The Manning brothers owned week 2 of the NFL. They showed us once again why they are the number 1 football family in the World. Peyton Manning is one of the best ever and Eli is charting his own course and building his own legacy. First it was Eli on Sunday night cooly and calmly guiding the Giants past the Cowboys at that mega-stadium out there in Dallas. Romo helped him out by playing horribly, but Eli did have to drive them down the field for a field goal in the last 3 minutes. He threw for 330 yards and 2 TDs in the game and made stars out of Mario Manningham and the (other) Steve Smith. He proved once again that good QBs do more for the receivers than good receivers ever do to help QBs. That stadium and that scoreboard look gorgeous and they look even better when the Boys lose. I wish I can watch a game there one of these days. It was an event and LeBron was there prompting Chris Collinsworth to remark "it's not a party unless LeBron shows up these days". interesting. Is LeBron over-exposed? Thats a conversation for another day and time.
Peyton Manning owned Monday night as he won the game against the Dolphins under very unusual circumstances. Miami dominated the time of possession to the tune of 45.07 minutes to 14.53 minutes and still lost. How is that even possible? I guess Peyton's brilliance is the primary reason for this. He threw for a 80 yard TD to open the game and a 48 yard game-winner at the end, which meant the Colts scored 14 points in 44 seconds. The rest of the way, Miami ran and ran and milked the clock. Their wildcat ran to perfection again. Brian Billick calls it a gimmick and Steve Young calls it a fad, but the way Miami runs it, it seems to work every-time. The Dolphins are even selling jerseys with "wildcat" on the back! I wouldn't mind owning one of those. But when the time came for a big play at the end, Miami just had nowhere to go. I like Chad Pennington a lot, but that final 2-minute drive must qualify as the worst 2-minute drill ever. In fact, it was not even a 2 minute drive, he actually had more than 3 minutes to go, not to mention the 2 timeouts. But they ran a play a minute until Chad suddenly seemed to realize he was in the 4-Th and not the 3-Rd quarter. But to me, the Dolphins lost the game the previous drive when the game was tied and they were in field goal range. They had a 3-Rd and 6 and after Chad and Ted Ginn Jr. had converted on a trillion 3-Rd downs all day, they called a run and settled for 3. Even the Raiders with JaMarcus Russell would have called a pass play at that point. I don't know what the coaches were thinking and it serves them right that Manning scored a TD soon after (in 32 seconds) to take the lead back for good.
Great Monday night game again though. NFL has been even better than advertised so far. John Feinstein made an interesting point that a 0-2 hole in the NFL is like a 20 game losing streak in the MLB. Thats true if you consider the fact that the NFL season is 16 games long and MLB is 162 games long. Another data point to illustrate how and why the NFL is so intense start to finish. There were a lot of interesting games last weekend. I was happy to see Kurt Warner and the Cardinals get back on track. Warner completed 24/26 passes and thats just insane! There are some murmurs about L-Fitz not getting the ball enough, but I think it will all be fine soon. Jacksonville apparently can't sellout these games and they seem to be in a bigger blackout hell than the Raiders. Speaking of the Raiders, they beat the KC Chiefs 13-10 behind JaMarcus Russell who was his usual self completing just 7/24 passes for a robust 109 yards. Matt Cassel should have been depressed and completely shocked after this game. On the positive side, if Cassel can recover from this disaster, he can handle anything the rest of his career. New Orleans and San Francisco continued from where they left off last week and won their 2-Nd game. Saints are for real and the Niners will let us know next week when they go outside their division and take on Adrian Peterson, Brett Favre and the Vikings. I can't think of another runner quite like AP when it comes to seeking out contact. The guy just takes defenders head-on and never shies away from contact. And considering the speed at which he is coming at them, it should be a nightmare for the guys in the secondary.
The best result of the weekend was of course New England losing to the J-E-T-S. Those guys talked trash all week and then backed it up by crushing the mighty NE Patriots with ease. I can't believe how good they are and how strong Mark Sanchez is. Dude seems to be from the Matty Ice school of rookie QBs and he looks a lot more mature than the Jets QB last year - Brett Favre! The defense came after Brady and shut him down. They kept Moss bottled up too with just 24 yards. Impressive! The Pats are a stupid Buffalo fumble away from being 0-2. NFL can be an upside down World sometimes. Off the field, Niners are accusing the Jets of some tampering with Michael Crabtree and now the Jets coach is saying they want to play the Niners! These guys are not kidding around. They want to crush everybody. The other AFC superpowers - Chargers and the Steelers, both lost as well. Cutler played much better as the Bears beat the Steelers and Ray Lewis made an amazing game ending tackle to make sure the Chargers lost despite the 436 yards passing by Philip Rivers. More great early season games. Houston and Tennessee played a good one as well as the Texans got back on track. Chris Johnson had 284 total yards in the loss, but he couldn't overcome the Matt Schaub-Andre Johnson connection. This game featured some of the most wide-open receivers I have ever seen in the NFL. I am not talking "NFL open", I am talking "there is nobody within 20 feet of the receiver" open. Both defenses looked like San Jose state against USC in certain plays and in one play, Houston completely forgot about Chris Johnson and he was all alone running by himself along the sidelines. Tennessee is in trouble and @ NY Jets is the last thing they need. We will see what happens next week.
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