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These are only excerpts from this article. Any mention of the Rams is first so you don't have to look for it. To read the entire article click the link below.
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http://mmqb.si.com/mmqb/2015/12/21/nfl-week-15-tyrann-mathieu-injury-odell-beckham-panthers-giants
Another Smashing Sunday
Week 15 spared nobody in the NFL, leaving in its wake melancholy Cards, beat-up Broncos and the sad citizens of St. Louis and San Diego. Plus the perfect Panthers, Beckham-Norman fallout, the playoff puzzle and more
by Peter King
I asked one of the editors of this column, Dom Bonvissuto, to search for a photo from an era long ago, to show that no matter how much things have changed, players still dress to the nines for road trips. See what he found?
Photo: AP (2) :: David Bookstayer/AP :: Reed Saxon/AP
Clockwise from top left: Rams coach George Allen at Milwaukee airport in 1967; Chiefs coach Hank Stram and QB Len Dawson at New Orleans airport in 1970; Giants players at Newark airport in 1981; Vikings QB Fran Tarkenton at Long Beach airport in 1977.
The QB woes of the Rams
Mastering the draft is not easy. No one has done it. Ron Wolf, a Hall of Fame GM, once told me he’d be happy if he could hit .333 in the draft … meaning one of three players he picked would be a direct hit. That’s a Hall of Famer talking.
Just look at a couple of recent drafts—the top half of the first round only—to see how hit-or-miss drafts can be.
How good the top half of the first round of the 2014 draft was:
Overall pick................... Player./Team........................................Position
4 ......................................Sammy Watkins/Buffalo....................... WR
5...................................... Khalil Mack/Oakland............................. LB
7...................................... Mike Evans/Tampa Bay.........................WR
9..................................... Anthony Barr/Minnesota.........................LB
11................................... Taylor Lewan/Tennessee........................ OT
12................................... Odell Beckham Jr./Giants...................... WR
13................................... Aaron Donald/St. Louis........... ...............DT
16................................... Zack Martin/Dallas................ .................OG
How bad the top half of the first round of the 2013 draft was:
Overall pick................... Player/Team......................................... Position
1...................................... Eric Fisher/Kansas City......................... OT
2...................................... Luke Joeckel/Jacksonville..................... OT
3...................................... Dion Jordan/Miami................................ DE
6...................................... Barkevious Mingo/Cleveland................ LB
7...................................... Jonathan Cooper/Arizona....................... OG
9...................................... Dee Milliner/Jets.................................... CB
12.................................... D.J. Hayden/Oakland.............................. CB
16.................................... EJ Manuel/Buffalo.................................. QB
But the one thing a good franchise has to do is to be able to find and develop and keep a good quarterback. Or else, quite simply, the team will never be any good. The Rams are a great example of this. Since making the mega-trade that allowed Washington to draft Robert Griffin III in 2012—a legitimately good trade, seeing that the Rams had their presumptive quarterback of the future, Sam Bradford, on the team before his two killer knee surgeries—the Rams have had 37 draft choices in four drafts, six of them in the first round. And the team may have the worst quarterback situation in the NFL.
Wisely, St. Louis built a top-five NFL defense with all the draft capital. The Rams have a franchise running back in Todd Gurley. But all that will be for naught, wherever they’re playing in 2016, if GM Les Snead cannot find a quarterback better than he’s got on his roster. Or unless 2015 third-round pick Sean Mannion is the golden child, and no one can know that now.
A treasure trove of draft choices is something every team would kill for. It’s rotten luck that the Rams couldn’t know until 2014 that they might have to move on from Bradford, and did in 2015. But at the end of the day, the franchise had an incredibly strong position in four straight drafts, and the top spot on the most important position on the depth chart in Snead’s office is empty entering 2016. Or should be.
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“If this is indeed the last home game for the Rams in St. Louis, they’re going out in a blaze of mustard!”
—NFL Network host Rich Eisen at halftime of the The Condiment Bowl between the red-clad Bucs (ketchup) and the urine-uniformed Rams (mustard), with St. Louis leading 21-3.
“Kroen-Ke sucks! Kroen-Ke sucks! Kroen-Ke sucks!”
—The crowd at what possibly was the last Rams game in St. Louis on Thursday night, in the middle of the fourth quarter.
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SPECIAL TEAMS PLAYERS OF THE WEEK
Benny Cunningham, running back/kick returner, St. Louis. Of all the kick returns in the NFL this season, Cunningham’s 102-yard run against the Bucs on Thursday night—when he quite possibly ran 135 yards to get the 102—was the most interesting. Cunningham, an undrafted free agent from Middle Tennessee in 2013, took the Connor Barth kickoff five yards deep in the end zone and weaved and sprinted 102 yards to the Bucs’ three-yard line. A dynamic return.
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I think this is what I liked about Week 15:
Case Keenum. Nice game: 14 of 17, 234 yards with two touchdowns and no picks.
I think this is what I didn’t like about Week 15:
Misleading Stat of the Week: Bucs had 30 first downs, 509 yards in St. Louis. Bucs had 283 yards in the final 15 minutes, after they trailed 28-6.
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Quite a day in the NFL:
• The most electric receiver and best cornerback in football faced off in New Jersey, and a UFC fight broke out.
• The Broncos, who’d owned the AFC West all season, now could be one loss away from being the conference’s sixth seed.
• Grown men wept on the field in San Diego—and not because they were sentenced to play for the 4-10 Chargers. (I’ll write the lead to my Tuesday column on the end of days, possibly, in St. Louis and San Diego on the heels of their final home games. Thanks in advance for your patience.)
• The Texans, 0-13 in their history in Indianapolis before Sunday, finally won there, behind a quarterback who wasn’t good enough to play in Cleveland or to back up in Dallas. And now Houston’s playoff life will depend on one Brandon Weeden. “Crazy day, crazy month, crazy year,” he said from the scene of the crime Sunday.
• The Jets could win their final six games, beat the reigning Super Bowl champs, finish 11-5, and miss the playoffs. Easily.
• Washington wins the NFC East by winning Saturday night. Philadelphia wins the NFC East by winning its last two games.
• Regular-season wins for New England the last four years: 12, 12, 12, 12.
• Kansas City is amazing. First team to lose five in a row in one season, then win eight straight. (Wherever do they find these silly records?) Average margin of victory in the eight straight wins: 17.5 points. And 3-11 Cleveland and 6-8 Oakland come to Arrowhead for the last two regular-season games, so the Chiefs have a heck of a shot to be the first team to lose five straight, then win 10 straight. With a possible first-round playoff game at Houston, it’s quite possible that Kansas City could carry an 11-game streak into a divisional game at Cincinnati or Denver.
• Pittsburgh’s three-headed wideout monster (Antonio Brown, Martavis Bryant, Markus Wheaton) caught 32 passes in the win over Denver. How often have the fifth and sixth seeds in a conference playoff been the biggest threat to No. 1? This could be that year, with Kansas City and Pittsburgh the kryptonite to New England.
• Speaking of hot wild-card teams: Seattle has won five in a row, and Russell Wilson—statistically and in every other way—is the best he’s ever been. How can you be better than 19 touchdowns and no interceptions and a 143.6 passer rating over five games?
There’s a lot going on. The Giants might be wise to work on one game plan with maniacal Odell Beckham Jr. in it and one with him out of it. Concussion opens this week. You should see it; it’s important. Three teams in eight days are preparing to say goodbye to their cities forever, and some fans are into the love-in of it all, and some want vengeance. And did I mention Brandon Weeden is relevant again?
But we start on the bus in south Philly, with Bruce Arians’ favorite player in trouble.
‘This would be devastating’
On the last defensive snap for Arizona on Sunday night, up 23, the Cardinals’ do-it-all safety, Defensive Player of the Year candidate Tyrann Mathieu, intercepted Sam Bradford to put this game out of its misery. It was a pirouetting play in front of Riley Cooper, with Mathieu turning upfield to run with the ball, then inadvertently kicking his left ankle with his right foot, and then the left leg twisted a little bit, and Mathieu went down suddenly. It was a strange incident. Mathieu will have an MRI this morning in Phoenix.
“It could be devastating. It could be okay,” Arians said. “We just don’t know. When he came off the field, he was smiling. But the doctor said the knee’s loose.”
Arians has liked the 2013 third-round pick from LSU because the Cards risked a lot to pick him prominently as Mathieu toted lots of baggage off the field and was thought to be too small, at 5-9, to play safety in the NFL. Since his first minicamp, Mathieu has played aggressively even in walk-throughs, determined not to let his past rule his future. Arians says he loves the fact that Mathieu has used his second chance perfectly, becoming a leader and a great player.
“It’s his energy and passion, at everything,” said Arians. “He’s just so good to be around, for us coaches and for his teammates. He wants to be great every day. I mean, we could lose Carson [Palmer], or Patrick [Peterson], and it’d be devastating. We could replace Tyrann, but who would replace his interceptions and his sacks? I have to say, he’s my favorite. This would be devastating for him.”
Coaches aren’t supposed to say that, but Arians has a thing for the overachievers and those who’ve got something to prove—and then prove it. That’s why he sounded glum early this morning. That plus the fact Mathieu tore two knee ligaments in 2013, missing the last three games of that season and all of the 2014 off-season. And the fact that the Cards really need him to be their defensive selves.
So the Cards will hope for the best. Arians said the celebration was subdued about the division title because the team has bigger hopes than that. The franchise’s newfound national respect has helped the team prepare for big games, he thinks. Four of the past six games have been played in prime time—three on Sunday night and one on Thursday night. The last one, Sunday night, brought the Cards’ prime-time record to 5-0 this year. “We’re in the big leagues,” Arians said. “Every game feels like a playoff game now. These night games have gotten us ready for the playoffs.”
With Aaron Rodgers and Russell Wilson coming to Glendale for the final two games of the regular season, Arizona won’t be the same without a physical center fielder in Mathieu. Arians will be crossing his fingers this morning over the MRI, just like Mathieu.
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In this corner, Odell Beckham Jr.
It certainly wasn’t all the fault of the Giants wide receiver. It takes two to fight, and Carolina cornerback Josh Norman roughed up Beckham on the first snap of the Panthers-Giants game Sunday. After that, though, Beckham was a dangerous, reckless problem, and he’ll be lucky if he avoids a one-game suspension when NFL vice president of football operations Merton Hanks considers his case today.
I think Beckham deserves to be banned for one game, for two reasons. One: In a week when Concussion hits the theaters and attention to head trauma in football is (wisely) at an all-time high, Beckham took a seven-yard running start at Norman on a Shane Vereen running play in the third quarter and launched himself, his helmet to Norman’s helmet in a vicious attack. There’s enough helmet-to-helmet stuff in the game already, blows that can cause concussions and can contribute to the cumulative ill-effects of head trauma over the life of a player.
If this blow happened by accident, you’d have seen it and thought, Norman might be concussed on that hit. But that was no accident. This was the kind of Brandon Meriweather brutality that has no place in football—and would have had no place even in the bad old days when there wasn’t such a focus on eliminating the helmet-to-helmet blows. “He came 15 yards down the field and just went straight for my head,” Norman said. “It was just crazy.”
Two: Beckham never stopped. Norman contributed too; don’t get me wrong. But this was 75 percent a Beckham show.
I can also blame the officials, and Tom Coughlin. It is absurd that Terry McAulay’s crew on the field missed a blatant Beckham blow to Carolina nickel back Cortland Finnegan’s head in the second quarter, calling the foul on Finnegan … and just as absurd that the crew called only one personal foul on Beckham in the first 35 minutes of the game. Regarding Coughlin, I’ve never seen a disciplinarian come up so soft. Not taking Beckham out of the game—even to cool him off for a series, or to warn him that one more scuffle and he’d be out of the game for the day—is a black mark on Coughlin.
This is not over, either. Usually, after a 15- to 20-minute cooling-off period after games, players cool off. Norman absolutely was not cooled off.
About 45 minutes after the game, reporters were at Norman’s locker waiting for him to speak. The MMQB’s Jenny Vrentas was one of them: “When he did talk, he was still pissed off. On a couple of answers he spoke through clenched teeth. It was intense.”
As a veteran of 32 seasons of working locker rooms, I can’t think of many times I’d call a post-game interview period intense.
Said Norman: “What he did, obviously is on display. You see what kind of player he is. You pull back the layers of skin and really see what it is. Film don’t lie. People who watch, the stuff he was carrying on, it don’t lie … He should have been [ejected]. The guy ran 15 yards down the field, dead on collision. He … washunting, and it was just malicious in every way. And when they put it on the film, they go back and review it, I hope the league office takes a better look at it to see what they can do. Because players like that don’t need to be in the game.”
“I have never seen that in football,” said Finnegan of the running-start, helmet-to-helmet play by Beckham.
Nor have I. It was awful.
Beckham’s explanation for any of the extracurriculars was meandering at best and totally evasive at worst, according to the transcript provided by the Giants. Asked three times about Norman, he said, “It’s unfortunate that we lost.”
Said former LSU teammate Brad Wing, the Giants’ punter, to our Emily Kaplan: “Have I seen him as emotional as he was today? Oh yeah, all the time. He takes pride in being the best, he wants to be the best every time he’s out there, he doesn’t like to lose—which has happened quite a bit lately—so what you’re seeing is the frustration. But what he did today? That wasn’t out of the ordinary.”
Wow. That is scary. There’s more of this to come?
Hanks, the NFL’s vice president of football operations, will watch the tape of this game to determine whether a fine or suspension is in order for Beckham and for others involved some of the scrums. So far this season, only one player has been suspended—Denver cornerback Aqib Talib, for attempting to gouge the eyes of Indianapolis tight end Dwayne Allen. Talib got a one-game ban, lost his appeal, and missed Denver’s game Nov. 15 against Kansas City.
The league, if it decides to suspend Beckham, will likely do so by the end of the day today so Beckham will have the right to appeal to one of two NFL/NFL Players Association arbitrators. That case would be heard Tuesday, with a decision handed down no later than Wednesday morning so the player would be fully involved in the week’s practice regimen for the next game, which is Sunday night at Minnesota. I can’t tell you what’s likely to happen. I don’t know. But how much really will a fine accomplish?
Two interesting things from a conversation I had with Carolina coach Ron Rivera post-game. He said he saw what he thought was a punch from Beckham at Finnegan and “brought it to the ref’s attention,” but said the officials said they didn’t see it, so they obviously couldn’t call something they didn’t see. “I was disappointed in the chippiness,” said Rivera. “We are football coaches and players want the excitement of the 38-35 game and the competition of the 38-35 game, but we don’t need to be chippy. That’s what I’m disappointed in today—that the game got way too chippy.”
I had talked to Rivera last week, and he seemed absolutely on the fence about whether to play all of his starters once the NFC’s top seed is clinched. The Panthers can’t clinch for at least another week, because Arizona won Sunday night and Carolina’s magic number remained at one. But when quarterback Cam Newton got tripped up in an accidental bumping with his center, Ryan Kalil, Newton came up gimpy. Rivera said he was fine after the game, but when I asked if that would factor into his plans whether to play all of his starters to go for a perfect regular season, he said: “Yes it will. I’ve got to be realistic about the big picture. I’ve got to be realistic about my players’ health.”
Carolina became the fourth NFL team ever to have a 14-0 record. The previous three reached the Super Bowl, and the 1972 Dolphins won it. Rivera appeared Sunday to be more interested in post-season perfection than a 16-0 season, but did say to me, “I’m undecided” about who to play and how long to play them in the last game, if the top seed is clinched.
In some ways, the 38-35 Carolina victory was the game of the season. But it was the game of the season, too, for rotten reasons—because of watching the series of Beckham-Norman car wrecks instead of concentrating on two of the best players in football facing off, mano a mano, for the first time. That’s a shame.
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Just when you thought you’d seen the last of Brandon Weeden…
When the time comes for a backup quarterback to do something more than carry a clipboard or monitor the plays being called in to the starter, he most often has no time to prepare. “You just take your baseball cap off, put your helmet on and you're playing,” said the fourth quarterback of the season (in 14 games) for Houston, Brandon Weeden. “You don't have time to get nervous.”
Such was the situation for Weeden on Sunday in Indianapolis. After being a Texan for one month, he didn't even know everyone on the team yet. And here he was, entering a game his team trailed 10-0 with the Texans and Colts in a dead heat atop the AFC South. He certainly didn't know the intricate playbook of head coach Bill O'Brien. After the game, he told me that in five practice weeks he had taken one snap with Houston’s first offensive unit. And that was a running play.
So he wasn't sure what to expect when T.J. Yates went down with a knee injury in the second quarter. And Texans fans, who knew Weeden only as the quarterback who lost his starting job in Cleveland and lost his backup job in Dallas, had to have been skeptical. Beyond skeptical. Houston entered the game never having won in Indianapolis (0-13), and now, down 10-0, the game was in Brandon Weeden’s hands. Yikes.
“It wasn’t like I stunk it up in Dallas—I thought I’d played pretty well, but we just hadn’t won,” he said. “I’ve learned in this business you’ve just got to keep plugging away. You never know when your next chance is going to come.”
For a guy who hadn’t played a single snap with this team, Weeden exceeded all expectations in what was likely the AFC South title game. In his first six possessions, Weeden led four scoring drives—one touchdown, three field goals. He looked calm, and looked very much like he knew what he was doing. And when it was over, another chance to start loomed. Yates likely has a significant knee injury, and the other quarterback on the roster, Brian Hoyer, is in the NFL’s concussion protocol and may not play for a while. If Weeden gets the keys to the offense Sunday at Tennessee, he’d be the fourth starter in 15 games for the Texans.
After the game, a few players he barely knows, veterans happy to finally break the Indy schneid, said to Weeden, “Thank you.” J.J. Watt was one.
“It’s pretty weird,” said Weeden. “But I’m just thankful for the opportunity. This game can be difficult to figure out sometimes.”
Sometimes?
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The last word, for now, on officiating
My thanks to Robert Klemko and Emily Kaplan of The MMQB for their detailed analysis on the state of NFL officiating. And to Seattle cornerback Richard Sherman, writing one of the best pieces in his three-year part-time columnist role for The MMQB. (Richard, you’ve got a future in the media.) Hesuggested an eighth official, a simplification of the rulebook, and a re-positioning of the officials on the field.
But what Sherman wrote that resonated with me was this: “To the fans who are still losing their minds over bad calls, I have one thing to say: Relax. Officiating NFL games is one of the hardest jobs in professional sports, and that’s why the replacement refs were yanked after three weeks. These days, with high-definition TV and rule experts on television and social media, everyone thinks he’s an expert. Everyone seems to know the rules and how they’re supposed to be called, and everybody can get the call right from the comfort of their own home, lying in bed. But in the heat of the moment, very few of us could get it right.”
Did you watch the Monday night game last week? In the Giants-Dolphins game, Eli Manning threw to Odell Beckham on the right side of the end zone, and Beckham stretched out for the ball, tried to get both feet in, and then attempted to secure the ball as he fell to the ground and slid way past the boundary.
To anyone watching, it was close. To me, and to the officials on the field, the immediate thought was: He didn’t get both feet inbounds, and he used the ground to secure the catch. So, then we saw the replays. One Beckham foot was clearly inbounds, and the new pylon-cam on ESPN spied a clear inch of green grass between Beckham’s other foot and the wide white stripe. So yes, both feet were legal. Inbounds. Now for the act of making the catch.
Beckham caught the ball, fell to the ground and slid—and if the ball barely moved a millimeter from the time he hit the ground to the time his slide stopped. Sliding along the ground, it appeared clear to me that Beckham did not use the ground to secure the catch, and the catch, after seeing the feet in correct position and the ball secured, should be good. And the catch was ruled good. Touchdown, Giants. Another play for the Beckham highlight loop.
My point: People will yelp about the officials getting the play wrong. But there is no human watching that game on the biggest hi-def TV ever invented, or watching in real time where the officials stood, feet away from the act, who could be remotely sure whether the ball was caught legally for a touchdown. The vast majority of people, I would guess, saw the play and said, “No way. Incomplete.” No matter how many rules are put in place to clarify the act of a catch, or the act of nearly anything in a pro football game, there are going to be holes. And officials will err. It’s just the way it is and always will be.
Now, I do think what I mentioned on NBC Sunday night—that the league is on a fast track to make one official on each of the 17 officiating crews a full-time, year-round official—is a good thing. It’s progress. And it may be that one day all officials will be full-time. But understand that the bang-bang nature of so many plays will ensure that no matter how much tape officials watch and no matter how many practices they work and no matter how many tests they take on the rules, there is very little you can do to make the game be played, live, in super-slow-motion. And that’s the only way officials can be anywhere close to perfect.
There still will be human error, the kind, in my opinion that allowed Beckham to stay in Sunday’s game when he was clearly out of control and did enough to be ejected. Why wasn’t he? I don’t know. It should have happened. It’s just another example of mistakes made under the white hot lights of a big game. We’ll see if a full-time official on each staff—or more, eventually—will cut down on the flaws.
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http://mmqb.si.com/mmqb/2015/12/21/nfl-week-15-tyrann-mathieu-injury-odell-beckham-panthers-giants
Another Smashing Sunday
Week 15 spared nobody in the NFL, leaving in its wake melancholy Cards, beat-up Broncos and the sad citizens of St. Louis and San Diego. Plus the perfect Panthers, Beckham-Norman fallout, the playoff puzzle and more
by Peter King
I asked one of the editors of this column, Dom Bonvissuto, to search for a photo from an era long ago, to show that no matter how much things have changed, players still dress to the nines for road trips. See what he found?
Photo: AP (2) :: David Bookstayer/AP :: Reed Saxon/AP
Clockwise from top left: Rams coach George Allen at Milwaukee airport in 1967; Chiefs coach Hank Stram and QB Len Dawson at New Orleans airport in 1970; Giants players at Newark airport in 1981; Vikings QB Fran Tarkenton at Long Beach airport in 1977.
The QB woes of the Rams
Mastering the draft is not easy. No one has done it. Ron Wolf, a Hall of Fame GM, once told me he’d be happy if he could hit .333 in the draft … meaning one of three players he picked would be a direct hit. That’s a Hall of Famer talking.
Just look at a couple of recent drafts—the top half of the first round only—to see how hit-or-miss drafts can be.
How good the top half of the first round of the 2014 draft was:
Overall pick................... Player./Team........................................Position
4 ......................................Sammy Watkins/Buffalo....................... WR
5...................................... Khalil Mack/Oakland............................. LB
7...................................... Mike Evans/Tampa Bay.........................WR
9..................................... Anthony Barr/Minnesota.........................LB
11................................... Taylor Lewan/Tennessee........................ OT
12................................... Odell Beckham Jr./Giants...................... WR
13................................... Aaron Donald/St. Louis........... ...............DT
16................................... Zack Martin/Dallas................ .................OG
How bad the top half of the first round of the 2013 draft was:
Overall pick................... Player/Team......................................... Position
1...................................... Eric Fisher/Kansas City......................... OT
2...................................... Luke Joeckel/Jacksonville..................... OT
3...................................... Dion Jordan/Miami................................ DE
6...................................... Barkevious Mingo/Cleveland................ LB
7...................................... Jonathan Cooper/Arizona....................... OG
9...................................... Dee Milliner/Jets.................................... CB
12.................................... D.J. Hayden/Oakland.............................. CB
16.................................... EJ Manuel/Buffalo.................................. QB
But the one thing a good franchise has to do is to be able to find and develop and keep a good quarterback. Or else, quite simply, the team will never be any good. The Rams are a great example of this. Since making the mega-trade that allowed Washington to draft Robert Griffin III in 2012—a legitimately good trade, seeing that the Rams had their presumptive quarterback of the future, Sam Bradford, on the team before his two killer knee surgeries—the Rams have had 37 draft choices in four drafts, six of them in the first round. And the team may have the worst quarterback situation in the NFL.
Wisely, St. Louis built a top-five NFL defense with all the draft capital. The Rams have a franchise running back in Todd Gurley. But all that will be for naught, wherever they’re playing in 2016, if GM Les Snead cannot find a quarterback better than he’s got on his roster. Or unless 2015 third-round pick Sean Mannion is the golden child, and no one can know that now.
A treasure trove of draft choices is something every team would kill for. It’s rotten luck that the Rams couldn’t know until 2014 that they might have to move on from Bradford, and did in 2015. But at the end of the day, the franchise had an incredibly strong position in four straight drafts, and the top spot on the most important position on the depth chart in Snead’s office is empty entering 2016. Or should be.
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“If this is indeed the last home game for the Rams in St. Louis, they’re going out in a blaze of mustard!”
—NFL Network host Rich Eisen at halftime of the The Condiment Bowl between the red-clad Bucs (ketchup) and the urine-uniformed Rams (mustard), with St. Louis leading 21-3.
“Kroen-Ke sucks! Kroen-Ke sucks! Kroen-Ke sucks!”
—The crowd at what possibly was the last Rams game in St. Louis on Thursday night, in the middle of the fourth quarter.
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SPECIAL TEAMS PLAYERS OF THE WEEK
Benny Cunningham, running back/kick returner, St. Louis. Of all the kick returns in the NFL this season, Cunningham’s 102-yard run against the Bucs on Thursday night—when he quite possibly ran 135 yards to get the 102—was the most interesting. Cunningham, an undrafted free agent from Middle Tennessee in 2013, took the Connor Barth kickoff five yards deep in the end zone and weaved and sprinted 102 yards to the Bucs’ three-yard line. A dynamic return.
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I think this is what I liked about Week 15:
Case Keenum. Nice game: 14 of 17, 234 yards with two touchdowns and no picks.
I think this is what I didn’t like about Week 15:
Misleading Stat of the Week: Bucs had 30 first downs, 509 yards in St. Louis. Bucs had 283 yards in the final 15 minutes, after they trailed 28-6.
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Quite a day in the NFL:
• The most electric receiver and best cornerback in football faced off in New Jersey, and a UFC fight broke out.
• The Broncos, who’d owned the AFC West all season, now could be one loss away from being the conference’s sixth seed.
• Grown men wept on the field in San Diego—and not because they were sentenced to play for the 4-10 Chargers. (I’ll write the lead to my Tuesday column on the end of days, possibly, in St. Louis and San Diego on the heels of their final home games. Thanks in advance for your patience.)
• The Texans, 0-13 in their history in Indianapolis before Sunday, finally won there, behind a quarterback who wasn’t good enough to play in Cleveland or to back up in Dallas. And now Houston’s playoff life will depend on one Brandon Weeden. “Crazy day, crazy month, crazy year,” he said from the scene of the crime Sunday.
• The Jets could win their final six games, beat the reigning Super Bowl champs, finish 11-5, and miss the playoffs. Easily.
• Washington wins the NFC East by winning Saturday night. Philadelphia wins the NFC East by winning its last two games.
• Regular-season wins for New England the last four years: 12, 12, 12, 12.
• Kansas City is amazing. First team to lose five in a row in one season, then win eight straight. (Wherever do they find these silly records?) Average margin of victory in the eight straight wins: 17.5 points. And 3-11 Cleveland and 6-8 Oakland come to Arrowhead for the last two regular-season games, so the Chiefs have a heck of a shot to be the first team to lose five straight, then win 10 straight. With a possible first-round playoff game at Houston, it’s quite possible that Kansas City could carry an 11-game streak into a divisional game at Cincinnati or Denver.
• Pittsburgh’s three-headed wideout monster (Antonio Brown, Martavis Bryant, Markus Wheaton) caught 32 passes in the win over Denver. How often have the fifth and sixth seeds in a conference playoff been the biggest threat to No. 1? This could be that year, with Kansas City and Pittsburgh the kryptonite to New England.
• Speaking of hot wild-card teams: Seattle has won five in a row, and Russell Wilson—statistically and in every other way—is the best he’s ever been. How can you be better than 19 touchdowns and no interceptions and a 143.6 passer rating over five games?
There’s a lot going on. The Giants might be wise to work on one game plan with maniacal Odell Beckham Jr. in it and one with him out of it. Concussion opens this week. You should see it; it’s important. Three teams in eight days are preparing to say goodbye to their cities forever, and some fans are into the love-in of it all, and some want vengeance. And did I mention Brandon Weeden is relevant again?
But we start on the bus in south Philly, with Bruce Arians’ favorite player in trouble.
‘This would be devastating’
On the last defensive snap for Arizona on Sunday night, up 23, the Cardinals’ do-it-all safety, Defensive Player of the Year candidate Tyrann Mathieu, intercepted Sam Bradford to put this game out of its misery. It was a pirouetting play in front of Riley Cooper, with Mathieu turning upfield to run with the ball, then inadvertently kicking his left ankle with his right foot, and then the left leg twisted a little bit, and Mathieu went down suddenly. It was a strange incident. Mathieu will have an MRI this morning in Phoenix.
“It could be devastating. It could be okay,” Arians said. “We just don’t know. When he came off the field, he was smiling. But the doctor said the knee’s loose.”
Arians has liked the 2013 third-round pick from LSU because the Cards risked a lot to pick him prominently as Mathieu toted lots of baggage off the field and was thought to be too small, at 5-9, to play safety in the NFL. Since his first minicamp, Mathieu has played aggressively even in walk-throughs, determined not to let his past rule his future. Arians says he loves the fact that Mathieu has used his second chance perfectly, becoming a leader and a great player.
“It’s his energy and passion, at everything,” said Arians. “He’s just so good to be around, for us coaches and for his teammates. He wants to be great every day. I mean, we could lose Carson [Palmer], or Patrick [Peterson], and it’d be devastating. We could replace Tyrann, but who would replace his interceptions and his sacks? I have to say, he’s my favorite. This would be devastating for him.”
Coaches aren’t supposed to say that, but Arians has a thing for the overachievers and those who’ve got something to prove—and then prove it. That’s why he sounded glum early this morning. That plus the fact Mathieu tore two knee ligaments in 2013, missing the last three games of that season and all of the 2014 off-season. And the fact that the Cards really need him to be their defensive selves.
So the Cards will hope for the best. Arians said the celebration was subdued about the division title because the team has bigger hopes than that. The franchise’s newfound national respect has helped the team prepare for big games, he thinks. Four of the past six games have been played in prime time—three on Sunday night and one on Thursday night. The last one, Sunday night, brought the Cards’ prime-time record to 5-0 this year. “We’re in the big leagues,” Arians said. “Every game feels like a playoff game now. These night games have gotten us ready for the playoffs.”
With Aaron Rodgers and Russell Wilson coming to Glendale for the final two games of the regular season, Arizona won’t be the same without a physical center fielder in Mathieu. Arians will be crossing his fingers this morning over the MRI, just like Mathieu.
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In this corner, Odell Beckham Jr.
It certainly wasn’t all the fault of the Giants wide receiver. It takes two to fight, and Carolina cornerback Josh Norman roughed up Beckham on the first snap of the Panthers-Giants game Sunday. After that, though, Beckham was a dangerous, reckless problem, and he’ll be lucky if he avoids a one-game suspension when NFL vice president of football operations Merton Hanks considers his case today.
I think Beckham deserves to be banned for one game, for two reasons. One: In a week when Concussion hits the theaters and attention to head trauma in football is (wisely) at an all-time high, Beckham took a seven-yard running start at Norman on a Shane Vereen running play in the third quarter and launched himself, his helmet to Norman’s helmet in a vicious attack. There’s enough helmet-to-helmet stuff in the game already, blows that can cause concussions and can contribute to the cumulative ill-effects of head trauma over the life of a player.
If this blow happened by accident, you’d have seen it and thought, Norman might be concussed on that hit. But that was no accident. This was the kind of Brandon Meriweather brutality that has no place in football—and would have had no place even in the bad old days when there wasn’t such a focus on eliminating the helmet-to-helmet blows. “He came 15 yards down the field and just went straight for my head,” Norman said. “It was just crazy.”
Two: Beckham never stopped. Norman contributed too; don’t get me wrong. But this was 75 percent a Beckham show.
I can also blame the officials, and Tom Coughlin. It is absurd that Terry McAulay’s crew on the field missed a blatant Beckham blow to Carolina nickel back Cortland Finnegan’s head in the second quarter, calling the foul on Finnegan … and just as absurd that the crew called only one personal foul on Beckham in the first 35 minutes of the game. Regarding Coughlin, I’ve never seen a disciplinarian come up so soft. Not taking Beckham out of the game—even to cool him off for a series, or to warn him that one more scuffle and he’d be out of the game for the day—is a black mark on Coughlin.
This is not over, either. Usually, after a 15- to 20-minute cooling-off period after games, players cool off. Norman absolutely was not cooled off.
About 45 minutes after the game, reporters were at Norman’s locker waiting for him to speak. The MMQB’s Jenny Vrentas was one of them: “When he did talk, he was still pissed off. On a couple of answers he spoke through clenched teeth. It was intense.”
As a veteran of 32 seasons of working locker rooms, I can’t think of many times I’d call a post-game interview period intense.
Said Norman: “What he did, obviously is on display. You see what kind of player he is. You pull back the layers of skin and really see what it is. Film don’t lie. People who watch, the stuff he was carrying on, it don’t lie … He should have been [ejected]. The guy ran 15 yards down the field, dead on collision. He … washunting, and it was just malicious in every way. And when they put it on the film, they go back and review it, I hope the league office takes a better look at it to see what they can do. Because players like that don’t need to be in the game.”
“I have never seen that in football,” said Finnegan of the running-start, helmet-to-helmet play by Beckham.
Nor have I. It was awful.
Beckham’s explanation for any of the extracurriculars was meandering at best and totally evasive at worst, according to the transcript provided by the Giants. Asked three times about Norman, he said, “It’s unfortunate that we lost.”
Said former LSU teammate Brad Wing, the Giants’ punter, to our Emily Kaplan: “Have I seen him as emotional as he was today? Oh yeah, all the time. He takes pride in being the best, he wants to be the best every time he’s out there, he doesn’t like to lose—which has happened quite a bit lately—so what you’re seeing is the frustration. But what he did today? That wasn’t out of the ordinary.”
Wow. That is scary. There’s more of this to come?
Hanks, the NFL’s vice president of football operations, will watch the tape of this game to determine whether a fine or suspension is in order for Beckham and for others involved some of the scrums. So far this season, only one player has been suspended—Denver cornerback Aqib Talib, for attempting to gouge the eyes of Indianapolis tight end Dwayne Allen. Talib got a one-game ban, lost his appeal, and missed Denver’s game Nov. 15 against Kansas City.
The league, if it decides to suspend Beckham, will likely do so by the end of the day today so Beckham will have the right to appeal to one of two NFL/NFL Players Association arbitrators. That case would be heard Tuesday, with a decision handed down no later than Wednesday morning so the player would be fully involved in the week’s practice regimen for the next game, which is Sunday night at Minnesota. I can’t tell you what’s likely to happen. I don’t know. But how much really will a fine accomplish?
Two interesting things from a conversation I had with Carolina coach Ron Rivera post-game. He said he saw what he thought was a punch from Beckham at Finnegan and “brought it to the ref’s attention,” but said the officials said they didn’t see it, so they obviously couldn’t call something they didn’t see. “I was disappointed in the chippiness,” said Rivera. “We are football coaches and players want the excitement of the 38-35 game and the competition of the 38-35 game, but we don’t need to be chippy. That’s what I’m disappointed in today—that the game got way too chippy.”
I had talked to Rivera last week, and he seemed absolutely on the fence about whether to play all of his starters once the NFC’s top seed is clinched. The Panthers can’t clinch for at least another week, because Arizona won Sunday night and Carolina’s magic number remained at one. But when quarterback Cam Newton got tripped up in an accidental bumping with his center, Ryan Kalil, Newton came up gimpy. Rivera said he was fine after the game, but when I asked if that would factor into his plans whether to play all of his starters to go for a perfect regular season, he said: “Yes it will. I’ve got to be realistic about the big picture. I’ve got to be realistic about my players’ health.”
Carolina became the fourth NFL team ever to have a 14-0 record. The previous three reached the Super Bowl, and the 1972 Dolphins won it. Rivera appeared Sunday to be more interested in post-season perfection than a 16-0 season, but did say to me, “I’m undecided” about who to play and how long to play them in the last game, if the top seed is clinched.
In some ways, the 38-35 Carolina victory was the game of the season. But it was the game of the season, too, for rotten reasons—because of watching the series of Beckham-Norman car wrecks instead of concentrating on two of the best players in football facing off, mano a mano, for the first time. That’s a shame.
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Just when you thought you’d seen the last of Brandon Weeden…
When the time comes for a backup quarterback to do something more than carry a clipboard or monitor the plays being called in to the starter, he most often has no time to prepare. “You just take your baseball cap off, put your helmet on and you're playing,” said the fourth quarterback of the season (in 14 games) for Houston, Brandon Weeden. “You don't have time to get nervous.”
Such was the situation for Weeden on Sunday in Indianapolis. After being a Texan for one month, he didn't even know everyone on the team yet. And here he was, entering a game his team trailed 10-0 with the Texans and Colts in a dead heat atop the AFC South. He certainly didn't know the intricate playbook of head coach Bill O'Brien. After the game, he told me that in five practice weeks he had taken one snap with Houston’s first offensive unit. And that was a running play.
So he wasn't sure what to expect when T.J. Yates went down with a knee injury in the second quarter. And Texans fans, who knew Weeden only as the quarterback who lost his starting job in Cleveland and lost his backup job in Dallas, had to have been skeptical. Beyond skeptical. Houston entered the game never having won in Indianapolis (0-13), and now, down 10-0, the game was in Brandon Weeden’s hands. Yikes.
“It wasn’t like I stunk it up in Dallas—I thought I’d played pretty well, but we just hadn’t won,” he said. “I’ve learned in this business you’ve just got to keep plugging away. You never know when your next chance is going to come.”
For a guy who hadn’t played a single snap with this team, Weeden exceeded all expectations in what was likely the AFC South title game. In his first six possessions, Weeden led four scoring drives—one touchdown, three field goals. He looked calm, and looked very much like he knew what he was doing. And when it was over, another chance to start loomed. Yates likely has a significant knee injury, and the other quarterback on the roster, Brian Hoyer, is in the NFL’s concussion protocol and may not play for a while. If Weeden gets the keys to the offense Sunday at Tennessee, he’d be the fourth starter in 15 games for the Texans.
After the game, a few players he barely knows, veterans happy to finally break the Indy schneid, said to Weeden, “Thank you.” J.J. Watt was one.
“It’s pretty weird,” said Weeden. “But I’m just thankful for the opportunity. This game can be difficult to figure out sometimes.”
Sometimes?
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The last word, for now, on officiating
My thanks to Robert Klemko and Emily Kaplan of The MMQB for their detailed analysis on the state of NFL officiating. And to Seattle cornerback Richard Sherman, writing one of the best pieces in his three-year part-time columnist role for The MMQB. (Richard, you’ve got a future in the media.) Hesuggested an eighth official, a simplification of the rulebook, and a re-positioning of the officials on the field.
But what Sherman wrote that resonated with me was this: “To the fans who are still losing their minds over bad calls, I have one thing to say: Relax. Officiating NFL games is one of the hardest jobs in professional sports, and that’s why the replacement refs were yanked after three weeks. These days, with high-definition TV and rule experts on television and social media, everyone thinks he’s an expert. Everyone seems to know the rules and how they’re supposed to be called, and everybody can get the call right from the comfort of their own home, lying in bed. But in the heat of the moment, very few of us could get it right.”
Did you watch the Monday night game last week? In the Giants-Dolphins game, Eli Manning threw to Odell Beckham on the right side of the end zone, and Beckham stretched out for the ball, tried to get both feet in, and then attempted to secure the ball as he fell to the ground and slid way past the boundary.
To anyone watching, it was close. To me, and to the officials on the field, the immediate thought was: He didn’t get both feet inbounds, and he used the ground to secure the catch. So, then we saw the replays. One Beckham foot was clearly inbounds, and the new pylon-cam on ESPN spied a clear inch of green grass between Beckham’s other foot and the wide white stripe. So yes, both feet were legal. Inbounds. Now for the act of making the catch.
Beckham caught the ball, fell to the ground and slid—and if the ball barely moved a millimeter from the time he hit the ground to the time his slide stopped. Sliding along the ground, it appeared clear to me that Beckham did not use the ground to secure the catch, and the catch, after seeing the feet in correct position and the ball secured, should be good. And the catch was ruled good. Touchdown, Giants. Another play for the Beckham highlight loop.
My point: People will yelp about the officials getting the play wrong. But there is no human watching that game on the biggest hi-def TV ever invented, or watching in real time where the officials stood, feet away from the act, who could be remotely sure whether the ball was caught legally for a touchdown. The vast majority of people, I would guess, saw the play and said, “No way. Incomplete.” No matter how many rules are put in place to clarify the act of a catch, or the act of nearly anything in a pro football game, there are going to be holes. And officials will err. It’s just the way it is and always will be.
Now, I do think what I mentioned on NBC Sunday night—that the league is on a fast track to make one official on each of the 17 officiating crews a full-time, year-round official—is a good thing. It’s progress. And it may be that one day all officials will be full-time. But understand that the bang-bang nature of so many plays will ensure that no matter how much tape officials watch and no matter how many practices they work and no matter how many tests they take on the rules, there is very little you can do to make the game be played, live, in super-slow-motion. And that’s the only way officials can be anywhere close to perfect.
There still will be human error, the kind, in my opinion that allowed Beckham to stay in Sunday’s game when he was clearly out of control and did enough to be ejected. Why wasn’t he? I don’t know. It should have happened. It’s just another example of mistakes made under the white hot lights of a big game. We’ll see if a full-time official on each staff—or more, eventually—will cut down on the flaws.
