In attendance: not even me! I had dance practice Thursday and had to record the game and watch it Friday night. Of course, I knew how it turned out before I watched it. My media blackout attempts were summarily killed by the Washington Post, which had the score on the front page of the Sports section Friday. Given how the game went down, this was probably a good thing, and no doubt saved me several heart attacks and much screaming and yelling.
Stud of the week: Michael Vick. Not only was his defense not able to hold a 14 point lead, going down by four at one point, and needing him to rally the team to a win, but he did it after getting repeatedly knocked on his ass. Much like a weeble, he kept popping back up. Thank God. Shady had a good game, too, going for 130 combined yards. Anyone else notice how much he's starting to run like BWest? Must be all those screens! Gotta give a shout out to Chef Spouse's boy David Akers, too, who set the franchise record for starts at 184 on Thursday, passing Wolverine, whose starts, let's be honest, were qualitatively different (no disrespect meant to Akers).
So, comments on the game. It's four days after, so the recaps have already hit everywhere but, um, here.
The big stories were:
Michael Vick is one tough mo-fo. Yes, he is. See above. Also, loved the whole "not in OUR house" 4th quarter come-back.
Andy Reid calls out the officials. Glad to see I'm not the only one who notices that some QBs (whose last name may be "Manning") draw 15 yard penalties if your arm glances off their helmet, while some QBs get blatantly face masked (see above, Vick, Michael) or their NOSES get BROKEN (Big Ben and the whole "my nose is now perpendicular to my face" thing on SNF) and...nothing.
Brent Celek and Jason Avant BOTH drop the same TD pass. C'mon man!
The Vick throw in the 4th quarter when we needed to keep the clock moving. I don't think that was actually a planned throw. Watching it again, the flags were already in by the time Vick threw it away. Andy is not the master of clock management, but I don't think that was him.
And the big one: the defense. OK, the third quarter was not great. But the thing is, the Texans can totes score points. I'm not thrilled that the gave up 2 TDs, but I'm not that surprised, either. It's clear that the Eagles D misses Asante Samuel big time, not least of which because no coach in his right mind wants to throw near him, which allows the rest of the defense to cheat the coverage on his side, leaving them only having to deal with about 2/3 of the field. When they have to cover the WHOLE field, things aren't so good. But again, giving up 24 points to the Texans is not beyond the pale.
4 games left, resurgent Cowboys twice, resurgent Vikings once, and the Giants in their house. The Eagles can't ever do anything the easy way, can they? Go get 'em, boys. (Doing something to reduce penalties might help.)
Around the rest of the NFL...
Saints over Bengals. How do the Bengals go up on the Saints? How, after they've pulled off that feat, do they fall for the oldest trick in the book and jump offsides on the hard count on 4th and 2 at the end of the game? Oh Bungles, it sucks to be you.
Bears over Lions. Have you noticed that the Lions have been in every game this season? If they can just keep Matthew Stafford healthy, they're this close to being good.
Packers over 49ers. Well, yes. And how many tackles did Donald Driver break to put the Pack ahead for good? 4? 5? 137?
Chiefs over Broncos. With the Chargers surprising loss to the Raiders (more on that below), the Chiefs have probably pretty much wrapped up the West. Raise your hand if you saw THAT coming. Also, Josh McDaniels is out. Three head coaches out of 32 are already out. As Chef Spouse observed while cooking dinner tonight, the beheadings don't usually start until January, so they're really ahead of schedule this year.
Browns over Dolphins. Apparently, this was the most boring game since the Steelers beat the Dolphins 3-0 on MNF a few years back (the infamous "the ball actually got stuck in the field" game).
Vikings over Bills. See, I told you the Vikes should give Tavaris Jackson a shot.
Giants over Redskins. Apparently, the Redskins dragon-style "we suck" suckitude-fu was stronger than DMac's tiger-style "Dear Giants: I own your asses" awesomeness-fu. Also, Fat Albert was apparently having a bad hair day and didn't feel like playing. Also, it would've been REALLY helpful if the Redskins could've pulled off the upset win. Also, perhaps they should fire EVERYONE (including the owner), burn FedEx field to the ground, salt the earth, and start over. Just a suggestion.
Jaguars over Titans. Did I mention that things are going all the way wrong in Tennessee? Because they are.
Raider over Chargers. Have you ever noticed that the second the commentators start making a big deal about something, whether it be "Mike Vick hasn't thrown a single pick all season" or "The Chargers haven't lost in December in FIVE YEARS," it immediately happens?
Rams over Cardinals. Whatever. Apparently, Ditka is also on record as agreeing with me that, if no team in a division finishes above .500, they should automatically lose their playoff spot. Preach, Ditka!
Cowboys over Colts. Well, that was unexpected. Two thoughts: number one, with almost no players left, Peyton Manning is clearly trying to do too much. Number two, maybe changing head coaches mid-season isn't such a bad move after all. At least then no one knows what to expect until they get some film on you. For the Eagles' sake, I hope 4 weeks worth of film on Jason Garrett will be enough.
Seahawks over Panthers. Yawn.
Falcons over Bucs. OK, everyone's now on the whole "Matty Ice is DREAMY" train. I have to point out that the 7-5 Bucs haven't beat any teams with winning records AND the NFC South features the truly awful Panthers. There's 10-2, and then there's 10-2.
Steelers over Ravens. Talk about a slug fest! I mean literally - Ben Roethlisberger's nose got broken. The Ravens dominated the game...up until the very end, when Troy Polamalu forced a Joe Flacco fumble that was recovered by LaMarr Woodley with about 3 minutes left, leading to the Steelers only TD of the evening.
On to Pats/Jets!
0 comments:
Post a Comment