|
AFC EAST AFC NORTH AFC SOUTH AFC WEST NFC EAST NFC NORTH NFC SOUTH NFC WEST |
Fourth and Long: by Joel 'DiG' DiGiacomo The king is dead. Long live the king. This past Sunday, the New England Patriots ventured into the fearsome and deafening den of the undefeated and defending world champions and slew the mighty Colts with an inspiring rally in the final nine minutes of an epic struggle that surprisingly lived up to the hype. The Colts did their part for the first 51 minutes of this titanic battle, holding Tom Brady to 111 yards passing, two interceptions and a passer rating of 51.9. This to a quarterback so good, that his rating went down last week to 136.2 after shredding the Redskins for 306 yards passing, three touchdowns and no interceptions. But as the clock ticked away in the fourth quarter in what was beginning to look like the Patriots' fourth consecutive loss to the Colts, Tom Brady showed why he is the best big-game quarterback since Joe Montana. Down 10, Brady led the Patriots to a come-from-behind victory with back-to-back touchdown drives, completing 8 of 11 passes for 144 yards, two touchdowns and a rating of 156.7. While Brady butted heads with his offensive linemen as the clock ran out, Bill Belichick celebrated the victory with players and Tedy Bruschi looked like he had just won the Super Bowl again. After nearly two seasons, the New England Patriots had finally slain their dragon and exorcized their demons. The Patriots became, without question, the team to beat in the NFL. And it now seems likely that they will sprint through the rest of their regular season unbeaten, untouched and unchallenged while heading for their place in the record books. The Patriots are back. The road to the Super Bowl once again passes through Foxborough. But something was lost in the euphoria. Something critical. And something, perhaps, prophetic. The Patriots looked mortal on Sunday. After eight weeks of annihilating opponents, of record-breaking offense, of running teams off the field, the Patriots looked shockingly mortal. Uncharacteristic penalties, visible frustration and Tom Brady screaming at refs. This was not the look of the greatest team in NFL history. The Colts, on the other hand, proved that they can match this truly awesome Patriots team drive for drive and hit for hit. And they did it Sunday without future Hall-of-Fame receiver Marvin Harrison and without starting left tackle Tony Ugoh. In this game, the Colts showed that they can play the same style of hard-nosed football that won the Patriots three world championships. The rematch, one suspects, will be held within the frigid confines of Gillette Stadium in Foxborough on January 20, 2008. And in an ironic twist, it is the Colts and not the Patriots who appear to be the team better equipped to handle the cold intemperate weather of January championship football. 'Larry King' Ramblings What an unbelievable game between the Chargers and the Vikings in the Metrodome. Adrian Peterson gained over 200 yards for the second time in his eight-game career and broke Jamal Lewis's single-game rushing record with 296 yards on 30 carries and three touchdowns. 253 yards in the second half alone. Two of those runs were touchdown explosions of 64 and 46 yards reminiscent of Gale Sayers, and after only eight games, this rookie sensation has already gained over 1000 yards. Now if the Viking could only get a quarterback. Chargers CB Antonio Cromartie, continuing the recent trend of returning missed field goals, scored on an NFL-record 109-yard touchdown return. The 57-yard field goal attempt by Ryan Longwell fell just short, allowing Cromartie to leap into the air and snag the ball, barely keeping his feet in bounds. He then ran untouched 109 yards, scoring his third touchdown in two games. Always-on-the-ball John Madden explained on Sunday Night Football why these returns are so successful, "The secret on that play is to run it along the side of your bench, because the field goal team is made up of big old offensive linemen and they're headed over to their bench as soon as it's kicked." After climbing back to .500, the Chargers stumbled badly in the loss to the 2-5 Minnesota Vikings, outscored 28-3 in the second half. That takes the Chargers, 14-2 last year, to 4-4 this year. This is a team in genuine crisis with upcoming games against the Colts, Jaguars, Ravens, Chiefs, Titans and Lions. As much as I felt firing Marty Schottenheimer and bringing in Norv Turner and Ted Cottrell was a mistake, I never believed this team would be in such serious danger of missing the playoffs like they are now. Speaking of top seeds in the NFL from last season, the Chargers, Ravens, Bears and Saints were a combined 50-14 during the regular season. At the midpoint this year, these same teams are at a shocking 15-17. Did you see the Sebastian Jankowski's field goal attempt for the Raiders? 64 yards and he doinked it off the middle of the right upright. That sucker would have been good from 74 yards. With the Raiders not winning, I wouldn't be surprised if Lane Kiffen gives Janikowski another shot this season to get the record. 'Heidi' Chronicles I promised myself I'd stop criticizing Football Night in America. I'd start watching the NFL Network for a few weeks and find something there to comment upon. But I can't. NBC just keeps raising the bar on the ridiculous. This week, they unveiled this whole 'Green Is Universal' campaign. Don't get me wrong. Saving the planet sounds like a good thing. Promote it all you want on the Today show. But turning off the lights on the NFL's premiere studio show? Are you kidding me? As I've stated before, this is corporate-driven political correctness at its worst. We've been forced to endure the fake comraderie, the false banter and forced laughter. And now we are to endure the greening of football. NBC, I beg, please keep these stunts away from the greatest sport in America and relegate them to morning television where they belongs. The only consolation I can take is that Chris Collinsworth and Keith Olbermann happily mocked the entire endeavor on the air, even incurring the wrath of Today's Matt Lauer. Playoffs?!? Don't Talk About Playoffs?!? With apologies to Jim Mora, it's never too early to talk playoffs... AFC Playoff Seeds NFC Playoff Seeds 'John Madden' Wayback Machine With Adrian Peterson breaking the single-game rushing record on Sunday against the Chargers, it's time to take a look at the running backs who have held this amazing record since 1933: Adrian Peterson (Vikings): 296 yards against the Chargers, 11/7/07. Battle for Brian Brohm (or Matt Ryan or Whoever the #1 Pick Will Be) At the halfway point of the season, the muck de la muck is slowly sinking to the bottom. #1 - Miami Dolphins (0-8): The good news is that it's hard to lose during bye week. The bad news? They are still the 0-8 Dolphins. This Website Stinks! I thought I would mix it up a little this week and rate the NFL scoreboards available on the Internet as they are the best way to keep track of the games on Sunday this side of DirectTV's Sunday Ticket. #1 - CBS Sports: Far and away the best NFL scoreboard online featuring genuine real-time play-by-play updates, easy-to-read indicators on their virtual football field, decent in-game blogs and the best league scoreboard boasting play-by-play updates for every game. Unfortunately, the individual 'gamecenters' are not accessible until kickoff and some of the in-game blogs are marred by illiterate fan posts and indifferent CBS 'gloggers'. But perhaps worst of all is the recent addition of full-screen interstitial ads in between almost every page. If CBS Sports isn't careful, their new ad strategy may ruin the best NFL scoreboads available online. #2 - NFL.com: Slickest of all the NFL scoreboards including an amazing looking virtual football field complete with kickoff animations, real-time play-by-play updates, ubiquitous league scoreboard and great pre- and post-game features including the best NFL video online. But the virtual field may be a little too slick as it's surprisingly hard to read at a glance and the lack of game blogs results in a somewhat cold and lifeless experience on Sundays afternoons. #3 - SI.com/FanNation: Agonizingly slow play-by-play updates (at least a full minute behind by my calculations), no field simulator, but a very clean design and the absolute best in-game blogs out there (not to be confused with the horrendous team blogs found at the bottom of the page). A very nice complement to CBS Sports or NFL.com. I'm not a big fan of the popup scoreboards that ESPN and Yahoo! Sports use. They tend to be too small and easily lost on the computer if you have a tendency to bounce around to various webpages during the games like I do. Also the limited size of the popups tends to limit features such as blogs, easy-to-read virtual football fields and non-scrolling scoreboards. And Yahoo has the additional problem of not working on the Mozilla Firefox browser. Of the remaining major scoreboards, specifically FOX Sports and NBC Sports, the deficiencies make them barely worth mentioning. They are glacially slow in updating play-by-play which is death in this market for obvious reasons and simply do not have compelling experiences. FOX does have the Momentum Meter, a neat little gadget that allows fans to vote on who has the momentum at the moment. But even this cool feature cannot salvage an otherwise appalling scoreboard. Agree? Think I missed the ultimate NFL scoreboard? Drop me a line at DiG@FootballForBreakfast.com. And Now for Something Completely Different... While this week's non-sequitar would have been more apropos for Halloween last week, I couldn't pass up sharing ExtremePumpkins.com. Make sure to visit the Photo Gallery and Contest Winners from each year. Previously... We'll see you all next time on Fourth and Long! Tell a Friend About Us | Add Us As a Friend on MySpace | Submit Us to Del.icio.us Email Comments, Tips, Stories, Link to Me at DiG@FootballforBreakfast.com. © Copyright 2007 Typing Monkeys. All rights reserved. |
FOURTH AND LONG ARCHIVES |