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These are excerpts from this article. To read the whole thing click the link below. PK has a new man-crush, Jimmy Garoppolo, Jim-MEE! Jim-MEE! Jim-MEE! and is giddy like a school girl over his Patriots.
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http://mmqb.si.com/mmqb/2016/09/12/jimmy-garoppolo-patriots-jack-del-rio-raiders-nfl-week-1
Jimmy G. and the Young QBs
New names stepped into the spotlight in Week 1, and none performed better than the Patriots backup quarterback. Plus a very Raider thing to do, a coach needs a heart, a new cause to get behind and much more
By Peter King
GLENDALE, Ariz. — “Jim-MEE! Jim-MEE! Jim-MEE!”
The players in New England’s locker room surrounded quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo and gave him the kind of moment he won’t forget if he lives to be 103, chanting his name like this was some high school post-game locker room and not the most outwardly blasé and act-like-you’ve-been-there-before group of players in sports.
Of all the Week 1 NFL stories—Trevor Siemian besting Cam Newton, Jack Del Rio burning the coaching rule book in New Orleans (and winning because of it), the precocious play of somany kid quarterbacks—the Patriots winning in the desert without Tom Brady and Rob Gronkowski and their two tackles, with a quarterback who’d never played, has to be the winner.
Look at the New England schedule. What game would be tougher this year? At Pittsburgh in October? Maybe. At Denver in December? Could be. But the first game of the season, the first game of the Brady ban, the first start of Jim-MEE’s career, against the top offense in football last year, with the cast intact … I never saw this coming. America didn’t either. At least the 44 states outside New England didn’t.
We’ll get to everything else from a jam-packed weekend in a bit, and news of Sam Wyche awaiting a heart transplant, and a cause I hope you’ll consider helping, and a lot more. This is the beginning of the 20th season that I’ve written this column. It was made for weekends like this.
So on with the show.
* * *
“Oh man,” Garoppolo’s friend and backup, rookie Jacoby Brissett, said to him at his locker Sunday night. “What a game.”
What a weekend. One of the first 14 games decided by 10 points or more. Five one-point games. Look around the league in Week 1. What was noticeable in so many games? Young quarterbacks, some playing for the first time, playing with such poise and maturity.
Garoppolo was so unaffected by the hype and the buildup Sunday night, the same way you saw Siemian make the little sidearm-flipped completion on his first snap Thursday, the same way Carson Wentz lofted a beautiful arcing strike to Jordan Matthews for a touchdown on the first series of his post-North Dakota State career, the same way Dak Prescott dueled Eli Manning on even terms before losing Sunday in Texas.
You see those players and you know the league’s got some good arms coming along to replace the older quarterbacks now—Brady, Drew Brees, Carson Palmer and the recently retired Peyton Manning.
Peter King's not returning my calls.
The other reason this outcome was so significant: Brady has such a command of this team and this locker room, and then he was gone, his four-game ban for the Deflategate sanction separating him from the team nine days ago. It was left to Belichick and the coaches and the remaining veterans to convey the sense of normalcy, even with Brady in limbo.
How’d they do it?
“We all just did our jobs,” said veteran receiver Julian Edelman.
“It’s all about tuning everything out and just doing your job,” said defensive end Chris Long, in his first year in New England.
That mantra is so pervasive in Belichickland that even the alumni use it. I was in Houston on Saturday night and listened to Bill O’Brien’s pre-game speech to his team, and he used some iteration of “Do your job” three times in 21 minutes.
Try as you might, you cannot get Patriots players to talk in real terms about what’s going on in this difficult period. Because they know you don’t do that; it can’t help the team win, and Belichick insists on eliminating all the crappola that affects his team’s chance to win.
“I don't think about who’s out there playing,” Edelman said. “That’s not my job. You know Belichick: ‘Ignore the noise. Don’t believe the hype.’” There’s little doubt he’s succeeded. Walking around the locker room Sunday night, you couldn’t find anyone giddy, or overly surprised, by what happened here. Train the mind, and the body will follow—as long as the body is good enough, and unselfish enough.
“That’s one of the differences here,” Long said. “Team-first guys. To gather all team-first guys, I’m telling you, it’s hard to do. But they do it here. It matters. Jimmy’s one of those. It’s a next man up thing, and he can handle it.”
Garoppolo isn’t demonstrative, nor particularly excitable. Two men in the offensive huddle on the game-winning drive had no memory of anything he said other than the play calls. He throws with good touch. He is accurate. Midway through the fourth quarter, New England trailing for the first time all day, Garoppolo faced a third-and-15. One of the options on offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels’ call was a fake screen that gave Garoppolo a couple options downfield. One was a deep throw up the left side to Danny Amendola; that’s the option Garoppolo took. His throw was perfect.
Garoppolo belongs. He just does. You saw his reaction to adversity—the two lost fumbles that kept Arizona in the game—which basically was no reaction. In the span of three hours, Garoppolo proved the Patriots aren’t going to be the vulnerable team everyone thought they’d be in the four games without Brady. The next three are home (Miami, Houston on a Thursday, Buffalo), and the prospects of running away with the division again are suddenly very real. “Everyone can shut up now and watch the guy get better and grow,” said safety Devin McCourty. Everyone can watch him do his job.
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The risk manager
In some ways, Oakland coach Jack Del Rio didn't think his decision in the final minute of his game at New Orleans was very controversial. Drew Brees was having his usual track meet against the Raiders, putting up 34 points on Oakland and meeting very little resistance. So when the Raiders got the ball back down seven points in the waning minutes, this is what he thought: “I told the offense early on that drive that we’re going to go down, score and then make that two-point conversion. It felt really obvious to me.”
But coaches don’t do that. Coaches play for overtime. Del Rio did not. “We were pretty much trading blows with Drew,” Del Rio said. “I saw this as an opportunity to go win the game.”
Michael Crabtree made a difficult catch on a two-point conversion to help the Raiders beat the Saints in a thrilling game at the Superdome.
Photo: Jonathan Bachman/Getty Images
Derek Carr drove the Raiders down to score and Del Rio sure enough called for a two-point play. But I believe the smartest thing he did was to call timeout once he saw the New Orleans defensive formation. The Saints were in man coverage and the Raiders thought they might shade an extra man on star wideout Amari Cooper. So Del Rio instructed Carr to call a timeout. The Raiders saw the coverage, noted that Michael Crabtree would probably be single covered on the far left flank, and tried to take advantage. Sure enough, Carr threw a jump ball for Crabtree, and Crabtree won it.
The Oakland coach grew up a few miles from the Raiders home field, and was a huge fan of the team. I asked him if winning a game like this the Raider way, with guile and guts, made him feel more like a classic Raider of the 60s or 70s.
“I don't have to feel like a Raider,” he said. “I am a Raider. Did it feel like a Raider thing to do? Yes it did.”
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The Award Section
OFFENSIVE PLAYERS OF THE WEEK
With apologies to Jameis Winston (four TDs in a road win at Atlanta) and Andy Dalton (fourth-quarter-comeback win at the Jets despite missing 150 catches from departed/injured 2015 Bengals), and Victor Cruz (winning touchdown catch in his first game back after missing the last 26 for New York), I have two:
Carson Wentz, quarterback, Philadelphia. One of a number of precocious young quarterbacks who impressed this weekend, Wentz, in his first home game outside of North Dakota in his young life, completed 22 of 37 for 278, with two touchdowns and no interceptions in his NFL debut. Philadelphia beat the Browns, 29-10, the only game that’s qualified as a rout among the first 14 played in the league this season.
“I wasn’t nervous,” Wentz said afterward. “I don’t really get nervous. I like to listen to worship music before the game to kind of calm my nerves.” Seemed pretty calm to me. His 19-yard touch fade to Jordan Matthews for a touchdown on the first possession of his professional life was fairly extraordinary, because it was the kind of throw a great touch passer like Russell Wilson would have made.
Trevor Siemian, quarterback, Denver. He won’t put the stats in the trophy case (18 of 26, 178 yards, one touchdown, one deflected pick, one bad pick, 69.1 rating), but this is about a quarterback starting his first game in the NFL and throwing his first pass in the NFL, and doing it against the defending MVP and NFC kings, and coming back from a 17-7 deficit with 20 minutes to go by leading touchdown drives of 10 and eight plays to score two fourth-quarter touchdowns. Siemian has miles to go, but what first-time starter doesn’t?
He’s poised, he throws the ball well enough, he can fit it into tight windows, he knows what NOT to do. His biggest error was throwing a medium-deep ball too short and having Ben Benwikere make a great pick of it. Gary Kubiak probably had a pretty good weekend of sleep after seeing Siemian manage a game like that.
Jimmy Garoppolo, quarterback, New England. Imagine what you must feel, a kid from Eastern Illinois who never started a pro game, replacing Tom Brady on national TV in a very loud place. “Amped up,” is how he described his pre-game emotions. I should hope so. He delivered in a big way: 24 of 33, 264 yards, 1 TD, no picks, a 106.1 passer rating. New England 23, Arizona 21.
DEFENSIVE PLAYER OF THE WEEK
Leonard Williams, defensive end, New York Jets. Williams had a career-best 2.5 sacks against a very good Cincinnati line and a quarterback who doesn’t take many sacks, Andy Dalton. The Jets nailed Dalton for seven—Cincinnati let him take just 20 in 13 starts last season—and I know the Jets didn’t finish the job in the Meadowlands, but this is going to be a very tough defensive team to play—led in part by Williams.
SPECIAL TEAMS PLAYERS OF THE WEEK
Dan Bailey, kicker, Dallas. Booted field goals of 23, 56, 25 and 54 to keep the Cowboys in the game (and ahead, till midway through the fourth quarter). Bailey should have had a chance for a fifth field goal, and the game-winner, if our Goat of the Week hadn’t faux-pased so badly in the last 10 seconds of the game.
Andy Lee, punter, Carolina. I will never criticize a GM for making a deal that seems imbalanced, such as dealing a fourth-round pick in 2018 for a 34-year-old punter and a seventh-round pick. First, think of this deal. A low fourth is about the 130th pick. A high seventh is about the 220th pick. That’s significant, surely. But if you’re talking about acquiring a top-five punter in the league when you’re a team with a coach who plays field-position football like Ron Rivera, it’s at worst a solid deal and, if you watched Thursday night’s game, it’s looking very good.
Lee punted four times, for 59, 56, 76 (a Carolina franchise record punt, with Lee booting from his end zone and the ball landing in the Denver returner’s hands at the Broncos’ 13) and 61. Lee tilted the field the way great punters do, booting from his 32, on average, with the Broncos starting drives from their 21, on average. “Andy Lee was phenomenal,” said coach Ron Rivera. “He justified—at least initially—why we went out and get him.”
COACH OF THE WEEK
Vance Joseph, defensive coordinator, Miami. In his first game as a defensive coordinator at any level of football, Joseph’s game plan was a gem for 56 minutes, holding the Seahawks to 277 yards and only one long drive out of 11 possessions. On the 12th drive, Wilson had to convert two fourth downs to keep it alive and eventually pull out a win. You’re right if you think close only counts in horseshoes and whatever, but I give Joseph credit. After the longest road trip in the league, against the toughest team in the league to beat at home, Joseph’s crew held Seattle to 12 points and had the game in the balance for three hours.
Josh McDaniels, offensive coordinator, New England. To get Jimmy Garoppolo ready to play at such a high level in his first NFL start, to get the offense to perform at a high level on third downs against a good defense (10 of 16), to play so smoothly in such a difficult environment that’s a huge home-field advantage … and to do it with no Gronk and two replacement tackles and of course without one of the greatest quarterback in history, I mean, McDaniels deserves every bit of praise he’d get after Sunday night.
GOAT OF THE WEEK
Terrance Williams, wide receiver, Dallas. On the last play (as it turned out), down 1 and with 12 seconds left, the Cowboys had no timeouts and needed 10 yards for a first down and about 12 yards and an immediate sprint out of bounds to have a chance to kick the winning field by Dan Bailey. Dak Prescott threw to Williams, who had enough for a first down … and then, inexplicably, Williams caught the ball and turned upfield, meaning the only way Dallas would have a chance to win the game was if Williams ran about 50 yards for a touchdown through the Giant defense. Stupid, of course, and non-thinking.
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View: https://twitter.com/JoeGiglioSports/status/775061771040141312
View: https://twitter.com/SeifertESPN/status/774996497322520576
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Nine Things I Think I Think
1. I think the most impressive wins over the weekend, in order, belonged to:
a. New England. For the above-stated reasons.
b. Denver. For winning with the Northwestern platoon quarterback in 2012 and 2013.
c. Kansas City. A word about the Chiefs. What impressed me was not so much the pluck, or whatever you’d call it, of coming back from a 21-3 deficit to beat San Diego. But it’s how they turned around a physical disadvantage early and were dominating late in the game. That tells me they’ve got great character players. Three touchdown drives for San Diego to begin the game, then 0-for-nine in drives for touchdowns the rest of the way. Great job by the Chiefs.
d. Cincinnati. Got manhandled at times by the physical Jets. Had enough to come back.
e. Minnesota. Beating Tennessee shouldn’t be any measuring stick, but the Vikings struggled running early and often, they got a shaky game from Blair Walsh, and they were just okay in the passing game in the first game post-Bridgewater. I think they’ll strongly consider starting Sam Bradford in the opening game at the new palace in Minneapolis on Sunday against Green Bay.
2. I think the worst losses were by:
a. Miami. Had a huge win on the road in their pockets, and suddenly it vanished, after 56 minutes of really strong defensive play.
b. San Diego. Blew a 21-3 lead. Outscored 30-9 after that. Long flight home to San Diego, and the momentum they’d hoped to build for the Nov. 8 tax initiative didn’t get started.
c. Indianapolis. No answers for another offense, this one slightly better than average at best. Detroit hung up 39 on the Colts. Bodes ill.
d. Atlanta. Amazing to say they really missed a guy who’s never played a game as a Falcon. But Keanu Neal is going to be the heart of that secondary, and Dan Quinn needs him. Falcs can’t be losing to the Bucs at home, and they’ve done it two years in a row.
3. I think I don’t care if the league and the players union do their own investigation (which is what’s set to happen) or if they combine forces. But the investigation into Cam Newton being allowed to stay on the field late in the game Thursday night has to be thorough and honest. My thought after I watched Newton get ear-holed late in the game, fall to the ground and appear for a couple of seconds to be napping on the turf: I don’t care what time of game it is; this guy’s got to be taken out, or a medical timeout has to be taken, to check him out. Take a cue from what Ben Roethlisberger did in self-reporting a concussion last year late in a game at Seattle.
4. I think Keenan Allen was about to take his rightful place among the top five to seven wideouts in football, and then he tears his ACL in the first game of the season. I love the physicality and athleticism he combines in one package, and I’ll really miss watching him in 2016.
5. I think you don’t want to draw too many conclusions from one game, and I shall not. But Robert Griffin III has to be better than 12 of 26 with a 55.0 rating if he’s going to revive his career under Hue Jackson.
6. I think I'm not much of an “America's Got Talent” fan, but I know a few people who swear by the NBC show, and it comes to a climax this week with 10 contestants vying for the championship. One of those talented people is Eagles long-snapper Jon Dorenbos, who left the team last night for the final two shows in the series; he'll be back in Philadelphia off a red-eye for practice Thursday as the Eagles prepare for the Monday night game next week.
Dorenbos’ talent is magic; he’s done it most of his life, and it’s been good enough to get him past several rounds of competition to the finals, which airs Tuesday night on NBC. The way this works is each one of the contestants has three to four minutes to do an act or a song. Then America votes. “This has a chance to change the rest of my life,” Dorenbos said the other day. Good luck to him. You can vote between Tuesday at 8 p.m. and Wednesday at 7 a.m., and the results will be broadcast on a second show Wednesday night.
7. I think I cannot wait till the public gets a crack at this new Chuck Noll book. It is tremendous. Anything Michael MacCambridge writes is gold. This one, in particular, is good—“Chuck Noll: His Life’s Work,” which you can pre-order on Amazon—because a definitive work on Noll and the birth of the great Steelers has never been dissected the way MacCambridge does. It comes out in late October. I can just tell you this: If you get this book for a Steeler fan in your life, said fan will thank you for the education on what exactly Noll did early—largely, pursuing small-college and HBCU players—to make the Steelers
8. I think this is what I’d call home-field advantage—and I never would have thought of this: In the decade since the 2006 season began, the Arizona Cardinals have drawn the most false-start penalties (135) of any team in the NFL. Minnesota, with 125, is next. Seattle third, with 123. I never would have thought University of Phoenix Stadium was such a cacophonous place, and I was there Sunday night.
9. I think when you listen to Bruce Arians talk, as I did this week on my podcast, I find it stunning that it took him so long to get a head coaching job. Imagine this: There were eight coaching openings in 2013 … he’s the first interim coach to ever win coach of the year … the first seven openings get filled without Arians getting a shot … the eighth team, piloted by Arizona president Michael Bidwill, took the plunge. Listen to this idea about teaching players, and you see why it’s a wonder Arians couldn’t get a job till age 60: “We have one of the largest staffs in the league, because I want small classrooms.
Michael Bidwill was very gracious. Let’s say I have $450,000 to hire one coach. Could I have three for $150,000? So I have smaller classrooms, and more eyes. I had a different idea how I wanted to get rookies ready. We have two tight end coaches. We have three offensive line coaches. When we come to the spring, and we have 90 guys on our roster, we have two practices going on. I want to have enough quality people to go to that other field, and those rookies get those 48 snaps that day, and the veterans get 48 snaps, rather than the veterans getting all the snaps and the rookies get three.
You’re not gonna find a diamond in the rough standing on the sideline. With the larger coaching staff, not only do we get the reps, we got ‘em coached. We’re bringing quality young coaches into the NFL. Our job is to make the game better, not just win games.” No wonder so many players have loved playing for Arians over the years.
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http://mmqb.si.com/mmqb/2016/09/12/jimmy-garoppolo-patriots-jack-del-rio-raiders-nfl-week-1
Jimmy G. and the Young QBs
New names stepped into the spotlight in Week 1, and none performed better than the Patriots backup quarterback. Plus a very Raider thing to do, a coach needs a heart, a new cause to get behind and much more
By Peter King
GLENDALE, Ariz. — “Jim-MEE! Jim-MEE! Jim-MEE!”
The players in New England’s locker room surrounded quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo and gave him the kind of moment he won’t forget if he lives to be 103, chanting his name like this was some high school post-game locker room and not the most outwardly blasé and act-like-you’ve-been-there-before group of players in sports.
Of all the Week 1 NFL stories—Trevor Siemian besting Cam Newton, Jack Del Rio burning the coaching rule book in New Orleans (and winning because of it), the precocious play of somany kid quarterbacks—the Patriots winning in the desert without Tom Brady and Rob Gronkowski and their two tackles, with a quarterback who’d never played, has to be the winner.
Look at the New England schedule. What game would be tougher this year? At Pittsburgh in October? Maybe. At Denver in December? Could be. But the first game of the season, the first game of the Brady ban, the first start of Jim-MEE’s career, against the top offense in football last year, with the cast intact … I never saw this coming. America didn’t either. At least the 44 states outside New England didn’t.
We’ll get to everything else from a jam-packed weekend in a bit, and news of Sam Wyche awaiting a heart transplant, and a cause I hope you’ll consider helping, and a lot more. This is the beginning of the 20th season that I’ve written this column. It was made for weekends like this.
So on with the show.
* * *
“Oh man,” Garoppolo’s friend and backup, rookie Jacoby Brissett, said to him at his locker Sunday night. “What a game.”
What a weekend. One of the first 14 games decided by 10 points or more. Five one-point games. Look around the league in Week 1. What was noticeable in so many games? Young quarterbacks, some playing for the first time, playing with such poise and maturity.
Garoppolo was so unaffected by the hype and the buildup Sunday night, the same way you saw Siemian make the little sidearm-flipped completion on his first snap Thursday, the same way Carson Wentz lofted a beautiful arcing strike to Jordan Matthews for a touchdown on the first series of his post-North Dakota State career, the same way Dak Prescott dueled Eli Manning on even terms before losing Sunday in Texas.
You see those players and you know the league’s got some good arms coming along to replace the older quarterbacks now—Brady, Drew Brees, Carson Palmer and the recently retired Peyton Manning.
Peter King's not returning my calls.
The other reason this outcome was so significant: Brady has such a command of this team and this locker room, and then he was gone, his four-game ban for the Deflategate sanction separating him from the team nine days ago. It was left to Belichick and the coaches and the remaining veterans to convey the sense of normalcy, even with Brady in limbo.
How’d they do it?
“We all just did our jobs,” said veteran receiver Julian Edelman.
“It’s all about tuning everything out and just doing your job,” said defensive end Chris Long, in his first year in New England.
That mantra is so pervasive in Belichickland that even the alumni use it. I was in Houston on Saturday night and listened to Bill O’Brien’s pre-game speech to his team, and he used some iteration of “Do your job” three times in 21 minutes.
Try as you might, you cannot get Patriots players to talk in real terms about what’s going on in this difficult period. Because they know you don’t do that; it can’t help the team win, and Belichick insists on eliminating all the crappola that affects his team’s chance to win.
“I don't think about who’s out there playing,” Edelman said. “That’s not my job. You know Belichick: ‘Ignore the noise. Don’t believe the hype.’” There’s little doubt he’s succeeded. Walking around the locker room Sunday night, you couldn’t find anyone giddy, or overly surprised, by what happened here. Train the mind, and the body will follow—as long as the body is good enough, and unselfish enough.
“That’s one of the differences here,” Long said. “Team-first guys. To gather all team-first guys, I’m telling you, it’s hard to do. But they do it here. It matters. Jimmy’s one of those. It’s a next man up thing, and he can handle it.”
Garoppolo isn’t demonstrative, nor particularly excitable. Two men in the offensive huddle on the game-winning drive had no memory of anything he said other than the play calls. He throws with good touch. He is accurate. Midway through the fourth quarter, New England trailing for the first time all day, Garoppolo faced a third-and-15. One of the options on offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels’ call was a fake screen that gave Garoppolo a couple options downfield. One was a deep throw up the left side to Danny Amendola; that’s the option Garoppolo took. His throw was perfect.
Garoppolo belongs. He just does. You saw his reaction to adversity—the two lost fumbles that kept Arizona in the game—which basically was no reaction. In the span of three hours, Garoppolo proved the Patriots aren’t going to be the vulnerable team everyone thought they’d be in the four games without Brady. The next three are home (Miami, Houston on a Thursday, Buffalo), and the prospects of running away with the division again are suddenly very real. “Everyone can shut up now and watch the guy get better and grow,” said safety Devin McCourty. Everyone can watch him do his job.
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The risk manager
In some ways, Oakland coach Jack Del Rio didn't think his decision in the final minute of his game at New Orleans was very controversial. Drew Brees was having his usual track meet against the Raiders, putting up 34 points on Oakland and meeting very little resistance. So when the Raiders got the ball back down seven points in the waning minutes, this is what he thought: “I told the offense early on that drive that we’re going to go down, score and then make that two-point conversion. It felt really obvious to me.”
But coaches don’t do that. Coaches play for overtime. Del Rio did not. “We were pretty much trading blows with Drew,” Del Rio said. “I saw this as an opportunity to go win the game.”
Michael Crabtree made a difficult catch on a two-point conversion to help the Raiders beat the Saints in a thrilling game at the Superdome.
Photo: Jonathan Bachman/Getty Images
Derek Carr drove the Raiders down to score and Del Rio sure enough called for a two-point play. But I believe the smartest thing he did was to call timeout once he saw the New Orleans defensive formation. The Saints were in man coverage and the Raiders thought they might shade an extra man on star wideout Amari Cooper. So Del Rio instructed Carr to call a timeout. The Raiders saw the coverage, noted that Michael Crabtree would probably be single covered on the far left flank, and tried to take advantage. Sure enough, Carr threw a jump ball for Crabtree, and Crabtree won it.
The Oakland coach grew up a few miles from the Raiders home field, and was a huge fan of the team. I asked him if winning a game like this the Raider way, with guile and guts, made him feel more like a classic Raider of the 60s or 70s.
“I don't have to feel like a Raider,” he said. “I am a Raider. Did it feel like a Raider thing to do? Yes it did.”
* * *
The Award Section
OFFENSIVE PLAYERS OF THE WEEK
With apologies to Jameis Winston (four TDs in a road win at Atlanta) and Andy Dalton (fourth-quarter-comeback win at the Jets despite missing 150 catches from departed/injured 2015 Bengals), and Victor Cruz (winning touchdown catch in his first game back after missing the last 26 for New York), I have two:
Carson Wentz, quarterback, Philadelphia. One of a number of precocious young quarterbacks who impressed this weekend, Wentz, in his first home game outside of North Dakota in his young life, completed 22 of 37 for 278, with two touchdowns and no interceptions in his NFL debut. Philadelphia beat the Browns, 29-10, the only game that’s qualified as a rout among the first 14 played in the league this season.
“I wasn’t nervous,” Wentz said afterward. “I don’t really get nervous. I like to listen to worship music before the game to kind of calm my nerves.” Seemed pretty calm to me. His 19-yard touch fade to Jordan Matthews for a touchdown on the first possession of his professional life was fairly extraordinary, because it was the kind of throw a great touch passer like Russell Wilson would have made.
Trevor Siemian, quarterback, Denver. He won’t put the stats in the trophy case (18 of 26, 178 yards, one touchdown, one deflected pick, one bad pick, 69.1 rating), but this is about a quarterback starting his first game in the NFL and throwing his first pass in the NFL, and doing it against the defending MVP and NFC kings, and coming back from a 17-7 deficit with 20 minutes to go by leading touchdown drives of 10 and eight plays to score two fourth-quarter touchdowns. Siemian has miles to go, but what first-time starter doesn’t?
He’s poised, he throws the ball well enough, he can fit it into tight windows, he knows what NOT to do. His biggest error was throwing a medium-deep ball too short and having Ben Benwikere make a great pick of it. Gary Kubiak probably had a pretty good weekend of sleep after seeing Siemian manage a game like that.
Jimmy Garoppolo, quarterback, New England. Imagine what you must feel, a kid from Eastern Illinois who never started a pro game, replacing Tom Brady on national TV in a very loud place. “Amped up,” is how he described his pre-game emotions. I should hope so. He delivered in a big way: 24 of 33, 264 yards, 1 TD, no picks, a 106.1 passer rating. New England 23, Arizona 21.
DEFENSIVE PLAYER OF THE WEEK
Leonard Williams, defensive end, New York Jets. Williams had a career-best 2.5 sacks against a very good Cincinnati line and a quarterback who doesn’t take many sacks, Andy Dalton. The Jets nailed Dalton for seven—Cincinnati let him take just 20 in 13 starts last season—and I know the Jets didn’t finish the job in the Meadowlands, but this is going to be a very tough defensive team to play—led in part by Williams.
SPECIAL TEAMS PLAYERS OF THE WEEK
Dan Bailey, kicker, Dallas. Booted field goals of 23, 56, 25 and 54 to keep the Cowboys in the game (and ahead, till midway through the fourth quarter). Bailey should have had a chance for a fifth field goal, and the game-winner, if our Goat of the Week hadn’t faux-pased so badly in the last 10 seconds of the game.
Andy Lee, punter, Carolina. I will never criticize a GM for making a deal that seems imbalanced, such as dealing a fourth-round pick in 2018 for a 34-year-old punter and a seventh-round pick. First, think of this deal. A low fourth is about the 130th pick. A high seventh is about the 220th pick. That’s significant, surely. But if you’re talking about acquiring a top-five punter in the league when you’re a team with a coach who plays field-position football like Ron Rivera, it’s at worst a solid deal and, if you watched Thursday night’s game, it’s looking very good.
Lee punted four times, for 59, 56, 76 (a Carolina franchise record punt, with Lee booting from his end zone and the ball landing in the Denver returner’s hands at the Broncos’ 13) and 61. Lee tilted the field the way great punters do, booting from his 32, on average, with the Broncos starting drives from their 21, on average. “Andy Lee was phenomenal,” said coach Ron Rivera. “He justified—at least initially—why we went out and get him.”
COACH OF THE WEEK
Vance Joseph, defensive coordinator, Miami. In his first game as a defensive coordinator at any level of football, Joseph’s game plan was a gem for 56 minutes, holding the Seahawks to 277 yards and only one long drive out of 11 possessions. On the 12th drive, Wilson had to convert two fourth downs to keep it alive and eventually pull out a win. You’re right if you think close only counts in horseshoes and whatever, but I give Joseph credit. After the longest road trip in the league, against the toughest team in the league to beat at home, Joseph’s crew held Seattle to 12 points and had the game in the balance for three hours.
Josh McDaniels, offensive coordinator, New England. To get Jimmy Garoppolo ready to play at such a high level in his first NFL start, to get the offense to perform at a high level on third downs against a good defense (10 of 16), to play so smoothly in such a difficult environment that’s a huge home-field advantage … and to do it with no Gronk and two replacement tackles and of course without one of the greatest quarterback in history, I mean, McDaniels deserves every bit of praise he’d get after Sunday night.
GOAT OF THE WEEK
Terrance Williams, wide receiver, Dallas. On the last play (as it turned out), down 1 and with 12 seconds left, the Cowboys had no timeouts and needed 10 yards for a first down and about 12 yards and an immediate sprint out of bounds to have a chance to kick the winning field by Dan Bailey. Dak Prescott threw to Williams, who had enough for a first down … and then, inexplicably, Williams caught the ball and turned upfield, meaning the only way Dallas would have a chance to win the game was if Williams ran about 50 yards for a touchdown through the Giant defense. Stupid, of course, and non-thinking.
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View: https://twitter.com/JoeGiglioSports/status/775061771040141312
View: https://twitter.com/SeifertESPN/status/774996497322520576
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Nine Things I Think I Think
1. I think the most impressive wins over the weekend, in order, belonged to:
a. New England. For the above-stated reasons.
b. Denver. For winning with the Northwestern platoon quarterback in 2012 and 2013.
c. Kansas City. A word about the Chiefs. What impressed me was not so much the pluck, or whatever you’d call it, of coming back from a 21-3 deficit to beat San Diego. But it’s how they turned around a physical disadvantage early and were dominating late in the game. That tells me they’ve got great character players. Three touchdown drives for San Diego to begin the game, then 0-for-nine in drives for touchdowns the rest of the way. Great job by the Chiefs.
d. Cincinnati. Got manhandled at times by the physical Jets. Had enough to come back.
e. Minnesota. Beating Tennessee shouldn’t be any measuring stick, but the Vikings struggled running early and often, they got a shaky game from Blair Walsh, and they were just okay in the passing game in the first game post-Bridgewater. I think they’ll strongly consider starting Sam Bradford in the opening game at the new palace in Minneapolis on Sunday against Green Bay.
2. I think the worst losses were by:
a. Miami. Had a huge win on the road in their pockets, and suddenly it vanished, after 56 minutes of really strong defensive play.
b. San Diego. Blew a 21-3 lead. Outscored 30-9 after that. Long flight home to San Diego, and the momentum they’d hoped to build for the Nov. 8 tax initiative didn’t get started.
c. Indianapolis. No answers for another offense, this one slightly better than average at best. Detroit hung up 39 on the Colts. Bodes ill.
d. Atlanta. Amazing to say they really missed a guy who’s never played a game as a Falcon. But Keanu Neal is going to be the heart of that secondary, and Dan Quinn needs him. Falcs can’t be losing to the Bucs at home, and they’ve done it two years in a row.
3. I think I don’t care if the league and the players union do their own investigation (which is what’s set to happen) or if they combine forces. But the investigation into Cam Newton being allowed to stay on the field late in the game Thursday night has to be thorough and honest. My thought after I watched Newton get ear-holed late in the game, fall to the ground and appear for a couple of seconds to be napping on the turf: I don’t care what time of game it is; this guy’s got to be taken out, or a medical timeout has to be taken, to check him out. Take a cue from what Ben Roethlisberger did in self-reporting a concussion last year late in a game at Seattle.
4. I think Keenan Allen was about to take his rightful place among the top five to seven wideouts in football, and then he tears his ACL in the first game of the season. I love the physicality and athleticism he combines in one package, and I’ll really miss watching him in 2016.
5. I think you don’t want to draw too many conclusions from one game, and I shall not. But Robert Griffin III has to be better than 12 of 26 with a 55.0 rating if he’s going to revive his career under Hue Jackson.
6. I think I'm not much of an “America's Got Talent” fan, but I know a few people who swear by the NBC show, and it comes to a climax this week with 10 contestants vying for the championship. One of those talented people is Eagles long-snapper Jon Dorenbos, who left the team last night for the final two shows in the series; he'll be back in Philadelphia off a red-eye for practice Thursday as the Eagles prepare for the Monday night game next week.
Dorenbos’ talent is magic; he’s done it most of his life, and it’s been good enough to get him past several rounds of competition to the finals, which airs Tuesday night on NBC. The way this works is each one of the contestants has three to four minutes to do an act or a song. Then America votes. “This has a chance to change the rest of my life,” Dorenbos said the other day. Good luck to him. You can vote between Tuesday at 8 p.m. and Wednesday at 7 a.m., and the results will be broadcast on a second show Wednesday night.
7. I think I cannot wait till the public gets a crack at this new Chuck Noll book. It is tremendous. Anything Michael MacCambridge writes is gold. This one, in particular, is good—“Chuck Noll: His Life’s Work,” which you can pre-order on Amazon—because a definitive work on Noll and the birth of the great Steelers has never been dissected the way MacCambridge does. It comes out in late October. I can just tell you this: If you get this book for a Steeler fan in your life, said fan will thank you for the education on what exactly Noll did early—largely, pursuing small-college and HBCU players—to make the Steelers
8. I think this is what I’d call home-field advantage—and I never would have thought of this: In the decade since the 2006 season began, the Arizona Cardinals have drawn the most false-start penalties (135) of any team in the NFL. Minnesota, with 125, is next. Seattle third, with 123. I never would have thought University of Phoenix Stadium was such a cacophonous place, and I was there Sunday night.
9. I think when you listen to Bruce Arians talk, as I did this week on my podcast, I find it stunning that it took him so long to get a head coaching job. Imagine this: There were eight coaching openings in 2013 … he’s the first interim coach to ever win coach of the year … the first seven openings get filled without Arians getting a shot … the eighth team, piloted by Arizona president Michael Bidwill, took the plunge. Listen to this idea about teaching players, and you see why it’s a wonder Arians couldn’t get a job till age 60: “We have one of the largest staffs in the league, because I want small classrooms.
Michael Bidwill was very gracious. Let’s say I have $450,000 to hire one coach. Could I have three for $150,000? So I have smaller classrooms, and more eyes. I had a different idea how I wanted to get rookies ready. We have two tight end coaches. We have three offensive line coaches. When we come to the spring, and we have 90 guys on our roster, we have two practices going on. I want to have enough quality people to go to that other field, and those rookies get those 48 snaps that day, and the veterans get 48 snaps, rather than the veterans getting all the snaps and the rookies get three.
You’re not gonna find a diamond in the rough standing on the sideline. With the larger coaching staff, not only do we get the reps, we got ‘em coached. We’re bringing quality young coaches into the NFL. Our job is to make the game better, not just win games.” No wonder so many players have loved playing for Arians over the years.
