As for the Patriots, what is there to say? The offense was misfiring on all cylinders last night. Brady, heretofore the most composed football player I have ever seen, has looked nonplussed all season. He has thrown a better deep ball than I have seen him throw in his career, yet not one of those deep balls ever seems to be within five yards of the intended wide receiver. The running game has been inconsistent, though Maroney is clearly the real deal. The defense has been fine -- when you hold a team to 17 points in the NFL and you have Tom Brady at quarterback you should win, period -- but they seem to give up score at inopportune times and they have not been the turnover-forcing factory of recent years.
This week the Pats get Cincinnati in Cincitucky. Cincinnati beat Pittsburgh yesterday in one of the best games of the season so far, but did not exactly look dominant in so doing. Still, the Bengals will and should be favored. The Patriots are in real danger of going to 2-2. But the reality is that this may be the toughest stretch of their schedule, and if they can defeat the Dolphins (has a bandwagon ever emptied so quickly? You know who you are) they will be 3-0 in division with a bye week coming up. And during a bye week, Patriots fans can take solace in one fact: We have Bill Belichick and everyone else does not.
9 comments:
The Ravens are not a very good football team. If they make the playoffs, they will not last long.
Yes, the Browns need to learn how to win. I'm thinking the coach ought to have a hand in doing the teaching. Crennel's okay, and that okayness meant that the Browns were in the game yesterday. But the point is that with a better coach, the Browns win that game. No doubt about it.
I guess I don't know what you mean by "good." The Ravens have scored 70 and given up 20 points in starting off 3-0. That's an average winning score of 23-7. Only six teams have scored more points than the Ravens, but more important, no team that has played three games has given up fewer. In a game in which the goals are to win, to score points, and to kep the other team from scoring, I guess I'm perplexed by what other criteria mightmake one "good" or "not good." Pretty uniforms? Style points?
Your Browns came close to beating a good team. The Ravens may or may not have the stuff to be great. But I think we'll get a sense this weekend of whether the browns can start bouncing back. They are playing a legitimately bad Oakland team, and should win the two touchdowns.
dcat
Tampa Bay 0-3; Oakland 0-2; Cleveland 0-3. I'm fairly certain that I am equipped to make a fairly solid judgment about how good a team is, despite their record in playing three of the worst teams in the NFL right now. (I fully expect Tampa to improve with Simms sidelined.)
In any case, Baltimore plays San Diego, Denver, and Carolina next, and we'll find out a lot about them in the next three weeks.
Sure, Tom, but part of the reason those 0-2 teams are 0-2 (or 0-3) is because they lost to the Ravens. And just last week you asserted that one of those teams was playoff bound.
Baltimore has played three games and given up 20 points. I don't care if you are playing a team of wheelchair-bound nuns. To do that in the NFL makes you somewhere between a good and a damned good team. That could change, but right now, two days after the Browns played them, the Ravens are 3-0 in the National Football League. They have the best record a team can have and among those teams that have the best record a team can have the Ravens have arguably the most impressive numbers. this isn't diving. There are no style points. There is no other measure of "good" than results.
Even if Baltimore goes through the next three games and is 3-3 I'm not certain that tells us anything more than that they went through a three game stretch as tough as any that a team will face in the NFL this year and emerged from their first six games with a 3-3 record. They may then not be as good, but the value assessment we are making is were the Ravens good when the Browns played them. By any reasonable measure, they were.
dcat
Yes, we measure results, and when at the end of the season the Ravens have missed the playoffs or are bounced in the first round, which is what I said in the first place, then we can fondly revisit this discussion and talk about the halycon days when the Ravens were able to shut down a Tampa Bay team led by the vastly overrated Chris Simms (I'm on the record about that one, too, even when every one else was saying how wonderful he was and how he led TB to the playoffs last year), the completely incompetant Raiders, and the poorly coached (on offense) Browns who had barely moved the ball at all in their first two games.
I was predicting results, which we do all the time and which my long career of drinking beer and yelling from the couch at football games on TV has given me plenty of background to do. I could be wrong, and I will unhappily admit if I am, but the Ravens are not a very good football team, despite their 3-0 start, as will be made evident over the course of the season. The Browns should have won the game.
The Browns had better win the next one. I am seriously considering taking them in my knockout pool, and while I would largely be betting against the Raisers as opposed to on the Browns, I cannot fathom what Cleveland '64 will look like if they lose to what right now looks like it may be not just a bad, but a historically, Tampa '76 bad, Oakland team.
Your predictions are stinky like you.
As you know, I have hated Chris Simms since Mack Brown absolutely screwed major Applewhite, who did nothing but win games and titles for Texas. At no point did I think he did anything but suck.
Oh -- and I'm more and more convinced that his father and Boomer Esiason are the same person. Or are long-lost brothers from some atavistic genetic accident gone horribly awry.
dcat
I'm fairly certain the Browns are going to lose to Oakland, if only because Browns fans are the ants and God is sitting up there with his giant frickin' magnifying glass laughing his ass off.
That is precisely why I may feel compelled to go in another direction. I don't think I'll be able to live with myself if I take the Browns and they collapse, even though it seems like an especially smart bet in a knockout pool where you can only pick a team to win once. At some point you have to take a few risks, because Cinci, Indy, and the like go pretty quickly and byweek 6-7 I would imagien that things start getting tough. On the other hand, I might get to know what it feels like to be a Browns fan for a while. That could be not fun.
dcat
GL --
I have total faith in Brady. But leaving that much salary cap space on the table makes no sense to me. What, winning in the NFL isn't tough enough that you figure you can give yourselves a $13 million handicap and it won't show? the windfow is only open for a brief time in any sport, but especially in footnall, and you cannot afford to throw away years. that said, i suspect that after this weekend the Pats will get on a roll and Brady and his receivers will develop chemistry, especially if Chad jackson gets healthy (or gets with the program -- there appear to be conflicting reports right now).
I'd love to see an upgrade in the defensive backfield, I hope they are developing linebackers among the young guys, and yes, like everyone, i am thrilled that Maroney slipped to us at that draft pick. I hope that we can get a running game going this week, because when we had to become pass happy things got ugly against denver.
dcat
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