Post by spiderfan on Dec 11, 2023 21:13:53 GMT -8
Ahoy Sports Coast to Coast, it is I, Spiderfan here, coming back to you do what my forum title says I do, analyze the National Football League. Week 14 was eventful, so without further ado let us begin!
Drew Lock Finally Started
For weeks I have been pushing "Drew Lock For Starter" as a recurring narrative in the column due to my frustrations as a Seahawks fan with what I think has been repeated instances of poor play by Seahawks starting QB Geno Smith. His whole "Oh he sucked and was a backup and didn't play for decade, but now he is a starter good for him" thing wore off a little over half way through last season and I actually was for his benching then. The argument could be made that last season's inconsistencies by Geno was due to his competing with Lock for the entire offseason and not having the necessary reps. This year? Not the case. And so with Geno suffering a groin injury during practice, it was time for Drew Lock to finally start a game for the Seattle Seahawks, against the division rival San Francisco 49ers on the road no less.
AAAAAAAANNNNNDDDD... it was hit and miss. The first drive by the Seahawks made me feel completely validated by my desire to Lock as the starter. His mobility and arm strength were on full display, and they would be at different points in the game. At other points in the game Lock looked like a guy who desperately didn't want to run even though it was clear that he should causing the offense to stall out OR was throwing balls for up grabs that became the most blatantly obvious interceptions that can possibly happen. Whether or not Lock showing flashes or not is enough to keep Geno at bay, is unclear at the moment, although my guess is that when healthy Geno is going to come back. What became clear is that neither Geno or Lock are the answer and the Seahawks need an upgrade at the position, whether that be in free agency or the draft.
About Chiefs-Bills
The Bills beating the Chiefs wasn't surprising to me. Despite their losses against them in the playoffs, the Bills have consistently had the Chiefs number in the regular season, and that was against Chiefs teams that played in and won Super Bowls, not a Chiefs team with a sub-XFL level WR corps and without starting RB Isaiah Pacheco. What I was surprised by was that based on how the Bills played early, the Chiefs were able to not suffer a 49ers-Eagles type blowout game and keep it close.. and of course Patrick Mahomes losing his mind
I get that he thought the refs calling offensive offside against WR Kadarius Toney was unfair because you rarely see such a thing called. But my counter argument to Mahomes would be that you rarely see it called because unlike defensive offside you rarely see it happen. Who he should be mad at is Kadarius Toney, who's mistake likely cost the Chiefs the game. If Toney doesn't commit that penalty, the Travis Kelce lateral touchdown counts and the Chiefs would have been in position to win the game. Except that play didn't count and the you could feel the lucky balloon pop. Instead of the Chiefs stealing a game that they arguably shouldn't have been competitive in, they lost.
Now the good news for the Chiefs is that with the notable exception of the Bengals, the 3 of the next 4 games are against well under .500 teams, so going on a run to clinch the AFC West and getting a high playoff seed is totally in the cards. The #1 seed is pretty much off the table at this point, but if the Chiefs manage to last deep in the playoffs (which I remain doubtful of), the only road game they'll probably play is the AFC Championship Game and even then they might host it if whoever the #1 or even #2 seed loses prior to then.
The 7-6 Cluster
After Week 14 there are 6 teams in the AFC with a 7-6 record all vying for the #6 and #7 Wild Card spots (as of Week 14 as the current #5 seed Cleveland Browns are 8-5). So let me take a brief look at all of them in their current order if the season ended today:
The Pittsburgh Steelers were 7-4 and looked like they were going to make a late season run with an easy schedule. Except they lost to the 2-10 Arizona Cardinals and then the 2-10 New England Patriots, and they lost their starting quarterback Kenny Pickett to injury. Steelers fans are actively in "Fire Tomlin" mode right now, which I don't blame them for as his mediocrity is not up to high standard that the Steelers have set over the decades. But Tomlin manages to find ways to coach his guys up to prevent a total bottoming out, so if 9-8 is all that is needed to make the playoffs, the Steelers can probably get there.
The Indianapolis Colts are the overachievers of the entire NFL. They've managed to put themselves in a position where they are playing meaningful football in December with Gardner Minshew having played pretty much the whole year after Anthony Richardson was put on injured reserve, ironically because the Colts thought that putting him at risk in games that didn't look like they would be meaningful would be a dumb idea. If the Colts had bottomed out, that would have been true. The Colts didn't and so now are a team that is hard to project. Is Minshew Mania sustainable enough to get into the postseason? It's too hard to say right now.
The Houston Texans are farther than expected into their rebuild and looked like a sure fire playoff team earlier in the year like the Steelers, except now the Texans have the injury bug at the worst time. The Texans young guns of CJ Stroud, Will Anderson, Tank Dell, and Nico Collins are all injured right now. Tank Dell is the only one out for the rest of the season, but any of the other missing time right now is kind of devastating at this point in the season.
The Denver Broncos have gone on a midseason run after barely starting 1-5 and are now in playoff position, much to my recurring chagrin. I still have a hard time picturing this team making the playoffs, if for no other reason than because I don't believe Russell Wilson has that caliber of football left in him.
The Cincinnati Bengals are still in playoff position even after Joe Burrow was ruled out for the rest of the season a few weeks ago. Backup QB Jake Browning has balled out the last couple weeks and will need him to keep balling out if they want to make the playoffs.
The Buffalo Bills are the underachievers of the entire NFL. They actually lucky to be 7-6 at this point and being at the bottom of the 7-6 teams means they are going to have to keep winning and have things go their way with the above teams. They have the potential to be a dangerous #6 or #7 seed, but the Bills have had a ceiling in the playoffs when they had better teams then the one they have now, so this version of the Bills making a deep playoff run is something that I will remain skeptical of until I see it happen.
The Arguable Best Game and the Unarguable Worst Game
While many would argue that the best game of Week 14 was Rams-Ravens due to it's high scoring nature and memorable finish in OT with a punt return TD that decided the contest, I would argue that Buccaneers-Falcons was the best game of Week 14 as it was not only high scoring, not only did it have a memorable finish, but the stakes were very real, as the winner would put themselves in position to be the top team in the NFC South and the loser would not only make themselves unlikely to be the top team in the NFC South going forward, they would put themselves on the outside looking in when it came to the playoffs in the NFC.
Ultimately, the game came down to quarterback play as most back and forth type games do. Buccaneers QB Baker Mayfield made the plays that he had to make to win his team the football game. Especially in crunch time after the Falcons took their first lead of the game, as before that the Buccaneers had either led or the score had been tied. The Buccaneers could have easily choked. Instead, Mayfield let them right down the field making multiple clutch throws concluding with the game winning TD to Buccaneers TE Jake Otten.
I could have just as easily expressed the same sentiment I just said about Mayfield about Falcons QB Desmond Ridder as Ridder led the Falcons back from that aforementioned deficit. Except as usual, the reason the Falcons were in as close of a game as they were was because Ridder made repeated mistakes whether it was throwing an interception or missing throws that a NFL starting QB should make. A while back heard FOX color commentator Brian Baldinger say on the "In the Huddle Podcast" make the statement that if the Falcons had traded for Lamar Jackson, they would be one of the best teams in the league, and I agree with that statement completely. As the game was unfolding, it kept being a recurring thought.
What no one will argue is that the worst game of Week 14 was Vikings-Raiders. One would think that a game that was competitive until the end would never be the worst game of any given week. Unless you have rooting interest, blowouts, especially blowouts that start early, are about as uncompelling as a game comes... usually. The final score of Vikings-Raiders was 3-0. And it was 0-0 for the first 58 minutes of game action. Whenever game breaks happened during any of the other games, the lack of scoring became a recurring joke, as it should have been.
The last time there was a 3-0 game was 2007 between the Dolphins and Steelers. What made that game different from Vikings-Raiders is that Dolphins-Steelers was played in atrocious weather conditions which made both teams already poor play even worse. That was not the case with Vikings-Raiders, as it was played in indoor Allegiant Stadium.
I'm going to list off a bunch of stats now to provide context as to how this bad game was: Between the two teams there was a combined 17 punts and 9 three and outs. Each team only had one appearance in the red zone the entire game. The Raiders ended up with 3 turnovers. The Vikings despite having no turnovers, did have a missed FG and were so inept offensively, Josh Dobbs was benched for Nick Mullens. Raiders QB Aidan O'Connell had only 171 passing yards and yet that was more than both Vikings QBs (Josh Dobbs and Nick Mullens) had combined.
Remember when it looked like Raiders interim coach Antonio Pierce took the football world by storm and looked like he might keep the Raiders permanently? Remember when Josh Dobbs took the football world by storm and everyone was talking him up as "The Passtronaut? Because I do, and all of that conversation has aged worse than Vikings-Raiders.
Other thoughts:
-The Jets beating the Texans has to be the most surprising outcome of the week. Clearly the Texans were not prepared to play in garbage weather unlike the Jets. They were also not prepared for Zach Wilson to actually play well, but to be fair no one would be prepared for that.
-Joe Flacco being the starting quarterback of a likely playoff bound team was not on my 2023 bingo card.
-Wow the Panthers are bad.
-If for not blowing a 21 point lead against the Broncos and blowing a 14 point in the last 5 minutes against the Lions earlier this season, the Bears would be 7-6 right now. I think the Bears should stay the course and build around the young players they have as opposed to starting over.
-The 49ers went through their slump and got out of it. Right now, both the Eagles and Lions are in slumps and like the 49ers, I expect both of them to get out of them, and play high level football.
-Congratulations LA based sports media complex! Now that Justin Herbert is out with injury, the Chargers will lose the rest of their games getting them not only a high draft pick, but will cost Brandon Staley his job!
-For as on point as Jordan Love was against the Chiefs, he was off point against the Tinys. So it goes with a first year starting quarterback.
-Either the Dolphins blowing a 13 point lead is going to be largely forgotten by non-Titans fans in a few weeks time because they got the #1 seed anyway OR it is going to cost the Dolphins the #1 seed and it will remembered for a while. It is a topic that will be worth revisiting later.
And with all of that said that is all for this week's Red Hot Gridiron. As always I hope ya enjoyed and hope to see ya again next week. The final stretch of the season is upon us and should result in some epic things that remind us why football is the greatest game in the world. This is spiderfan out.