The Minor Fall

I suspect some pretty important plot points will be revealed this weekend. As usual, not all of the news is good.

 

Carolina 27, Tampa Bay 16 – After games like these, fans of the Panthers must ask themselves, “Why don’t they play like this all the time?” The answer, of course, is that they don’t play the Buccaneers every week.

Dallas 28, Detroit 30 – This feels like the kind of game the Cowboys lose on a last-second missed FGA from 41 yards out. Or a made FG by the Lions from 47 yards out following a strip-sack fumble by Tony Romo. And he dislocates his left (non-throwing) shoulder on the play. Why do some teams just seem to lose games like that all the time?

Cleveland 3, Kansas City 20 – Both touchdowns are scored by the Chiefs’ defense.

Miami 20, New England 34 – It’s going to happen one of these weekends. Brady will have one of those 25 of 30, 300+ yards, 3 TD. This would be a really good time to do that. Perhaps just as importantly, will Aqib Talib be able to take away Mike Wallace? Can the front seven get to Ryan Tannehill? Rookie wideouts, Gronk in the red zone, running game, Stevan Ridley, blah, blah, blah. Never mind any of that! Until Brady looks like Brady again, nothing else really matters.

NY Giants 20, Philadelphia 31 – Michael Vick reminds us of Michael Vick the football player. Vick can be a lethal deep ball thrower and he’s sometimes still the fastest guy on the field. Not the sturdiest. Luckily for Vick, making contact on defense has not been their specialty in 2013.

San Francisco 17, Jacksonville 20 – There’s always one totally crazy, unbelievable, inexplicable outcome in every week of the NFL season. This is Week 8’s crazy, unbelievable, inexplicable outcome.

NY Jets 13, Cincinnati 27 – If you were taking the SAT’s and you were asked, “What comes next in the following pattern?” and that pattern was “W-L-W-L-W-L-W,” what would your answer be?

Pittsburgh 20, Oakland 16 – Unlikely to break into the Top 10 All-Time Great Steelers-Raiders Games.

Washington 13, Denver 54 – Somebody’s got to pay.

Atlanta 27, Arizona 24 – Because I have to believe Atlanta is going to get their collective shit together and because Carson Palmer has a pathological need to throw into double coverage in order to feel alive.

Green Bay 31, Minnesota 16 – If you took the best parts of Christian Ponder, Josh Freeman and Matt Cassel and put them all together into some FrankenQB, it would be no match for Aaron Rodgers.

Seattle 37, St. Louis 17 – Sam Bradford was having a pretty good year; perhaps the best year of his brief career. His season-ending knee injury hardly rises to the level of tragedy but it certainly merits our sympathy. It reminds us that Bradford has been hurt before; he missed six games in 2011. The Rams prepared for this eventuality with Kellen Clemens, who was last confused with “the answer” in 2007, who is now the human equivalent of a “white flag.”