 |
| He is back, and he looked good. Look out AFC West! |
# 5 With the Redskins' surprising victory over the Saints, the Cowboys looking impressive, and the Eagles (great expectations) and Giants (less than Philadelphia, but still recognized as the defending champions) to round off the division; is the NFC East the most interesting division in football? Which team will ultimately emerge and win the division and the automatic playoff berth that comes with it?
To put it simply, this is a division where any team can beat the other, and every division game matters. Just to put into context how wacky this division actually can be, last year the Eagles had the best division record at 5-1 yet did not finish first (if you watched their game against the Browns, you might see why that occured), perhaps even more odd is that the Redskins managed to beat the eventual Superbowl champion New York Giants twice! If RG3 can replicate his effort against the Saints and play the whole season like he did in week one, it is very possible that all four teams could be competing for a division title in the last two weeks of the season. This division will definitely be one of the main points of discussion all season not just on this blog, but on major sports networks as well. There is no way to make an accurate prediction until more games are watched, but at gunpoint I would pick the Cowboys right now.
# 4 Did you know that there is a Thursday night game in every week of the season? Is this a good idea? Bad idea?
I was really happy when I heard that the NFL network would air Thursday night games throughout the season. This is a nice bridge between the six-day wait between the Monday night game and the early Sunday games, and gives us a nice football fix in the middle of the week. Whether its a good idea or not remains to be seen. For fans I think its great, but what about the teams? The Packers (more on them in a bit) and Bears only had 96 hours to prepare for a crucial game. How will their performance be affected? What if one team has more time to prepare for the other, even if it isn't their BYE week? Does it benefit teams for their next game? (The Giants and Cowboys have had a lot of extra time to prepare for their games against the Bucs and Sea-hawks respectively). Only time will tell, but I would be very interested to see statistics of the records on Thursday night and then of the following game(s).
# 3 Can the Green Bay Packers avoid going into an early 0-2 hole against their division rival: the Chicago Bears? Will the Bears take advantage of this opportunity and nick an important division win and start off strong at 2-0?
Speaking of Thursday night games, this is our first one, and what a match-up it is! This game will be Green Bay's second home game already so it puts that much more importance on it, as starting 0-2 with 8 road games to go has 'disappointing' season written all over it. Having said that, I fully expect Aaron Rodgers and his Packers team to recover and beat Chicago in convincing fashion. They are simply too good to go 0-2 (Then again, we thought the same thing about the Eagles last year, the NFL is a weird league and weirder things have happened). This seems like a good place to mention that I will be making picks throughout the year against the spread, and will post the meaningless results in every week's 'big picture' post. For this game I pick the Packers (-5.5) over the Bears.
# 2 Did you see Peyton Manning on Sunday night?! Can this Broncos team actually be for real?
First off, I am really happy for Manning and am glad that he is still able to play the game he loves. It would have been a really cruel way to end such a storied career. For one week at least, he reminded us of what he is capable of doing. But was that performance a one off? I don't think so, great athletes just 'have it' regardless of the circumstances, and yes I do think that this team is for real and will win their division.
# 1 Officiating
I am aware that what I wrote above is not phrased as a question, but that is because there are many questions (and issues) to consider when it comes to this topic, that I decided to break it down a little further. While circumstances prevented me from watching as many games as I would have liked, through seeing scores one thing struck me right away: "I can't believe how many high-scoring games there are" was what I kept thinking to myself. As it turns out: week one of this season was the highest scoring opening week ever (and second highest all-time) in the NFL according to this ESPN article. Not long after that, loyal reader D-block (who had seen most of the games) informed me that he could not believe how many 'pass interference' calls there were. Intuitively, the pass interference call is the most damaging to a defense (spot of foul AND a first down) and usually results in points for the offensive team. Hmmmmm a high number of pass interference calls in the second-highest scoring week ever you say? It could be just a coincidence, but I don't think so. The replacement officials have a lot to prove, but I will play a little bit of devil's advocate in my next point.
These guys are in a no-win situation.
Even before the season started, everyone thought that the replacement officials would suck (obviously they would not be as good as seasoned refs who have done this for many years), but what's making the situation worse is that the media is completely unafraid of calling them out. It shocked me hearing announcers talk about how bad calls were, and discussing questionable decisions (way more than in year's past). Jason Whitlock of Fox sports speculated (both in that article and on twitter) that the media is targeting the replacement refs because they are both an easy story and an easy target. We never hear announcers openly lambaste coaches and player's because they are afraid of their relationships with them. Essentially, if the replacement refs perform well, no one would care (or notice), if they perform poorly, they will get criticized (and its not easy to perform when every mistake is magnified to ridiculous proportions). You know what nobody is talking about? How a professional league with endless revenue refuses to pay officials a bit more, which brings me to my last point.
Officiating in all sports needs a major overhaul
I will keep this brief and expand it in a future post. Until professional leagues take the stance that FIFA does (removing officials from tournaments, docking them pay, suspending them) things will not change. How many times have you heard David Stern blindly protect his incompetent officials despite overwhelming evidence that they suck at their job? (maybe not in general, but for a stretch of games at least). Why are officials exempted from talking to the media? When will professional leagues start docking pay, and taking away games from refs for failing to do what they are paid for? Just something to consider.
2 That impressed: Ravens, Redskins 2 That disappointed: Saints, Eagles
2 That impressed: Ravens, Redskins 2 That disappointed: Saints, Eagles
That's all I will say this week, enjoy the games this weekend everyone!
No comments:
Post a Comment