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It wasn’t a banner weekend as I fell into a lot of the stranger games of the week, such is my habit. There was quite a bit of information from the weekend I will dissect, however, with the caveat being that we know preseason is hideously deceptive and such dissection is fraught with perils. Being that we are all football enthusiasts and can’t help ourselves, I will proceed with the national and regional action I can semi-intelligently comment about.
We’ll start at the logical beginning: Mike Vick, who fell under the wrath of my hard earned money on Saturday. Didn’t the Ravens injure someone else last year? This is a blackeye on the NFL, given that not only did they just lose a majorly hyped star but it also happened on the new highly-hyped FieldTurf!! It was an ugly tackle and I doubt that’s how Billick teached it in camp this year. I would caution not to assume the Falcons are done. The Falcons are blessed with an easy September schedule and such situations are notorious for “bringing a team together” and making them stronger in the long run. After all, there is no “I” in team, or “V” in this case! The game to circle might be the 3rd game. They may be facing a 2-0 Bucs team ready for a letdown, or a desperate 0-2 Bucs team bent on hellfire the Falcons will be in little position to stop. Dan Reeves, who long suffered with Chris Chandalier, is no stranger to the pinch-hit QB.
The Saints have the most yards after the whistle, but the Raiders have the most yards CALLED BACK by the whistle. I’ll now backtrack to Oakland who presented a valuable lesson this week: never bet on the losers of the Superbowl in the preseason. Why? Because the whole team is in debt big to the books for betting on themselves and have to throw a couple preseason games! Okay, a far-fetched theory but a pretty good description of the game. The draw-dropping performance of Fargas (18-126) was offset by THREE dropped QB hikes, badly shanked field goals, tons of penalties (by the Raiders?!? Hell freezeth over), an idiot coach replay challenge to keep the 49ers horrendous kicker from missing a 52 yarder thus giving up about 35 yards of field position, and a couple timely plays by the official. And they still only missed the cover by 2 having blown a lead with 2 minutes to go and losing the ball inside the 10 yard line to cap a horrendous team performance. As for Fargas, you might argue that he was playing against backups. But you know what – that is exactly how it SHOULD look against backups! Fargas was awesome (again) and I can’t wait until he cracks the starting linuep. He was a man among boys.
The height of the weekend from my perspective had to be that awesome shootout between the Packers and the Browns. Holcomb had a magical performance reminiscent of last year and enough to bench Couch for good, who was solid in his own right. W. Green broke 100 yards on just 4 touches. And Farve was out there playing sandlot ball like a pro, demonstrating how dangerous he can be on the run when the strings are cut lose. Even a little defense with an exchange of interceptions helped round out the night.
From that thriller came the weekend’s biggest failure: Cardinals at Chargers. I’m going to get on my soap box a bit here. Prior to the game, the Cardinals coach outlines a priority of the game to find a RB to backup Emmitt Smith. Read that again. I’m thinking a priority should be to find a receiver to START for the Cardinals. Am I making sense here? Who the hell cares who will spell Emmitt this season when they have no passing game whatsoever? The Cardinals managed a totally laughable 7 completions on 14 tries for a measly 68 TOTAL passing yards. TOTAL!!! Only one guy emerged with more than a single catch in the game. This is absolutely pitiful. Last year, I remember looking at the Bengals at the tale end of the season as a “bet on” because I figured as low as the numbers looked, Vegas simply couldn’t afford to give away a team as bad as the Bengals. How many people are going to take the Bengals no matter what the number is? Not many. I was wrong – the Bengals did an abysmal job of covering what must have been generous lines. The Cardinals might fall into this category. You may think it is IMPOSSIBLE to underestimate them, yet that very well could happen. 68 yards may have helped the Texans win a game last year vs. the Steelers but that’ll happen about once every 50 years. On the other side, the Chargers were equally disappointing. They racked up just 55 rushing yards on 15 carries against a woeful Cardinals defensive line and actually managed to lose the stupid game (inexcusable under any pretext). Regardless of who is toting the ball, I’d expect better than that! Brees’ 5-7 for 48 yards is decent.
Here’s another boxscore for you: Plummer 8/13 for 117 yards. Good! 1 Int. BAD!!! Plummer needs to cut down the mistakes and throwing yet another 1st half pick is a bad omen. The other side features a 3-8 for 38 yard performance from Kordell and Atrain maintains his 2 yard per carry average. More disturbing is that the Bears blew ANOTHER game in the 4th quarter, quite reminiscent of 2002. Or a coincidence?
Finally, we come to the Bucs/Rams game on MNF. The Bucs have discarded letdown chances in their previous two preseason games. The Rams looked like the same-old 2002 version in their last outing. So what happens? The Bucs come out FLAT for the Rams? Are you kidding me?!? And give up 17 STRAIGHT passes from the opening gun to Warner and crew? If it were 2001, I wouldn’t blink but that was almost unthinkable in 2003. After all, you don’t see many repeats in the NFL – the storyline generally stays a bit fresh and this read like another over-adrenalined rout by the Bucs. Instead, the Bucs fail to disrupt a single pass for more than a half of football! Sorry, its hard NOT to read into this a bit. A wakeup call for the Bucs? Something they needed? A preview of the Rams to come in 2003? Or a meaningless blip in the preseason? This certainly puts a new light of doubt on which Bucs team will show up in Philadelphia and which Warner will play for the Rams this year. How can you not factor this in a bit? Oh yeah, just preseason...just preseason...just preseason.
ONWARD AND UPWARD
If the Rams needed to put together a good showing, and Holcomb needed to have a preseason display like last season, than it would only stand to reason that the Steelers will stop stinking up the joint and outgun a thin Dallas team on Thursday. It seems like Quincy Carter is ready to assume the mantle and a bad showing by Hutchinson will just make the team more united for opening kickoff, so everybody should be reading from the same script. A 3rd quarter appearance by Maddox and company won’t hurt the spread either. Parcells is likely to let his scrubs get whooped up on just to teach them a good lesson.
I like Atlanta to show up focused and composed, ready to test themselves against Miami. That’s a national game by the way. Chicago and Arizona should be brutal. New England looks poised to go undefeated in the preseason and might find a fat&happy Eagles team already looking towards their MNF opener. Rams and Bills seem poised for an exciting shootout. Carolina might find a fat&happy Green Bay, coming off a solid performance in Cleveland. Take the over in penalties in the Jets/Giants game regardless of time of season. Baltimore will try for two in a row against Ramsey. The Saints/49ers may feature the best 7-on-7 action the league can offer.
The Black Cat