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These are only excerpts. To read the entire article click the link below.
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http://mmqb.si.com/mmqb/2015/09/21/nfl-week-2-seattle-seahawks-monday-morning-quarterback
Panic and Patience
Two Sundays into the 2015 season, the sky is falling for several 0-2 teams. Here’s why some (like Seattle) should take a deep breath while others (hello, New Orleans) need to blow it all up. Plus, five things nobody saw coming, the physicality of Julio Jones, weekly awards and much more
by Peter King
Moral of the story after two weeks in the NFL: Nobody knows nothin’.
I know that, after the second Sunday of the season, it looks an awful lot like a Green Bay-New England Super Bowl. (And wouldn’t Roger Goodell and Tom Brady, who has found the fountain of youth, be happy to see each other in Santa Clara in February?) But football rarely looks in January the way it did in September; the four teams that played in the conference championship games last year were a combined 8-7 after four weeks. I’ll get to the good, the bad and the ugly of the league after two weekends, but first a few words about the two-time defending NFC champions.
The Seahawks are not finished. At all. The defense badly misses—but should not cave to—holdout strong safety Kam Chancellor, a true difference-maker. The offense, as we suspected going back to the daily offensive-line changes, misses regularity and stoutness on the line, and Russell Wilson (on pace to be sacked 64 times) is in a race to get better. Fast. But consider this: If the first quarter of the Seattle schedule had been reversed—Chicago and Detroit at home to start the season, St. Louis and Green Bay on the road in Weeks 3 and 4—the Seahawks might well be 2-0 right now, and no one would be throwing themselves off the top of Mount Rainier this morning.
“We have dealt with adversity before,” said wide receiver Doug Baldwin. “What has made us good in the past is being able to come out of that adversity better than we were before.”
The way the schedule fell this season is that Seattle had its toughest two games in Weeks 1 and 2—at St. Louis (1-3 in the last four years there) and at Green Bay (best team in the NFC right now). In Week 1, Chancellor’s replacement allowed the tying touchdown in the final minute, and a kooky and truly dumb decision to onside/pooch kick to start overtime cost them the game. In Week 2, Wilson, down seven and driving, threw an interception midway through the fourth quarter at Lambeau Field.
Neither loss was a killer. In fact, neither was at all surprising. But couple those with the way the Super Bowl ended, and the Seahawks are on a three-game losing streak, there’s no end in sight to the Chancellor drama, and things look bad.
Marshawn Lynch (Jeffrey Phelps/AP)
I’ll be surprised if Seattle isn’t 2-2 when it heads to Cincinnati in three weeks. The flawed Seahawks are still a top-10 team, even with the zits that have shown up in the first eight quarters. If I were offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell, I’d be incorporating Jimmy Graham far more into the game plan as a post-up intermediate presence; Graham has been targeted only 10 times in eight quarters. It’s ridiculous that he has only 62 yards worth of catches so far. Wilson’s got to look for him more often. Rookie Tyler Lockett (six catches, 51 yards) needs to be featured more too.
But those are play-calling points of emphasis that can be fixed. Seattle is wounded, but with the Chancellor holdout and the schedule, we could see that coming. So much else around the league, we couldn’t.
3. Broken Baltimore. Something odd about John Harbaugh’s eighth team in Baltimore: It’s his first one to start 0-2. The mantra around the Ravens after the 19-16 defeat in Denver in Week 1 was that the loss of Terrell Suggs to season-ending Achilles surgery wouldn’t be deadly, because the defensive depth was good enough to cover up for him. Well, that was before Sunday’s game in Oakland. Remember, the Raiders were down 33-0 to Cincinnati, in Oakland, just seven days earlier, and looked incompetent offensively.
Against Baltimore, Oakland put up 37 points and 448 yards, and the Ravens had no answer for Derek Carr. Before the season the Ravens told the league they’d prefer their four western games—at Denver, Oakland, San Francisco and Arizona—be parceled out, two at a time. So the league scheduled Denver and Oakland roadies in Weeks 1 and 2, and Niners and Cardinals games in Weeks 6 and 7. Surely the Ravens didn’t count on being in an 0-2 hole with a brutal five-game stretch coming up beginning Sunday. Baltimore is home to Cincinnati, then travels to its annual mayhem-fest in Pittsburgh on a short week Thursday. Time to either save the season or ruin it.
4. Atlanta is 2-0. I credit Dan Quinn and the pass-rush he imported, an improving offensive line, a steady Matt Ryan, and the most acrobatic, sure-handed receiver playing today. Julio Jones has twice as many catches (22) as DeMarco Murray has rushing yards. Look at Jones’s first two weeks: nine catches for 141 yards Monday in the win over Philadelphia, and 13 for 135 in the win over the Giants on Sunday. My mini-interview with Jones after he dove for balls and picked one off a Giant corner’s head:
Me: Are you still going to be standing after 16 games? Looks like you’re getting beat up a lot.
Julio: Football’s a contact sport. You’ve got to expect that. I don’t feel physically punished at all right now. It’s football. I get hit. No big deal.
Me: Your style’s pretty unique—physical and fast and quick. You learn the craft from watching any other receivers over the years?
Julio: I don’t watch other receivers. I just focus on my job and improving and being the best I can be. I don’t watch football outside of our games.
Me: What’s Dan Quinn brought to the team?
Julio: With Dan Quinn, his message is, “We’re going to be relentless.” Who has the grit to keep at it? One game at a time. That’s what he talks about. That’s pretty much how we’ve played.
So we see.
5. It took eight days for Johnny Football to produce a quarterback controversy in Cleveland. As I said on NBC Sunday night, my gut feeling is that if Josh McCown passes his concussion protocol this week—and McCown was not even at the stadium on Sunday, with the team preferring to keep him away from the bright light and noise that can sometimes exacerbate concussion symptoms—he’ll keep his starting job. But Manziel won his first NFL game Sunday, 28-14 over Tennessee, and his 60- and 50-yard touchdown passes to Travis Benjamin were big factors in the victory.
Manziel is exciting, and it’s possible that the coaches will decide this week to keep him in the lineup, but his four fumbles and one pick in seven quarters will work against him, as will the fact that the coaches seem to trust McCown more—at least for now. “Johnny is definitely arrow-up right now,” coach Mike Pettine said from Cleveland Sunday night. “He has been very interactive with the coaches, very involved, and those are the things we like.
He’s been different, very different, in a positive way. On the other hand, you talk to some of the veterans, Joe Thomas and Brian Hartline, and they’re big fans of Josh too, as a player and a leader.” The good thing for Pettine, and his team, is that the backup quarterback—if that’s what Manziel remains when McCown returns—isn’t the liability he was a year ago.
6. The Bengals are Old Man River. Since Andy Dalton was drafted in the second round in 2011, he has started every one of Cincinnati’s 70 games. The Bengals have won nine, 10, 11 and 10 games in his four regular seasons. For the first time in franchise history they’ve made the playoffs four straight years. And as you know if you follow football even slightly, it’s not enough. Dalton and the Bengals are 0-4 in those playoff games, and the local populace is getting quite restless. Reportedly, Dalton was booed by some fans during this year’s baseball All-Star Game festivities in Cincinnati.
So what are we to make of the Bengals’ 2-0 start, and Dalton’s terrific performance so far? He has completed 68.3% of his throws in wins over Oakland and San Diego, with five touchdowns and no interceptions. The difference this year could be a tight end the offense trusts instead of the inconsistent Jermaine Gresham. Tyler Eifert leads the team with 13 catches on 17 targets, 153 yards and three touchdowns—more, in each count, than star wideout A.J. Green.
That’s because offensive coordinator Hue Jackson has been eager to feature a strong receiving tight end, and now he has one. With Green, Marvin Jones and Mohamed Sanu, and a very good receiving back in Gio Bernard, Dalton has five legitimate threats. If they stay upright, Dalton might finally break his January schneid this year.
“We understand that we have a lot of good players on the offensive side of the ball,” said Eifert, the 2013 first-round pick out of Notre Dame. “But you never know who is going to break out or have a good game. It’s good to have a lot of good players to give the defenses a lot of things to worry about.”
While it’s true the Bengals have to get the playoff monkey off their backs, what they’ve done in the first two games shows it’s not something that beats them down. The next three weeks—at Baltimore, then Kansas City and Seattle at home, all defenses that can pressure the quarterback well—will give a good indication whether Dalton has enough weapons and can rise to the pressure he has to be feeling.
It’s the most worrisome time of the year
For the Romo-less Cowboys. Owner Jerry Jones is the sunniest guy in the NFL. Losses always have silver linings. But it was a sign of how down the Cowboys were, even after making the Eagles look like a bunch of Bad News Bears Sunday in boo-happy Philly, that Jones said he felt “as low as a crippled cricket’s ass.” (Raise your hand if you’ve ever heard that one… I didn’t think I’d see any hands.) His franchise quarterback, for the second time in five years, will miss at least half the season because of a broken left collarbone, this one suffered on a hard sack by Eagle Jordan Hicks.
When Romo got the word after an X-ray in the bowels of Lincoln Financial Field, he called Jones, and the owner said, “We were both sick.” It’s likely Romo will miss two months; the Cowboys would be fortunate to get him and Dez Bryant (broken foot) back for the last six games. If so, it’s not a stretch to think they could split the next eight games, particularly with the way their defense played in suffocating the Eagles. Dallas doesn’t have a strong backup (Brandon Weeden), and may be in the market for quarterback help this week. (Matt Cassel? Chad Henne?)
So the Cowboys will now have to rely on defensive coordinator Rod Marinelli’s unit to play low-scoring, run-heavy games. As Tony Dungy said on NBC last night, Marinelli will tell his defensive players they have to play even better now and keep Dallas in the race until Romo returns. In what is shaping up to be a weak NFC East, playing 17-13 games might be the Cowboys’ best chance to survive.
For the 0-2 Saints. At the start of the fourth quarter Sunday, in the Superdome, the Saints were trailing the moribund Bucs, 23-7. At that point, New Orleans had 19 possessions this season, and two touchdown drives. Running game, mortal. Drew Brees, mortal. The crowd, understandably laconic. After a sixth straight home loss—heresy to think about—to a team that gave up 42 points to Tennessee last week, the Saints have to face the real possibility that the glory days aren’t coming back without a complete rebuild.
They’re 26-26 (including playoffs) since the start of 2012. And though Jameis Winston was suitably honored to be playing a guy he’s watched on TV since he was a kid (“That’s Drew Brees over there!” he said after the game) he shouldn’t genuflect too much. After two games, Winston has a better passer rating than the great Brees. Strange days indeed in New Orleans.
For the 0-2 Giants. Sunday was the 50th game since their Super Bowl 46 win over New England. They’re 22-28, with zero playoff trips, since. Team president John Mara, seething at the end of the last season, has to be apoplectic after the Giants, who have now blown 13-point and 10-point leads—both in the fourth quarter—limped off the field in the Meadowlands at a low point in recent history. The Giants weren’t going to be great this year, because they have too many defensive holes and no pass-rushers.
But they’re not getting the return on offensive investments Eli Manning (two touchdown drives in two games, not including a one-yard drive in Dallas after a turnover) and Victor Cruz (injured). Manning, in particular, has had a brain-locked first two weeks, a bad delay-of-game penalty Sunday against Atlanta (on a key third down, coming out of a Falcons timeout) following the dumb endgame decisions in Dallas. It’s New York, so it won’t be long before the drumbeats increase for Tom Coughlin’s job.
For Matthew Stafford and the winless Lions. Detroit is 0-2, and this is the Lions’ reward: consecutive prime-time dates with Peyton Manning and the 2-0 Broncos Sunday at home, then at Seattle eight nights later in a game the Seahawks will have to have. Tremendous reportage by Mlive.com’s Kyle Meinke in the losers’ locker room Sunday at Minnesota, when The Franchise, Matthew Stafford, looked like a guy who’d just gone 12 rounds with Tyson in his prime.
Wrote Meinke of Stafford: “There was a blood-soaked bandage on his left forearm, near the elbow. He began picking at a bandage around his left wrist. His throwing arm looked beat up too. It's no wonder he put on long sleeves for that press conference. The big toe on his left foot was blue. Two toes on his right foot were taped … Stafford just kept sitting there in the corner, breathing just right, trying to soothe his battered ribs. He had X-rays for those ribs. There's no word on the results.” Yow. It’s Sept. 21. How in the world will Stafford last through 14 more of these three-hour survival tests? And as Stafford goes, so go the Lions.
* * *
DEFENSIVE PLAYER OF THE WEEK
Ryan Shazier, linebacker, Pittsburgh. This is exactly the kind of game the Steelers envisioned when they drafted Shazier in the first round of the 2014 draft. The numbers were ridiculous enough: 15 tackles, a sack for a 17-yard loss, three tackles for loss, a strip and recovery off Colin Kaepernick, when the Niners were trying to get back in the game in the second quarter. With the immense production came speed, the kind of speed that had multiple teams—Atlanta wanted him badly pre-draft in 2014—hoping he fell to them. Pittsburgh, instead, got the sideline-to-sideline speed and presence that Shazier brings to the interior.
GOAT OF THE WEEK
Sam Bradford, quarterback, Philadelphia. I don’t care what the numbers say. I’m sure Chip Kelly doesn’t care what the numbers say. But Bradford had zero answers for the complicated Dallas rush and cover schemes Sunday, and looked like a Double-A batter facing Clayton Kershaw. The worst thing? Bradford looked unprepared, tentative, almost nervous. And when the final chance died—when a stray snap bounced off his chest and he didn’t move heaven and earth to try to recover a ball the Cowboys ended up with, I just thought: The Eagles are in big trouble.
* * *
Touchdown passes for Aaron Rodgers at Lambeau Field in his past 58 quarters played there: 38.
Interceptions thrown by Aaron Rodgers at Lambeau Field in his past 58 quarters played there: 0.
* * *
I think this is what I liked about Week 2:
Aaron Donald. He has multiple “wow” plays every week, notably Sunday for throwing two linemen aside and sacking Kirk Cousins five minutes into their game.
Nick Foles to Kenny Britt, perfectly thrown into end zone traffic. Touchdown.
* * *
I think this would be my best guess—as one of the 46 Pro Football Hall of Fame voters—for the list of 15 finalists for the Class of 2016. The preliminary list of 108 football people came out Wednesday. It will be cut to 25 on the first vote, by mail ballot, and then after another mail vote, cut to 15. Then we meet in California the day before the Super Bowl to winnow the class of 15 down to 10, and then to five, and then we vote yes or no on each of the five. So here’s a guess about which 15 will be left standing entering the Feb. 6 vote:
Quarterback (2): Brett Favre, Kurt Warner.
Running back (1): Terrell Davis.
Wide receiver (3): Isaac Bruce, Marvin Harrison, Terrell Owens.
Offensive line (3): Tony Boselli, Alan Faneca, Orlando Pace.
Linebacker (1): Kevin Greene.
Defensive back (1): Ty Law.
Kicker (1): Morten Andersen.
Coaches (3): Don Coryell, Tony Dungy, Jimmy Johnson.
Boselli and Law and Faneca are the surprising new nominees. Favre, of course, is the slam dunk. I’d like to see Bryant Young, Steve Atwater, Darren Woodson and Leroy Butler have their cases heard in the room one day as well.
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http://mmqb.si.com/mmqb/2015/09/21/nfl-week-2-seattle-seahawks-monday-morning-quarterback
Panic and Patience
Two Sundays into the 2015 season, the sky is falling for several 0-2 teams. Here’s why some (like Seattle) should take a deep breath while others (hello, New Orleans) need to blow it all up. Plus, five things nobody saw coming, the physicality of Julio Jones, weekly awards and much more
by Peter King
Moral of the story after two weeks in the NFL: Nobody knows nothin’.
I know that, after the second Sunday of the season, it looks an awful lot like a Green Bay-New England Super Bowl. (And wouldn’t Roger Goodell and Tom Brady, who has found the fountain of youth, be happy to see each other in Santa Clara in February?) But football rarely looks in January the way it did in September; the four teams that played in the conference championship games last year were a combined 8-7 after four weeks. I’ll get to the good, the bad and the ugly of the league after two weekends, but first a few words about the two-time defending NFC champions.
The Seahawks are not finished. At all. The defense badly misses—but should not cave to—holdout strong safety Kam Chancellor, a true difference-maker. The offense, as we suspected going back to the daily offensive-line changes, misses regularity and stoutness on the line, and Russell Wilson (on pace to be sacked 64 times) is in a race to get better. Fast. But consider this: If the first quarter of the Seattle schedule had been reversed—Chicago and Detroit at home to start the season, St. Louis and Green Bay on the road in Weeks 3 and 4—the Seahawks might well be 2-0 right now, and no one would be throwing themselves off the top of Mount Rainier this morning.
“We have dealt with adversity before,” said wide receiver Doug Baldwin. “What has made us good in the past is being able to come out of that adversity better than we were before.”
The way the schedule fell this season is that Seattle had its toughest two games in Weeks 1 and 2—at St. Louis (1-3 in the last four years there) and at Green Bay (best team in the NFC right now). In Week 1, Chancellor’s replacement allowed the tying touchdown in the final minute, and a kooky and truly dumb decision to onside/pooch kick to start overtime cost them the game. In Week 2, Wilson, down seven and driving, threw an interception midway through the fourth quarter at Lambeau Field.
Neither loss was a killer. In fact, neither was at all surprising. But couple those with the way the Super Bowl ended, and the Seahawks are on a three-game losing streak, there’s no end in sight to the Chancellor drama, and things look bad.
Marshawn Lynch (Jeffrey Phelps/AP)
I’ll be surprised if Seattle isn’t 2-2 when it heads to Cincinnati in three weeks. The flawed Seahawks are still a top-10 team, even with the zits that have shown up in the first eight quarters. If I were offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell, I’d be incorporating Jimmy Graham far more into the game plan as a post-up intermediate presence; Graham has been targeted only 10 times in eight quarters. It’s ridiculous that he has only 62 yards worth of catches so far. Wilson’s got to look for him more often. Rookie Tyler Lockett (six catches, 51 yards) needs to be featured more too.
But those are play-calling points of emphasis that can be fixed. Seattle is wounded, but with the Chancellor holdout and the schedule, we could see that coming. So much else around the league, we couldn’t.
3. Broken Baltimore. Something odd about John Harbaugh’s eighth team in Baltimore: It’s his first one to start 0-2. The mantra around the Ravens after the 19-16 defeat in Denver in Week 1 was that the loss of Terrell Suggs to season-ending Achilles surgery wouldn’t be deadly, because the defensive depth was good enough to cover up for him. Well, that was before Sunday’s game in Oakland. Remember, the Raiders were down 33-0 to Cincinnati, in Oakland, just seven days earlier, and looked incompetent offensively.
Against Baltimore, Oakland put up 37 points and 448 yards, and the Ravens had no answer for Derek Carr. Before the season the Ravens told the league they’d prefer their four western games—at Denver, Oakland, San Francisco and Arizona—be parceled out, two at a time. So the league scheduled Denver and Oakland roadies in Weeks 1 and 2, and Niners and Cardinals games in Weeks 6 and 7. Surely the Ravens didn’t count on being in an 0-2 hole with a brutal five-game stretch coming up beginning Sunday. Baltimore is home to Cincinnati, then travels to its annual mayhem-fest in Pittsburgh on a short week Thursday. Time to either save the season or ruin it.
4. Atlanta is 2-0. I credit Dan Quinn and the pass-rush he imported, an improving offensive line, a steady Matt Ryan, and the most acrobatic, sure-handed receiver playing today. Julio Jones has twice as many catches (22) as DeMarco Murray has rushing yards. Look at Jones’s first two weeks: nine catches for 141 yards Monday in the win over Philadelphia, and 13 for 135 in the win over the Giants on Sunday. My mini-interview with Jones after he dove for balls and picked one off a Giant corner’s head:
Me: Are you still going to be standing after 16 games? Looks like you’re getting beat up a lot.
Julio: Football’s a contact sport. You’ve got to expect that. I don’t feel physically punished at all right now. It’s football. I get hit. No big deal.
Me: Your style’s pretty unique—physical and fast and quick. You learn the craft from watching any other receivers over the years?
Julio: I don’t watch other receivers. I just focus on my job and improving and being the best I can be. I don’t watch football outside of our games.
Me: What’s Dan Quinn brought to the team?
Julio: With Dan Quinn, his message is, “We’re going to be relentless.” Who has the grit to keep at it? One game at a time. That’s what he talks about. That’s pretty much how we’ve played.
So we see.
5. It took eight days for Johnny Football to produce a quarterback controversy in Cleveland. As I said on NBC Sunday night, my gut feeling is that if Josh McCown passes his concussion protocol this week—and McCown was not even at the stadium on Sunday, with the team preferring to keep him away from the bright light and noise that can sometimes exacerbate concussion symptoms—he’ll keep his starting job. But Manziel won his first NFL game Sunday, 28-14 over Tennessee, and his 60- and 50-yard touchdown passes to Travis Benjamin were big factors in the victory.
Manziel is exciting, and it’s possible that the coaches will decide this week to keep him in the lineup, but his four fumbles and one pick in seven quarters will work against him, as will the fact that the coaches seem to trust McCown more—at least for now. “Johnny is definitely arrow-up right now,” coach Mike Pettine said from Cleveland Sunday night. “He has been very interactive with the coaches, very involved, and those are the things we like.
He’s been different, very different, in a positive way. On the other hand, you talk to some of the veterans, Joe Thomas and Brian Hartline, and they’re big fans of Josh too, as a player and a leader.” The good thing for Pettine, and his team, is that the backup quarterback—if that’s what Manziel remains when McCown returns—isn’t the liability he was a year ago.
6. The Bengals are Old Man River. Since Andy Dalton was drafted in the second round in 2011, he has started every one of Cincinnati’s 70 games. The Bengals have won nine, 10, 11 and 10 games in his four regular seasons. For the first time in franchise history they’ve made the playoffs four straight years. And as you know if you follow football even slightly, it’s not enough. Dalton and the Bengals are 0-4 in those playoff games, and the local populace is getting quite restless. Reportedly, Dalton was booed by some fans during this year’s baseball All-Star Game festivities in Cincinnati.
So what are we to make of the Bengals’ 2-0 start, and Dalton’s terrific performance so far? He has completed 68.3% of his throws in wins over Oakland and San Diego, with five touchdowns and no interceptions. The difference this year could be a tight end the offense trusts instead of the inconsistent Jermaine Gresham. Tyler Eifert leads the team with 13 catches on 17 targets, 153 yards and three touchdowns—more, in each count, than star wideout A.J. Green.
That’s because offensive coordinator Hue Jackson has been eager to feature a strong receiving tight end, and now he has one. With Green, Marvin Jones and Mohamed Sanu, and a very good receiving back in Gio Bernard, Dalton has five legitimate threats. If they stay upright, Dalton might finally break his January schneid this year.
“We understand that we have a lot of good players on the offensive side of the ball,” said Eifert, the 2013 first-round pick out of Notre Dame. “But you never know who is going to break out or have a good game. It’s good to have a lot of good players to give the defenses a lot of things to worry about.”
While it’s true the Bengals have to get the playoff monkey off their backs, what they’ve done in the first two games shows it’s not something that beats them down. The next three weeks—at Baltimore, then Kansas City and Seattle at home, all defenses that can pressure the quarterback well—will give a good indication whether Dalton has enough weapons and can rise to the pressure he has to be feeling.
It’s the most worrisome time of the year
For the Romo-less Cowboys. Owner Jerry Jones is the sunniest guy in the NFL. Losses always have silver linings. But it was a sign of how down the Cowboys were, even after making the Eagles look like a bunch of Bad News Bears Sunday in boo-happy Philly, that Jones said he felt “as low as a crippled cricket’s ass.” (Raise your hand if you’ve ever heard that one… I didn’t think I’d see any hands.) His franchise quarterback, for the second time in five years, will miss at least half the season because of a broken left collarbone, this one suffered on a hard sack by Eagle Jordan Hicks.
When Romo got the word after an X-ray in the bowels of Lincoln Financial Field, he called Jones, and the owner said, “We were both sick.” It’s likely Romo will miss two months; the Cowboys would be fortunate to get him and Dez Bryant (broken foot) back for the last six games. If so, it’s not a stretch to think they could split the next eight games, particularly with the way their defense played in suffocating the Eagles. Dallas doesn’t have a strong backup (Brandon Weeden), and may be in the market for quarterback help this week. (Matt Cassel? Chad Henne?)
So the Cowboys will now have to rely on defensive coordinator Rod Marinelli’s unit to play low-scoring, run-heavy games. As Tony Dungy said on NBC last night, Marinelli will tell his defensive players they have to play even better now and keep Dallas in the race until Romo returns. In what is shaping up to be a weak NFC East, playing 17-13 games might be the Cowboys’ best chance to survive.
For the 0-2 Saints. At the start of the fourth quarter Sunday, in the Superdome, the Saints were trailing the moribund Bucs, 23-7. At that point, New Orleans had 19 possessions this season, and two touchdown drives. Running game, mortal. Drew Brees, mortal. The crowd, understandably laconic. After a sixth straight home loss—heresy to think about—to a team that gave up 42 points to Tennessee last week, the Saints have to face the real possibility that the glory days aren’t coming back without a complete rebuild.
They’re 26-26 (including playoffs) since the start of 2012. And though Jameis Winston was suitably honored to be playing a guy he’s watched on TV since he was a kid (“That’s Drew Brees over there!” he said after the game) he shouldn’t genuflect too much. After two games, Winston has a better passer rating than the great Brees. Strange days indeed in New Orleans.
For the 0-2 Giants. Sunday was the 50th game since their Super Bowl 46 win over New England. They’re 22-28, with zero playoff trips, since. Team president John Mara, seething at the end of the last season, has to be apoplectic after the Giants, who have now blown 13-point and 10-point leads—both in the fourth quarter—limped off the field in the Meadowlands at a low point in recent history. The Giants weren’t going to be great this year, because they have too many defensive holes and no pass-rushers.
But they’re not getting the return on offensive investments Eli Manning (two touchdown drives in two games, not including a one-yard drive in Dallas after a turnover) and Victor Cruz (injured). Manning, in particular, has had a brain-locked first two weeks, a bad delay-of-game penalty Sunday against Atlanta (on a key third down, coming out of a Falcons timeout) following the dumb endgame decisions in Dallas. It’s New York, so it won’t be long before the drumbeats increase for Tom Coughlin’s job.
For Matthew Stafford and the winless Lions. Detroit is 0-2, and this is the Lions’ reward: consecutive prime-time dates with Peyton Manning and the 2-0 Broncos Sunday at home, then at Seattle eight nights later in a game the Seahawks will have to have. Tremendous reportage by Mlive.com’s Kyle Meinke in the losers’ locker room Sunday at Minnesota, when The Franchise, Matthew Stafford, looked like a guy who’d just gone 12 rounds with Tyson in his prime.
Wrote Meinke of Stafford: “There was a blood-soaked bandage on his left forearm, near the elbow. He began picking at a bandage around his left wrist. His throwing arm looked beat up too. It's no wonder he put on long sleeves for that press conference. The big toe on his left foot was blue. Two toes on his right foot were taped … Stafford just kept sitting there in the corner, breathing just right, trying to soothe his battered ribs. He had X-rays for those ribs. There's no word on the results.” Yow. It’s Sept. 21. How in the world will Stafford last through 14 more of these three-hour survival tests? And as Stafford goes, so go the Lions.
* * *
DEFENSIVE PLAYER OF THE WEEK
Ryan Shazier, linebacker, Pittsburgh. This is exactly the kind of game the Steelers envisioned when they drafted Shazier in the first round of the 2014 draft. The numbers were ridiculous enough: 15 tackles, a sack for a 17-yard loss, three tackles for loss, a strip and recovery off Colin Kaepernick, when the Niners were trying to get back in the game in the second quarter. With the immense production came speed, the kind of speed that had multiple teams—Atlanta wanted him badly pre-draft in 2014—hoping he fell to them. Pittsburgh, instead, got the sideline-to-sideline speed and presence that Shazier brings to the interior.
GOAT OF THE WEEK
Sam Bradford, quarterback, Philadelphia. I don’t care what the numbers say. I’m sure Chip Kelly doesn’t care what the numbers say. But Bradford had zero answers for the complicated Dallas rush and cover schemes Sunday, and looked like a Double-A batter facing Clayton Kershaw. The worst thing? Bradford looked unprepared, tentative, almost nervous. And when the final chance died—when a stray snap bounced off his chest and he didn’t move heaven and earth to try to recover a ball the Cowboys ended up with, I just thought: The Eagles are in big trouble.
* * *
Touchdown passes for Aaron Rodgers at Lambeau Field in his past 58 quarters played there: 38.
Interceptions thrown by Aaron Rodgers at Lambeau Field in his past 58 quarters played there: 0.
* * *
I think this is what I liked about Week 2:
Aaron Donald. He has multiple “wow” plays every week, notably Sunday for throwing two linemen aside and sacking Kirk Cousins five minutes into their game.
Nick Foles to Kenny Britt, perfectly thrown into end zone traffic. Touchdown.
* * *
I think this would be my best guess—as one of the 46 Pro Football Hall of Fame voters—for the list of 15 finalists for the Class of 2016. The preliminary list of 108 football people came out Wednesday. It will be cut to 25 on the first vote, by mail ballot, and then after another mail vote, cut to 15. Then we meet in California the day before the Super Bowl to winnow the class of 15 down to 10, and then to five, and then we vote yes or no on each of the five. So here’s a guess about which 15 will be left standing entering the Feb. 6 vote:
Quarterback (2): Brett Favre, Kurt Warner.
Running back (1): Terrell Davis.
Wide receiver (3): Isaac Bruce, Marvin Harrison, Terrell Owens.
Offensive line (3): Tony Boselli, Alan Faneca, Orlando Pace.
Linebacker (1): Kevin Greene.
Defensive back (1): Ty Law.
Kicker (1): Morten Andersen.
Coaches (3): Don Coryell, Tony Dungy, Jimmy Johnson.
Boselli and Law and Faneca are the surprising new nominees. Favre, of course, is the slam dunk. I’d like to see Bryant Young, Steve Atwater, Darren Woodson and Leroy Butler have their cases heard in the room one day as well.
