Brandon Marshall clearly is not the Messiah, so why is he invariably the first option? The guy doesn’t have out-of-this-world moves, therefore eight times out of ten he won’t be open. Coach Bowles is demonstrating that he is not the greatest game manager, i.e. his game plan works only if he has a lead.
Saw some complaints about the mono-color uniforms. Besides being ugly as heck, if you are red/green colorblind (something like 8 million people, mostly men) you could not tell which player was on which team. Giant fail by the NFL and Nike.
Another blunder by the NFL. Hideous. Transparent marketing appeal for sales of neon jerseys to fans.
Yeah, my son sent me a link on what the game would look like to people with color blindness…what it looked like to be was a giant bowl of holiday colored M and M’s…
My wife said it looked like the red power rangers versus the green power rangers. My brother is red/green color blind. I’ll have to ask what it looked like.
Russell Wilson just outdid Sanchez with a butt-fumble safety. OMG! That is a play that will live in infamy. Yes, the separation is in the preparation and he spent his off week in Mexico taking “Old Spice Guy” beach photos. #-o 8-} ~X(
Not really a butt-fumble, more of a side fumble. They just sort of ran into each other, and the Cards didn’t get a TD out of it. So I think Sanchez is safe. 
How bout those Patriots? Brady throws a terrible pick which might have sealed the game, but then drives them for the winning field goal with seconds left.
The bad news is Edelman has a broken foot and will undergo surgery on Monday, and could be out for the year. I don’t know how many more injuries they can take before the wheels come off. They have no margin at either WR or OL.
Peyton was 5-20 for 35 yards, 2 sacks, and 4 picks, for a quarterback rating of… 0.0 . That has to be the most ignominious performance ever while setting of of the major NFL records. Too bad I started him on my fantasy team today… that sorry showing got me -8 points. I’m pretty sure that’s a league record for worst score ever by a player.
Just heard Edelman could be back sometime during the playoffs.
Dez broke the same bone, and it took him 7 weeks to get back. So hopefully you are right and they get him back for the playoffs.
That game was going to be emblematic of the season one way or the other and now we know which way. Grrrrrr. It was a microcosm of everything that has gone wrong so far this year. The D line was the only bright spot. I hope they have a short list of offensive coordinators to interview this winter.
Headline on NFL.com: “Is Brock Osweiler a better fit for the Broncos offense?” I had to check the spelling of his name twice. I gather Peyton not only has rib problems - for which he was listed this week - but also what seems to be significant plantar fasciitis. 5 for 20 with 4 picks is not the way to break the passing yardage record, but it was.
The Packers have lost 3 in a row. Losing to the Lions in Green Bay? Huh? Huh? Huh?
We were out so I didn’t watch much except highlights of the day. To me the story in Seattle is the defense isn’t what people like to think it is. This is the 3rd or 4th game this year - more? - in which they’ve given up the lead in the 4thQ. Seattle is now a 3rdQ comeback team, 4thQ can’t hold on team. The offense is an oddity: it depends on big play breakdowns related to Wilson’s scrambling. I don’t understand why AZ was blitzing on so many plays: better I would think to contain Wilson and make him stand back and throw because a) he isn’t accurate from the pocket and b) better to give up small gains than big plays. This is what the Patriots would do with Peyton early on: when every team blitzed Peyton and he’d tear them to pieces, they’d rush 3 or 4 and would defend the stretch play (with Edgerrin James) and cover. Funny thing is Seattle does exactly this with SF when Kaepernick is QB.
This is a big loss for Seattle because a) if things continue as they are, AZ wins the division and b) if I assume MN and GB finish reasonably well, that leaves 1 wild card team and right now Atlanta is 6-3. That means one slot may be open. The Falcons have a tough road: Colts (4-5), Vikings (7-2), at Buccaneers (4-5), at Panthers (9-0), at Jaguars (3-6), vs. Panthers (9-0), vs. Saints (4-6). They could easily lose all or win 2, etc. but it’s theirs to lose now. Now St. Louis is 3-0 in the division but, given their schedule, I’m thinking 8-8 might be their best case, but right now 6 teams are 4-5 (and if Houston manages to win tonight, then 7). Seattle has one of the easier schedules remaining.
I’m pretty shocked at Seattle’s season. I’m used to Dallas being sucky, but I couldn’t believe that game last night.
Well, it’s not over until it’s over. Seattle still has time to get it together.
can’t believe I’m a football fan but the Patriots make it easy. Wifey on the other hand … “you were NOT a football fan when I agreed to marry you …” 1st world empty nest struggles …
^ You have to turn her into a fan as well. Start by emphasizing the large muscular men with zero percent body fat in skin tight pants.
Worked for me anyway. I’ve even got her playing fantasy now. 
WHO DEY!!!
I want to note something about the Mannings: I think Eli perform so well in big games - and is otherwise way too up and down - because of rivalry with Peyton. One reading is he knows he can never outperform Peyton on a weekly basis but he knows he can do that in big games because, bluntly, that’s when Peyton has been at his worst. Eli is at his best against NE; it’s always a big, big game. He played fantastically well on Sunday. He went to guys who had never caught a ball, which is what a big game QB does in big games.
By contrast, Brady doesn’t perform well against the Giants (or Miami in Miami). Those are two of his weak places. (The other is probably Denver, where NE has alway had trouble.) I don’t know why but he makes bad decisions against these teams, like he’s tense. This is the 2nd INT he’s thrown at the goal line in 2 games. I think the pressure of a) not losing a game on top of all that he’s been through in the last year and b) losing Edelman in the 1stQ (after losing Dion Lewis last week) made him distinctly uncomfortable. NE still has weapons beside Gronkowski - they have 2 quality WR’s in Amendola and LaFell - and their real need is a back who can catch the ball. They have 2 guys on the team with that skill but it remains to be seen how well they fit. As for the 3rd WR, I actually think Keshawn Martin, if he’s healthy, will be a better fit than Aaron Dobson because Martin showed an immediate grasp of the system. Main thing for NE is to get healthy: their best defensive player has missed 2 games with an illness and they desperately need O-line health.
And it would be a great pity if Peyton’s ribs and foot mean this is the end. To go out squeaking by the yardage record while throwing 4 INTs is not how you imagine it.
LaFell was open on that play, but Brady threw it way behind him. Not so much a bad decision but poor execution. If he had led him properly, that would have been 6 points.
The first play on the last drive where he just chucked it up - that was a bad decision.
IMO the problem when they play the Giants is that the o-line somehow turns into pudding. Or the Giants d-line turn into the Fearsome Foursome when they play the Patriots when they suck against everyone else.
And he failed to get the win record as well.
Sigh…once again the Bengals choked during a big game. If this game had been on Sunday, they wouldve won. They never perform well when the pressure is on. Hopefully, they will shake this off, and gear up for the next game!
That was a very bad show by Cincy: Houston’s defense isn’t as bad as it’s shown in recent games but it isn’t as good as it looked last night. BTW, Vince Wilfork is now a shadow of his old self, something that showed up last year (with NE) but he looked pretty bad. I looked specifically for him, which is difficult because TV only talks about Watt.
Offensively, Houston had 1 play, the TD - which was a terrific catch. And a handful of decent others, but they lack the ability to string enough plays together to be good.
In terms of entertainment value, the Sunday night and Monday night games were excellent TV.
BTW, Brady has throw 3 INTs this year. One was bounced up in the air by Edelman and had nothing to do with Brady - and I think there could be a stat introduced which looks at that - and the other two were at the goal line, one a bad choice, bad location to Edelman and the other a bad throw to LaFell (which may also have been a misread by LaFell about where to go). Both I think reflect the mental process of being near the goal line and the pressure to score when space is limited.
There’s a lot of focus today about the “error” at the end of the Jaguars win over the Ravens, meaning the crew missed that an offensive player wasn’t set. This to me reflects the same degree of, well, nonsense that has infected so much of our society: “safe spaces” in college “violated” by “offensive” words, thoughts, Halloween costumes, etc. I mean explicitly that games have always ended on blown calls and that’s the way life works; there are always plays with pass interference, holding, you name it that would change the outcome. On the big play in the 2007 Super Bowl, there is obvious holding that prevented a sack of Eli Manning: call that and NE is 19-0. But that’s the way it goes. Gronkowski actually tackled in the Carolina end zone as the ball comes to him and Carolina wins. You take a shower, get on the plane and prepare for the next game. The idea we can eliminate all errors, that we can make all these places into “safe spaces”, etc. is idiotic. It goes agains the nature of reality. And the idea that every mistake must be punished is hideous.
There are sites like Pro Football Focus which take things like dropped passes and dropped interceptions and pass accuracy into their grades and ratings (they currently have Palmer and Brady essentially tied as the top qbs in the league). But there is an element of subjectivity involved, so it is not so easy to come up with a simple stat.
PFF rates Peyton’s game against KC as the single worst qb performance since they started back in 2007, by a large amount.
I’m crying over how the Ravens got screwed on that play. We mockingly talk about “Flacco plays” in our house - that’s where you send a receiver deep, and deliberately (or maybe not 
) underthrow the ball so the receiver can stop and let the db run into him and collect a cheap PI penalty. He has perfected that play. And then there’s the Harbaugh factor. Much schadenfreude over how the Ravens have imploded this year.