Monday Morning Moment of Clarity

• The Patriots continue to struggled against defenses with elite pass-rushers. Nate Solder and Sebastian Vollmer struggled to contain Aldon Smith and Justin Smith, before the latter left with an injury. Funny how the NFL works sometimes, the Giants and Niners both of the Patriots number, but the Niners can’t beat the Giants, and Giants consistently beat themselves.

• Is there anyway they don’t split this year’s MVP vote between Peyton Manning and Adrian Peterson. Have you ever been more excited to here “now we’re going to Minnesota with a game-break“.

• Detroit is going to be in tough position when they have to re-sign Matt Stafford. Being one of the last QB’s to get a huge rookie contract, he’s going to demand to be paid like a former No.1 pick. After a performance like yesterday, three seasons later you’re still wondering what you have in this guy. While his numbers are great, they are such empty numbers, it’s kind of like Brad Pitt in “Moneyball” “No one gives a shit if you lose the last game of the season“, no one gives a shit if you throw 400 yards in a loss with 4 picks. What is even worse is they lost to team starting a rookie drafted in the 6th round out of San Diego St.

• I’m not seeing the logic of the Bucs trading CB Aqib Talib with no one on the roster even close to replacing him. Drew Brees took them out to the woodshed and beat them like the NFL’s ugly red-headed step-child, throwing 26 of 39 for 307 and 4 TD’s

• Mike Shanahan is quickly regaining back his reputation as a football genius, winning games starting two different rookie quarterbacks in the same season. Has anyone ever done that?

• Kirk Cousins made himself some Matt Cassel/Matt Flynn money yesterday, 329 and 2 TD’s.

• Who would have guessed that the Week 16 San Francisco versus Seattle game was going to be the premier game of the week.

• How bout those same Seahawks posting back to back 50 spots. Typical Pete Carroll trying to drum up attention for his teams anyway he knows how.

• Yesterday’s Oakland/ Kansas City game went exactly how a 2012 Raiders/Chiefs game would play-out, five Sebastian Janikowski field goals, with the Chiefs going to 0-3 on fourth down, twice in the Raiders end.

• Big fan of the Josh Hamilton signing for the Angles. First, who really cares about the contract numbers anymore in baseball, everyone is getting paid like a lotto winner, get over it! Secondly, you’re like holy crap they just teamed up Albert Pujols and Hamilton, then you remember that Mike Trout was the best player in the game last year, it has the potential of the best 3-4-5 of all time.

• Baseball has resumed becoming an arm’s race again. Kind topsy-turfy when you think about how it was only two years ago the wide success of the movie “Moneyball” and that Oakland just made the playoff again last season with the payroll of what the Angels are paying Hamilton and Pujols combined.

• Adding R.A. Dickey to the Jays is going to be a nightmare for opposing managers. Toronto is going to force opposing teams to use their entire bench’s when they play the Jays, you start with a big lefty in Johnson, right-handed flamethrower in Morrow, then a knuckleballer in Dickey, another lefty in Romero, then soft tossing Buehrle. Seems like the Jays are hoping that a more than few managers are going to over-manage prepping for the Jays.

Game of the Night

New York Giants (7-4, 5-5-1 ATS) vs Washington Redskins (5-6, 6-5 ATS) @ FedEx Field, 8.30 PM
Line: NYG by 3
Total: 49.5

While home-field hasn’t been an huge advantage for the Redskins this season, Washington is 3-0 against the spread versus the NFC East this season. In Robert Griffin III first meeting against the reigning champs, New York need three forced fumbles and a 77 yard Eli to Victor Cruz pass with less then two minutes to beat the impressive rookie from Baylor 27-23.

The Redskins offense ran the ball 38 times for 248 with Alfred Morris getting career highs in carries (22) and yards (120).

The Giants have struggled when their opponent gains 100+ rushing yards against them (2-4, but really 1-4 last week Green Bay gained 100 mercy yards in a blow-out).

RGIII went 20-28 with 2 TDs and 1 INT, this time he’ll have favorite target Pierre Garcon who missed the last meeting. The only thing really holding the Redskins out from a big blow-out is that Washington’s secondary is one of the worst in the game. Washington linebacker London Fletcher-Baker, who originally got hurt in the first game, may miss his first game in like two decades.

Take Washington and the over.

Contenders vs Pretenders

Pretenders:

Atlanta Falcons (10-1)- When coach Mike Smith took over the Atlanta Falcons, running the football was the key to their initial success. Signing Michael Turner away from San Diego allowed the Falcons, despite a shaky offensive line and rookie QB from Boston College to start building a winner. Soon, 300 plus carry seasons were the norm for Turner who seemingly allowed Atlanta to set and forget their running back position for years.

Well it seems like the flames have finally went out on Michael “the Burner” Turner. Turner, after a career 1585 carries in 9 seasons (a majority coming in the last five seasons) has only three carries for over 20 yards this year, with two of those in the first few weeks.

There has been two direct results of the Falcons being woefully under-prepared for their 29 year old running back falling apart. First, QB Matt Ryan, who was always known for his ability to take what the defense gives him and call the game accordingly (game manager), Atlanta now has Ryan playing like he’s leading the 2007 Patriots. In 11 games, Ryan is averaging 39 pass attempts per game (4 more than his career high), he has 3,425 passing yards (3rd highest of his career), and his 429 pass attempts is more then he threw in 16 games in 2008 and 14 game in 2009.  Ryan has also been sacked 21 times this season (4 off his career high), his offensive line does not have a ton of overly athletic players and was not built to drop back 40-50 times a game. Teams like the New York Giants and San Francisco 49ers have defensive ends that will make life very difficult on Atlanta’s tackles come playoff time.

Secondly, the Falcons have begun more and more to rely on the diminutive Jacquizz Rodgers. Rodgers will forever be remembered by college football fans for when he ran all over the Southern Cal team with four NFL linebackers and the Trojans had no answer for him. But putting your faith in a player who’s 5’6, 196 pounds without Barry Sanders speed can be a scary proposition.

Atlanta has also had the luxury of having one of the easier schedules in the league. The Falcons have wins over KC, Denver (Peyton had half an arm at the time), SD, Carolina, Dallas, Oakland, Philly, Arizona, Washington, and Tampa Bay. They really struggled for wins against ‘Zona, Oakland and Dallas. Their one loss came against the New Orleans Saints (31-27 in New Orleans), who have a replacement head coach! With upcoming games against the Saints again, the Giants, and Tampa it’s entirely possible the Falcons lose three of the next five games and lose their bye week and are playing on wild card weekend.

Chicago Bears (8-3)- Da Bears are another team that have been getting a lot of help from their schedule this season. Their only win against a playoff team came in Week One versus Indy (Andrew Luck was making his first career start). All the other games versus playoff teams against Houston, Green Bay and San Francisco, the Bears barely made it interesting.

If Matt Forte has to miss any significant amount of time, Chicago is in serious trouble. Putting more pressure on Jay Cutler and the 32nd ranked passing offense just simply is not an option. Cutler has some how been held to eye popping 177.2 yards per game. In the era of the 5,000 yard passers are the norm, Cutler has somehow erased all memory of playing with any receiver not named Brandon Marshall, targeting Marshall 124 times to the next Bears receiver in Earl Bennett’s 40.

If there was ever an outlier stat that shows the inmates are running the asylum, this is it! I don’t think there’s a coach out there that would go in to the season thinking “If i can get my receiver the ball 300 times, despite constant double teams and the opposition knowing our quarterback doesn’t go anywhere else, we’re gonna win this thing baby!”. Lance Briggs, Brian Urlacher and Charles Tillman have more interceptions for touchdowns (5) than Earl Bennett, Devin Hestor and Kellen Davis have receiving touchdowns (4).

The teams that make the playoffs are the ones that don’t turn the ball over often. Expecting the Bears defense to create those same opportunities in the playoffs will be much harder to come by. If the Bears have to play from behind, teams are going to double down on Marshall and force Cutler to throw to players he either has no trust in or has a real disdain for.

The Bears offensive line has allowed Cutler to get sacked 26 times already, missing a start and parts of games already, they haven’t done a good job protecting the quarterback and we have seen teams like Houston (13-6) and San Fran (32-7) grind Chicago’s offense to a halt. Don’t have faith in Chicago, I mean there quarterback barely does.

Indianapolis Colts (7-4)- Every season usually has some story about a tragedy that happens in one of the organizations that bands them together and putting trivial personal achievements aside for a bigger goal. See saw this a few seasons ago in Cinncy, when defensive coordinators Mike Zimmer’s wife passed away and Cinncy played all out for a grieving coach.  Another example, how the passing of Patriots owner Robert Kraft’s wife helped bring both sides together to end the lockout last year. Sometimes a tragedy can put thing in prospective for a greater good.

This is clearly the case going on in Indy. Colts coach Chuck Pagano has given his team a reason beyond playing personal accolades and try to bring joy to a man that had to fight for his life. Having the a quarterback mature beyond his years has helped a bit too. The Colts are 7-4 despite giving up 273 points against and only scoring 230 points.

Next week they play Detroit, which is a game that could go either way, same with the Titans game, then probably lose to Houston. After the next three weeks they could be sitting at 8-6 or 7-7 then play KC and probably Houston’s second unit to lock up the wild card at 9-7 or 10-6.

The love affair with Andrew Luck will be in full force wild card weekend, where every analyst will be none stop hammering his story on us, turning the Colts into a title contender rather then what they’re, a team that never thought they’d be in this position and lacking experience in a lot of important positions. Indy will have to play either in Baltimore, In Denver versus Peyton Manning and all the drama that goes with that or in New England who dropped 59 on them two weeks ago. Don’t buy into Indy being this season New York Giants as all the talking heads will want you to believe.