I agree. I hate the icing the kicker garbage from last year.
But at least the Cards won.
Atlanta win was fantastic–you rarely see a team come back with so few seconds on the clock.
If they keep this up, is there any question that both the Rookie of the Year and the Coach of the Year come from that team?
I know I’m loving it. Now we just need Big Blue to do what they should do.
I describe the Panthers as the Stephen King of football. They often have a strong start, good elements, create a really stable sense of hope in me…and then fall apart at the end, whether it’s in a game or the season itself.
Of course, sometimes they’re the Dan Brown of football in that they’re lightweights from the get-go.
Matt Ryan has impressed the hell out of me. I thought for sure he’d be a turnover machine, but so far he has done very well. Although he’s not lights out, he’s managing the games and playing well enough to get the win. Roddy White has played great and their O Line has been surprisingly effective.
In other news, the Packers looked good in a win. Sure it was against a team starting Charlie Frye, but a win is a win, especially in the NFC North.
I agree. I’ve seen this before, and I sure as hell don’t understand the rationale, at least not when there’s like 15 seconds left on the clock.
The main advantage of the squib is that it’s guaranteed to wind several seconds off the clock. You can simply not catch a normal kickoff, letting it bounce through the endzone for a touchback without the clock ever winding.
You have to pick up a squib because kickoffs are live balls after 10 yards, and a squib won’t even make it to the endzone, (where it would still be live,) much less roll past it for touchback.
So if there’s only like 10 seconds left, a squib will eat up several of those, effectively ending the game. This is assuming you aren’t a pathetic joke of a team who can’t pull their heads out of their asses long enough to stop one play that is guaranteed to be aimed at the sidelines. I mean, you’d have to be the laughingstock of the league to fuck that up, right?
(This is said with empathy; the same basic thing happened to the Giants in Parcells’ first game at the Meadowlands as coach of the Cowboys on a MNF game. Except the Giants’ squib, with 11 seconds left in the game, actually rolled out of bounds with nobody touching it, so not only did it eat no clock, it also gave them the ball on the 40. One pass later – to Witten IIRC – and they kicked the game-winning FG. Fuckers!)
Hey, for once the Raiders didn’t blow the game in the fourth quarter!
They decided to roll over in the first half instead. Probably much easier for them.
Shuddup you. 
Stupid freakin Raiders. This is not the same team that existed before Kiffin was fired. The play calling was insane, the defense was swiss cheese and they didn’t come close to utilizing what they have in terms of running the football. Did Michael Bush even get to touch the ball?
I appreciate them trying to bring Russel’s passing game along, and I really do think that the kid is going to turn into one of the great QB’s of the game, but he has to learn to walk before he can run. He just isn’t there yet, and with the potential for a running game that is so strong, why would they possibly switch to a pass centered offense? And when they did run it was back to the old Art Shell model of “punch it up the middle”.
CBS didn’t even finish showing the 4th quarter out here. We got the end of the Jets/Bengals game instead.
Stupid freakin Raiders.
I’ve seen very little of Russell’s games, just a few snippets yesterday. And I saw nothing that would make me think he’ll ever be “one of the great QBs of the game”. The bit I saw, he should have had at least 3 ints, not one. He threw to clearly covered receivers, had poor accuracy (13 of 35) EVEN against the prevent defense, and had happy feet in the pocket.
Of course, I’m only going by the few games I’ve seen him in, but I can’t imagine he’ll ever be a great QB. Educate me.
Ooooh, that must have been exciting watching the powerhouse Bengals put the screws to Fahvray and company!
:rolleyes:
Freaking Bengals. Win a damn game!
:mad:
Well, he’s effectively a rookie, and he’s playing for the Raiders, after all, behind a line that can run block superbly but can’t pass-protect at all.
He throws a terrific deep ball- he just doesn’t have any decent receivers.
I’m not sure he’s going to be a great quarterback, or even a good one, but he’s certainly shown flashes.
Wasn’t the coaches’ fault. It was a horrible, horrible kick. What IS the coaches’ fault is failing to stop a rookie quarterback from completing a 20 yard pass that everyone in the building knows is going to the sideline.
I can’t believe he’ll keep up this level of play all year, but if he does, he’s a shoe-in for OROTY. Plus, whoever calls the plays for the Falcons deserves a huge raise. Feeding the ball to Turner 25+ times a game, even if he’s averaging 2 yards per carry, is really, really smart football.
I think Sparano or Dick Jauron might end up winning Coach of the Year - but if Miami and Buffalo don’t make the playoffs, and the Falcons do, Smith is certainly going to win.
Wisenhunt said he didn’t see him on the ground - the guy was like 50 yards downfield from the play, so that’s understandable. Anyway, the zebras should have called an injury timeout- clearly, *they * saw him down on the field, because they flagged him.
Meh. That was poor execution, not poor coaching - and the Buccaneers played absolute lights-out football most of the game. Nice to finally get a win over the Panthers on our home field! 
They were talking about the kicker icing that backfired.
:smack: I read RyJae’s two posts as one.
I was hoping that last-minute icing bullshit would backfire sooner or later. I know it’s legal and everything but it’s really, really unsportsmanlike.
Romo out for 4 weeks with a broken pinky: http://sports.espn.go.com/nfl/players/profile?playerId=5209
Have fun with T.O., Brad Johnson.
Consider that this was his sixth NFL game before anything. What I like about Russel is that he has an arm that is absolutely insane, and he is a smart player. Watching the season so far he has made real leaps in his ability to make decisions and react to changing defensive situations. But he is really green and doesn’t have any good recievers, yesterdays game was the first time he threw anywhere near that amount of passes, and most of the misses were sqarely the fault of his recievers. I may have been a little over enthusiastic in my praise for him last night, but I do think he has amazing potential.
I agree with what Gannon said when he was doing the game color, between him and McFadden you have two young players that you can build a team around. They just need a quality reciever or two, and a coach who isn’t going to call crap plays.
I would be curious to see some sort of icing stat, because I don’t really think it’s that effective either. I would suspect that misses are probably not off the standard number of misses in the NFL anyway. I mean… imagine a pro golfer going to tee up, suddenly he’s got to wait 5 minutes before he takes his swing. He’s really going to forget how to take a swing in that five minutes? Kicking is similar to me. He goes out, kicks the ball, five minutes later he kicks again. It’s not nearly enough time for him to tighten up or whatever they expect to happen.
Plus, at this point a kicker has got to expect it. If you really want to get into the head of a kicker, I think you would want to mix it up- so the kicker never exactly knows if this is going to happen or not.
The Niners players played well yesterday, otoh, Mike Nolan is a fucking moron. He seems totally unclear on the concept of the replay flag. Here’s a clue it’s not so the fans can tell what a dumb ass you are. Maybe you should spend a few more minutes studying a playbook rather than GQ. I know I can’t be the only new his absolutely knew Nolan would blow a 9 point fourth quarter lead by calling vanilla plays. The man is an idiot.
I’m waiting for the “Brady…” chants to start in Cleveland tonight.
Where the Giant’s D tonight? 