Remember the good ole days when the
biggest offseason storylines from the NFL were limited to treatment of
concussions and long-term effects of brain injuries? With the unresolved sagas of Ray Rice, Adrian
Peterson and Breaking Bad-style de-evolution of Roger Goodell into a Vince McMahon-like league villain,
it’s safe to say those days are gone.
There has been, however, some good football to come out of the 2014
season at its mid-point – it just hasn’t involved any of the following: Geno
Smith, Ryan Fitzpatrick, Jay Cutler, Thursday Night Football, professional
football in Washington D.C. and Oakland, London games played at 6:00am PST, and ghosts of Bill Gramatica.
Biggest Surprise: There
are a few viable candidates here. The
Cleveland Browns are somehow 5-3 despite 0 yards being gained from Johnny
Football, the non-reinstatement of their best receiver, injuries to their second-best
pass catcher (Jordan Cameron), playing in a super-competitive division where
everyone is above .500, and having a bottom-three rush defense. And yet Cleveland has victories over New
Orleans and Pittsburgh, along with two last-second losses to the Ravens and
Steelers. Their lone bad performance all
season came against the Jaguars in Jacksonville (go figure). And perhaps most amazingly of all, Mike
Pettine has not even been fired yet!
You could also go with the Buffalo
Bills (5-3 in spite of a bad draft, major injuries on offense and defense, and
Kyle Orton as QB) or the Miami Dolphins (also 5-3 with dominant victories over
New England, Chicago and San Diego, with Ryan Tannehill turning into a white Michael Vick). Or you could go with DeMarco Murray, a guy
who suffered through severe sprained ankle, foot and MCL injuries the last
three seasons before reaching a career high in rushing yards for a season . . .
through the first nine games of 2014. He
is on pace for 2,000 rushing and 440 receiving yards while taking the title of
unquestionably the NFL’s best runningback.
But the winner here has to be the only
team to have held Murray under 100 yards in a game, which is precisely what the
7-1 Arizona Cardinals did last week. If you were to ask at the beginning of the
season which NFC team would start out with the best record through eight games,
I realistically would have picked eight other teams before the Cards (Seattle,
San Francisco, New Orleans, Green Bay, Chicago, Philadelphia, Dallas, Atlanta). It’s not as though the Cardinals are statistically
blowing opponents away; the Cardinals rank dead last in pass yards allowed, 5th
worst in rushing offense, and have only outscored their opponents by a total of
36 points. Hell, they’ve had to turn to
the likes of Drew Stanton, Logan Thomas, and Larry Foote to cement key
wins. They are winning games for two
primary reasons: They don’t turn the ball over (six turnovers through eight
games) and they know how to win close games.
Of course on the flip side, you
could make the case that moving forward the Cardinals still have to face the
49ers, Lions, Chiefs and two games against the defending champs. They still have a 35-year-old quarterback who
has never won a playoff game and an offense that has eclipsed 30 points only
once. But you could also point to how
they have the best secondary in football with the fearsome combination of
Cromartie-Peterson-Matthieu and how Deone Bucannon is a viable defensive rookie
of the year candidate. In a year when
everything that could go wrong for Seattle and San Francisco has gone really wrong, Arizona has stepped in out
of nowhere and played better than anyone could have expected (in its last 17
games, the Cardinals are an amazing 14-3).
I expect nothing less than this team to go on a 2008-like playoff run,
and if that is the case, Arians seems like a shoo-in for Coach of the Year,
while Palmer (11 TDs, 2 INTs, 99.3 QB rating) could be a front-runner (along
with Arian Foster and Kyle Orton) for Comeback Player of the Year.
Biggest Disappointment: It’s
hard to find an example of a disappointing team in the group of five AFC teams
with losing records (Jets, Texans, Titans, Jaguars, and Raiders). I don’t think anyone expected New York to be
1-8 at this point but I also don’t think many people realistically estimated
substantial growth from Geno Smith or considerable help from 34-year-old
Michael Vick. They’ve also played only
one sub-.500 team all season – the Raiders – which accounted for their lone
victory. Their October16 loss to the Patriots on a short week – a loss eerily mirroring their
questionably-officiated, game-winning FG victory from last year – was their 2014 season.
Meanwhile, I would argue that the Jaguars and Raiders are playing much
better football than their record would suggest.
That leads us to the NFC. A cumulative record of 9-7 for the two best
teams of 2013 (the Seahawks and 49ers) has to be considered a disappointment at
some level, but both teams have suffered through throngs of injuries on both
sides of the ball, along with a pair truly agonizing losses to the Rams. If you had told Saints fans their team would
be 4-4 at the break, you’d be met with some groans . . . but this would be
amended after you told them that New Orleans is still the odds-on favorite to
win the NFC South. Atlanta and Carolina
are certainly suffering through painful seasons after their successes in 2012
and 2013 respectively, but neither was exactly the Super Bowl favorite coming
into 2014.
Believe it or not, the only team that
truly fits the bill for disappointment is the 3-5 Chicago Bears. They are the
very definition of an erratic and frustrating team: 0-3 at home, 3-2 on the
road; blowout losses to the Dolphins and Packers, yet a truly impressive
victory in San Francisco against the 49ers on national television;
statistically outstanding seasons from Jay Cutler (17 TDs, 95.8 QB rating) and
Matt Forte (1,000 total yards) but 9 fumbles by Cutler and only 3 rushing
touchdowns for Forte. Most beguiling of
all, the Bears haven’t suffered any serious injuries outside of Peanut Tillman,
meaning one of two things: Either (A) their starters really are just that bad,
or (B) the team has lost focus due to turmoil
in the locker room and lack of leadership on the parts of Cutler, Brandon
Marshall, and Marc Trestman.
For the second half of the season,
the Bears do get treated to home games against the Vikings, Buccaneers,
Cowboys, Saints and Lions, meaning they have ample room make up ground in the
NFC North. But there’s no way of
predicting which team will show up on the field on any given day – the one that
held the Falcons to under 300 yards of total offense or the team that gave up
21 points to the Patriots in a span of48 seconds. Is it too late to call
up Josh McCown again?
Team to watch in the Second Half: Once
again, the disappointing first halves for the Seahawks and 49ers suggest that
both teams are more than capable of righting the ship in time for playoff runs virtually
everyone banked on going into the season.
Meanwhile, someone has to win
the NFC East and while history would suggest that Eli Manning and the Giants
can be the beneficiaries of injuries to Nick Foles and Tony Romo, New York has
also lost three straight, has to fly to Seattle this weekend, and hasn’t
defeated a team over .500.
There is, however, a 2013 playoff
team that no one is talking about because Brady-Manning-Luck have overshadowed
the race in the AFC. This team has
victories over the Dolphins, Patriots, and Chargers, and close losses to the
49ers and Broncos. So yes, while
everyone in Jayhawk country spent the majority of the month of October rooting
for their incredible baseball team (or rooting unsuccessfully against their odious governor), you could make the case that quietly the 5-3 Kansas City Chiefs are playing the best football in the NFL right
now. They have found a legitimately frightening two-headed beast at runningback
with the combination of Jamaal Charles and Knile Davis, while Alex Smith is
completing over 67 percent of his passes – most of which are going into the
arms of breakout tight end Travis Kelce (419 yards, 4 TDs). On defense, Justin Houston and Tamba Hali
have remained healthy and fearsome, combining for 16 sacks, and the Chiefs
defense has given up the fewest points in the AFC (138).
The problem? Kansas City has been absolutely incapable of
creating turnovers. Of the five (you
read that correctly, five) takeaways
they’ve forced through eight games, three came against one opponent (the
Patriots, on that memorable Monday night stampeding).
Due to the impressive ball control abilities of the offense, the lack of
takeaways hasn’t received a lot of notice, but the upcoming return of Eric
Berry (out of the lineup since Week Two) should help a secondary that gets
stabs at Kyle Orton and Derek Carr twice . . . but also Russell Wilson, Peyton
Manning, Carson Palmer, and Ben Roethlisberger.
I’m picking Kansas City here not so much because their schedule is
favorable (which it is anyway) but because this is a legitimately talented team
with playoff experience that is seriously going under the radar. We all now
know what teams in KansasCity – along with their tremendous fans – are capable of.
Coach of the Year: Arians,
for the reasons stated in the “Biggest Surprise” category. But a close second would be Jim Caldwell, who
has somehow turned the Lions into the best defense in football. I don’t have complete faith in their 6-2
record, since two of those games were super-fluky wins over the Saints and
Falcons, but Caldwell has done an amazing job of turning around a team that
hasn’t had a top-ten defense since 1983.
All the more impressive is that defensive players haven’t revolted in
wake of Ndamukong Suh’s lame-duck year.
I guess I just don’t understand how Caldwell is such a good coach – does
he motivate his players through stern looks
and unrelenting stares
into empty space?
Best Team: Come
on. This isn’t really all that tough, is
it? A month ago, the New England Patriots were sitting at
2-2. They had two blowout conference
losses, a home game against the Raiders they should have lost, and a
borderline-unfair win against Matt Cassel and the Vikings the same week the
Adrian Peterson scandal broke. The
beloved Belichick-Brady era seemed on its final ropes, as everyone had started predicting
as long as five years ago. “Trading
Logan Mankins a week before the season was a terrible idea!” They chimed. “No one can catch the ball other than Edelman
and Gronk!” They proclaimed. “They’re
too old/slow/banged up/inexperienced/unmotivated/overmatched/untalented!” They
insisted.
It’s
amazing to me that in year 14 of Brady-Belichick experiment people still don’t
seem to realize that the Patriots feed off when the media criticizes them. No way they can beat the Greatest Show on
Turf in an indoors Super Bowl? Not a problem. No way they can recover from the penalties
and repercussions of SpyGate? No big deal. No way they can win games after Brady goes
down in the first quarter of Week One? Nobody cares. Take your pick of adversity and criticisms
this team has faced: Losing Wes Welker and Randy Moss, the Aaron Hernandez
saga, Gronkowski’s injuries, Brady’s age, bad officiating, bad drafting, 4th-and-2, and
the Manning Brothers (good times and bad).
And yet after that shellacking by
the Chiefs, the media still insisted that the Patriots were done for. Don’t get me wrong. That Kansas City game was terrible. But as awful as that game was for Tom and
company (and the fans that had to watch it), New England has responded with precisely
that much more intensity, anger, and outstanding play – and they have done so
in spite of losing their best rusher (Stevan Ridley), their best tackler
(Jerrod Mayo) and their best defensive lineman (Chandler Jones). They put up 43 points on the Broncos and the
Bengals; Tom went 150 passes without throwing an interception (the one he did
throw last week was a tipped pass); and with Brandon Browner back in the
lineup, the secondary is pretty clearly the best in the AFC. And the losses of Wes Welker, Aqib Talib, and
Logan Mankins? Not exactly the first
thing on Pats’ fans minds anymore . . .
So here’s the real question: How far
can this team really go? We’ve heard all
these glowing praises before, but the Pats always find ways to shoot themselves
in the foot with injuries and inexplicably poor play in January. They have an incredibly tough slate of games
coming up (at Indianapolis, at Green Bay, at San Diego, home for Detroit and
Miami; meanwhile, Denver gets Oakland twice).
They haven’t run the ball especially well without Ridley and we all know
Gronk could have a fluke injury at any point (every game there’s at least one “hold-your-breath-for-dear-life”
moment like this one). Peyton Manning won’t forget last week any
time soon. But for the time being, I’d
take this group against any other team in the league, and the tough schedule
will help keep them disciplined in their quest for title #4.
MVP: This
is a tough one. Prior to the last few
weeks, the obvious candidate was Murray, a guy who legitimately seemed
unstoppable in the rare Adrian Peterson/Jamal Lewis-in-2003/Barry Sanders
mode. And of course Murray could still
win it, but two things will almost certainly need to happen: He will need to
break the 2,000 rushing yard mark and the Cowboys will need to make the
playoffs.
Murray supporters will also need to
root for more mediocre play from perennial MVP candidates like Brady, Manning,
and Aaron Rodgers, but I think the real favorite here has to be Andrew
Luck. He’s on pace for 5,484 yards,
which would pass Manning’s record breaking mark from last season. He has accounted for at least two total
touchdowns in every game this season, and hasn’t exactly been able to rely on
the ground game of Trent Richardson and Ahmad Bradshaw (even though the latter
has played better than anyone expected).
If the NFL’s PR campaign wants to brand the league as guys who take the
game seriously, have no off-the-field issues, and who are universally loved by
seemingly everybody, then Luck is precisely the player they would want to
bestow the league’s highest individual honor on. And let’s be honest – this Colts team is hardly
loaded with talent, and a total of zero people were seriously panicked after
Indy’s 0-2 start or their defensive meltdown against the Steelers. Luck just promotes that kind of confidence in
this team.
I write all this and yet (you’re going
to hate me for this) my MVP vote goes to Rob
Gronkowski. Simply put, he is the
most explosive offensive weapon in football.
You can’t put a linebacker on him because he’s too mobile, but you can’t
put a safety on him because he’ll run him over.
You can’t protect against his run-blocking because he’s too dominant,
and there’s no way you can guard against him with one-on-one coverage. And then there are plays like these which he makes
once or twice per game, which no one can possibly defend against. In his five years in the league, no team has
sufficiently figured out how to cover him, and if you don’t believe me, take a
look at his career game log: 31 five-catch games, 15 100-yard games, and 35 games with a TD.
Gronkowski has been the best player
in football in 2014 and this is true even considering how limited he was in the
Pats’ first four games (he still managed three TDs). With a healthy Gronkowski, the New England
offense is historically great, and this isn’t even factoring in the receiving play
of Julian Edelman, Brandon LaFell, and Shane Vereen. He has systematically redefined the position
he plays – how many players can you say that about?
So
there’s my mid-season report and I’m still not wavering from the Super Bowl
pick I made at the beginning of the season: 31-30 Patriots over Seahawks. Comments?
Questions? Not enough time spent
talking about how great New England is playing?
Write them below!
