Week 9 Quick Reactions

Take a look at our Week 9 Picks and see for yourself how we did.

Now to the games.

Colts vs. Eagles

It was bound to happen. With it being a short week, on the road, against a team that was undefeated coming off a bye week under Andy Reid, it was destined to expose the many chinks in the armor. The funny thing is, I thought the Colts were destined for failure at the beginning of the season. Since then, things have plummeted downhill. I have never seen a team so completely decimated by injuries, and yet, they have somehow managed to field a competitive lineup. At one point last night, the Colts had lost six starters on defense to injury (seven if you count Bullitt who started throughout the whole season last year). The only healthy starters were Freeney, Mathis, Hayden, Bethea, and Muir. Now consider that the defense isn’t that good to start with, and you have a disaster brewing.

Unfortunately, that’s only one side of the ball. On offense, Peyton is missing his top two targets (Clark and Collie) this year and the two best RBs (Hart and Addai). Fortunately, UK’s own, Jacob Tamme has stepped up to help fill the void left by Clark, but the receiving core hasn’t been so lucky. I’m done with both Reggie and Garcon. Reggie acts like he doesn’t care anymore, and to make matters worse, the Eagles moved their top corner to Garcon’s side and Reggie still had no impact. Garcon tries hard, but he was blessed with frying pans for hands. One couldn’t help but see his dropped pass on the crossing pattern last night and think of his terrible drop in the Super Bowl.

Dropped passes were the theme on offense last night. Reggie dropped a huge TD, Tamme had multiple drops, and Garcon had a couple of painful ones. Combine that with Peyton being a bit off, and it wasn't pretty.

That brings us to Donald Brown. I can handle him not being a great runner given the Colts’ issues in the running game, but he is an AWFUL pass blocker. There were multiple plays where Brown completely blew his responsibilities and allowed Peyton to get crunched. Brown would normally be third string, but injuries to Addai and Hart have forced him into a starting role.

As for the defense, I am still amazed at how the defensive coordinator, Larry Coyer, fails to make adjustments or proper preparations. There were two major issues I had with the defensive scheme last night. First, how in the world does a team running the Tampa 2 defense let their receivers get behind the safeties? Obviously DeSean Jackson is going to run a lot of deep patterns. It might help to cover him. Second, I was in shock that there was no one responsible for spying Vick on the key plays of the game. Vick was good last night, but his major damage came when he was allowed to run.

In the end, Peyton just isn’t going to be able to carry this team every week. When he’s off, he has to have help, and last night there wasn’t any help available.

On to the penalty issues that arose in the game.

First, the Austin Collie hit had the potential to be as bad as it gets on the football field. I couldn’t watch the replay after the first couple of times because it was so awful, and I hope I never have to see it again. Anytime a guy goes to the field rigid and motionless, you pray that it’s just a concussion. Unless you are Asante Samuel, then you dance around his motionless body a few minutes later when they show the replays. Way to show some class Asante. Luckily, it seems that Collie escaped a major injury. He was moving around the locker room after the game, and he was even responding well enough to fly home on the team plane.

In my opinion, the penalty was the correct call, but I also don’t think the player responsible should get fined (Which he didn’t). The officials after the game said they would have called it an incomplete pass because the second foot hadn’t gotten down yet when he was hit. Even though he went to protect himself in the process of the catch, it doesn’t mean that he had completed the catch when the hit was made. As the NFL has said, the officials are instructed to err on the side of caution when deciding whether to throw the flag for unnecessary roughness. Thus, I think they got it right. However, the hit itself was an accident that resulted from Collie getting hit and spun by the initial defender, then getting hit in the head by the safety. There was no ill intent, nor blatant disregard for safety so it should have gone, and did go, unpunished by the NFL.

There has also been a lot of whining about the call on 4^th and 18 where Peyton was hit in the head by a defensive lineman. It was obviously a weak hit and wasn’t a call I thought was a legitimate foul. However, the NFL has decided to use strict liability for those hits so the call was by definition correct. The bigger issue is that the officials had just missed a blatant blow to the head a couple snaps before. Peyton took a stiff arm from a rushing DT, and the play went unpenalized. If anything, the plays canceled each other out. Not that it’ll keep Philly fans from complaining.

Bucs vs. Falcons

This Bucs team is a lot of fun. While they didn’t get it done on Sunday, they were one play from a possible win, but they couldn’t score on the goal line. Whenever it seemed like the game was about to get out of hand, the Bucs would do something to jump right back in it. This game, it was kickoff returns that kept them in it. One return was for a TD and another return that let them start deep in ATL territory. I’m not sure what this season holds for the Buccos, but next year is looking very promising.

Story of Crowder's career

Dolphins vs. Ravens

This was an embarrassment. My Locke of the week decided they didn’t want to show up or even attempt to play hard. The Ravens tried their hardest to let Miami get back in it, but Miami just didn’t want anything to do with a win.

The game was the boring part compared to Channing Crowder proving just how stupid he is. Let’s not forget that this is the guy who got owned when he tried to fight without his helmet on. See Below




He really outdid himself this time. The interview is summed up well here.

Somehow Crowder is the only one who doesn’t realize that he sucks. He just keeps running his mouth and adds idiot to his resume of………well he doesn’t really have one. Like I said, he sucks.

Jets vs. Lions

The Jets sneak away with the victory all because a DT was forced to kick an extra point after their kicker was hurt. The joke of the matter is that the Jets benefited from their roughing the kicker because they were able to knock him out of the game. In other news, Mark Sanchez is terrible.

Browns vs. Patriots

The Browns pull off another dominating performance. Funny that Tom Brady is too scared to stay in the game when it gets out of hand. For a team that prided itself on running up the score in 2007 while claiming that they were making sure there were no comebacks. Then when roles are reversed and the Patriots are down big, Belichick pulls Brady with more time remaining than was in those games in 2007. What a joke. Hey Tom, go find out when the last time Peyton came out of the game when trailing was (Not counting the pre-playoff rest). I can’t ever remember it happening, but hey, Brady would rather be purse shopping than watching his team play the biggest game of the year in 2008. There’s a big difference.

Raiders vs. Chiefs

The Raiders are for real. They will win the AFC West….Mark it down. However, the officials tried to hand it to KC. The Raiders used all their challenges early and were victimized by a terrible fumble call that allowed KC to go ahead late in the game. The Raiders didn’t give up though. They fought back, and eventually won with some magic and the leg of Janikowski.