omac
09-26-2007, 04:14 PM
http://msn.foxsports.com/nfl/story/7265078?CMP=OTC-K9B140813162&ATT=5
Week 4 NFL Rundown
FootballOutsiders.com
It's time to turn back the clock. This week, the Rundown staff is wearing our throwback uniforms!
Rundown first appeared on the Internet back in 1982. Back then, we only had a handful of readers: Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Al Gore, Marty Bishop, Gary Gygax and Al Davis (he had his fingers in everything). Readers turned on their Commodore 64s, placed the phone receiver on the modem, waited about 45 minutes, then enjoyed a Rundown full of tidbits about Gifford Neilson and jokes about Irv Cross. Few remember those halcyon days, but if you could see inside the Rundown offices, you'd get a gander at what Web life was like 25 years ago.
Male staffers are wearing Choose Life tee-shirts under pink unconstructed blazers with parachute pants and adidas kicks. Female staffers are resplendent in Madonna's Boy Toy collection, accessorized with leg warmers, their hair dyed Cyndi Lauper hues. In the parlance of the day, we look mahh-velous. Some of the duds aren't historically accurate, but football teams don't wear leather helmets with their throwback jerseys, so we can cheat a little.
With all of the pastel, neon and acid wash on display around here, it looks like we all dove headfirst into flea market bins. But we still look better than most NFL teams do on throwback day. The Steelers looked like burnt pretzels in their throwbacks. The Redskins, as Rich Eisen pointed out, resembled Radio Shack employees. The Eagles wore light blue lederhosen straight from the legs of 17th century European courtesans. All three teams displayed a strange obsession with the color yellow: canary yellow, saffron yellow, searing-corona-during-an-eclipse yellow.
Given the choice, we'll take 1980s day at Rundown headquarters. You can keep your throwback jerseys. We're happy watching our favorite throwback quarterback.
Games to watch
Packers at Vikings: Rundown has been telling you for three weeks that the Packers are good, but you remained skeptical. Maybe that win against the Chargers convinced you the Packers are for real. They are going to beat Kelly's Heroes (or Tarvaris' Terrors if Tarvaris Jackson's groin heals) this week, they are going to be 4-0, and they will win at least 10 games this season. And since we mistakenly mentioned an injured Packer (our apologies to the Noah Herron Fan Club), we'd like to list several active players who deserve credit for the Packers' hot start.
On defense: Aaron Kampman and Cullen Jenkins, pass-rushing ends who make quarterbacks think twice before taking a seven-step drop. Nick Barnett, the middle linebacker whose interceptions against the Eagles and Packers were difference-makers. A.J. Hawk, young playmaking linebacker with superstar potential. Cornerback Al Harris, who still draws a few flags but usually blankets the No. 1 receiver. Cornerback Darren Woodson, still a phenomenal athlete with the closing speed to turn an incorrect guess into an interception.
On offense: Chad Clifton and Mark Tauscher, veteran tackles who stabilize an offensive line full of youngsters. Donald Driver, a true top wideout who doesn't always get his due. Bubba Franks, the old-school tight end who is still a capable blocker and red zone target. Greg Jennings and James Jones, exciting young secondary targets in the passing game.
Oh, yeah, and Brett Favre. We don't want to hear about how much he has slipped from his heyday, true as it may be. We don't want to start speculating about whether he'll come back in 2008 if the Packers make the playoffs. We just want to enjoy what we see: a superstar turned (gulp) game manager, a guy who is having fun and winning games with a team full of guys who were on the high school JV squad when he was having 30-touchdown seasons.
The Packers are no mirage. And they are no one-man team. They are NFC noisemakers. When they face the Bears in two weeks, they may really go boom.
Eagles at Giants: Back in our college days, we had a math professor whose favorite saying was "True, but not interesting." After we factored a polynomial that didn't need factoring or integrated a function that should have been disintegrated, the old professor would use that saying to remind us that while our calculations were correct, we were headed in the wrong direction.
When Donovan McNabb said last week that he endured greater criticism and fan pressure because of his race, we thought immediately of that old professor. True, Donovan, obviously, undeniably true. But not interesting. When your team is 0-2 and your offense is treating the end zone like a Superfund site, you're going to get a healthy dose of thoughtful, legitimate criticism to go with the ever-present knee jerk nonsense. Fix the offense and win some games, and your doubters will be limited to the Archie Bunker crowd. Sadly, Archie and his ilk never go away, but success makes it easy to shout them down.
McNabb threw four touchdown passes last week against a completely incompetent Lions defense, and the only color the fans saw after the game was the phosphorescent gold of the team's throwback uniforms, a color now seared onto our retinas. The win was crucial after the team's sloppy start, but the Eagles can't afford to celebrate very long. The Giants righted their own ship against Washington last week. The Giants defense, missing in action like the Eagles offense in the opening weeks, snapped back into form just in time to keep the team from sinking to the bottom of the division.
The Giants and Eagles met three times last year. The Giants won the first matchup in overtime after a wild fourth-quarter comeback, while the Jeff Garcia-led Eagles took both the late season rematch and a playoff game. The Giants played the Eagles tight in both losses (the 36-22 game was closer than the score), but they are now without their greatest anti-Philly weapon, Tiki Barber, who is presently wedged between Ryan Seacrest and Regis Philbin on the Annoying Media Personality Index. Barber vexed the Eagles in ways that the Giants' current crop of runners — including Derrick Ward, Reuben Droughns and injured Brandon Jacobs — cannot.
With Barber out of the equation and Brian Dawkins likely to be back in action, the Eagles will be free to blitz Eli Manning to distraction. The Giants defense, helped by an overly fussy Redskins game plan last week, is still short on talent and manpower. McNabb carved up the Giants in a losing effort last season. If he can build on the success he had throwing to Kevin Curtis last week while mixing in some other targets, the Eagles will coast to a win.
That will silence the McNabb criticism for, oh, two or three days. And it will make the NFC East, currently Cowboys-dominated, truly interesting.
Broncos at Colts: When the Broncos acquired cornerback Dre' Bly to join Champ Bailey and John Lynch in their star-studded secondary, they were clearly preparing for battle against receiver-rich AFC foes like the Colts and Patriots. They weren't expecting any trouble from the likes of David Garrard and the Jaguars. But after Garrard's passing and running helped the Jaguars chew up 39 minutes of the clock and convert seven of 10 first half third downs, the Broncos know their defense needs some fine-tuning. "Peyton and the boys will be waiting for us," linebacker Nate Webster said after losing to Jacksonville. "We have to get it back together quick."
They may have to get it back together without Lynch, who left the Jaguars game with a knee injury, and nickel defender Domonique Foxworth, who has been out for several weeks with a bad ankle. Reserve safety Hamza Abdullah is also out, forcing Mike Shanahan to dip into the practice squad in search of defensive backs. That's not something you want to do against the Colts, who are always willing to beat you with Dallas Clark and Anthony Gonzalez if Bailey and Bly are covering Marvin Harrison and Reggie Wayne.
The post-Jaguars jitters in Denver may seem a little premature; after all, the Broncos defense easily dispatched the Bills and Raiders. But the Bills and Raiders dispense points with an eyedropper, while the Colts and Chargers (Denver's next opponent) open the spigot. The Colts also excel at ball control, and they'll use Joseph Addai to attack a Broncos defense that struggled with gap control against the Jaguars.
It all adds up to a terrible matchup for the Broncos, who needed last-second field goals to beat weak opponents in the first two weeks of the season and hardly look like a threat to the Colts, Patriots and Steelers for AFC supremacy in the early going. The Bly-Bailey combination can only do so much when the rest of the defense is sloppy. The Broncos offense is good, but it isn't built to outscore the Colts. Look for the Colts to repeat the formula they used against the Titans and Texans. They'll chew up the clock, score just enough points, and milk their lead.
Texans at Falcons: It seemed like a great idea at the time. The Falcons had two quarterbacks but needed additional draft picks. The Texans needed a new passer to replace David Carr. The Falcons and Texans shuffled some draft picks, Matt Schaub signed a new deal with Houston after being traded, and both teams left the bargaining table happy.
Stop. Wait. It didn't seem like a great idea at the time. It seemed like a dreadful idea at the time. Long before we knew anything about Bad Newz Kennels, we knew that Michael Vick was a platinum-plated flake who flipped the bird to fans and brought fake water bottles on airplanes. We also knew he was an inaccurate passer with little interest in the finer points of game-planning or defense reading. The Falcons left new coach Bobby Petrino without a security blanket when they traded Schaub. Now, they're flailing around in search of a quarterback. Sure, Joey Harrington played well against the Panthers last week, but the Falcons wouldn't have signed Byron Leftwich if they had any long-term confidence in Harrington.
Schaub, meanwhile, has been as good as advertised in Houston. He fell back to earth a bit last week against the Colts — the whole Texans team did — but a 27-of-33 performance ain't half bad, especially when your No. 1 receiver (Andre Johnson) is hurt. Schaub has great pocket poise and makes more good reads than bad. When Falcons fans see him warming up in the Georgia Dome, they'll be muttering to themselves about what might have been.
Now, all that being said, we're picking the Falcons in this game. The Texans enter the game with both Johnson and Jacoby Jones out, leaving Schaub with no one to throw to. Center Steve McKinney is out for the year, thrusting 34-year old retread Mike Flanagan into the lineup. Ahman Green has a swollen ankle and may be limited. The Texans won't be able to move the ball. Their young defense is impressive, but not impressive enough to lay three points on the road when half the offense is on crutches.
The Falcons may win on Sunday, but the Texans are the long-term winners. They have a quarterback. The Falcons don't.
Week 4 NFL Rundown
FootballOutsiders.com
It's time to turn back the clock. This week, the Rundown staff is wearing our throwback uniforms!
Rundown first appeared on the Internet back in 1982. Back then, we only had a handful of readers: Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Al Gore, Marty Bishop, Gary Gygax and Al Davis (he had his fingers in everything). Readers turned on their Commodore 64s, placed the phone receiver on the modem, waited about 45 minutes, then enjoyed a Rundown full of tidbits about Gifford Neilson and jokes about Irv Cross. Few remember those halcyon days, but if you could see inside the Rundown offices, you'd get a gander at what Web life was like 25 years ago.
Male staffers are wearing Choose Life tee-shirts under pink unconstructed blazers with parachute pants and adidas kicks. Female staffers are resplendent in Madonna's Boy Toy collection, accessorized with leg warmers, their hair dyed Cyndi Lauper hues. In the parlance of the day, we look mahh-velous. Some of the duds aren't historically accurate, but football teams don't wear leather helmets with their throwback jerseys, so we can cheat a little.
With all of the pastel, neon and acid wash on display around here, it looks like we all dove headfirst into flea market bins. But we still look better than most NFL teams do on throwback day. The Steelers looked like burnt pretzels in their throwbacks. The Redskins, as Rich Eisen pointed out, resembled Radio Shack employees. The Eagles wore light blue lederhosen straight from the legs of 17th century European courtesans. All three teams displayed a strange obsession with the color yellow: canary yellow, saffron yellow, searing-corona-during-an-eclipse yellow.
Given the choice, we'll take 1980s day at Rundown headquarters. You can keep your throwback jerseys. We're happy watching our favorite throwback quarterback.
Games to watch
Packers at Vikings: Rundown has been telling you for three weeks that the Packers are good, but you remained skeptical. Maybe that win against the Chargers convinced you the Packers are for real. They are going to beat Kelly's Heroes (or Tarvaris' Terrors if Tarvaris Jackson's groin heals) this week, they are going to be 4-0, and they will win at least 10 games this season. And since we mistakenly mentioned an injured Packer (our apologies to the Noah Herron Fan Club), we'd like to list several active players who deserve credit for the Packers' hot start.
On defense: Aaron Kampman and Cullen Jenkins, pass-rushing ends who make quarterbacks think twice before taking a seven-step drop. Nick Barnett, the middle linebacker whose interceptions against the Eagles and Packers were difference-makers. A.J. Hawk, young playmaking linebacker with superstar potential. Cornerback Al Harris, who still draws a few flags but usually blankets the No. 1 receiver. Cornerback Darren Woodson, still a phenomenal athlete with the closing speed to turn an incorrect guess into an interception.
On offense: Chad Clifton and Mark Tauscher, veteran tackles who stabilize an offensive line full of youngsters. Donald Driver, a true top wideout who doesn't always get his due. Bubba Franks, the old-school tight end who is still a capable blocker and red zone target. Greg Jennings and James Jones, exciting young secondary targets in the passing game.
Oh, yeah, and Brett Favre. We don't want to hear about how much he has slipped from his heyday, true as it may be. We don't want to start speculating about whether he'll come back in 2008 if the Packers make the playoffs. We just want to enjoy what we see: a superstar turned (gulp) game manager, a guy who is having fun and winning games with a team full of guys who were on the high school JV squad when he was having 30-touchdown seasons.
The Packers are no mirage. And they are no one-man team. They are NFC noisemakers. When they face the Bears in two weeks, they may really go boom.
Eagles at Giants: Back in our college days, we had a math professor whose favorite saying was "True, but not interesting." After we factored a polynomial that didn't need factoring or integrated a function that should have been disintegrated, the old professor would use that saying to remind us that while our calculations were correct, we were headed in the wrong direction.
When Donovan McNabb said last week that he endured greater criticism and fan pressure because of his race, we thought immediately of that old professor. True, Donovan, obviously, undeniably true. But not interesting. When your team is 0-2 and your offense is treating the end zone like a Superfund site, you're going to get a healthy dose of thoughtful, legitimate criticism to go with the ever-present knee jerk nonsense. Fix the offense and win some games, and your doubters will be limited to the Archie Bunker crowd. Sadly, Archie and his ilk never go away, but success makes it easy to shout them down.
McNabb threw four touchdown passes last week against a completely incompetent Lions defense, and the only color the fans saw after the game was the phosphorescent gold of the team's throwback uniforms, a color now seared onto our retinas. The win was crucial after the team's sloppy start, but the Eagles can't afford to celebrate very long. The Giants righted their own ship against Washington last week. The Giants defense, missing in action like the Eagles offense in the opening weeks, snapped back into form just in time to keep the team from sinking to the bottom of the division.
The Giants and Eagles met three times last year. The Giants won the first matchup in overtime after a wild fourth-quarter comeback, while the Jeff Garcia-led Eagles took both the late season rematch and a playoff game. The Giants played the Eagles tight in both losses (the 36-22 game was closer than the score), but they are now without their greatest anti-Philly weapon, Tiki Barber, who is presently wedged between Ryan Seacrest and Regis Philbin on the Annoying Media Personality Index. Barber vexed the Eagles in ways that the Giants' current crop of runners — including Derrick Ward, Reuben Droughns and injured Brandon Jacobs — cannot.
With Barber out of the equation and Brian Dawkins likely to be back in action, the Eagles will be free to blitz Eli Manning to distraction. The Giants defense, helped by an overly fussy Redskins game plan last week, is still short on talent and manpower. McNabb carved up the Giants in a losing effort last season. If he can build on the success he had throwing to Kevin Curtis last week while mixing in some other targets, the Eagles will coast to a win.
That will silence the McNabb criticism for, oh, two or three days. And it will make the NFC East, currently Cowboys-dominated, truly interesting.
Broncos at Colts: When the Broncos acquired cornerback Dre' Bly to join Champ Bailey and John Lynch in their star-studded secondary, they were clearly preparing for battle against receiver-rich AFC foes like the Colts and Patriots. They weren't expecting any trouble from the likes of David Garrard and the Jaguars. But after Garrard's passing and running helped the Jaguars chew up 39 minutes of the clock and convert seven of 10 first half third downs, the Broncos know their defense needs some fine-tuning. "Peyton and the boys will be waiting for us," linebacker Nate Webster said after losing to Jacksonville. "We have to get it back together quick."
They may have to get it back together without Lynch, who left the Jaguars game with a knee injury, and nickel defender Domonique Foxworth, who has been out for several weeks with a bad ankle. Reserve safety Hamza Abdullah is also out, forcing Mike Shanahan to dip into the practice squad in search of defensive backs. That's not something you want to do against the Colts, who are always willing to beat you with Dallas Clark and Anthony Gonzalez if Bailey and Bly are covering Marvin Harrison and Reggie Wayne.
The post-Jaguars jitters in Denver may seem a little premature; after all, the Broncos defense easily dispatched the Bills and Raiders. But the Bills and Raiders dispense points with an eyedropper, while the Colts and Chargers (Denver's next opponent) open the spigot. The Colts also excel at ball control, and they'll use Joseph Addai to attack a Broncos defense that struggled with gap control against the Jaguars.
It all adds up to a terrible matchup for the Broncos, who needed last-second field goals to beat weak opponents in the first two weeks of the season and hardly look like a threat to the Colts, Patriots and Steelers for AFC supremacy in the early going. The Bly-Bailey combination can only do so much when the rest of the defense is sloppy. The Broncos offense is good, but it isn't built to outscore the Colts. Look for the Colts to repeat the formula they used against the Titans and Texans. They'll chew up the clock, score just enough points, and milk their lead.
Texans at Falcons: It seemed like a great idea at the time. The Falcons had two quarterbacks but needed additional draft picks. The Texans needed a new passer to replace David Carr. The Falcons and Texans shuffled some draft picks, Matt Schaub signed a new deal with Houston after being traded, and both teams left the bargaining table happy.
Stop. Wait. It didn't seem like a great idea at the time. It seemed like a dreadful idea at the time. Long before we knew anything about Bad Newz Kennels, we knew that Michael Vick was a platinum-plated flake who flipped the bird to fans and brought fake water bottles on airplanes. We also knew he was an inaccurate passer with little interest in the finer points of game-planning or defense reading. The Falcons left new coach Bobby Petrino without a security blanket when they traded Schaub. Now, they're flailing around in search of a quarterback. Sure, Joey Harrington played well against the Panthers last week, but the Falcons wouldn't have signed Byron Leftwich if they had any long-term confidence in Harrington.
Schaub, meanwhile, has been as good as advertised in Houston. He fell back to earth a bit last week against the Colts — the whole Texans team did — but a 27-of-33 performance ain't half bad, especially when your No. 1 receiver (Andre Johnson) is hurt. Schaub has great pocket poise and makes more good reads than bad. When Falcons fans see him warming up in the Georgia Dome, they'll be muttering to themselves about what might have been.
Now, all that being said, we're picking the Falcons in this game. The Texans enter the game with both Johnson and Jacoby Jones out, leaving Schaub with no one to throw to. Center Steve McKinney is out for the year, thrusting 34-year old retread Mike Flanagan into the lineup. Ahman Green has a swollen ankle and may be limited. The Texans won't be able to move the ball. Their young defense is impressive, but not impressive enough to lay three points on the road when half the offense is on crutches.
The Falcons may win on Sunday, but the Texans are the long-term winners. They have a quarterback. The Falcons don't.