Once more with a look forward to the weekend:
Worst NFL game of the week – This is getting pretty easy. You just look at the games involving Kansas City and St. Louis and decide which one is more painful. That has worked so far, but I am actually going to do something different this time around. Kansas City hosts Denver. That won’t be exciting, and the Chiefs won’t win, but the Broncos have an explosive offense and should be able to burn up the scoreboard. Scoring is fun to watch. Buffalo visits St. Louis. That one will be interesting for a couple of reasons – we can see what Trent Edwards can do in a glorified practice, and we can see if Trent Green still has any game. That leaves me with my choice – Cleveland at Cincinnati. Two broken teams with enormous problems. The potential for true terribleness.
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We’re going to try another new feature for the football season. Each Monday we are going to look back at some of the teams that the large majority of people weren’t backing that nonetheless managed to cover the spread. We’ll look back at their stats or their performance coming in to see what could have tipped us off to the eventual outcome. In other words, we’ll go back and make a case for betting on the eventual winners. This is my way of saying ‘I knew it all along’, even when I didn’t necessarily. This isn’t to suggest that the underdogs were always the right pick. It’s just that doing this can fulfill two important roles – it can potentially help us learn for next time, and it can be therapy to ease the pain of losses. Without further ado:
1. I think that I’m not yet convinced that Chase Daniel is the clear Heisman leader that people say he is. Sure, the stats are compelling – he’s top five in the country in completion percentage, passing yards, yards per attempt, yards per game, and touchdowns. He’s only been sacked once, and he’s thrown just one pick. On top of all that, he completed 20 in a row against Buffalo. Here’s the thing, though – he’s only played one BCS team – Illinois – and his stats in that game were significantly worse than the rest – his completion percentage was 25 points worse, his yards per attempt were much worse, and both the pick and the sack came in that game. It’s not exactly like the Illini are known for their stout defense, either. Don’t get me wrong, I like him and his team. I just want to hold judgment until he gets through his tough stretch of next four games – Nebraska, Oklahoma State, Texas, Colorado. That’s a much better test of where he is at than what we have seen so far.
I’ll admit up front that I am not that excited about this week. I always find that there is a bit of a lull in week four between the heat of the non-conference schedule and the heart of the conference schedule. That means that there are a lot of games this week that do little to capture the imagination. Here’s a look at the few games that have interesting storylines this weekend. I’m only going to look at three games as I plan to save my enthusiasm for weeks full of interesting games. Let me again remind you that I am looking at these just from the perspective of interesting storylines. These are not in anyway meant to be picks:
If you guessed that today we would be looking at the 0-2 teams then give yourself a pat on the back. There are ten winless squads, and those range from the absolutely inevitable to the absolutely shocking. We’ll go alphabetically agan:
The title says it all. That clock management in the last two minutes of West Virginia’s loss to Colorado was laughably bad. Stewart sapped the momentum from his team with his ineptness. The worst part is that they just signed him for six years so they are stuck with him. Good luck with that, Mountaineers.
Based on the title of this article a detective could probably figure out what we are going to look at tomorrow. Before then, though, let’s assess which of the 2-0 teams seem like they are for real, and which ones are lucky to be where they are. There are ten teams that have yet to lose. We’ll take a quick look at each of them, and we’ll do it alphabetically to avoid any claims of bias:
Stories about people are usually the most interesting parts of sports, and today we have all sorts of interesting people stories to keep us interested:
I’m not surprised to hear that the Vikings have decided to put Tarvaris Jackson on the bench. He hasn’t been helping his team at all so far, and the team has to do something now before it is too late to salvage the season. That seems ridiculous to say after just two games, but that’s how the league is. What I am surprised about, though, is that the team has name Gus Frerotte the starter for the rest of the seasonn. If the team was willing to get rid of Jackson that easily then why did they wait until now, and why didn’t they find a better option than Gus Frerotte? This move doesn’t give me a ton of faith in a coaching staff that I thought was ready for big things before the season started.
Time to look forward to what the football weekend has to offer again:
Worst NFL game of the week – I was tempted to go with Kansas City ay Atlanta, because the Chiefs are awful and the Falcons aren’t ready for prime time yet. The Falcons should be able to run and score some points, though, and that is always fun to watch. That rules out this game. Many would argue that it is Detroit at San Francisco, but my well documented soft spot for the Niners eliminates that possibility. Besides, San Fracisco isn’t as bad as people think. My choice is St. Louis at Seattle. The Rams are terrible and seemingly self-destructing, and even with two new additions today the Seahawks won’t have a full, healthy, operating receiver corps. They have looked listless so far, and I am not hopeful for a dramatic turnaround.
Excellent defensive display in the NFC East tonight. The line movement was interesting in that one, especially on the total. Three quarters of bettors were on the over, yet the total opened at 48 and dropped down to 46.5 or lower. A move like that generally indicates either that either a good deal of smart money is on the under, or that the books favor the under, so they want to do everything they can to encourage bets on the over. Either way, the books would have had a bad night on that front – the teams didn’t just go over, they obliterated the total.
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