Week 9 Recap and the Lady Blitz Mid-Season Awards

Oy, it's always a little harder to write these things when your team disappoints, and Sunday was a "what else now?" kind of game for the Saints.  Two tipped-pass interceptions, a missed field goal and a bobbled would-be TD reception by Nick Toon keep replaying in my mind as Rex Ryan got the best of brother Rob yet again.  But hey, if there's a silver lining or two to cling to and if you have to lose games each season, go for the away games against a non-conference opponent.  Also, those Seahawks look more vulnerable than I would have thought though the Panthers are really starting to breathe down New Orleans' neck.  Okay, enough of that - here's the rest of my Week 9 recap and our Lady Blitz Mid-Season Awards.

Week 9: The Good Stuff

Surprising Replacement QBs - With Peyton Manning on a bye and a relatively dull schedule of games for Week 9, you would've thought there'd be a number of low-scoring yawners to bypass on Sunday.  Instead, we got shockingly good performances out of four replacement QBs: Jason Campbell, Case Keenum, Josh McCown and Nick Foles.  Campbell has put up 5 TDs and over 500 yards of passing in two games.  Despite losing a last-minute heartbreaker, Case Keenum is already making Houston forget that Schaub guy with 350 yards in passing and 3 TDs in prime time on Sunday night.   And kudos to McCown for sticking to Marc Trestman's aggressive passing attack in the hostile environs of Lambeau Field. But the heavyweight title this week goes to Nick Foles who is really taking that QB competition seriously in Philadelphia.  Against a decent Oakland secondary, Foles put up a staggering 7 TDs and had only 6 incompletions on the day.  Michael Vick might want to start thinking about his golf game...

Panthers on the Rise - The NFC South just got a whole lot more interesting with the Saints losing in New York and the Panthers clocking another dominant win against a divisional opponent.  Carolina has now won its last four games by a cumulative margin of over 80 points in an incredibly balanced fashion.  Even though Cam Newton didn't have the best game on Sunday, the Panthers had four players with 20+ rushing yards and forced four turnovers against the Falcons.  To be somewhat fair, Carolina has only played one game so far against a team with a winning record (Seahawks) and lost, and they'll face six teams in the next 8 weeks currently 0.500 or better, but these guys are playing as lights out as could be expected by any top brass in the league.

Nailed It!  My Best Week 9 Prediction - My only pick against the favorite ended up paying off this week, as the Dolphins pulled off an unlikely victory in OT thanks to said underrated defense:

• " It’s very tempting to pick Cincy in this one given the Bengals’ lights out performance last week, but I’ll give Ryan Tannehill a shot at home with a solid and underrated Dolphins defense."

Week 9: The Bad Stuff

Richie Incognito, A Real Name and a Terrible Person - So maybe Antonio Smith was onto something when he gave Richie Incognito a helmet to the jaw back in the preseason.  It didn't take long for rumors of rookie hazing and blatant racism to lead to dismissal for the Dolphins' offensive lineman.  And when I say rumors, I mean pretty obvious evidence that this joker is a 'roided out idiot who would make O'Bannion from Dazed and Confused blush.  I have no concept of how often this level of "hazing" happens in the NFL and I probably don't want to know, but good for Miami for showing Incognito the door after what appears to be a very short career of false entitlement. 

The Swiss Cheese Curtain - It's a gross visual and not really all that great of an analogy, but who are these 2013 Steelers anyway?  The once-punishing Steel Curtain let Tom Brady and his third-string offense drop 55 points and 600 yards on the misfit band of dinosaurs and clueless young'uns.  Mike Tomlin can take away all the ping pong tables he wants, Pittsburgh's due for a serious shakeup this offseason, and it's probably a good thing for the long term. 

Shanked It!  My Worst Week 9 Prediction: To be fair, I thought Matt Barkley would be starting again for the Eagles this week, but there's no side-stepping how dominant Nick Foles proved in Oakland on Sunday:

• "Who would’ve thought six months ago the Eagles would be jealous of the Raiders’ quarterback situation?"

Week 9 Feature: The Lady Blitz Mid-Season Awards

We are already 133 games into the 2013 season, meaning we're over halfway to the playoffs and one potentially miserable Super Bowl in the wintry Meadowlands in February.  That means it's time to hand out the totally fake and meaningless mid-season awards:

• Best Game To Date - We've had our share of wild and entertaining games so far this season, mostly at the Dallas Cowboys' expense.  Chief among them had to be that 99-point, 1,039-yard affair with Peyton Manning's Broncos where defense need not apply.  Denver looked completely unstoppable until that afternoon in Arlington when Tony Romo put up 500 yards and 5 TDs.  With a chance to win the game in the waning minutes, naturally this thing could have only ended with a loss-clinching Romo interception.  Classic. 

• Best Game to Come - Some games I predicted to be worthwhile this year still hold and some are destined to be House Punch material (Falcons vs. Seahawks next week, anyone?).  Especially given the Patriots' rise back to prominence on offense this week, I think the next chapter in the Brady-Manning rivalry still holds as an excellent matchup.  But also keep an eye on conference seeding in Week 13 when the Broncos and Chiefs face off in the AFC and the Saints and Seahawks face off in the NFC... I mean, who wants to play a Super Bowl in the Meadowlands anyway?

• Biggest Bear - Some teams just aren't what they seemed to be from August looking forward, and there sure are a lot of disappointing teams out there when it comes to potential playoff repeats.  In terms of sheer talent and lost potential, my August self would be stunned to know that both the Falcons and the Texans are a pitiful 2 - 6 at the moment.  It's enough for Arthur Blank to get out a couple pints of ice cream and put The Notebook on repeat for Coach Mike Smith.  Houston and Atlanta can do little more than eye draft prospects at this point and hope the window hasn't closed for the next couple of years.

• Biggest Bull - Like I said earlier, I would not be surprised at all to see the Panthers make a run at a wild card or even, gulp, a division title.   They've got a lot of things going right between a few years of great draft classes and a much more aggressive mindset in Coach Rivera's play-calling.  The Chiefs have certainly been a surprise, but I picked them to get to the wild card round this year, so my AFC Bull has to be the New York Jets.  They have yet to win or lose two games in a row, but their wins against the Saints, Patriots and Falcons have been impressive and exemplary of Rex Ryan's ground and pound comfort zone.

• The Lady Blitz Kiss of Death - Welp, I finally picked against the Falcons for the first time this season in Week 9 after having Atlanta rack up 11 wins and the division title in the preseason.  But if only to spite me, they dropped 5 games where I had them winning and lost two of their most important offensive weapons for an extended period of time.  I didn't see this collapse coming, exactly, but it does reflect the cautions I put forth about Atlanta's riverboat gambling style of front office moves: "While some moves work out swimmingly, others create holes and expose previously unknown vulnerabilities that cannot be solved overnight." The Falcons bet big on Julio Jones, Roddy White, Stephen Jackson and Tony Gonzalez--not a bad bet on the face of it--but with Gonzalez being the last man standing and a very thin running game and defense, theses Dirty Birds are cooked.

• My Super Bowl Mulligan - I'm not really all that disgusted with my Super Bowl pick of the Packers vs. Patriots, although the severity of Aaron Rodgers' injury last night could obviously be a factor.  If Seattle can hang on to #1 seeding in the NFC, I can't see any team including the Rodgers-led Packers beating them at CenturyLink Field.  I still like the Pats in the AFC now that Gronk is back and they're actually honoring that run game, and we know how other favorite Peyton Manning tends to do in January...