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The Ramblings Of Rosstradamus…Week 11 |
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Week eleven was simply crazy. A division considered one of the best in the league—the AFC North—saw all of its teams lose, with Pittsburgh and Cincy doing it in incomprehensible style. The Broncos blew a three-game division lead in a month…and it was the second time in less than a year that they’ve done it. A division—the NFC East—that was on the downturn flipped the script as each of its three playoff-contending teams won games they could have, and perhaps should have, lost. The number one overall pick in 2009 lit up the scoreboard and earned the everlasting respect of his teammates as the Lions…yes, the Lions earned a last-second win in a thriller. Oh, and the Chiefs and Raiders won on the same day for the fist time since 2007. And there was more!
 The New York Giants won a game they had to win as Eli Manning had a career day at home—something he seldom does. That’s the short version. Manning threw for 384 yards and three touchdowns (two to Kevin Boss) and their young receivers put on a show in front of the home crowd. Mario Manningham, Steve Smith (pictured) and Hakeem Nicks combined for 15 receptions and 275 yards. That’s a passing attack, and it doesn’t even include the Big Boss Man’s five for 76 yards. So why was this game in overtime? One reason was the Giants’ inability to run the ball against Atlanta. Twenty-six carries for a measly 88 yards? Really? Against an Atlanta team ranked 24th in the league against the run? Against an Atlanta team which yielded 185 yards to Carolina on 34 totes (5.4 ypc) a week ago? The passing game bailed them out in this game…but will that passing game be as effective in the weeks ahead? I’m a bit skeptical considering the Giants will play half of their remaining games in potential bad weather locations in prime time. Cold, windy, not fun…that’s how’d I’d describe at Denver, Philly at home and at Washington for night games.
This Giants team is going nowhere if they aren’t able to run the ball…and we know they can. They’ve done it as recently as the Philadelphia loss. But the inconsistency of Manning is now matched by a similar lack of reliability in the rushing attack. Woe is the team who cannot perform with consistency on offense. Defensively, everyone knew what was coming in the fourth quarter, didn’t we? The Giants went up 31-17 when the adult film-named Madison Hedgecock hauled in a three-yard Manning pass…but the end was not near. In typical Giants fashion, the defense let the opposition right back into the game, giving up a touchdown on the ensuing Falcons’ drive. It can be argued that the home team’s D played a solid first half…what cannot be argued is this: In the second half, the Falcons had the ball four times and scored four times. That’s not a playoff defense and it’s certainly not what Giant fans expected against a Michael Turner-less Atlanta team which was forced to come from behind. Good—not even great—defenses tend to tee off on the opposition once their offense has established a lead. Not the Giants. They let Matt Ryan throw all over them and allowed Turner’s understudy—the immortal Jason Snelling—to find the end zone twice.
I cannot tell you how relieved I was to see Atlanta kick that extra point to tie the score instead of going for two. Mike Smith should have rolled the dice. I know, I know—after the Bill Belichick call on fourth down, no one wants to get into another debate, but think about it. The Falcons’ defense couldn’t stop Manning. The Giants defense had given up four scores on four second-half possessions. The Big Blue D was melting. The Atlanta D was a no-show. Why not try to end the game there? Instead, Smith’s defenseless Birds lost the coin flip and the game was over right there. Coaches are afraid of risk taking, even when it makes sense…even when their gut tells them to do it. There’s no way Smith had any confidence in his defense at that point, but (unlike Belichick) he feared the second-guessers. As a result, he played it safe and his team will now have to rely on others to make the playoffs. The Giants won the game, and at this point in the season, that’s all that really matters. But the red flags still exist. With a short week and a Thanksgiving game against a reeling Denver team coming up, followed by home games against Dallas and Philly, their season will be determined over the next three games. In my mind, if they go 3-0 or even 2-1 they’ll make the playoffs. Anything less and they’ll be watching the post-season with the rest of us, wondering what happened to their 5-0 start.
Speaking of wondering about great starts, how about those New York Jetropolitans? They took it on the chin from an angry New England team and now sit at 4-6 after beginning their campaign 3-0 with a mouthy bullet. The boasting has been replaced by crying…literally, and Rex Ryan’s crew is watching their playoff aspirations fall by the side of the New Jersey Turnpike. This 31-14 beat down was quite the contrast from the teams’ week two meeting, one which saw the Jets emerge with a hard-fought 16-9 win over their division rivals. The differences in this return bout were glaring: Wes Welker destroyed the New Yorkers this time around, hauling in 15 receptions for 192 yards. I guess since he missed the first match-up he figured he had to put up two games’ worth of stats in this one. He was everywhere, and the Jets were too busy patting themselves on the back for holding Randy Moss in check…but what about the war?
 Despite Welker, the Jets managed to stay in the game thanks to a blocked punt with less than a minute to go in the first half. That made it 24-7 and when Mark Sanchez hit Jerricho Cotchery (pictured) for a 29-yard touchdown to open the second half to make it 24-14 there was, justifiably, some hope for the Jets. Hope that Sanchez would realize that New England’s Leigh Bodden was in fact wearing a Patriots jersey. The defense made a stop on the ensuing series and New York got the ball back, down ten with plenty of time left. But Sanchez could not get anything going…could never find a rhythm of consistency. The teams exchanged punts and the Jets began the fourth quarter with the ball and a chance…which was snuffed out by Bodden, who must have some more pictures of Sanchez eating hot dogs or something; three picks in one game? Forget who made these interceptions; the distressing thing is that Sanchez threw them at all. He’s transformed from a confident player who was leading his team to victories to a quarterback with zero confidence, one who is leading his team into the loss column on a weekly basis.
The tiring Jet defense held Brady and company in check one more time following the turnover…but when they gave the ball back to Sanchez, the speechwriting signal caller refused to accept it. Instead, he threw his fourth interception of the afternoon. At this point, Jet fans had to be thinking, ‘At least it wasn’t to Bodden.’ New England took advantage—seriously, how many times do you turn it over against a solid team and expect to get away with it—in the form of a Laurence Maroney touchdown plunge to make the score 31-14. Sanchez added a fumble on the next Jet possession to complete his five turnover day. It was another awful performance from the man out of USC, and one that’s starting to become par for the course. That’s scary for the Jets who, after the team’s 3-0 start, thought they were all set at quarterback for years to come. Now they—and the rest of us—aren’t so sure. As I mentioned last week, this 4-6 record wouldn’t be so foul-tasting to Jet fans if they’d lost their first three and were slowly showing signs of improvement; if Sanchez started terribly but was now showing signs of “getting it”, the mood surrounding the team wouldn’t be as gloomy as it currently is.
But they didn’t, they haven’t, and it is. Look, no one should expect a rookie quarterback to do everything right. Once teams adjust to his strengths, it’s up to Sanchez to adjust in kind…but he can’t seem to do it and the game is now playing Sanchez instead of the reverse. This team is not without positives; Thomas Jones played well again, the defense played well in the second half, and the special teams made a huge play…but when your quarterback goes 8-21 for 136 and turns the ball over five times, it doesn’t matter what the rest of the team does. So what do you do if you’re the Jets? Do you sit Sanchez down for a game to let him catch his breath? No way. He must fight his way out of this on the field, not by watching someone with half of his talent flounder. There are six games left in the Jets’ season. Sanchez had that amount of time to reassure the coaching staff, his teammates, and the fans that he IS the right guy for this job. The only way to do that is to take care of the football. He knows it. He also knows that he helped contribute to what we can see now were unrealistic expectations for this Jet team. They were never as good as that 3-0 record…but are they as bad as the 1-6 record they’ve compiled since then? The next half dozen games will tell us, and will determine the mindset for the 2010 Jets.
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