Cancel Your Playoff Plans Edition
If you live in New York (and wear green and white), Denver, Dallas, or Tampa, you've got to be extremely disappointed with your football teams' efforts. There's no true way to describe how awful these teams played, not just this past week, but over the last quarter of the season.
It's honestly even hard to pin one down as the worst choke job of them all.
Tampa has to be up there, losing four in a row to close the season, allowing more than 30 points per game in that stretch (which just included a home loss to Oakland and Walter Payton...sorry, Michael Bush).
The Jets would have to get serious consideration, too. They join the Bucs as the only two teams to start out at least 8-3 and not make the playoffs since 2002, and the advent of the current four division set up. Road losses to the dregs of the league in Seattle and San Fran obviously don't help anyone's cause. Neither does Brett Favre saving his absolute worst stretch of the season for the end (2 TDs to 9 INTs in the final 5 weeks).
Denver is just bad, plain and simple. Good teams don't give up 52 points. Good teams don't lose home games to Oakland and Buffalo in the same calendar year. Good teams don't lost to Kansas City, anywhere.
And last, Dallas. If you're really surprised by this latest Dallas collapse, then you've mysteriously either missed out on the last few seasons of awful Decembers for the Boys, or, you refuse to believe it could happen again. Can Tony Romo have a full good season before people anoint him as anything other than an average QB? As far as I see it, he's a guy that gets injured too often and has a real hard time winning games either in December or January or any other time labelled as "big".
- You think Pittsburgh's rethinking playing Ben Roethlisberger after watching him take a beating that lead to his leaving the game with a concussion? Maybe, but, that sort of thing happens sometimes. If it had happened in the third quarter, there's beef. As it is now, that bye week should be enough.
- Stat of the Day: the Browns haven't scored an offensive TD since Nov. 17th. That's a string of 6 games to close the year, without one. So long, Romeo.
- Whether or not you're from the New York area (in fact, unless you root for the Jets), you've got to be happy for Chad Pennington. After being let loose for the golden goose, he latched on with a one win team, and most people in the NY area figured never to hear from him again, at least not with anything serious on the line. To have him come into the final game of the season in the Meadowlands, and not only beat his former team, but kick them out of the playoffs...Mmmm, revenge is sweet.
- Who says the one-running back systems are dead? Don't tell that to Michael Turner. First full season in the books, pretty darn good. Nearly 17-hundred yards, 17 TDs and two 200+ yard games. And, oh yeah, he lead the league in carries.
- Of course, this wouldn't be complete without a reference to the now infamous Detroit Lions. At one point during the broadcast, the Detroit announcers referred to the roster as the worst roster in the NFL. The final call went something to the effect of "16 times the Lions thought this Sunday was theirs, 16 times, they were wrong". Obviously, this isn't just a one year problem. Those of you thinking this year's Lions will be next year's Miami--not so fast. Detroit's lost 97 games over the past 8 seasons. Getting rid of that clown Millen is a great start, but, from there, it's truly anyone's guess. I don't root for Detroit, nor do I truly care how they do. But, for their own sake, could they at least work at not being the biggest joke in the league? Until that point, get them off the Thanksgiving Day game. If 0-16 doesn't kick you off that game, nothing will.
- Houston is on the brink of something big. Maybe it'll just take Matt Schaub to be healthy for the whole season. Maybe another year of dominance from Mario Williams. Who knows? But, they're going to be good, and real quick.
Special season wrap up edition of the Longsnapper coming mid-week.
I don't think Houston is on the brink of something big, but I think they are on the brink of something amazing on offense at least. They were the 3rd best offense this year. They had Sage Rosenfels at quarterback for some of this season, so it certainly says a lot about their other superstars on offense. Besides Andre Johnson, who is arguably the best receiver in the league, they have a slough of decent receivers. They also have Owen Daniels, one of the leagues top 5 tight ends, not to mention the dynamic Steve Slaton. This is a young offense that can be great for an extended period of time. Besides Demeco Ryans and Mario Williams this defense could use some work though. I bet most football fans couldn't name four players on their defense...
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