- Joined
- Feb 9, 2014
- Messages
- 20,922
- Name
- Peter
These are excerpts from this article. More shameless butt-kissing of the Patriots and Tom Brady but the Rams also get some love. To read the whole article click the link below.
************************************************************************
http://mmqb.si.com/mmqb/2015/10/05/nfl-quarter-season-surprises-disappointments-mvp
And at the End of the First Quarter, the Score is...
Here are the biggest surprises, disappointments and more of what we think we’ve learned through four Sundays. Plus, Todd Gurley gets going, kickers have a crazy week and the NFL eyes global dominance
by Peter King
The football season always flies. (Easy for someone writing on a laptop, not tackling someone, to say.) But we’re already through 24 percent of the regular season, and this column will focus on some truths—bitter, euphoric, surprising, real—and some consequences after four intriguing weekends.
For starters:
• New England is the best team in the league. Tom Brady has come back with a vengeance, and I’d be surprised if the Patriots finish worse than 14-2. Toughest games left: Jets in October, Broncos in November, Jets in December.
• In the NFC, Green Bay is the best. Four wins by at least eight points, a quarterback who will never throw an interception the rest of his life, and a sneaky good defense averaging 4.3 sacks a game.
• While we’re at it, here’s the First Quarter MVP ballot.
1. Tom Brady, QB, New England. No franchise wideout, and running backs Bill Belichick picked out of a hat.
2. Aaron Rodgers, QB, Green Bay. Value increased by playing so well without Jordy Nelson.
3. DeMarcus Ware, OLB, Denver. Reborn under Wade Phillips. Watt-like impact, with so much help from his mates.
4. Andy Dalton, QB, Cincinnati. Stop laughing. Average yards per pass play: Dalton 10.2, Rodgers 8.1.
5. Matt Ryan, QB, Atlanta. Classic case of “makes everyone around him better.”
• Kickers now fail, just like real people. PATs missed in 256 games last year: eight. PATs missed in 62 games this year, with the scrimmage line moved back 13 yards: 17. This was a particularly brutal weekend, with 10 kicks (six field-goal attempts, four extra points) missed from 40 yards and in. Missing two on Thursday night cost Josh Scobee his job in Pittsburgh, and don’t be surprised to see rookie Kyle Brindza, who missed five in the past two Bucs games, walk the plank in Tampa.
I think the trend has to do with the youth at the position—12 of 32 teams are using kickers in their first years with their teams—and the mental game that the longer PAT has forced kickers to deal with. Kickers are lottery tickets. You just pick one and pray.
• Joe Philbin’s got to go. One of the nicest coaches I’ve ever met, with a team that’s killing him. Count the ways: Outscored 37-3 in first quarters this year, a defensive front making a jillion dollars with one measly sack in four games, a quarterback playing tentatively, and losses by a combined 40 the past eight days to the two division teams—the Bills and Jets—that their owner was counting on Miami to have vaulted past.
• Colin Kaepernick’s playing like a lost sheep in the pasture of life. DO NOT read this, Niners fans, if you feel a certain burning rivalry with the team across the Bay. Passer rating through four games: Derek Carr, Raiders, 97.7 … Colin Kaepernick, Niners, 67.7. Either his psyche or his mechanics, or both, need major surgery. Stat.
Sam Bradford's 82.2 rating ranks among the bottom third of starting quarterbacks this season. (Mark Tenally/AP)
• The Eagles have (crash-) landed. Chip Kelly overestimated a few things and/or people: Sam Bradford’s ability to resume his career at a high level after two bad knee injuries; DeMarco Murray; the smoothness of Nelson Agholor’s transition from college to pro football; new faces adjusting quickly on the offensive line; and the ability of ex-Seahawk Byron Maxwell to be a shutdown cornerback for $10.5 million a year. Don't listen to WIP this morning, Chip.
• A mortal Manning. Pretty weird to see Peyton Manning rated 25th in the league, with six touchdowns and five interceptions. His arm’s not what it was even last October. But the Broncos are 4-0, and Manning finds a way to throw enough completions. He’ll be favored, incredibly, to enter November 6-0, with the Raiders, Browns and the bye coming the rest of this month.
• The disappearance of RG3. In 2013, NFL players voted Robert Griffin III the game’s 15th-best player for NFL Network’s top 100 players series. Today he’s 25, healthy, and a healthy scratch. His status for the four Washington games so far: inactive, inactive, inactive, inactive. Coach Jay Gruden has Kirk Cousins and Colt McCoy ahead of Griffin on the depth chart. Someday, this will be a Coen Brothers movie.
• The receiving boom. Last year, two receivers averaged 100 yards per game. This year seven are doing so. It’s very early; weather and injuries tend to knock down prolific receivers as the year goes on. But Julio Jones (478 yards), Antonio Brown (478 yards) and Larry Fitzgerald (432 yards) look as special as ever.
• Adrian Peterson, at 30, looks like Adrian Peterson, at 23. See him burst through the stout Denver front and sprint for an uncontested TD Sunday? His 372 rushing yards lead the league. This is a bit of a surprise: He’s won only two rushing titles, in 2008 and 2012, in seven full seasons. My guess is Peterson is pretty well aware of that, and wants to make it about seven before he retires.
• The Colts are a hot mess. They’ll also be over .500 if they win at Houston on Thursday. The owner and coach and GM are not in love, and Andrew Luck has a bum shoulder. Fun times.
• Roger Goodell is still commissioner, and the league is still trying to censure Tom Brady. Deflategate is out of sight, out of mind, sort of … except that the league will continue to press its case to suspend Tom Brady for four games, only this time the case will be heard in 2016. The logical sentiment is to say, “Drop it.”Goodell and the league won’t do it, because so many teams around the league think Brady did something. But the league hasn’t proven its case. And stretching the battle into 2016 is not going to find the league more answers.
• Four most surprising teams (good):
1. Atlanta (4-0). A year and a half ago no one in Atlanta had heard of Devonta Freeman and Dan Quinn. Times change.
2. New York Jets (3-1). And they get Sheldon Richardson back today from a four-game suspension. What a scary D.
3.Carolina (4-0). Not a shocker, but surprising given the dearth of weapons for Cam Newton.
4. New England (3-0). Not because they’re here and they’re good … but because they’re hammering teams as they did in 2007, and Tom Brady is quarterbacking like he did in 2007.
• Four most disappointing teams:
1. Philadelphia (1-3). Stunning how bad the offensive line looks, not to mention the man they’re protecting.
2. Kansas City (1-3). Over the last three weeks, the Chiefs have surrendered 35 points a game.
3. Baltimore (1-3). The gift of Josh Scobee won’t help against Seattle, Arizona and Cincinnati down the stretch.
4. Miami (1-3). Here because of apparent utter hopelessness.
* * *
Todd Gurley (Christian Petersen/Getty Images)
Now we know why Gurley went 10th
Thirteen games Sunday, and the most compelling thing I saw was Todd Gurley’s fourth quarter. About 10 months past the reconstructive knee surgery that put the draft status of this Adrian Peterson run-a-like in doubt, here was the quarter-by-quarter performance of Gurley in his second game as a professional:
First quarter: One carry, minus-3 yards.
Second quarter: Three carries, 5 yards.
Third quarter: Six carries, 38 yards.
Fourth quarter: Nine carries, 106 yards, all in the final 12 minutes of the game.
Total: 19 carries, 146 yards.
Final score: Rams 24, previously unbeaten Cardinals 22. At Arizona.
“I got one game ball!” St. Louis coach Jeff Fisher said in the Rams’ locker room. “Where’s 30? Thirty! Come up!”
Fisher handed Gurley, No. 30, the football.
“This is just the beginning,” Fisher said.
Afterward, what everyone was marveling about was the eight yards Gurley didn’t gain. On his last carry, the Rams were nursing the 24-22 lead. Arizona was hoping to make a stop at the Cards’ 38 on third-and-12 with 1:17 left in the game. The Cardinals had no timeouts left, but if they could stop the Rams and force a punt, they’d get the ball back deep in their territory with maybe 30 seconds left, and maybe Carson Palmer could pull out one stunning drive to a winning field goal.
Gurley took a handoff from Nick Foles and darted left, through some traffic around the end and down the field. He didn’t need an escort. He broke into the clear past some exhausted but pursuing Cardinals, and as he galloped down the left sideline—looking so much like the man he was compared to a hundred times pre-draft, Peterson—teammate Tavon Austin started waving him downfield toward his first NFL touchdown. An Arizona safety, Tony Jefferson, was all that stood between him and the touchdown.
Then Gurley slowed a bit. He didn’t appear hurt, but maybe he tweaked something as he slowed some more and lowered himself to the ground inside the 10, falling at the 8-yard line.
He wasn’t hurt. He was smart.
Before the play, Gurley knew Arizona had no timeouts left, and he knew if he could get the first down and kill some clock, the Rams would be able to run the clock out without Arizona touching the ball again. If he scored with 65 seconds to play, what would happen if the Rams missed the extra point? They’d have an eight-point lead, and would be kicking to one of the most explosive offenses in football. Lying down inside the 10? A no-brainer.
“The way I’ve been coached here,” Gurley said over the phone after the game, “I know in a four-minute situation at the end of the half or the end of the game, if you have the lead, you don’t go out of bounds, and you don’t stop the clock. On that play, I didn’t care about the touchdown. I just cared about the win.”
Gurley shouldn’t get a medal for that. He should get some appreciation for making the smart play in that situation. It capped an impressive quarter, with runs of 52, 20 and 30 yards (the final carry) that only emphasized to the Rams that picking him, higher than virtually any other team would have, paid off, at least on a day when the Rams pulled the upset of Week 4. Gurley, from the University of Georgia, talked some SEC trash with LSU product Tyrann Mathieu after Mathieu hogtied him down to halt the longest of his runs. But for the rest of the day, he let his legs do the talking.
“Oh man, it feels great to have a day like this,” Gurley said. “It definitely means a lot to me, and to us. Some of these runs give me confidence that I can really do this here. I definitely knew what I was capable of, and I felt the support from the coaches and my teammates.”
And the knee? “It’s fine, fine,” he said. “It doesn’t bother me. I keep up on my ice, my cold tubs, whether I think I need it or not. I feel fine now, no pain. I’ll probably feel it tomorrow.”
After his debut—six carries, nine yards last week—Gurley was hearing from those around the team not to worry, that better days were ahead. He knew it. The lack of impact wasn’t a big deal to him. “Listen,” he said to one team employee, “nobody’s gonna remember my first four games. What’d Adrian Peterson do his first four games?”
Peterson, in his first four games in 2007: 76 carries, 383 yards.
Gurley’s right: No one remembers. But for the record, Gurley’s got 228 yards to gain in the next two games if he wants to catch up. I doubt he's too concerned with chasing yards like that—he gave up eight, and a touchdown, that he could have had pretty easily in his coming-out party.
* * *
OFFENSIVE PLAYERS OF THE WEEK
Todd Gurley, running back, St. Louis. After Gurley’s inauspicious debut last week, coach Jeff Fisher said that trained eyes could see he was close to breaking some of his runs. Fisher evidently knew what he was talking about. Gurley owned the previously unbeaten Cardinals on the road Sunday. He ran 19 times for 146 yards, and did the smart thing on the final insurance drive, going to the ground instead of running into the end zone. Gurley knew the Cardinals wouldn’t get to touch the ball again if he played it that way. The Rams drafted Gurley 10th overall last spring, when he was only five months removed from reconstructive knee surgery. For one day at least, it looks like a brilliant pick.
* * *
Eric Branch @Eric_Branch
Sources: Jim Tomsula did not pass loud gas during his presser Wednesday. The sound came from a reporter sitting in leather seat near mic.
* * *
Ten Things I Think I Think
1. The fight of the Rams.
The vanquished Carson Palmer with this line on the Rams’ defense, which was formidable: “Very good front, very good defense. They do just enough to keep you on your toes every snap.”
************************************************************************
http://mmqb.si.com/mmqb/2015/10/05/nfl-quarter-season-surprises-disappointments-mvp
And at the End of the First Quarter, the Score is...
Here are the biggest surprises, disappointments and more of what we think we’ve learned through four Sundays. Plus, Todd Gurley gets going, kickers have a crazy week and the NFL eyes global dominance
by Peter King
The football season always flies. (Easy for someone writing on a laptop, not tackling someone, to say.) But we’re already through 24 percent of the regular season, and this column will focus on some truths—bitter, euphoric, surprising, real—and some consequences after four intriguing weekends.
For starters:
• New England is the best team in the league. Tom Brady has come back with a vengeance, and I’d be surprised if the Patriots finish worse than 14-2. Toughest games left: Jets in October, Broncos in November, Jets in December.
• In the NFC, Green Bay is the best. Four wins by at least eight points, a quarterback who will never throw an interception the rest of his life, and a sneaky good defense averaging 4.3 sacks a game.
• While we’re at it, here’s the First Quarter MVP ballot.
1. Tom Brady, QB, New England. No franchise wideout, and running backs Bill Belichick picked out of a hat.
2. Aaron Rodgers, QB, Green Bay. Value increased by playing so well without Jordy Nelson.
3. DeMarcus Ware, OLB, Denver. Reborn under Wade Phillips. Watt-like impact, with so much help from his mates.
4. Andy Dalton, QB, Cincinnati. Stop laughing. Average yards per pass play: Dalton 10.2, Rodgers 8.1.
5. Matt Ryan, QB, Atlanta. Classic case of “makes everyone around him better.”
• Kickers now fail, just like real people. PATs missed in 256 games last year: eight. PATs missed in 62 games this year, with the scrimmage line moved back 13 yards: 17. This was a particularly brutal weekend, with 10 kicks (six field-goal attempts, four extra points) missed from 40 yards and in. Missing two on Thursday night cost Josh Scobee his job in Pittsburgh, and don’t be surprised to see rookie Kyle Brindza, who missed five in the past two Bucs games, walk the plank in Tampa.
I think the trend has to do with the youth at the position—12 of 32 teams are using kickers in their first years with their teams—and the mental game that the longer PAT has forced kickers to deal with. Kickers are lottery tickets. You just pick one and pray.
• Joe Philbin’s got to go. One of the nicest coaches I’ve ever met, with a team that’s killing him. Count the ways: Outscored 37-3 in first quarters this year, a defensive front making a jillion dollars with one measly sack in four games, a quarterback playing tentatively, and losses by a combined 40 the past eight days to the two division teams—the Bills and Jets—that their owner was counting on Miami to have vaulted past.
• Colin Kaepernick’s playing like a lost sheep in the pasture of life. DO NOT read this, Niners fans, if you feel a certain burning rivalry with the team across the Bay. Passer rating through four games: Derek Carr, Raiders, 97.7 … Colin Kaepernick, Niners, 67.7. Either his psyche or his mechanics, or both, need major surgery. Stat.
Sam Bradford's 82.2 rating ranks among the bottom third of starting quarterbacks this season. (Mark Tenally/AP)
• The Eagles have (crash-) landed. Chip Kelly overestimated a few things and/or people: Sam Bradford’s ability to resume his career at a high level after two bad knee injuries; DeMarco Murray; the smoothness of Nelson Agholor’s transition from college to pro football; new faces adjusting quickly on the offensive line; and the ability of ex-Seahawk Byron Maxwell to be a shutdown cornerback for $10.5 million a year. Don't listen to WIP this morning, Chip.
• A mortal Manning. Pretty weird to see Peyton Manning rated 25th in the league, with six touchdowns and five interceptions. His arm’s not what it was even last October. But the Broncos are 4-0, and Manning finds a way to throw enough completions. He’ll be favored, incredibly, to enter November 6-0, with the Raiders, Browns and the bye coming the rest of this month.
• The disappearance of RG3. In 2013, NFL players voted Robert Griffin III the game’s 15th-best player for NFL Network’s top 100 players series. Today he’s 25, healthy, and a healthy scratch. His status for the four Washington games so far: inactive, inactive, inactive, inactive. Coach Jay Gruden has Kirk Cousins and Colt McCoy ahead of Griffin on the depth chart. Someday, this will be a Coen Brothers movie.
• The receiving boom. Last year, two receivers averaged 100 yards per game. This year seven are doing so. It’s very early; weather and injuries tend to knock down prolific receivers as the year goes on. But Julio Jones (478 yards), Antonio Brown (478 yards) and Larry Fitzgerald (432 yards) look as special as ever.
• Adrian Peterson, at 30, looks like Adrian Peterson, at 23. See him burst through the stout Denver front and sprint for an uncontested TD Sunday? His 372 rushing yards lead the league. This is a bit of a surprise: He’s won only two rushing titles, in 2008 and 2012, in seven full seasons. My guess is Peterson is pretty well aware of that, and wants to make it about seven before he retires.
• The Colts are a hot mess. They’ll also be over .500 if they win at Houston on Thursday. The owner and coach and GM are not in love, and Andrew Luck has a bum shoulder. Fun times.
• Roger Goodell is still commissioner, and the league is still trying to censure Tom Brady. Deflategate is out of sight, out of mind, sort of … except that the league will continue to press its case to suspend Tom Brady for four games, only this time the case will be heard in 2016. The logical sentiment is to say, “Drop it.”Goodell and the league won’t do it, because so many teams around the league think Brady did something. But the league hasn’t proven its case. And stretching the battle into 2016 is not going to find the league more answers.
• Four most surprising teams (good):
1. Atlanta (4-0). A year and a half ago no one in Atlanta had heard of Devonta Freeman and Dan Quinn. Times change.
2. New York Jets (3-1). And they get Sheldon Richardson back today from a four-game suspension. What a scary D.
3.Carolina (4-0). Not a shocker, but surprising given the dearth of weapons for Cam Newton.
4. New England (3-0). Not because they’re here and they’re good … but because they’re hammering teams as they did in 2007, and Tom Brady is quarterbacking like he did in 2007.
• Four most disappointing teams:
1. Philadelphia (1-3). Stunning how bad the offensive line looks, not to mention the man they’re protecting.
2. Kansas City (1-3). Over the last three weeks, the Chiefs have surrendered 35 points a game.
3. Baltimore (1-3). The gift of Josh Scobee won’t help against Seattle, Arizona and Cincinnati down the stretch.
4. Miami (1-3). Here because of apparent utter hopelessness.
* * *
Todd Gurley (Christian Petersen/Getty Images)
Now we know why Gurley went 10th
Thirteen games Sunday, and the most compelling thing I saw was Todd Gurley’s fourth quarter. About 10 months past the reconstructive knee surgery that put the draft status of this Adrian Peterson run-a-like in doubt, here was the quarter-by-quarter performance of Gurley in his second game as a professional:
First quarter: One carry, minus-3 yards.
Second quarter: Three carries, 5 yards.
Third quarter: Six carries, 38 yards.
Fourth quarter: Nine carries, 106 yards, all in the final 12 minutes of the game.
Total: 19 carries, 146 yards.
Final score: Rams 24, previously unbeaten Cardinals 22. At Arizona.
“I got one game ball!” St. Louis coach Jeff Fisher said in the Rams’ locker room. “Where’s 30? Thirty! Come up!”
Fisher handed Gurley, No. 30, the football.
“This is just the beginning,” Fisher said.
Afterward, what everyone was marveling about was the eight yards Gurley didn’t gain. On his last carry, the Rams were nursing the 24-22 lead. Arizona was hoping to make a stop at the Cards’ 38 on third-and-12 with 1:17 left in the game. The Cardinals had no timeouts left, but if they could stop the Rams and force a punt, they’d get the ball back deep in their territory with maybe 30 seconds left, and maybe Carson Palmer could pull out one stunning drive to a winning field goal.
Gurley took a handoff from Nick Foles and darted left, through some traffic around the end and down the field. He didn’t need an escort. He broke into the clear past some exhausted but pursuing Cardinals, and as he galloped down the left sideline—looking so much like the man he was compared to a hundred times pre-draft, Peterson—teammate Tavon Austin started waving him downfield toward his first NFL touchdown. An Arizona safety, Tony Jefferson, was all that stood between him and the touchdown.
Then Gurley slowed a bit. He didn’t appear hurt, but maybe he tweaked something as he slowed some more and lowered himself to the ground inside the 10, falling at the 8-yard line.
He wasn’t hurt. He was smart.
Before the play, Gurley knew Arizona had no timeouts left, and he knew if he could get the first down and kill some clock, the Rams would be able to run the clock out without Arizona touching the ball again. If he scored with 65 seconds to play, what would happen if the Rams missed the extra point? They’d have an eight-point lead, and would be kicking to one of the most explosive offenses in football. Lying down inside the 10? A no-brainer.
“The way I’ve been coached here,” Gurley said over the phone after the game, “I know in a four-minute situation at the end of the half or the end of the game, if you have the lead, you don’t go out of bounds, and you don’t stop the clock. On that play, I didn’t care about the touchdown. I just cared about the win.”
Gurley shouldn’t get a medal for that. He should get some appreciation for making the smart play in that situation. It capped an impressive quarter, with runs of 52, 20 and 30 yards (the final carry) that only emphasized to the Rams that picking him, higher than virtually any other team would have, paid off, at least on a day when the Rams pulled the upset of Week 4. Gurley, from the University of Georgia, talked some SEC trash with LSU product Tyrann Mathieu after Mathieu hogtied him down to halt the longest of his runs. But for the rest of the day, he let his legs do the talking.
“Oh man, it feels great to have a day like this,” Gurley said. “It definitely means a lot to me, and to us. Some of these runs give me confidence that I can really do this here. I definitely knew what I was capable of, and I felt the support from the coaches and my teammates.”
And the knee? “It’s fine, fine,” he said. “It doesn’t bother me. I keep up on my ice, my cold tubs, whether I think I need it or not. I feel fine now, no pain. I’ll probably feel it tomorrow.”
After his debut—six carries, nine yards last week—Gurley was hearing from those around the team not to worry, that better days were ahead. He knew it. The lack of impact wasn’t a big deal to him. “Listen,” he said to one team employee, “nobody’s gonna remember my first four games. What’d Adrian Peterson do his first four games?”
Peterson, in his first four games in 2007: 76 carries, 383 yards.
Gurley’s right: No one remembers. But for the record, Gurley’s got 228 yards to gain in the next two games if he wants to catch up. I doubt he's too concerned with chasing yards like that—he gave up eight, and a touchdown, that he could have had pretty easily in his coming-out party.
* * *
OFFENSIVE PLAYERS OF THE WEEK
Todd Gurley, running back, St. Louis. After Gurley’s inauspicious debut last week, coach Jeff Fisher said that trained eyes could see he was close to breaking some of his runs. Fisher evidently knew what he was talking about. Gurley owned the previously unbeaten Cardinals on the road Sunday. He ran 19 times for 146 yards, and did the smart thing on the final insurance drive, going to the ground instead of running into the end zone. Gurley knew the Cardinals wouldn’t get to touch the ball again if he played it that way. The Rams drafted Gurley 10th overall last spring, when he was only five months removed from reconstructive knee surgery. For one day at least, it looks like a brilliant pick.
* * *
Eric Branch @Eric_Branch
Sources: Jim Tomsula did not pass loud gas during his presser Wednesday. The sound came from a reporter sitting in leather seat near mic.
* * *
Ten Things I Think I Think
1. The fight of the Rams.
The vanquished Carson Palmer with this line on the Rams’ defense, which was formidable: “Very good front, very good defense. They do just enough to keep you on your toes every snap.”
