NFL 2013: Week 2

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Week 1 Thoughts

* Last year's replacement refs were a disaster, but the real refs did not have a great week 1. The officials wrongly awarded a TD to Victor Cruz, wrongly penalized the Chargers for contact with the Texans long snapper (a call which facilitated a Texans TD shortly thereafter), and wrongly assessed an unnecessary roughness penalty on Joe Staley while he was being punched by Clay Matthews (and, upon assessing the two penalties, wrongly made the determination of a replay of 3rd down rather than 4th down, a mistake which slightly balanced out the fact that the 49ers should have had 1st and goal).

* Even though it's a big number as fines go, Suh got a slap on the wrist, given his history. And he is appealing. For all the boundary pushing the NFL has done under Goodell when it comes to dealing with players, it is surprising that their fine structure remains so impotent.

* Von Miller, are you kidding?

* If asked to make a top 10 QB list right now, I could easily come up with 10 names, but would have absolutely no idea what order to put them in.

* Speaking of top 10, while he might not quite crack the top 10 list of quarterbacks, expect Carson Palmer to be one of the statistical top 10 QBs this year.

* I'm convinced that I am cheering for both the absolute best and absolute worst teams in the NFL. It's hard to watch the latter after the former.

* David Wilson will be OK. The Giants bringing in Brandon Jacobs is not a serious threat to Wilson's starting role. Jacobs really is only viable as a complementary back at this point, but the team realizes they need another sledder while Andre Brown is down for the count.

* Adrian Peterson barreled for a 78 yard touchdown on his first carry - and then only 15 yards the rest of the game.

* Blaine Gabbert and Danny Amendola are already damaged, but Ryan Mathews remains intact!

Pick 'Ems

San Diego at Philadelphia: The whole league is abuzz over the first glimpse of Chip Kelly's offense. For one half of football, it dazzled the league. And while the gas pedal was let up in the second half, the offensive attack still left a firm impression. Now, the question being asked is, is the pace sustainable. Kelly insists that the offense was actually slower than they are aiming for, so perhaps there is even greater excitement left ahead. Similarly, San Diego built a strong lead in the first half of their week 1 game, but their 2nd half letdown led to a heartbreaking loss as the Texans rallied. Philip Rivers threw for 4 TDs yet completed a Tebow-like 48% of his passes. Ryan Mathews kicked off his this-year-its-for-real tour with a 33 yard, 2.5 YPC effort against a stout Texan defense.

San Francisco at Seattle: Hereafter known as the Eyebrow Bowl. San Francisco dismantled an extremely good Green Bay team in week 1, while Seattle ran up some yardage - but not many points - against the Panthers. Russell Wilson looked better than last year, but Marshawn Lynch was anything but Beast Mode as his 17 carries yielded a measly 43 yards. On the other side, Kaepernick was sensational, but Frank Gore struggled as much as Lynch: 44 yards on 21 carries. It seems unlikely both running games will remain stuck in the mud. The one that gets on track might determine the winner.

Carolina at Buffalo: EJ Manuel's best stat of week 1: 0 turnovers. Manuel threw for 150 yards, largely on short passes to backs CJ Spiller and Fred Jackson, but it was enough to get the Bills offense moving and take New England down to the wire. Carolina had a week 1 they'd rather forget, as the passing game was largely ineffective, and the entire offense only put 7 points on the board. Carolina was effective at slowing down Marshawn Lynch, though, and if they can do the same this week, they may force the rookie Manuel to have to do more work to score points.

Washington at Green Bay: Two of the highest scoring losing teams of week 1. RG3 was clearly not his old self under the Monday Night lights, struggling with his mechanics and pushing off. The Packers were formidable, but just outclassed by probably the best team in football at this moment (with some arguments from the Denver faithful). The good news for the Racial Epithets is that RG3 clearly improved over the second half of the game, lending hope that it's just a case of rust. The bad news is that a slightly embarrassed Green Bay team is ready to beat up somebody their own size.

Minnesota at Chicago: If not for the three times he threw the ball to the other team (and the muffed handoff turnover), Christian Ponder's week 1 numbers look rather good. Ponder sparked a little optimism for his end-of-season performance last year (well, maybe not from Milkman), but turnovers will derail that optimism faster than anything else. Still, they have Purple Jesus, so they're always a danger. Over on the Bears side, the retooled Bears offensive line played a whole game without yielding a sack of Jay Cutler. The result was a 24-21 win over a playoff-caliber Bengals team.

Make your Week 2 picks

Week 1 Results
billt721 : 5 - 0

Cobble : 5 - 0

Jolly Bill : 5 - 0

kaostheory : 5 - 0

Kush15 : 5 - 0

mudbunny : 5 - 0

psu_13 : 5 - 0

tboon : 5 - 0

Zaque : 5 - 0

Elliottx : 4 - 1

Jayhawker : 4 - 1

Kosars : 4 - 1

Laarrs : 4 - 1

McFinn : 4 - 1

MudderFudder77 : 4 - 1

oldmanscene24 : 4 - 1

s0lidarity : 4 - 1
Asian Man : 4 - 1

TheGameGuru : 4 - 1

thejustinbot : 4 - 1

Bzzz : 3 - 2

Fedaykin98 : 3 - 2

garion333 : 3 - 2

Gumbie : 3 - 2

Jasonofindy : 3 - 2

Jowner : 3 - 2

karmajay : 3 - 2

LeapingGnome : 3 - 2

Leroyog : 3 - 2

MilkmanDanimal : 3 - 2

onewild : 3 - 2

paleocon : 3 - 2

Stele : 3 - 2

Thin_J: 3 - 2

Top_Shelf: 3 - 2

Xeknos: 3 - 2

Zellbrigen26: 3 - 2

Atras: 2-3

Certis: 2-3

FSeven: 2-3

Grumpicus: 2-3

iaintgotnopants: 2 - 3

Infyrnos: 2-3

ostlobster: 2-3

TempestBlayze: 2-3

Get ready to lose that eyebrow Russell Wilson. :p

Come on, Miller. Really?!

Xeknos wrote:

Come on, Miller. Really?!

Has the NFL said that they'll extend his suspension?

Secret Asian Man wrote:
Xeknos wrote:

Come on, Miller. Really?!

Has the NFL said that they'll extend his suspension?

Mortscoop says no, which means there's at least a 50/50 chance that they will.

This is apparently Miller's second citation for driving on a suspended license.

*Legion* wrote:

* Blaine Gabbert and Danny Amendola are already damaged, but Ryan Mathews remains intact!

Also Jamaal Charles is already on the "he's hurt, will he or won't he play" watch. Some things never change.

*Legion* wrote:
Secret Asian Man wrote:
Xeknos wrote:

Come on, Miller. Really?!

Has the NFL said that they'll extend his suspension?

Mortscoop says no, which means there's at least a 50/50 chance that they will.

This is apparently Miller's second citation for driving on a suspended license.

I guess Manning just has to throw 7 TDs every week.

Can we set up PIN's for the pick 'em so there's no more extra submission shennanigans?

S0LIDARITY wrote:

Can we set up PIN's for the pick 'em so there's no more extra submission shennanigans?

It's not like we're playing for money here. Why can't we just use the normal goodjer behavior of "don't be a jerk"?

I just figured the forum name box was the easiest thing, so that you don't have to have a google account if you don't want to. I don't know that there's any way to officially tie it in with our gwj logins.

I still haven't seen any reason from GameGuru why he submitted 8 responses of exactly the same teams last week?

The only other duplicate entry was someone (Jayhawker? :D) submitted an entry for me where the 49ers lost. Obviously I'm not picking against my team, so that was kind of pointless and easy for me to delete.

If there's ever some issue where someone has two sets of picks with different results, I can always PM them to try to figure out the right thing.

Also, there's nothing stopping people from still posting their picks here in the thread if they want to talk about who or why they are picking. Then you'd have another reference to point at if someone was really trying to spoil your picks. I don't think anyone would be that malicious in a "just for fun" game.

I'm not overly concerned about the security just wanted to throw out a suggestion.

Not a good week for my picks last week. Hopefully this week the always pick Green Bay and pick against the Bears works out better!

Can't wait for Sunday night.

I want to see Richard Sherman smooch his bicep after a pick-6.

Go Hawks.

I'll be at the game this Sunday with my Dad. He's a lifelong 49er fan. The look on his face as his team gets ground into the turf will be priceless.

This game may set a new noise record - I don't think I've felt this much anticipation for a game since the NFC Championship.

Games like this are why I put up with paying for 2 meaningless preseason games, the traffic and all the drunken idiots.

GO HAWKS!

No, this isn't disturbing at all. After one game, the Bucs have had a players-only meeting, everybody hates the coach (even more than usual), and I'm pretty sure having your QB skip the team photo after there are allegations the team captain voting was rigged to prevent him from being captain for his fifth straight year is not a particularly good sign.

Have I complained about the Thursday night games yet this season? I hate these damn things.

Just in case my picks aren't recorded:

Philadelphia vs. San Diego
San Francisco vs. Seattle
Buffalo vs. Carolina
Green Bay vs. Washington
Chicago vs. Minnesota

Could you maybe choose some easier games? Isn't there a 49ers vs. Jags matchup somewhere?

I still haven't seen any reason from GameGuru why he submitted 8 responses of exactly the same teams last week?

No clue..my thought is to blame Chrome.. I have it always restore all my tabs and perhaps I had it sitting on the submitted tab and it somehow refreshed my entry?? Certainly not an intentional move on my part.

tboon wrote:

Have I complained about the Thursday night games yet this season? I hate these damn things.

Same.. I tolerated it when it was during the last couple weeks of the season..especially since sometimes I was on vacation around the holidays... as well as of course the Thanksgiving games.. but every week is a bit much.. just doesn't feel right.

It makes fantasy football a lot more annoying too. Having to check injuries on Thurs, and weigh that against whether someone is questionable/probable and might end up active on Sun when you haven't even heard if they practiced Fri or not, and maybe having to play a lesser person on Thurs just to get points... it's a pain in the ass.

I was surprised to see everyone jumping on the Philly bandwagon (although personally I think it's a good bandwagon to be on, just not always successful ).

Ought to be some good games this week!

MilkmanDanimal wrote:

No, this isn't disturbing at all. After one game, the Bucs have had a players-only meeting, everybody hates the coach (even more than usual), and I'm pretty sure having your QB skip the team photo after there are allegations the team captain voting was rigged to prevent him from being captain for his fifth straight year is not a particularly good sign.

Kind of tough to pull a Harbaugh and clean house of the loudmouths who speak out against you when the entire team seems to dislike you.

Jolly Bill wrote:

I was surprised to see everyone jumping on the Philly bandwagon (although personally I think it's a good bandwagon to be on, just not always successful ).

Ought to be some good games this week!

I think Philly can have a great couple of week on offense, and I look forward to avoiding TV so I don't have to hear the talking heads raving about how unstoppable they are. Then, after a few weeks, defensive coordinators will have plenty of film, plus Vick and/or McCoy will get themselves hurt, and things will go back to normal. The Wildcat was the next great revolution in offenses (oh, Pat White, where hast thou gone) until defenses figured it out.

garion333 wrote:
MilkmanDanimal wrote:

No, this isn't disturbing at all. After one game, the Bucs have had a players-only meeting, everybody hates the coach (even more than usual), and I'm pretty sure having your QB skip the team photo after there are allegations the team captain voting was rigged to prevent him from being captain for his fifth straight year is not a particularly good sign.

Kind of tough to pull a Harbaugh and clean house of the loudmouths who speak out against you when the entire team seems to dislike you.

Freeman's always been really popular with his teammates; they've had nothing but great things to say about him since he was drafted. Even in that horrible stretch last year where he had consecutive four-pick games, people weren't throwing him under the bus. Schiano is committing suicide here. He can't keep the team on his side at all by doing this, everybody dislikes him and likes their QB.

Why, yes, my attitude towards this season has already changed from "usual cautious optimism" to "begin drinking prior to noon on Sundays".

At Grantland, Bill Barnwell breaks down the Eagles' O.

from the story wrote:

Those packaged plays represent the newest form of option football. The Eagles aren't just running the read-option like Washington did a year ago. They're running the read-option, plus a bubble screen on the outside, plus a stick route up the seam, and they're doing it all on the same play. Naysayers and read-option doom-mongerers miss the point; even if there was some simple way to defeat the read-option (and there's not), all you would accomplish in doing that would be to open up advantageous situations for the receivers on the outside of the field. You can try and try and try to stop everything in these situations, but you're going to find it awfully difficult to stop three plays at once if you don't know what's coming.

Barnwell notes that the offense worked really well when Vick got the ball out of his hands quickly (as in about 1.5 seconds after the snap). He also notes that Vick made a lot of bad reads that probably did more to slow down the Eagles than DC did.

I know a lot of you poo-pooh'd my suggestion Monday night that this is the future of the NFL. It might not be. But it's definitely not the wildcat.

Oh, it's definitely more than the Wildcat. This is an efficient system that incorporates read options in a smart manner. The Wildcat put the ball in the hands of your rb and wasted your QB, effectively making then useless most of the time.

The NFL is all about mismatches and the read option and Chip Kelly offenses create mismatches. My guess is that blitzing a hell of a lot less and being smart, thus making the reads harder and the QB having the ball longer are short term solutions. Someone is likely to come up with some sort of defense to better counter it.

Anyway the idea that this is the future of the NFL is probably correct in that the game will keep evolving. Just as older, revolutionary offenses took the league by storm, so too could thus but at the end of the day it too will be assimilated and iterated on until it's just one of many ways to run a team.

I'm not saying it's as limited as the Wildcat, I'm simply saying watching one good half of offense in week one of what was an across-the-board sloppily-played week and saying it's the future of the NFL isn't really any different than saying the Wildcat was an unstoppable force during the week after the Dolphins used it to hammer the Patriots. It's a game. Half a game, actually. LeSean McCoy carried the ball 30+ times, Vick is, to put it mildly, injury prone at this point, and, if this is still rolling like this in week ten, I'll . . . well, I'll have hung myself by then based on all the news out of Tampa, but I promise I will come back to life just to correct myself.

One week of greatness has never in the past portended the future, so I see no reason why I should expect it to now.

MilkmanDanimal wrote:

... well, I'll have hung myself by then based on all the news out of Tampa, but I promise I will come back to life just to correct myself.

I was going to say "hang in there, MMD!" but that's probably a bad choice of words ...

I don't think the Eagles will keep it up, either, because of injuries and because Vick probably isn't the guy to drive this team. But I suspect Kelly can morph his offense faster than opposing Ds can stop it, at least this season.

I think certain concepts from the Kelly offense are likely to be part of the future of NFL offense, because they are sensible reactions to the kind of game the NFL is trying to legislate into existence.

The high tempo is something we saw back in the '90s Bills K-Gun offense. But now the game is even more tuned to the offense's side of the equation. Offenses get to wear on defenses by making them chase them up and down the field. Defenses no longer get to wear on offenses by manhandling them.

I think the multi-play option football is indeed the future, and that's not really a "new" thing, just a simple evolution of the sport's playbook complexity. It's the next logical step from receivers running option routes.

Whether Kelly's specific implementation of these concepts are the future or not is less clear. But I will not be surprised to see these general trends catch on.

garion333 wrote:

My guess is that blitzing a hell of a lot less and being smart, thus making the reads harder and the QB having the ball longer are short term solutions. Someone is likely to come up with some sort of defense to better counter it.

My approach is the opposite. I want to man blitz the hell out of it. I don't want my defenders thinking, I want them blowing up gaps and smashing whomever they find there. I want my corners in tight on press coverage, to disrupt the precious timing of the offense. I want my defenders in one-on-one and forcing the offensive guys to execute, rather than beat me with a cute wrinkle that creates an opening on the field.

The advantage an NFL defense has over a college defense in this scenario is that NFL defenders are much more of a match for winning the one-on-one situations than college defenders are. And I think this offense may find frustration in defenses that just attack gaps and ignore the niftiness of the offense. I want to play the game within the first 5 yards past the line of scrimmage, make things really crowded.

But we'll see. That's my mentality at the moment, and it may prove to be completely wrong.

Josh Freeman Slept Through Buccaneers’ Team Photo Shoot, Lost Captaincy Shortly After

Read more at: http://nesn.com/2013/09/josh-freeman...

Food coma.

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