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These are excerpts. To read the whole article click the link below. Comments related to the Rams are up first.
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https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2018/10/08/nfl-week-5-cleveland-browns-fmia-peter-king/
By Peter King
• Behind the McVay call. The league’s getting gutsier, it seems. (Except for Jason Garrett.) Intriguing call for Sean McVay on Sunday at Seattle. L.A. ball, fourth and a half-yard, Rams 42, 1:39 left, no timeouts left for Seattle. High stakes here. If the Rams go for it and make it, the game’s over; they can run out the clock because Seattle has no timeouts left. If the Rams go for it and fail, Seattle needs 15 yards to be in breezy field-goal range for the winning kick.
If the Rams punt, they could likely pin the Seahawks around their 15-yard line. On the bus to the airport Sunday evening, McVay explained the call to go for it thusly: “I think the biggest thing was this: Our offensive linemen had the confidence to be able to get those six inches. I thought Jared [Goff] did an excellent job of mixing up his cadence a little bit, and I felt like he could catch them off guard.
We attack success. We don’t fear failure. We want to go for the win in that situation. Getting six inches to close it out was something that we felt the percentages were in our favor.” Smart move, and not just because it worked.
MVP Watch
Jared Goff, QB, Los Angeles Rams. This is not just Sean McVay’s influence making Goff a player. You don’t make the kind of precise throws into tight coverage the way Goff is doing with a coach pulling strings and making you a robot. Sunday in Seattle was the kind of tough struggle even the best teams are going to have to win regularly in the course of a long season.
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Todd Gurley, at $11.5-million a year average, for the next six years, is a pretty reasonable contract for the Rams. I won’t say cheap, but reasonable.
By the way, there is no way the Todd Gurley touchdown should have been reversed in Seahawks-Rams. I repeat what the NFL had been doing a good job of until the Cleveland first-down reversal late in last week’s game at Oakland: Reverse only the plays that are absolutely shown to be wrong on appeal.
The concussion suffered by Brandin Cooks is worrisome, coming on the heels of the serious one he suffered in the Super Bowl. Cooks is only 25. Two concussions in nine months is tough for him.
I think the Rams basically won the NFC West with the win in Seattle, barring some major injuries. The Rams have a three-game lead over Seattle with the tiebreaker over the Seahawks, which means they’ve got a three-and-a-half game lead in effect. And L.A. has Denver and San Francisco in the next two weeks, so 7-0 seems quite possible. All those years the Rams were finished by Dec. 1, and now they could clinch by then.
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Awaken the Sleeping Giant? Browns—Yup—Feeling Frisky
Getty Images
The thing that’s surprised me the most about the first month of the season—even more than the fact that Philadelphia is 2-3 and hasn’t scored 24 points in any game, more than Atlanta being 1-4, more than Ryan Fitzpatrick being 18 points higher than Tom Brady in passer rating—is the Cleveland Browns. They’re fun. They’re competitive. They’ve got a quarterback out to prove the world wrong, and playing like it. They’re 2-2-1, they easily could be 4-1, and conceivably could be 5-0.
Scoring margins in the first five Browns games: 0, 3, 4, 3, 3. In the three games they lost or tied, they had the ball in opposing territory in the last minute of the fourth quarter with a chance to win. The whole year: crazytown.
You might remember back in April, when I covered the Browns draft in Cleveland and met a two-decade season-ticket-holder named Dan Adams. So mad at the Browns’ ineptitude was this middle-aged operations manager at a hydraulics company that when his ticket invoice came in the mail last spring he photocopied his hand with the middle finger sticking up and folded up the image and sent it to the Browns with these words: 1-31 and I’m done. This one’s for you. At the last moment, he relented and bought the tickets again, for one last time he said. He just couldn’t quit his Browns.
I called Dan Adams on Sunday night.
“The energy in this city is incredible right now,” he said, a few hours after the Browns’ ugly but beautiful 12-9 overtime beatdown of Baltimore, their first AFC North home win in four seasons. (Think how incredible that is.) “The Indians are great. The Cavs are great, and God bless LeBron. But there is nothing like this place when the Browns are winning—70,000 people just going nuts for their team. We’ve really missed that.”
When the draft was over, I met Cleveland GM John Dorsey near the Browns’ practice facility in Berea. He showed up in one of those funky gray sweatshirts with the block orange CLEVELAND BROWNS on the front. (Dorsey: those sweatshirts. Jim Harbaugh: the khakis.) We had a couple of beers, from Cleveland’s Great Lakes Brewing, and Dorsey dissected the draft.
Here’s what I remember about that day: Dorsey knew the draft cognoscenti wasn’t crazy about quarterback Baker Mayfield at No. 1 overall and cornerback Denzel Ward at 4. Mike Mayock, for instance, had Mayfield as his fourth-rated passer, and thought pass-rusher Bradley Chubb was a surer choice than Ward. USA Today gave the Browns’ draft the 25th-best grade out 32 teams. But Dorsey was almost fierce in his regard for both picks. And he made this declaration:
“We will awaken the sleeping giant. I have no doubt.”
Five games is too early to say anything about the Browns other than this: They’re one of the most compelling and competitive teams in the NFL. Their feisty new leader, wideout Jarvis Landry, told me Sunday he thinks they shouldn’t have lost a game yet, and when players say things like that, you just nod and laugh a little bit on the inside.
But they tied Pittsburgh when their kicker had a field goal blocked with 13 seconds left in overtime, they lost to the Saints when their kicker missed two field goals and a PAT in the fourth quarter, and they lost to Oakland when a dubious replay reversal gave the Raiders life in the final minute.
Most Sundays, I watch games in some combination on my laptop and the TV, on the RedZone Channel and whatever is the game of the day. In the last two weeks, the 45-42 loss at Oakland and the 12-9 win over Baltimore, I spent most of the second half and overtimes lasered on the Browns. The Cleveland Browns, the Browns Gonna Brown Browns. Dorsey talked about awakening the sleeping giant? He’s awake all right, now, and Baker Mayfield is the alarm clock.
“C’mere Baker!” coach Hue Jackson said in the Browns’ post-game locker room Sunday.
“Bake Money!” Jabrill Peppers shouted as Mayfield made his way to the middle of the room, next to Jackson, who wanted to give Mayfield a game ball.
“I ain’t been around you a long time, but I know this: You don’t flinch,” Jackson said. “You keep playing. You gotta keep doing that for this football team.”
With 2:12 left in overtime, the Dan Adamses of the world had to be thinking, We’ll take a tie. Browns had second-and-21 at their 5, and their four previous plays had gone for zero, zero, zero and minus-11. Mayfield, in the shotgun, took the snap at the goal line, and pressure forced him back to four yards deep in the end zone.
Here came Terrell Suggs of the Ravens, rushing from the right and making a strategic error: Instead of penning in Mayfield, Suggs tried to get to him from the middle, forcing the quarterback out to the offensive left side. No Raven was there. So Mayfield took 13 easy yards. “As I continue to get reps with [the linemen], they will realize I’m going to try to extend plays,” Mayfield said. Really?
Two-minute warning. Third-and-eight. Three Baltimore rushers surrounded Mayfield in the pocket, but he leaked out to the right, and a total unknown, undrafted wideout Derrick Willies, playing only because of an injury, had a step on his man on a crossing route. Mayfield put it right in Willies’ gut. Gain of 39. Three clock-bleeding plays put the Browns in range for a field-goal try, but if you know the Browns’ tradition of field-goal follies, you knew something would go wrong.
“I couldn’t look,” Jarvis Landry told me Sunday night. “I couldn’t look.”
Greg Joseph, whose wounded duck from 55 yards fell short and way off to the left at the end of the fourth quarter, would find a way to miss this, wouldn’t he? His low kick found a Raven’s hand going over the line of scrimmage, but instead of dying at the line, the 37-yard kick knuckled downfield and made it over the crossbar with a couple of centimeters to spare.
Mayfield led the charge, and he got some defensive help from Ward. Without Ward’s pick at the Browns’ three and then his block of a Justin Tucker field goal on the last play of the half, the Browns would never have forced overtime. This would have just been another dispiriting loss.
With three interceptions now, Ward has been just the clinging, physical corner defensive coordinator Gregg Williams wanted. It was Williams, among others, who urged the selection of Ward over Chubb—and they’re pretty happy about it now.
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There’s something else I like about this team. It’s something Jarvis Landry brought from Miami. When the Browns did “Hard Knocks” this summer, the most memorable scene was Landry, new to the team this year, lighting up the receivers room. He was ticked off (putting it mildly) at the effort and practice habits of the team’s young receivers, and he stood in front of the room and said:
“If your hamstring ain’t fallin’ off the bone, if your leg ain’t broke, you should be practicing! Straight up. It’s weakness. It’s contagious as f—! … It’s over with here, bro! If you’re not hurt, you gotta f—ing practice! That ain’t happenin’ here! That don’t exist! … It’s contagious. It’s contagious.”
Coming from one of the highest-paid receivers in the league, that tirade got noticed.
“My heart was full,” Landry said. “I had no idea it would be as big as it turned out to be. But I was just trying to state the truth and wake some guys up.”
Landry thought for a minute. “With me,” he said, “what it comes down is I hate losing more than I love winning. I love football, and I just hate to lose.”
When the Browns tied Pittsburgh on opening day, Landry thought some players were a little happy to not lose. “There’s nothing to celebrate!” he yelled. “We work too hard to tie!”
On the first drive of overtime, Landry stuck his head in the offensive huddle and said, “It’s just us. Calls ain’t gonna go our way. Can’t worry about that. Just play.”
After the game, in the raucous Cleveland locker room, Dorsey found Landry. The GM loves this firebrand wideout because of the example he sets and the ethos he brings to practice and games. Dorsey smiled at Landry. “Hey!” Dorsey said. “It ain’t always gonna be easy.”
But with these Browns, it’s always going to be interesting.
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The Rest
• The Eagles don’t have much time to fix their ills. Philadelphia, 2-3, isn’t too far gone to heal. The Eagles have lost by two, three and six points. The problem, though, is time. The Eagles have to go to the Meadowlands on Thursday night to face the struggling and enigmatic Giants, and then they have the similarly enigmatic Panthers at home, and then a game in London against the Jaguars. Not much time, particularly this week, to get right on offense and in the secondary, which are major issues.
In Carson Wentz’s three starts since returning from knee reconstruction, the Eagles are 1-2, averaging only 21.3 points a game. In his last nine games last season before getting hurt, Wentz and the Eagles went 8-1 and averaged 33.4 points a game. He’s moving in the pocket well and throwing with more precision than last year (67.2 percent this year in a smaller sample size, 60.2 last year), so I it’s smart to be patient with the passing game. It should come around.
The secondary is a worry, particularly with all the resources GM Howie Roseman added. The Eagles allowed a stingy opposing QB rating of 79.5 last year, which is superb. This year: 96.5, which is not. Philly’s lucky the rest of the division is a combined 5-8.
• Confidence game. Graham Gano is 31. Before Sunday, he’d been 18 of 32 on field goals of 50 yards or longer, and he’d never made one from 60 yards or longer in his NFL career. So to win a game the Panthers would have been heartbroken to lose, Gano had to make a field goal the length of which he hadn’t made since high school.
“I kicked a 68-yarder in high school, but there was a flag and the penalty allowed us to get a first down—so they took that field goal off the board,” he said Sunday from Charlotte. “And when I went out there today, I really didn’t feel too nervous about it. That could be because I didn’t realize it was 63 yards when I went out there.” From the Giants’ 45, coach Ron Rivera decided to try the field goal, his Panthers down to the Giants 31-30 with six seconds left.
Three points about this kick: Gano’s leg-swing seems almost casual; he certainly wasn’t trying to kill the ball. “I try to swing the same for short field goal as for a long one,” he said. “When you try to hit the ball too hard, you usually kick it wide.” … Thinking is optional, so as to avoid nerves. “As soon as the ball is snapped, I try to not think at all,” he said …
Gano really want to attempt the kick, and didn’t want to give Rivera any reason to doubt him. “I kind of just jogged on the field, to let them know I am confident.” Gano said. “John Kasay used to do that here. If he felt good about it, he’d just start jogging on the field. On this kick, my first thought when it left my foot was, That felt good.” I should hope so. Looked like it’d have been good from 70.
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The Award Section
Offensive Players of the Week
Adam Thielen, wide receiver, Minnesota. No receiver in the last half century at least has opened a season with five straight 100-yard receiving games, and even with that target on his back in a tough place to play Sunday, Thielen had seven catches for 116 yards and a touchdown. And he fell on and secured a close-call onside kick that was the final decider in the Vikings’ 23-21 victory over the Eagles, the team that beat Minnesota for the NFC title last season.
Isaiah Crowell, running back, New York Jets. He had the best game of his life and the best rushing game in Jets history. How many backs in history can say they had three runs in excess of 35 yards in one game? Crowell had 77, 54 and 36-yard runs, the long one for a first-half touchdown. Crowell’s most famous moment this season before this game had been scoring in Detroit and faux wiping his rear end with the football as if it were toilet paper. Maybe this week he can actually be known for his play.
Sony Michel and James White, running backs, New England. In the Patriots’ 1-2 start, Michel and White, combined, averaged 17 touches from scrimmage per game for just 72 yards. (Michel did not play in the first game of the season.) Scoring at a typical Patriots pace in the last last two wins (38 against Indy on Thursday night, 38 against Miami the previous Sunday), Michel and White proved how invaluable a balanced offense can be for New England.
The two backs, combined, averaged 36 touches from scrimmage per game for 206 yards. In the two decisive victories, Michel’s 210 rushing yards, plus White’s 145 chains-moving receiving yards, promise to be a good road map for the New England offense the rest of the way.
Defensive Players of the Week
T.J. Watt, pass-rusher, Pittsburgh. Is it possible another Watt will lead the NFL in sacks? He’s tied with Geno Atkins atop the league this morning after a three-sack, eight-tackle performance against the defenseless Falcons on Sunday. Watt has the same ferocious and quick-for-his-size elusiveness that made J.J. Watt so great—and consider that T.J. was a tight end for his first two injury-riddled seasons at Wisconsin.
Denzel Ward, cornerback, Cleveland. In a field-position game, Ward continued his brilliant rookie year. He intercepted a Joe Flacco pass at the Cleveland 2-yard line in the second quarter that saved points, either seven or three. And on the last play of the first half, Ward steamed from around the end to block a Justin Tucker field-goal try. Ward deflected two other passes too. Not bad. The Browns won 12-9 in overtime, an extra period that would never have been played without Ward’s second-quarter dramatics.
Special Teams Players of the Week
Graham Gano, kicker, Carolina. Picked a fine time for the longest kick of his life. He kicked two 47-yarders in the second quarter, and in the last three minutes of the game, he kicked a 39-yarder to put the Panthers up six. After the Giants went 75 fast yards to go ahead with 1:08 to play in the game, the Panthers stumbled to the Giants’ 45 and couldn’t get closer. So Gano, whose longest field goal ever had been from 59 yards, creamed a 63-yard field goal to win it.
Britton Colquitt, punter, Cleveland. Easily one of the best games of a good NFL career. Colquitt punted nine times for 50.2-yard average, with a net average of 41.4 yards per punt. Three punts pinned the Ravens inside the 20. The Browns are going to need to play this kind of field-position football while the offense stops-and-starts with so many new players.
Jakeem Grant, wide receiver/punt returner, Miami. Grant is 5-7, 169 pounds, and sometimes you watch him in the return game and just hope he doesn’t break. Grant broke the Bengals on Sunday—at least before Miami’s second-half collapse. With 22 seconds left in the first half, Grant weaved and sprinted 70 yards down the right side and then survived an oh-so-close replay review about whether he stepped out before scoring. He didn’t. Marvelous return for touchdown.
Coach of the Week
Matt Patricia, head coach, Detroit. All the rookie Lions leader has done over the past two games in Detroit is orchestrate strong game plans in wins over Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers. What Detroit lacks in consistency—it sandwiched a loss to Dallas between wins over New England and Green Bay—it makes up for in rising to the challenge in big games. Patricia’s defense got the job done Sunday, forcing three fumbles and taking advantage of sloppy play by the Packers.
Goats of the Week
Ryan Tannehill, quarterback, Miami. After Miami had a 17-0 lead with 24 minutes left, these were the next five Tannehill possessions: three-and-out, pick-six, punt, strip sack returned for a touchdown, interception. This utterly pathetic display by Tannehill followed a worse one last week. He left trailing the Patriots 38-0. The Dolphins, thanks to these two forgettable games by Tannehill and his friends, are the same old Dolphins, despite the 3-2 record.
Blake Bortles, quarterback, Jacksonville. You would hope Bortles had days like this one in his rearview mirror. But he doesn’t. This was a stinker, one of the most misleading 400-yard-passing days in NFL history. Bortles had to throw for 400 (430, to be exact, on 33 of 61 passing) because he kept putting the Jaguars in holes with his five turnovers on the day.
Mason Crosby, kicker, Green Bay. Packers lost by eight in Detroit. Crosby left an amazing 13 points off the board with his four missed field goals and one missed PAT. When your offense is beat up and has to score in the high twenties, minimum, to have a chance to win consistently, you can’t have an errant kicker.
Crosby missed from 41 yards with the Packers down 7-0; then missed from 42 with the Packers down 17-0; then missed from 38 with the Packers down 17-0; then missed the PAT with the Packers down 11; then missed from 56 with the Packers down 11. You’ve really got to wonder how this game will mentally impact Crosby in the future.
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Things I Think I Think
1. I think these are my quick-hit thoughts of Week 5:
a. Russell Wilson was vintage MVP-contender Russell Wilson for much of the 33-31 loss to the Rams, leading five scoring drives in nine possessions and compiling a 132.5 passer rating. But 48 net yards for the Seahawks in the fourth quarter sealed their fate.
b. Miami first three weeks: 3-0 … Dolphins 75, Foes 52.
c. Miami last two weeks: 0-2 … Foes 65, Dolphins 24.
d. DeAndre Hopkins was one of my two all-pro receivers in 2017. Judging by his incredible catch and run in overtime last night against Dallas, I like his chances to repeat.
e. Todd Gurley, at $11.5-million a year average, for the next six years, is a pretty reasonable contract for the Rams. I won’t say cheap, but reasonable.
f. By the way, there is no way the Todd Gurley touchdown should have been reversed in Seahawks-Rams. I repeat what the NFL had been doing a good job of until the Cleveland first-down reversal late in last week’s game at Oakland: Reverse only the plays that are absolutely shown to be wrong on appeal.
g. The concussion suffered by Brandin Cooks is worrisome, coming on the heels of the serious one he suffered in the Super Bowl. Cooks is only 25. Two concussions in nine months is tough for him.
h. Stephen Weatherly, the Minnesota defensive end getting some playing time with Everson Griffenout, will be a footnote to the Vikings’ 23-21 win in Philadelphia. He shouldn’t be. He strip-sacked Carson Wentz and allowed Linval Joseph to capitalize and run 64 yards for the touchdown.
i. For as talented as Martavis Bryant is, and he’s supremely talented, he’s not worth the trouble. His fumble at the Chargers on Sunday … just inexcusable. Never mind all his off-field stuff.
j. Never really thought Josh Allen would be as nimble and good making people miss in the open field as he is.
k. Tremendous job, Mike Adams of Carolina, getting two picks against the Giants, his nearby home-town team. Adams is from nearby Paterson, N.J., the home of Victor Cruz too.
l. Tackling optional for the Giants, obviously.
m. But that was a classic Eli Manning comeback. From the pinnacle to the depths to a comeback in the last couple of minutes when you were sure he had no chance.
n. Play of the Day: The 104-yard interception return by Jets safety Marcus Maye … and the most amazing part of it was Denver rookie Courtland Sutton wrangling Maye down at the half-yard line. Just weird.
o. Catch of the Day: Terrelle Pryor’s physical one-hander in the end zone from Sam Darnold in garbage time for the Jets. Brilliant catch.
p. Why oh why would Seattle’s Quinton Jefferson shove Jared Goff down significantly after the end of a play, earning the easiest roughing-the-passer call of the 2018 season? Has Jefferson not paid attention to the NFL in 2018? Does he think it’s 1988?
q. The great thing about JuJu Smith-Schuster that isn’t talked about nearly enough: his physical sure-handedness, illustrated again on his first-quarter touchdown, climbing high in the end zone to pick it out of the air, getting whacked by cornerback Robert Alford and then the ground—and hanging onto the ball.
r. The calendar just turned to October last week, and Patrick Mahomes has 16 touchdowns. Every week it’s another stat that blows you away with this guy.
s. Kenny Golladay, with a 60-yard reception, continues to show he’s the latest in the line of Mid-American Conference receivers (Golladay went to Northern Illinois) to verge on NFL stardom.
t. Looks bad for the Packers. So hurt, and so reliant on the quarterback who clearly is not whole.
u. Frank Reich knows his offense can’t be all Andrew Luck, all the time. But the Colts are just beat up right now, and Reich feels, obviously, like he has no choice.
v. Inexcusable rookie mistake by Luck, throwing the almost panicky quick throw for a pick in the last minute of the first half in New England.
w. This Used to Be a Rivalry Dept.: Since 2010, the Colts have lost eight straight to the Patriots. Average margin: 18.4 points.
2. I think the Giants/Beckham controversy will be deodorized because of the way the Giants came back and the cool touchdown pass Odell Beckham threw. But his selfish comments to Josina Anderson of ESPN have to be making the Giants wonder if he’s got the maturity to be a cornerstone player for the team for the long haul. The key moments with Anderson:
Anderson: Is there an issue at quarterback for the Giants?
Beckham: “Uh, I don’t know …”
Anderson: Are you unhappy in New York?
Beckham: “That’s a tough question.”
It continued in Charlotte, where Beckham was totally unaware where a punt was falling, got hit by the ball, and the Panthers recovered it in the end zone for a touchdown. He made some big plays after that, including the clever 57-yard touchdown pass to Saquon Barkley, and caught eight passes for 131 yards.
But there’s no excusing the comments he made, and coach Pat Shurmur—who Jay Glazer reported was livid over what Beckham said—is going to have to air him out today in East Rutherford, if he didn’t on the plane from Charlotte to Newark last night.
3. I think Cincinnati’s win over Miami taught me three things: Thou shalt never again take 30-year-old franchise defensive disruptor Geno Atkins (two sacks, six on the year now) for granted … Third-round rookie defensive Sam Hubbard was a steal for the Bengals last April, and he continued to show it with a spry 19-yard game-clinching fumble return for touchdown …
And that was a gut-check win, with 24 points in 13 fourth-quarter minutes to embarrass the Dolphins. Glad I picked the Bengals to win the AFC North, because after five weeks, Cincinnati is the team that not only has the division lead but also is the most solid team top to bottom in the division.
4. I think if the NFL Players Association wants a cause for the 2021 negotiations, Thursday night football might be it. I’m like you, probably: The specter of a good game on Thursday night is like an extra scoop of ice cream on the sundae. Tom Brady’s on TV tonight? Count me in.
But in the last two weeks, here’s what you’ve asked players to do: for the Minnesota Vikings, fly three hours on a Tuesday to Los Angeles without having all of the game plan installed for a game against the hottest team in football, the Rams; and for the Indianapolis Colts, fly to New England and play a game against the defending conference champions four days after a five-quarter OT game against the Texans on a 73-degree sunny day. Here’s what the Colts had to deal with Thursday night:
• Normally 45 players of a team’s 53-man roster dress for a game. The Colts had only 42 healthy bodies to play.
• Missing for the Colts: both starting tackles (Anthony Castonzo and Denzelle Good), their best wide receiver (T.Y. Hilton) and tight end (Jack Doyle), the NFL’s leading tackler (linebacker Darius Leonard). When linebacker Anthony Walker went out with a concussion in the first quarter and safety Clayton Geathers left with a neck injury later, that left the Colts to play the vast majority of the game against the Patriots without their three leading tacklers.
• Ten Colts played 90 or more snaps against Houston. In the span of five days, five Colts (Matt Slauson, Quenton Nelson, Le’Raven Clark, Andrew Luck, Ryan Kelly) played more than 170 snaps. Defensive lineman Margus Hunt played 169.
• The league is more conscious than ever about keeping quarterbacks healthy. One of the biggest quarterback billboards in football, Luck, coming off 20 months away from football with a serious shoulder injury, had to play 174 snaps five days apart. Luck threw 121 passes and took 129 pass-drops or shotgun sets in the span of five days.
5. I think Thursday night is a huge money-maker for the league, and thus for the players; it’s very likely not going away, particularly now that the league has made a far better Thursday night schedule to accomodate free-spending FOX. But Thursday night football will always be the yeah-but element to those in the league saying they’re doing everything humanly possible about player safety.
However (and this is a big however), I do want to make one last point about these short-week games: Over the years, I have met players and one coach—Mike McCarthy—who have pointed out that the side benefit to the Thursday games is the mini-bye that follows. That cannot be forgotten when discussing the effect of the Thursday games on players’ health.
Some coaches give their players Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday off after the Thursday games, and that five days of rest in midseason can be invaluable to players. So I do not dismiss the Thursday games as altogether bad for player health. But don’t tell that to the Colts today. They just had to play the best team this century with half a team.
6. I think the Rams basically won the NFC West with the win in Seattle, barring some major injuries. The Rams have a three-game lead over Seattle with the tiebreaker over the Seahawks, which means they’ve got a three-and-a-half game lead in effect. And L.A. has Denver and San Francisco in the next two weeks, so 7-0 seems quite possible. All those years the Rams were finished by Dec. 1, and now they could clinch by then.
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https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2018/10/08/nfl-week-5-cleveland-browns-fmia-peter-king/
By Peter King
• Behind the McVay call. The league’s getting gutsier, it seems. (Except for Jason Garrett.) Intriguing call for Sean McVay on Sunday at Seattle. L.A. ball, fourth and a half-yard, Rams 42, 1:39 left, no timeouts left for Seattle. High stakes here. If the Rams go for it and make it, the game’s over; they can run out the clock because Seattle has no timeouts left. If the Rams go for it and fail, Seattle needs 15 yards to be in breezy field-goal range for the winning kick.
If the Rams punt, they could likely pin the Seahawks around their 15-yard line. On the bus to the airport Sunday evening, McVay explained the call to go for it thusly: “I think the biggest thing was this: Our offensive linemen had the confidence to be able to get those six inches. I thought Jared [Goff] did an excellent job of mixing up his cadence a little bit, and I felt like he could catch them off guard.
We attack success. We don’t fear failure. We want to go for the win in that situation. Getting six inches to close it out was something that we felt the percentages were in our favor.” Smart move, and not just because it worked.
MVP Watch
Jared Goff, QB, Los Angeles Rams. This is not just Sean McVay’s influence making Goff a player. You don’t make the kind of precise throws into tight coverage the way Goff is doing with a coach pulling strings and making you a robot. Sunday in Seattle was the kind of tough struggle even the best teams are going to have to win regularly in the course of a long season.
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Todd Gurley, at $11.5-million a year average, for the next six years, is a pretty reasonable contract for the Rams. I won’t say cheap, but reasonable.
By the way, there is no way the Todd Gurley touchdown should have been reversed in Seahawks-Rams. I repeat what the NFL had been doing a good job of until the Cleveland first-down reversal late in last week’s game at Oakland: Reverse only the plays that are absolutely shown to be wrong on appeal.
The concussion suffered by Brandin Cooks is worrisome, coming on the heels of the serious one he suffered in the Super Bowl. Cooks is only 25. Two concussions in nine months is tough for him.
I think the Rams basically won the NFC West with the win in Seattle, barring some major injuries. The Rams have a three-game lead over Seattle with the tiebreaker over the Seahawks, which means they’ve got a three-and-a-half game lead in effect. And L.A. has Denver and San Francisco in the next two weeks, so 7-0 seems quite possible. All those years the Rams were finished by Dec. 1, and now they could clinch by then.
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Awaken the Sleeping Giant? Browns—Yup—Feeling Frisky
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The thing that’s surprised me the most about the first month of the season—even more than the fact that Philadelphia is 2-3 and hasn’t scored 24 points in any game, more than Atlanta being 1-4, more than Ryan Fitzpatrick being 18 points higher than Tom Brady in passer rating—is the Cleveland Browns. They’re fun. They’re competitive. They’ve got a quarterback out to prove the world wrong, and playing like it. They’re 2-2-1, they easily could be 4-1, and conceivably could be 5-0.
Scoring margins in the first five Browns games: 0, 3, 4, 3, 3. In the three games they lost or tied, they had the ball in opposing territory in the last minute of the fourth quarter with a chance to win. The whole year: crazytown.
You might remember back in April, when I covered the Browns draft in Cleveland and met a two-decade season-ticket-holder named Dan Adams. So mad at the Browns’ ineptitude was this middle-aged operations manager at a hydraulics company that when his ticket invoice came in the mail last spring he photocopied his hand with the middle finger sticking up and folded up the image and sent it to the Browns with these words: 1-31 and I’m done. This one’s for you. At the last moment, he relented and bought the tickets again, for one last time he said. He just couldn’t quit his Browns.
I called Dan Adams on Sunday night.
“The energy in this city is incredible right now,” he said, a few hours after the Browns’ ugly but beautiful 12-9 overtime beatdown of Baltimore, their first AFC North home win in four seasons. (Think how incredible that is.) “The Indians are great. The Cavs are great, and God bless LeBron. But there is nothing like this place when the Browns are winning—70,000 people just going nuts for their team. We’ve really missed that.”
When the draft was over, I met Cleveland GM John Dorsey near the Browns’ practice facility in Berea. He showed up in one of those funky gray sweatshirts with the block orange CLEVELAND BROWNS on the front. (Dorsey: those sweatshirts. Jim Harbaugh: the khakis.) We had a couple of beers, from Cleveland’s Great Lakes Brewing, and Dorsey dissected the draft.
Here’s what I remember about that day: Dorsey knew the draft cognoscenti wasn’t crazy about quarterback Baker Mayfield at No. 1 overall and cornerback Denzel Ward at 4. Mike Mayock, for instance, had Mayfield as his fourth-rated passer, and thought pass-rusher Bradley Chubb was a surer choice than Ward. USA Today gave the Browns’ draft the 25th-best grade out 32 teams. But Dorsey was almost fierce in his regard for both picks. And he made this declaration:
“We will awaken the sleeping giant. I have no doubt.”
Five games is too early to say anything about the Browns other than this: They’re one of the most compelling and competitive teams in the NFL. Their feisty new leader, wideout Jarvis Landry, told me Sunday he thinks they shouldn’t have lost a game yet, and when players say things like that, you just nod and laugh a little bit on the inside.
But they tied Pittsburgh when their kicker had a field goal blocked with 13 seconds left in overtime, they lost to the Saints when their kicker missed two field goals and a PAT in the fourth quarter, and they lost to Oakland when a dubious replay reversal gave the Raiders life in the final minute.
Most Sundays, I watch games in some combination on my laptop and the TV, on the RedZone Channel and whatever is the game of the day. In the last two weeks, the 45-42 loss at Oakland and the 12-9 win over Baltimore, I spent most of the second half and overtimes lasered on the Browns. The Cleveland Browns, the Browns Gonna Brown Browns. Dorsey talked about awakening the sleeping giant? He’s awake all right, now, and Baker Mayfield is the alarm clock.
“C’mere Baker!” coach Hue Jackson said in the Browns’ post-game locker room Sunday.
“Bake Money!” Jabrill Peppers shouted as Mayfield made his way to the middle of the room, next to Jackson, who wanted to give Mayfield a game ball.
“I ain’t been around you a long time, but I know this: You don’t flinch,” Jackson said. “You keep playing. You gotta keep doing that for this football team.”
With 2:12 left in overtime, the Dan Adamses of the world had to be thinking, We’ll take a tie. Browns had second-and-21 at their 5, and their four previous plays had gone for zero, zero, zero and minus-11. Mayfield, in the shotgun, took the snap at the goal line, and pressure forced him back to four yards deep in the end zone.
Here came Terrell Suggs of the Ravens, rushing from the right and making a strategic error: Instead of penning in Mayfield, Suggs tried to get to him from the middle, forcing the quarterback out to the offensive left side. No Raven was there. So Mayfield took 13 easy yards. “As I continue to get reps with [the linemen], they will realize I’m going to try to extend plays,” Mayfield said. Really?
Two-minute warning. Third-and-eight. Three Baltimore rushers surrounded Mayfield in the pocket, but he leaked out to the right, and a total unknown, undrafted wideout Derrick Willies, playing only because of an injury, had a step on his man on a crossing route. Mayfield put it right in Willies’ gut. Gain of 39. Three clock-bleeding plays put the Browns in range for a field-goal try, but if you know the Browns’ tradition of field-goal follies, you knew something would go wrong.
“I couldn’t look,” Jarvis Landry told me Sunday night. “I couldn’t look.”
Greg Joseph, whose wounded duck from 55 yards fell short and way off to the left at the end of the fourth quarter, would find a way to miss this, wouldn’t he? His low kick found a Raven’s hand going over the line of scrimmage, but instead of dying at the line, the 37-yard kick knuckled downfield and made it over the crossbar with a couple of centimeters to spare.
Mayfield led the charge, and he got some defensive help from Ward. Without Ward’s pick at the Browns’ three and then his block of a Justin Tucker field goal on the last play of the half, the Browns would never have forced overtime. This would have just been another dispiriting loss.
With three interceptions now, Ward has been just the clinging, physical corner defensive coordinator Gregg Williams wanted. It was Williams, among others, who urged the selection of Ward over Chubb—and they’re pretty happy about it now.
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There’s something else I like about this team. It’s something Jarvis Landry brought from Miami. When the Browns did “Hard Knocks” this summer, the most memorable scene was Landry, new to the team this year, lighting up the receivers room. He was ticked off (putting it mildly) at the effort and practice habits of the team’s young receivers, and he stood in front of the room and said:
“If your hamstring ain’t fallin’ off the bone, if your leg ain’t broke, you should be practicing! Straight up. It’s weakness. It’s contagious as f—! … It’s over with here, bro! If you’re not hurt, you gotta f—ing practice! That ain’t happenin’ here! That don’t exist! … It’s contagious. It’s contagious.”
Coming from one of the highest-paid receivers in the league, that tirade got noticed.
“My heart was full,” Landry said. “I had no idea it would be as big as it turned out to be. But I was just trying to state the truth and wake some guys up.”
Landry thought for a minute. “With me,” he said, “what it comes down is I hate losing more than I love winning. I love football, and I just hate to lose.”
When the Browns tied Pittsburgh on opening day, Landry thought some players were a little happy to not lose. “There’s nothing to celebrate!” he yelled. “We work too hard to tie!”
On the first drive of overtime, Landry stuck his head in the offensive huddle and said, “It’s just us. Calls ain’t gonna go our way. Can’t worry about that. Just play.”
After the game, in the raucous Cleveland locker room, Dorsey found Landry. The GM loves this firebrand wideout because of the example he sets and the ethos he brings to practice and games. Dorsey smiled at Landry. “Hey!” Dorsey said. “It ain’t always gonna be easy.”
But with these Browns, it’s always going to be interesting.
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The Rest
• The Eagles don’t have much time to fix their ills. Philadelphia, 2-3, isn’t too far gone to heal. The Eagles have lost by two, three and six points. The problem, though, is time. The Eagles have to go to the Meadowlands on Thursday night to face the struggling and enigmatic Giants, and then they have the similarly enigmatic Panthers at home, and then a game in London against the Jaguars. Not much time, particularly this week, to get right on offense and in the secondary, which are major issues.
In Carson Wentz’s three starts since returning from knee reconstruction, the Eagles are 1-2, averaging only 21.3 points a game. In his last nine games last season before getting hurt, Wentz and the Eagles went 8-1 and averaged 33.4 points a game. He’s moving in the pocket well and throwing with more precision than last year (67.2 percent this year in a smaller sample size, 60.2 last year), so I it’s smart to be patient with the passing game. It should come around.
The secondary is a worry, particularly with all the resources GM Howie Roseman added. The Eagles allowed a stingy opposing QB rating of 79.5 last year, which is superb. This year: 96.5, which is not. Philly’s lucky the rest of the division is a combined 5-8.
• Confidence game. Graham Gano is 31. Before Sunday, he’d been 18 of 32 on field goals of 50 yards or longer, and he’d never made one from 60 yards or longer in his NFL career. So to win a game the Panthers would have been heartbroken to lose, Gano had to make a field goal the length of which he hadn’t made since high school.
“I kicked a 68-yarder in high school, but there was a flag and the penalty allowed us to get a first down—so they took that field goal off the board,” he said Sunday from Charlotte. “And when I went out there today, I really didn’t feel too nervous about it. That could be because I didn’t realize it was 63 yards when I went out there.” From the Giants’ 45, coach Ron Rivera decided to try the field goal, his Panthers down to the Giants 31-30 with six seconds left.
Three points about this kick: Gano’s leg-swing seems almost casual; he certainly wasn’t trying to kill the ball. “I try to swing the same for short field goal as for a long one,” he said. “When you try to hit the ball too hard, you usually kick it wide.” … Thinking is optional, so as to avoid nerves. “As soon as the ball is snapped, I try to not think at all,” he said …
Gano really want to attempt the kick, and didn’t want to give Rivera any reason to doubt him. “I kind of just jogged on the field, to let them know I am confident.” Gano said. “John Kasay used to do that here. If he felt good about it, he’d just start jogging on the field. On this kick, my first thought when it left my foot was, That felt good.” I should hope so. Looked like it’d have been good from 70.
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The Award Section
Offensive Players of the Week
Adam Thielen, wide receiver, Minnesota. No receiver in the last half century at least has opened a season with five straight 100-yard receiving games, and even with that target on his back in a tough place to play Sunday, Thielen had seven catches for 116 yards and a touchdown. And he fell on and secured a close-call onside kick that was the final decider in the Vikings’ 23-21 victory over the Eagles, the team that beat Minnesota for the NFC title last season.
Isaiah Crowell, running back, New York Jets. He had the best game of his life and the best rushing game in Jets history. How many backs in history can say they had three runs in excess of 35 yards in one game? Crowell had 77, 54 and 36-yard runs, the long one for a first-half touchdown. Crowell’s most famous moment this season before this game had been scoring in Detroit and faux wiping his rear end with the football as if it were toilet paper. Maybe this week he can actually be known for his play.
Sony Michel and James White, running backs, New England. In the Patriots’ 1-2 start, Michel and White, combined, averaged 17 touches from scrimmage per game for just 72 yards. (Michel did not play in the first game of the season.) Scoring at a typical Patriots pace in the last last two wins (38 against Indy on Thursday night, 38 against Miami the previous Sunday), Michel and White proved how invaluable a balanced offense can be for New England.
The two backs, combined, averaged 36 touches from scrimmage per game for 206 yards. In the two decisive victories, Michel’s 210 rushing yards, plus White’s 145 chains-moving receiving yards, promise to be a good road map for the New England offense the rest of the way.
Defensive Players of the Week
T.J. Watt, pass-rusher, Pittsburgh. Is it possible another Watt will lead the NFL in sacks? He’s tied with Geno Atkins atop the league this morning after a three-sack, eight-tackle performance against the defenseless Falcons on Sunday. Watt has the same ferocious and quick-for-his-size elusiveness that made J.J. Watt so great—and consider that T.J. was a tight end for his first two injury-riddled seasons at Wisconsin.
Denzel Ward, cornerback, Cleveland. In a field-position game, Ward continued his brilliant rookie year. He intercepted a Joe Flacco pass at the Cleveland 2-yard line in the second quarter that saved points, either seven or three. And on the last play of the first half, Ward steamed from around the end to block a Justin Tucker field-goal try. Ward deflected two other passes too. Not bad. The Browns won 12-9 in overtime, an extra period that would never have been played without Ward’s second-quarter dramatics.
Special Teams Players of the Week
Graham Gano, kicker, Carolina. Picked a fine time for the longest kick of his life. He kicked two 47-yarders in the second quarter, and in the last three minutes of the game, he kicked a 39-yarder to put the Panthers up six. After the Giants went 75 fast yards to go ahead with 1:08 to play in the game, the Panthers stumbled to the Giants’ 45 and couldn’t get closer. So Gano, whose longest field goal ever had been from 59 yards, creamed a 63-yard field goal to win it.
Britton Colquitt, punter, Cleveland. Easily one of the best games of a good NFL career. Colquitt punted nine times for 50.2-yard average, with a net average of 41.4 yards per punt. Three punts pinned the Ravens inside the 20. The Browns are going to need to play this kind of field-position football while the offense stops-and-starts with so many new players.
Jakeem Grant, wide receiver/punt returner, Miami. Grant is 5-7, 169 pounds, and sometimes you watch him in the return game and just hope he doesn’t break. Grant broke the Bengals on Sunday—at least before Miami’s second-half collapse. With 22 seconds left in the first half, Grant weaved and sprinted 70 yards down the right side and then survived an oh-so-close replay review about whether he stepped out before scoring. He didn’t. Marvelous return for touchdown.
Coach of the Week
Matt Patricia, head coach, Detroit. All the rookie Lions leader has done over the past two games in Detroit is orchestrate strong game plans in wins over Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers. What Detroit lacks in consistency—it sandwiched a loss to Dallas between wins over New England and Green Bay—it makes up for in rising to the challenge in big games. Patricia’s defense got the job done Sunday, forcing three fumbles and taking advantage of sloppy play by the Packers.
Goats of the Week
Ryan Tannehill, quarterback, Miami. After Miami had a 17-0 lead with 24 minutes left, these were the next five Tannehill possessions: three-and-out, pick-six, punt, strip sack returned for a touchdown, interception. This utterly pathetic display by Tannehill followed a worse one last week. He left trailing the Patriots 38-0. The Dolphins, thanks to these two forgettable games by Tannehill and his friends, are the same old Dolphins, despite the 3-2 record.
Blake Bortles, quarterback, Jacksonville. You would hope Bortles had days like this one in his rearview mirror. But he doesn’t. This was a stinker, one of the most misleading 400-yard-passing days in NFL history. Bortles had to throw for 400 (430, to be exact, on 33 of 61 passing) because he kept putting the Jaguars in holes with his five turnovers on the day.
Mason Crosby, kicker, Green Bay. Packers lost by eight in Detroit. Crosby left an amazing 13 points off the board with his four missed field goals and one missed PAT. When your offense is beat up and has to score in the high twenties, minimum, to have a chance to win consistently, you can’t have an errant kicker.
Crosby missed from 41 yards with the Packers down 7-0; then missed from 42 with the Packers down 17-0; then missed from 38 with the Packers down 17-0; then missed the PAT with the Packers down 11; then missed from 56 with the Packers down 11. You’ve really got to wonder how this game will mentally impact Crosby in the future.
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Things I Think I Think
1. I think these are my quick-hit thoughts of Week 5:
a. Russell Wilson was vintage MVP-contender Russell Wilson for much of the 33-31 loss to the Rams, leading five scoring drives in nine possessions and compiling a 132.5 passer rating. But 48 net yards for the Seahawks in the fourth quarter sealed their fate.
b. Miami first three weeks: 3-0 … Dolphins 75, Foes 52.
c. Miami last two weeks: 0-2 … Foes 65, Dolphins 24.
d. DeAndre Hopkins was one of my two all-pro receivers in 2017. Judging by his incredible catch and run in overtime last night against Dallas, I like his chances to repeat.
e. Todd Gurley, at $11.5-million a year average, for the next six years, is a pretty reasonable contract for the Rams. I won’t say cheap, but reasonable.
f. By the way, there is no way the Todd Gurley touchdown should have been reversed in Seahawks-Rams. I repeat what the NFL had been doing a good job of until the Cleveland first-down reversal late in last week’s game at Oakland: Reverse only the plays that are absolutely shown to be wrong on appeal.
g. The concussion suffered by Brandin Cooks is worrisome, coming on the heels of the serious one he suffered in the Super Bowl. Cooks is only 25. Two concussions in nine months is tough for him.
h. Stephen Weatherly, the Minnesota defensive end getting some playing time with Everson Griffenout, will be a footnote to the Vikings’ 23-21 win in Philadelphia. He shouldn’t be. He strip-sacked Carson Wentz and allowed Linval Joseph to capitalize and run 64 yards for the touchdown.
i. For as talented as Martavis Bryant is, and he’s supremely talented, he’s not worth the trouble. His fumble at the Chargers on Sunday … just inexcusable. Never mind all his off-field stuff.
j. Never really thought Josh Allen would be as nimble and good making people miss in the open field as he is.
k. Tremendous job, Mike Adams of Carolina, getting two picks against the Giants, his nearby home-town team. Adams is from nearby Paterson, N.J., the home of Victor Cruz too.
l. Tackling optional for the Giants, obviously.
m. But that was a classic Eli Manning comeback. From the pinnacle to the depths to a comeback in the last couple of minutes when you were sure he had no chance.
n. Play of the Day: The 104-yard interception return by Jets safety Marcus Maye … and the most amazing part of it was Denver rookie Courtland Sutton wrangling Maye down at the half-yard line. Just weird.
o. Catch of the Day: Terrelle Pryor’s physical one-hander in the end zone from Sam Darnold in garbage time for the Jets. Brilliant catch.
p. Why oh why would Seattle’s Quinton Jefferson shove Jared Goff down significantly after the end of a play, earning the easiest roughing-the-passer call of the 2018 season? Has Jefferson not paid attention to the NFL in 2018? Does he think it’s 1988?
q. The great thing about JuJu Smith-Schuster that isn’t talked about nearly enough: his physical sure-handedness, illustrated again on his first-quarter touchdown, climbing high in the end zone to pick it out of the air, getting whacked by cornerback Robert Alford and then the ground—and hanging onto the ball.
r. The calendar just turned to October last week, and Patrick Mahomes has 16 touchdowns. Every week it’s another stat that blows you away with this guy.
s. Kenny Golladay, with a 60-yard reception, continues to show he’s the latest in the line of Mid-American Conference receivers (Golladay went to Northern Illinois) to verge on NFL stardom.
t. Looks bad for the Packers. So hurt, and so reliant on the quarterback who clearly is not whole.
u. Frank Reich knows his offense can’t be all Andrew Luck, all the time. But the Colts are just beat up right now, and Reich feels, obviously, like he has no choice.
v. Inexcusable rookie mistake by Luck, throwing the almost panicky quick throw for a pick in the last minute of the first half in New England.
w. This Used to Be a Rivalry Dept.: Since 2010, the Colts have lost eight straight to the Patriots. Average margin: 18.4 points.
2. I think the Giants/Beckham controversy will be deodorized because of the way the Giants came back and the cool touchdown pass Odell Beckham threw. But his selfish comments to Josina Anderson of ESPN have to be making the Giants wonder if he’s got the maturity to be a cornerstone player for the team for the long haul. The key moments with Anderson:
Anderson: Is there an issue at quarterback for the Giants?
Beckham: “Uh, I don’t know …”
Anderson: Are you unhappy in New York?
Beckham: “That’s a tough question.”
It continued in Charlotte, where Beckham was totally unaware where a punt was falling, got hit by the ball, and the Panthers recovered it in the end zone for a touchdown. He made some big plays after that, including the clever 57-yard touchdown pass to Saquon Barkley, and caught eight passes for 131 yards.
But there’s no excusing the comments he made, and coach Pat Shurmur—who Jay Glazer reported was livid over what Beckham said—is going to have to air him out today in East Rutherford, if he didn’t on the plane from Charlotte to Newark last night.
3. I think Cincinnati’s win over Miami taught me three things: Thou shalt never again take 30-year-old franchise defensive disruptor Geno Atkins (two sacks, six on the year now) for granted … Third-round rookie defensive Sam Hubbard was a steal for the Bengals last April, and he continued to show it with a spry 19-yard game-clinching fumble return for touchdown …
And that was a gut-check win, with 24 points in 13 fourth-quarter minutes to embarrass the Dolphins. Glad I picked the Bengals to win the AFC North, because after five weeks, Cincinnati is the team that not only has the division lead but also is the most solid team top to bottom in the division.
4. I think if the NFL Players Association wants a cause for the 2021 negotiations, Thursday night football might be it. I’m like you, probably: The specter of a good game on Thursday night is like an extra scoop of ice cream on the sundae. Tom Brady’s on TV tonight? Count me in.
But in the last two weeks, here’s what you’ve asked players to do: for the Minnesota Vikings, fly three hours on a Tuesday to Los Angeles without having all of the game plan installed for a game against the hottest team in football, the Rams; and for the Indianapolis Colts, fly to New England and play a game against the defending conference champions four days after a five-quarter OT game against the Texans on a 73-degree sunny day. Here’s what the Colts had to deal with Thursday night:
• Normally 45 players of a team’s 53-man roster dress for a game. The Colts had only 42 healthy bodies to play.
• Missing for the Colts: both starting tackles (Anthony Castonzo and Denzelle Good), their best wide receiver (T.Y. Hilton) and tight end (Jack Doyle), the NFL’s leading tackler (linebacker Darius Leonard). When linebacker Anthony Walker went out with a concussion in the first quarter and safety Clayton Geathers left with a neck injury later, that left the Colts to play the vast majority of the game against the Patriots without their three leading tacklers.
• Ten Colts played 90 or more snaps against Houston. In the span of five days, five Colts (Matt Slauson, Quenton Nelson, Le’Raven Clark, Andrew Luck, Ryan Kelly) played more than 170 snaps. Defensive lineman Margus Hunt played 169.
• The league is more conscious than ever about keeping quarterbacks healthy. One of the biggest quarterback billboards in football, Luck, coming off 20 months away from football with a serious shoulder injury, had to play 174 snaps five days apart. Luck threw 121 passes and took 129 pass-drops or shotgun sets in the span of five days.
5. I think Thursday night is a huge money-maker for the league, and thus for the players; it’s very likely not going away, particularly now that the league has made a far better Thursday night schedule to accomodate free-spending FOX. But Thursday night football will always be the yeah-but element to those in the league saying they’re doing everything humanly possible about player safety.
However (and this is a big however), I do want to make one last point about these short-week games: Over the years, I have met players and one coach—Mike McCarthy—who have pointed out that the side benefit to the Thursday games is the mini-bye that follows. That cannot be forgotten when discussing the effect of the Thursday games on players’ health.
Some coaches give their players Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday and Tuesday off after the Thursday games, and that five days of rest in midseason can be invaluable to players. So I do not dismiss the Thursday games as altogether bad for player health. But don’t tell that to the Colts today. They just had to play the best team this century with half a team.
6. I think the Rams basically won the NFC West with the win in Seattle, barring some major injuries. The Rams have a three-game lead over Seattle with the tiebreaker over the Seahawks, which means they’ve got a three-and-a-half game lead in effect. And L.A. has Denver and San Francisco in the next two weeks, so 7-0 seems quite possible. All those years the Rams were finished by Dec. 1, and now they could clinch by then.
