Look, you can make all the excuses you want, but the fact is that the Buffalo Bills have fallen out of the race. Maybe someone should remind them that the NFL season is not a sprint, it’s a marathon — and a long, hard one at that. When you play — at home no less — to a team as bad as the San Francisco 49ers, it shouldn’t matter if you have a hobbled Trent Edwards at QB or a healthy J.P. Losman. Not to mention that the Niners just became the first west coast team to win in the Eastern time zone too. One of the writers at the chain I work at was covering the Bills-Niners game and saw the Titans mash the Lions on Thanksgiving. What was his comment on that 72 hour span? “That was the worst eight quarters of football I’ve ever witnessed.”
The Green Bay Packers are another team that should be written off. After falling to Carolina, they’re now 3-3 at Lambeau Field and 5-7 overall. And I’m not sure how they couldn’t manage to score after getting to first-and-one with time dying in a tie game. You basically have four tries to gain a single yard and they failed that and settled for the field goal. On the first play after the kickoff, Jake Delhomme hit a single-covered Steve Smith for 54 yards, bringing the Panthers to Green Bay’s one yard line. They then demonstrated how to block in short yardage situations and walked away with the win.
Speaking of blowing a first-and-one in a key situation, the Jets did that in their own Brett Farve-ian way. The common thinking would be that maybe on the first play you would attempt a play-action pass or maybe a fade or quick slant out of shotgun – then try to pound the rock (which makes even more sense with the ever-emerging Thomas Jones in the backfield). But no, on all four attempts, Favre stood in shotgun, got the ball and fired an eventual incomplete pass. Based on that sequence, the Jets deserved to lose that game.
How screwed are the Browns? They’re now down to Ken Dorsey at QB for the rest of the season with Brady Quinn and Derek Anderson both out and this is awful news for Romeo Crennel. It looks like the over-matched Romeo needs to win out to keep his job and not only that, win impressively. That’s not going to happen so he should just start putting together his resume for the Raiders. He already looks, act and coaches like Art Shell, why not follow in his footsteps?
This week: 7-7 (With Jacksonville +3 tonight)
This season: 86-74-3