Week 10 - Rex Bowles a strike

[kurtsimonw]

Just now, abdomlahor said:

We'd be a really good team if we had even a half decent defence, that's the annoying thing with the Giants. How many games have we lost game to field goals as the clock expires this season? Three? We never make plays when it matters the most any more either. Not since the last Superbowl.

Hopefully that changes next season when Collins finds his feet a little more and we hopefully sign a safety. He played okay tonight, but you just cannot have Craig Dahl starting at safety.

A major positive was the pass rush today though. JPP and Ayers make such a difference.

3 late FG defeats (Atlanta, New Orleans, New England) and a late TD defeat (Dallas). We're literally 4 plays away from being 9-1. It's incredible.

[kurtsimonw]

Carson Palmer is pretty awesome.

[StefanAVFC]

Worst half of football I've seen from any team ever.

Pathetic excuse for a team.

Wilson is awful. Bottom 10 QB. Got his payday and he's been shit all year.

Lynch is banged up.

Secondary can't cover. Sherm is having a bad day and Williams is the worst starting CB in the league.

And don't get me started on the O Line. Got to be up there for one of the worst O lines of all time. 

More penalty yards than offensive yards, most on the offensive line.

How the **** can you be called for holding on every 1st down when you only give your QB 1.5 seconds to throw!?

Fire Bevell. Fire Cable. Get to 8-8 at best and regroup for next year. Reinvest all of our cap space into any O lineman who is capable.

Fed up of this piece of shit team this season. None of them give a crap summed up by Wilson.

[StefanAVFC]

Fed up of this 'what is a catch' nonsense now.

Blatant catch and fumble ruled incomplete against us again.

[Brumerican]

Seattle need the winter to turn up ,sharpish.

[maqroll]

Too much minutiae in the rules, totally bogs down the game. There needs to be a massive rule cull, to simplify and speed up the game. As is, the game is being strangled to death.

[kurtsimonw]

It's quite amazing that in a league that's about 65% about passing/catching, there is no definitive rule on what a catch actually is. 

[kkr]

Giants Patriots games really are superb and a great watch every time.

I don't buy that the Giants will make the playoffs so easily though, despite how we played last night.  Let's face it, it was against an injury ravaged team.  Yes we have them too, but not to the same level.

We play Washington in their back yard off the bye which historically is a fixture we shit the bed in an epic let down game.  Lose that one and it is season done.

We then have to play in Miami, battle of NY, Panthers, at Vikes and a Philli team that owns us, especially since Chip Kelly arrived.

We need 4-5 wins and to be able to win close games against good teams.  We haven't done that all year.

[kkr]

Having said that if we stay healthy and play to our best I think we are capable of winning all those games.  Just think it is very unlikely for a team that has been creative in finding new ways to lose this season

[leviramsey]

http://www.footballoutsiders.com/images/MPYBG.JPG

Very interesting graphic of who has the most passing yards after the nth game of their career.

If Brees manages to stay around for another 4 or 5 years with decent production, he'll probably pass Peyton, and Stafford has an outside chance of catching both.

[leviramsey]

The Seahawks scored on every drive they didn't commit a penalty.

3 drives...

[leviramsey]

The last kick by Gostkowski was what put him ahead of Vinatieri for the Patriots' all-time FG lead.  Gostkowski is now 264-301, Vinatieri was 263-321.

[kurtsimonw]

A high quality kicker is very underrated. Gostkowski is an outstanding player.

Cruz out for the season. Shocker.

[maqroll]

Crazy second half last night, holy cow.

[Milfner]

9-0. 13 regular season wins in a row. [emoji41]

[leviramsey]

I missed it, but the safety the Eagles got against the Dolphins was hilarious.  There's a Vine out there that's worth watching.

Summary: Damien Williams fumbles a kickoff deep in the endzone and tries to run it out.  His teammate Jay Ajayi is desperate to have him take a knee that he basically clotheslines him as he's coming out of the endzone.  Williams collapses in a heap about a foot or two past the goal line.  1st and 10 inside their own one.  False start moves them back a foot.  Walter Thurmond is unblocked and drills Tannehill, sending the ball out the back of the endzone.

(The Vine is of the return)

[leviramsey]

The Giants' playcalling at the end was suspect.

2:10 2-5-NE23: 18 yard pass to Harris, Giants first timeout

2:06 1-5-NE5: incomplete pass

2:01 2-5-NE5: "incomplete" pass

1:56 3-5-NE5: sack for loss of 6, Patriots final timeout

1:50 4-11-NE11: FG attempt

The Giants' timeout is perplexing.  You have enough time to get the shots at a score you need if you let the clock run down to the 2 minute warning, and then just running it and attempting a FG with 25-40 seconds left.

[abdomlahor]

We've been taking odd timeouts at odd times all season, it's nothing new really.

[leviramsey]

Monday Morning Hangover

The Broncos will claw their way into the playoffs, probably with Manning at quarterback: Gary Kubiak may give Brock Osweiler a tryout against the Bears, but they'll have to strap Manning to a gurney to keep him away from Brady-Manning XVII.

Once they reach the playoffs, however, the Broncos will need defensive miracles to do more than go one-and-done.

Later Sunday, the Patriots survived a sloppy, mistake-filled game against a feisty opponent. It was Patriots football at its worst, which is still pretty amazing: spotty protection for Tom Brady, weak play in the secondary, too many penalties. The Patriots could easily have lost to the Giants. But they would have obliterated this week's Broncos.

The Bengals have endured many games in recent years like the Broncos experienced Sunday. They don't have them anymore. Andy Dalton and his team have grown out of what Peyton Manning just aged into. If the Broncos have to travel to Cincinnati in the playoffs, they will get hammered.

Ben Roethlisberger should have been on a sofa with his foot elevated, but instead he took the field and helped the Steelers look far superior to the Broncos. The Colts already made their point against the Broncos; when they stumble backward into the playoffs, Andrew Luck will be healthy. Peyton Manning may be Old Man Fredrickson from Up by then.

It's shocking to be here, two weeks before Brady-Manning XVII, wondering if there will really be a Brady-Manning XVII or if the game will even be worth watching. It's depressing to watch what has so obviously become one of those final seasons, the ones you look at 20 years later at the bottom of a Hall of Famer's career record and wonder: Was that season really necessary?

There's the matter of the all-time passing record. When we think of Manning's 71,871 passing yards, we should think of the glory days of Omaha, not what we saw Sunday. We should think of how it all started back in 1998: a time before wireless Internet, smartphones and Tom Brady; a time before careers or children for some of us, maybe before first grade (or birth) for a few of you. We should think about the years, the wins, the touchdowns, the Super Bowls.

But when we think about Sunday's game, we have no choice but to be realistic and think about the end.

The great Manning is long gone. The good Manning could have led these Broncos to the Super Bowl. But all the current Manning can do is echo a hollow reminder of how things used to be.

At least the Broncos are still likely to reach the playoffs. Many middle-tier teams suffered losses Sunday that crushed, or at least badly bruised, their playoff chances.

Here's a roundup of wild-card hangers-on who learned some harsh lessons Sunday. While most of them are still mathematically alive for playoff berths, none of them should be feeling optimistic Monday morning.

Saints

If Rob Ryan still has a job by Tuesday afternoon, it means he has the kind of blackmail photos that could topple a major government. He's got something involving Sean Payton, three senators, a foreign king, nine supermodels, a Jacuzzi full of cognac, a briefcase full of nuclear launch codes and a milking goat.

Kirk Cousins and Marcus Mariota combined for eight touchdowns and zero interceptions in the last two games against the Saints defense.

Now, Cousins endures a lot of kidding here in Hangover land, some of it undeserved. But he's the second-best healthy quarterback in the NFC East. Mariota is an incredibly promising rookie. But eight touchdowns and zero interceptions? That would be tough to swallow against Brady and Roethlisberger.

You have probably seen Matt Jones' 78-yard touchdown run on a routine screen pass that would have gained seven yards against a defense that didn't treat every routine misdirection play like they were watching Criss Angel levitate the Superdome.

The worst part of the worst play by the worst-coached defense in the NFL was Brandon Browner turning away from Jones to level guard Spencer Long, who was trotting several yards behind the play. Hey, it doesn't matter if you are alert, or in proper position, or doing anything to help your team as long as you are being tough and physical. It's the Rob Ryan way. And it leads right to a second straight year without a playoff berth.

Playoff Hopes: Ain't happening.

Eagles

The battle of culture vs. scheme continues in Philly—although, for Chip Kelly, it is often a three-way duel between culture, scheme and reality. Sunday's loss proved that all of the next-level thinking in the world cannot keep Sam Bradford healthy for a full season or make the Mark Sanchez-to-Miles Austin combination in the red zone anything but an interception waiting to happen.

Bradford suffered a shoulder injury and a concussion in the Dolphins loss, and he has never been a short-term injury kind of quarterback. Running back Ryan Mathews also suffered a concussion, which set up a situation that proved Kelly's philosophy hasn't dreamed of all things on heaven and Earth:

The Eagles rely on the read-option mesh often when handing off, even though they never run the read-option. It makes a kind of Kelly anti-sense, so just go with it.

Sanchez and DeMarco Murray haven't practiced the mesh much, which is a problem because it is trickier than a standard handoff. Kelly has rotated running backs liberally all year, but with Mathews out, he was down to Murray and scatback Darren Sproles. Sproles has practiced with Sanchez and handled increased workloads in the past, but Kelly chose to limit him to three carries against the Dolphins for some reason.

As a result, Sanchez and Murray kept engaging in sloppy, slow-developing, dangerous near-fumble shotgun handoffs that stymied the Eagles running game and increased their reliance on the Sanchez-to-Austin passing combo, which would have been dangerous circa 2009.

Playoff Hopes: Slim but not ridiculous. The Eagles still managed 29 first downs and 436 yards of offense, despite all of their miscues (blocked punts, fumbled snaps, dropped passes, Sanchez bouncing a pass off a wide-open Murray's back). No one is ever going to be truly dead in the NFC East until the final weeks, even a team with Sanchez at quarterback.

Cowboys

The Dallas offense is like an amnesia pill. You forget what the Cowboys are doing while they are doing it. After a Cowboys game, you are left with a vague recollection of some off-tackle Darren McFadden runs, a Matt Cassel scramble or two and lots of passes into the flat.

The Cowboys defense played better than the offense, with Jeff Heath intercepting a pair of passes. But the end of the Buccaneers' final series encapsulated the Cowboys' overall problems.

A defensive penalty in the end zone negated Jameis Winston's unforced fumble (he lost the handle of the ball as if he had slammed hard into the plane of the goal line itself), then no one bothered to serve as the stay-at-home defender against a mobile quarterback at the 1-yard line, leading to an easy touchdown.

Dez Bryant and Cowboys fans wanted a pass-interference call on Bradley McDougald's game-ending interception. There was some contact, perhaps even a little shove. However:

* In real time, the contact appeared completely incidental.

* There's no way a super-duper borderline call like that should ever be made in an obvious "let 'em play" situation.

* If you are Dez Bryant, and the game is on the line, you shouldn't be knocked off course by a tiny tap from someone named Bradley McDougald.

* If your season hinges on a borderline pass-interference penalty to snap a six-game losing streak against the Buccaneers, your season probably isn't really hinging on anything anymore.

Playoff Hopes: A sad little Romo will save us, Romo will save us, Romo will save us pipe dream.

Ravens

The Hangover team tried to watch the Ravens-Jaguars game. We really tried. But every time we focused our attention on the game, our eyes went blurry as a little voice whispered in our collective ears: Don't do this to yourselves. Life is too short for Ravens-Jaguars games.

Sure enough, a review of the highlights and play-by-play reveals an ugly four-turnover Ravens special. Everyone who watches football regularly knows what that looks like.

Now that it's all over for the Ravens, Hangover would like to offer them a little advice: RUN THE FOOTBALL SOMETIMES!

Coordinator Marc Trestman called 29 passes (including one Joe Flacco scramble) and four runs in the first half. This for a team whose running back gained 1,266 yards last year but whose top receiving threats are named Kamar Aiken and Crockett Gillmore.

Playoff Hopes: None. It's a good thing Flacco is used to adjusting to a new offensive coordinator every year. It's about to happen again.

Rams

It's more interesting to watch Todd Gurley's NFL.com statistical table update in real time than it is to watch the Rams offense.

Gurley was held to 45 rushing yards and a touchdown against the Bears, though he added a hurdling run after a catch as part of 44 receiving yards. Nick Foles throws so many passes about three diagonal yards beyond his targets that he must be aiming for a point three diagonal yards behind his targets, like he is trying to hit the tops of their shadows just before sundown.

The Rams defense cracked under the pressure of compensating for their offense the last three years, allowing 153 rushing yards by the Bears and a Pro Bowl performance by Jay Cutler.

The Rams are such dedicated spoilers that they probably have a few upset wins left in them this year. That visit to Cincinnati in two weeks looks like something right up their alley.

But the Rams are a mediocre team with a handful of young superstars and a real problem at quarterback. That's a fine place to be in the first year of a coach's tenure. It's a ridiculous place to be in the fourth year.

Playoff Hopes: Dwindling and largely contingent on the Cardinals and Seahawks kicking even more snot out of each other.

Raiders

Hey, leave the Raiders alone. They are a young, developing team on the rise. They just spent the last two weeks learning that it's easier to go from terrible to average in the NFL than average to good.

Sometimes, they are going to dazzle opponents with their growing array of offensive weapons. But other times, someone like Adrian Peterson is going to find the spackled-together parts of their defense and rack up 203 rushing yards.

Playoff Hopes: Not completely lost. You saw the Broncos. Anything is possible.

[leviramsey]

Note the way the Browns player is pointing on this fumble recovery