Here are my lingering thoughts on Week 10 in Quick Snap form. I'll also feature a big idea, team and/or player each week to keep things interesting. This week: Why "Nobody" Likes the Falcons. But first, the good stuff:
Week 10: The Good Stuff
- Mud Bowl 2012 - I won't gloat that I picked the Texans to [slightly] upset the Bears at home on Sunday, especially since it's hard to say what would have happened if Jay Cutler had not suffered a game-ending concussion in the first half, but I also loved this game for other reasons. The low-scoring affair was probably a bore to many, but the sloppy field and unforgiving Chicago weather brought these two teams to their nasty ground-and-pound cores. And major kudos to the Texans for rising from the muddy ashes. With Brandon Marshall, Devin Hester and Andre Johnson getting sandbagged in the finesse game, we got to see the vintage kind of football clash that these two teams were built to play. Here's to hoping for Part II when Chicago heads to San Francisco next Monday night.
- The Saints' Surprising Red Zone Defense - I never thought I'd say this after the first half of this season, but there is actually a silver lining in that historically bad Saints defense. They might still get gashed by offenses good and bad for 450+ yards a game, but they are clutch in the one place where it really counts, the red zone. They've had big stops in each of their wins this season that have let them edge out a growing number of contenders in complement to the big production of Drew Brees' offense. But don't take my word for it, Saints columnist Mike Triplett has summed it up quite nicely:
- "The Saints have now held their opponents without a touchdown nine
times this season when they had either a first or second down inside the
5-yard line.
- Earlier in the fourth quarter Sunday, they also forced Atlanta to settle for a field goal after the Falcons had a first-and-goal from the 5-yard line.
- Last week, they stopped the Philadelphia Eagles three times inside the 5-yard line, allowing one field goal and forcing two turnovers (one of which was returned 99 yards for a touchdown).
- Three weeks ago, the Saints famously stopped the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on four straight plays from the 1-yard line after safety Malcolm Jenkins' touchdown-saving tackle at the end of Vincent Jackson's 95-yard catch.
- Earlier this year, the Saints forced both the Green Bay Packers and Carolina Panthers to fumble inside the 4-yard line." - Adrian Peterson's More Than Full Recovery - The way AP has played this year after a devastating ACL tear in 2011 makes you wonder if more than a few prospective running backs would suffer a similar fate if they knew they could run like this afterwards. Obviously this is no Tommy John-like situation, so don't try this at home, folks, but Adrian Peterson is making one helluva case for MVP this year. He leads the league in rushing by a big margin right now, averaging nearly 6 yards a carry and more than keeping the unlikely Vikings afloat on offense. Sunday's performance against the Lions put another notch in the consideration column to be sure with a buck-70 running game.
- Nailed It! My Best Week 10 Prediction - Yet another reason to love the Seahawks this season, they took Jabba the Rex to the cleaners this weekend by handing Mark Sanchez a QB rating of just 6.2:
- "For everything I loathe about Rex Ryan's incessant yammering, I have to give him credit for always acting as though the Jets have no reason to feel intimidated by anyone even if they're walking into the lion's jaws. And you can count on that latter part when Mark Sanchez (or Tebow?!?!?!) gets to face Seattle's secondary in the Emerald City this weekend."
Week 10: The Bad Stuff
- The Giants' On-Schedule Slump - November is a make or break time for a lot of teams that you can practically set your watch to each year. Tony Romo turns on his passer-rating competency, the Saints become nearly unstoppable, and the Giants sink into an inexplicable slump after a strong start. I pointed out in my Week 10 picks last week that I thought this would be a tough [but winnable] game for New York since the sense of urgency in Cincinnati is hard to match right now. But no, the Giants went very opposite day on us. Once-MVP hopeful Eli Manning tossed 2 picks, no TDs and just 215 yards. The Giants' second-in-takeaways defense had no sacks and just one fumble, plus they allowed Andy Dalton to have his first no-INT game of the season (and 4 TDs) and got totally outplayed in the red zone. New York still has a workable cushion as the NFC East division leader, but they continue to be a very frustrating self-fulfilling prophecy in November.
- Matt Cassel's... Everything - This is looking like a career-ending year for Matt Cassel, and not in the polite ice-cream-cake-retirement-party kind of way. The Chiefs had a chance just about every 3 minutes to put the Steelers away on Monday night, especially when Ben Roethlisberger went down, but they just couldn't stop shooting themselves in the foot at every turn. There were and continue to be a lot more problems than can be attributed to Matt Cassel alone but get this: Cassel has single-handedly caused more turnovers (19) in nine games than 28 entire teams have so far this season. You know it's bad when Brady Quinn looks like Johnny Unitas in comparison. Don't expect the home crowd booing to let up anytime soon either if Cassel's back under center next week.
- Aaron Rodgers' Spot-On Impression of Jay Cutler - I know I'm definitely in the minority on this one, but I've had a nagging feeling for a long time that Aaron Rodgers' personality sucks. Yes, the man is a beast on the field, but there's just a certain level of self-righteous pouting that seems to rear its ugly head every few weeks that I alluded to along with the other Packers' attitude problems back in my Week 4 Recap. Not to mention the championship belt TD dance that every opposing player and their mothers have rolled their eyes at for the past year and a half. Now we need to bring out our tiny violins once again for poor Mr. Rodgers, who did not like his feature on 60 Minutes last week because it was too short and didn't feature his one night of attending a children's cancer charity event. (So that I won't seem like a total jerk, here's a link to said charity if you want to learn more.) But really, talk about rich people problems. "Boo-hoo-hoo, I'm Aaron Rodgers and I got a huge segment on one of the top-rated news magazine shows of all time, but they only used 11 minutes of my nondescript personal story. How will people ever know that I think cancer is a bad thing now?" This is the kind of stuff that lands you Tom-Brady's-Uggs levels of resentment if you're not careful.
- Shanked It! My Worst Week 10 Prediction - Hoo boy. There were some really great upsets and even the elusive NFL tie game on Sunday, but few [including myself] saw the Titans' 60-minute domination over a hot Dolphins team coming:
- "It'll be interesting if Jake Locker gets off the bench this weekend in Miami, but it won't be enough to stop the Titans' defensive bleeding against the capable Ryan Tannehill and Reggie Bush, who may not be on track to top the league in rushing but is definitely having a career year."
I won't even try to hide how biased this week's feature is since I'm still riding high off of the Saints' best win to date. To be clear, I think New Orleans will be hard-pressed to come out on top when we repeat this matchup in Atlanta on Thursday night in Week 13, but this feature is bigger than a division rivalry. Week after week, the story in Atlanta has been why the Falcons haven't received the kind of respect 8 - 0 teams usually garner among NFL fans and pundits. Sure, the Falcons have surpassed nearly everyone's expectations so far this season, but that still doesn't seem to be enough for most to put money on a February Super Bowl appearance. What gives? Here are some meditations from a snotty, callous Saints fan:
- They Still Haven't Proven Anything - Ah yes, the one thing the Falcons absolutely cannot do anything about for the next month and a half. Atlanta has been the very definition of disappointment in the postseason since Mike Smith, Thomas Dimitroff and Matt Ryan took over in 2008. For four (soon to be five) seasons in a row, the Falcons have had a winning record, made the playoffs three (soon to be four) times and won the division once (soon to be twice). But for all of Atlanta's regular season successes, it's those instantaneous playoff collapses that have been foremost in everyone's minds. Sure, there are a handful of other teams who've suffered similar fates over the past few years like the Cowboys and Chargers, but few have lost in a manner so consistently deflating as the Falcons, who've lost their last three postseason games by a combined 55 points or 18 points on average. Add to those historic woes the fact that Atlanta has one of the easiest schedules in all of the NFL this season (12 out of 16 games on the schedule are against teams with losing records currently), and there's no room for Atlanta to really prove itself before the postseason. Getting smacked around in the red zone by the league's worst defense this past Sunday certainly doesn't help.
- Roddy White Is the Ultimate Unsympathetic Character - I'll admit there are a few Falcons players I genuinely like, namely Tony Gonzalez and Thomas DeCoud, but then there's Roddy White, who eclipses whatever good can be derived from this roster. Don't get me wrong, Roddy White is still the Falcons' best, most dangerous receiver and has quietly racked up over 1,000 yards a season over the past five years, but the man is just too pathetically arrogant to be respected in the NFL despite his elite numbers. In fact, when you look up Roddy White's Wikipedia bio, two of the three sentences in his "Personal Life" section are literally: "White had developed a tendency for partying during the early part of his career. His mother actually had to steal his credit cards from him after she found out that he was almost bankrupt less than a year after signing his rookie contract worth over $7 million." Add to that every sour grapes quote he contributes to the news media and Twittersphere that gets used against him when the Falcons inevitably have a disappointing outing (plus unsolicited homophobia!), and you can see what a distracting embarrassment White can be to his team off the field.
- They're Coached Not to Lose (Read: They're Boring) - You could characterize the above two points as low-hanging fruit, but this Reason the Third is what really underlies the Falcons' respect problem if you ask me: Mike Smith doesn't coach his team to win, he coaches them not to lose. That's all well and great statistically over the course of several games like with baseball, but it'll only get you so far in football, and it continues to be the wall the Falcons seem to hit year-in and year-out in the Mike Smith era. Case in point: many have pointed out that the Falcons should have gone for 2 against the Saints when trailing by 5 in the fourth quarter, since Atlanta would have to go for another touchdown anyway if they made the traditional extra point, but they went inexplicably by the book. The Falcons also continued to waste goal line plays on Michael Turner up-the-gut despite his continuing lack of success against the Saints because this was the most conservatively assured approach. In essence, Atlanta prides itself and its winning record on robotics: the team limits turnovers, injuries and penalties, gives Matt Ryan as many high-percentage checkdowns as possible, and nearly always goes for the most statistically safe play rather than honoring situational football in big games. They do not take risks even when they're the better team, and this ultimately serves as a discredit to a highly talented roster. In that regard, Sunday showed us that the Falcons still have a big hurdle to jump if they want to make it into the inner circle of truly elite NFL teams.
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