Monday, September 17, 2007

Chargers lay an egg

The unpredictability of the NFL was on full display in week 2 as the football World turned over upside down over and over again. Good games ended up being bad, expected blowouts went to overtime and bad teams won while good teams lost. The biggest surprise was how one-sided the Chargers-Patriots game was. I knew the hooded spy will get his team ready and the Pats will win, but I was expecting more from the Chargers than a 38-14 drubbing. Pats scored first and they intercepted Phillip Rivers the very first Chargers play and the game was over soon after. The Chargers just could not stop the Pats on offense and they were pretty bad on offense themselves. Moss had another great game. The luckiest guys are those who got Randy cheap in fantasy drafts. His stock has dropped the lost 2 years and he was drafted pretty low this year. Those fantasy owners who "gambled" on him now have a top 3 receiver on their hands again. Chargers need to re-group and the Pats may just win the Super Bowl this season.

The greatest game of the week was actually the supposed dog of a game - Cincinnati @ Cleveland. Cleveland had shipped out Charlie Frye after a horrible week 1. Now they were supposed to tolerate Derek Anderson while waiting for Brady Quinn to get ready for the big show. Boy did Derek Anderson have other ideas. He came out swinging and throwing bombs to match Carson Palmer dart for dart. He may not have seen too many 51-45 games even in the Pac-10 at Oregon state. This game saw crazy scoring with very little defense and Palmer ended up on the losing side despite 401 yards and 6 TDs. Anderson had 328 and 5 TDs. Awesome game for the fans as Ocho-Cinqo had 209 yards and 2 touches for the Bengals while Braylon Edwards had 146 yards and 2 TDs for the Browns. I am sure the Browns fans were as shocked as anybody to see their team play like this and win.

Houston, Detroit, Green Bay, Washington and San Francisco are all a surprising 2-0. Keep an eye on Matt Schaub. This dude can play some QB and he has got a great weapon in Andre Johnson who had 120 yards receiving for Houston on 7 catches. Brett Favre is doing what he does best leading the Packers to 2-0 as the Giants fell to 0-2 despite Eli Manning suiting up and playing. Kitna lead Detroit to it's second win as he went out with a concussion, but came back and showed some serious leadership. This team might be the real deal. Again, he's got a stud in Roy Williams to goto anytime he is in trouble. I am not so sure San-Fran is the real deal despite a close 17-16 win over the Rams. Alex Smith looked horrible again and the Niners won again behind a crazy TD by Frank Gore on a 4-Th and 1. Gore didn't dominate either, but that big play took care of the game. Niners were out-gained 392-186 by the Rams, but the Rams as always hurt themselves with crucial turnovers. Washington is 2-0 after beating Philadelphia 20-12 on Monday night. They might have exposed Phily and Donovan McNabb. McNabb looked terrible and the Eagles are now 0-2. By the way, the most shocking 0-2 might be the Saints as they lost against Tampa Bay. Where are Brees and Reggie Bush hiding?

Arizona shocked Seattle with a 23-20 win. Seems like Seattle is going nowhere this season as they let Matt Leinart have a decent game and let Edge rush for 128 yards on 24 carries. As I had predicted, the NFC West games were close, but both games had different results than what I had expected. This is a mediocre division right now and is up for grabs. Oakland surprisingly took Denver to OT despite Josh McCown passing for just 73 meagre yards. Lamont Jordan carried the Raiders with 159 rushing yards and the D scored a late TD to give them a chance to win. Sea-bass kicked a long 52 yarder through in OT, only to see it wiped away by a timely time-out by Mike Shanahan. He made Janikowski kick it again and sure enough, he missed it this time. Denver got the ball back and moved the ball well to give Elam a 23-yarder to win the game. Elam doesn't miss too many of those. Only the Raiders can lose games like this after celebrating what they thought was a winning field goal.

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