By Ryan McGowan
It’s almost November, and we’re deep into football season. Yes, I realize it’s not exactly the midpoint of the season, but enough marriages have been ended from excessive game watching, friendships strained from fantasy drama, and eyeballs disturbed from staring at electronic screens for hours upon hours of obsessive fandom that we can finally start making sense of another crazy NFL season. It’s also a good time to start to assess our preseason predictions, 90% of which have been completely refuted so far.
EVERYTHING WE EXPECTED
King Peyton
Just over a year after undergoing full knee surgery, and just about 12 months removed from naysayers questioning whether said surgery caused him to jump the shark, Peyton Manning is playing the best football of his career. And the fact that he’s doing it with a receiving corps highlighted by the Pierre Garcons and Dallas Clarks of the world is just plain scary. I really miss the old days when we could sit around and mock Manning for choking under pressure and never winning the big game and not be considered shameless homers. Along with Brady and Brees, there probably isn’t a more valuable player to his franchise than Peyton. And you know how much it pains me to say that.
His Royal Mangina-tude
I’ll never understand Randy Lerner’s decision to can Romeo Crennel and replace him immediately with Eric Mangini, over whom Lerner had been salivating and possibly gratifying himself for God knows how long. Hiring the Mangenie in a Bottle to take over an already bad team was like signing John Stamos to play Affleck’s role in a remake of Gigli. The Browns deserve their 1-6 record for such a shortsighted move. And Mangini can burn in hell forever for introducing the world to the biggest piece of much-ado-about-nothing ever to dominate ESPN for months, the “Spygate” waste of life.
The Norv and Philip Show
As much as I hate the Chargers, I am more surprised at the number of people who constantly refer to them as “one of the most talented teams in football.” They have a crappy head coach who has no idea how to maximize his personnel, an overrated douchebag quarterback who talks five times as much junk as he has ever achieved, one running back who is over the hill and another who is a one-dimensional scatback, a roid-head linebacker who can’t play anymore, etc. They were blown out by the Broncos at home in a game that was only marginally competitive on some level. They deserve all the mediocrity that comes their way.
WE’RE NOT SURPRISED
Birth Control, Ho Chi Minh, Tommy Brady’s Back Again
If Billy Joel could rewrite his chintzy hit “We Didn’t Start the Fire,” I hope he would throw this line in for the 09 season. (And isn’t it about time he updated the song and added another stanza or two? I mean, “Ayatollah’s in Iran, Russians in Afghanistan” was great to describe the 1980s, but can we get some mentions of the Clinton years, 9/11, the Bush/Cheney era, Obama’s election, the Teletubbies fad and the entire series run of “The O.C.”?) I’m not going to say that there were no questions around Tom Brady’s comeback, but so far, we’re not surprised at the results. Brady was named AFC Offensive Player of the Month for October, having just completed absolute scorchings of Tennessee and Tampa Bay by a combined score of 94-7. The bitch of it all is that Brady still isn’t 100% in sync with his receivers and is still somewhat rusty after missing all of 2008. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Be afraid, NFL. Be very afraid.
The Sanchize
If the Chargers are the #1 team for winning Super Bowls of the Mouth Only, then the Jets have to be #2. As a life-long Jets hater, nothing is more satisfying than watching them play well in the first half of every season, only to watch their internal dysfunction and overall incompetence lead their franchise (and its insufferable fan base) to their annual epic collapse. Eternal optimism ensues in the offseason, followed by a similarly dominant preseason and first six weeks, then the collapse again. Wash, rinse, repeat. It’s like a time loop from “Lost” or something. There is nothing more ironic than Kerry Rhodes and some other Jets mouthers criticizing the Dolphins for “acting like they won the Super Bowl” after the Fins knocked off New York. If you believed Sexy Rexy, Mark “The Sanchize” Sanchez should have been inducted into Canton after beating the Patriots in Week 2, aka “Super Bowl 43 ½” in the minds of the Green faithful. Enjoy December, fellas.
Northern Favrellatio
See the above comments on the Jets and transfer them to the Vikings and their quixotic wonderboy quarterback. The one year Brett Favre-Jets experiment was like a perfect storm of dysfunction at the highest level, and it would be hard to replicate that in Minnesota, especially with their all-everything running back Adrien Peterson. But the collapse is bound to happen. It’s like the sunrise and sunset. It started last week in Pittsburgh and it will continue this Sunday night at Lambeau Field. [Addendum, Monday 11/2 5:19 PM EST: It didn’t happen. My bad.] When you sign Favre, it’s as if your franchise decided to dance with the devil in the pale moon light. And we all know how well that ended up for the Joker. (Too soon?)
SOMEWHAT UNEXPECTED
Saint Drew
I didn’t do an NFC preview article, as I left that to my colleague Trevor Freeman. But if I had, I would have ranked the Saints no higher than second in their division, perhaps even third behind the Falcons and Panthers. That clearly shows how much I know about the NFC South. The Saints are clearly the best team in football, and as time goes on it looks more and more as if the biggest winner in the 2004 NFL Draft was undoubtedly Drew Brees, who was saved from the chaos that was to become San Diego and ended up with a solid head coach who knows what he is doing in Sean Payton. What the Saints did to Miami last weekend was downright cruel—they were blown out of the water by the Dolphins for the first 27 minutes of the game, then they decided to actually play and scored 36 points in the second half to not only win but also cover a six-point spread. The Saints are a lot like the Colts and the Patriots—they might not be unbeatable, but you have to play your best game to beat them. I’d love to see Brees up against either Manning or Brady in Miami in February. If the NFL can get Dick Bavetta to ref some playoff games, they’d make that happen.
AFC North Switcheroo
Troy Polamalu’s absence hurt the Steelers more than anyone could have predicted. With him back in the lineup, Pittsburgh has readied the ship lately, and is now tied atop the division at 5-2. What was unexpected is the team with whom they are tied—the Bengals. Clearly the Ravens were a chic pick to unseat the Steelers this year not only as division champs but also as winners of the AFC Championship game. But since the Ravens lost to New England, they have been on a skid, losing three straight to drop to 3-3. Meanwhile the Bengals are one freak play away from being 6-1 and in the discussion for home field advantage and a playoff bye. I’ll believe the Bengals are really a playoff team the minute they take the field in Week 18, but until then they’ve managed to turn perhaps the league’s toughest division upside down through the first half of the season.
Parity Parody
Speaking of tough divisions, there aren’t that many at all. The NFC East is still tough, but has lost some luster from 2008 when every team finished at .500 or better. The AFC East is wildly unpredictable, but outside of New England, there aren’t any other championship contenders. The NFC West is a complete joke. There are so many more bad teams this year than there were 3-5 years ago. The “Any Given Sunday” mantra doesn’t really apply here, unless the “given Sunday” is one where the good team plays hungover and sleepwalks through the entire game. Otherwise, there are good teams, and there are bad teams, and the bad teams just ain’t beating the good teams. Vegas can’t even make the lines big enough to entice any action on the Rams or Bucs of the world. If there is any silver lining to this season so far, it’s definitely the fact that Vegas is taking a beating on its premier gambling sport, although that might lead them to fix the blackjack games and slots a little more to recoup some losses, which won’t be good for me during my semiannual April trip there in 2010.
OUT OF THE FREAKING BLUE
Broncos Bust Out
The story of the year so far is obviously the Broncos, ranked 14th in the conference by me in my AFC preview article. As I said on last week’s podcast, Josh McDaniels might have done the best coaching job in NFL history over the first 7 weeks of a season. After the Great Matt Cassel Experiment of 2008, it probably makes sense that McDaniels could take Kyle Orton and make him into one of the most efficient passers in the league. Orton still hasn’t thrown a legitimate interception this season; he threw a Hail Mary that was picked off by Randy Moss at the very end of the first half against New England. Meanwhile, McDaniels’ suspension of Brandon Marshall in the preseason has apparently made Marshall into a Josh-o-phile; the when he talks about his head coach after a game he sounds like Glenn Beck waxing nostalgically about George W. Bush. It remains to be seen, of course, whether the Broncos will finish strong under the new regime, or fold like a house of cards like they did under Shanahan last season. My money’s on the Broncos to finish third in the conference now. If only I had placed that bet back in August.
Collapse of the Titans
I predicted the Titans would have a bit of a letdown year and finish second in the AFC South, but never in our wildest dreams did anyone envision the debacle that has played out so far. In the unseasonable snow of Foxborough two weeks ago, the Titans took a beating worse than anything Ralph Kramden ever threatened Alice with. To watch a team with a completely tattered secondary, confidence-shattered and incompetent starting and backup quarterbacks, frustrated running back, and deer-in-the-headlights head coach, you would have thought the Raiders were re-enacting the Tuck Rule game in ’09. Jeff Fisher’s success at building such a strong program has actually somewhat turned into a disadvantage in Nashville—while he is a fantastic coach for a veteran, solid team, he might not be the right guy to blow something up and start over again. Fisher will be all right—with the run he’s had, he’ll land on his feet, along with Gruden, Cowher, Shanahan, and any of the other A-list ex-head coaches who will most likely land jobs in ’10 or ’11. But it’s tough to watch right now.
