Post-Sunday Week 2 Hangover and Recap - MIAvsBUF, CHIvsCIN, DALvsLAC, BALvsKC, - Upset Talk

 

Week 2 of the 20201 season has taught me something – as a person who wants to play along with the media obsession of the NFL:

Week 2's games mean about as much as Week 1's games. And week 1's games are only about 5.88235% of the total games each team will play. Which is to say the season is less than 12% of the way through. The sky hasn't fallen - yet.

Boy, oh boy, were there some brutal games this weekend though. Maybe not so many outcomes so brutal on the scoreboard as Miami's 35 – 0 humiliation at the hands of the Buffalo Bills at Home, but brutal none the less.

Injuries

Here's a list of some of the players who played and went down with injuries yesterday: Andy Dalton, Bradley Chubb, Carson Wentz, Baker Mayfied and Jarvis Landry. Mayfield would come back. Andy Dalton looked and felt scripted. (I'll probably come back to that.) Brandon Graham for the Eagles. It sounds like his might be serious, too. An achilles? Darrell Henderson – another RB for the Rams. TJ Watt played like his groin was on fire Week 1 – and maybe it was. Someone should have been watching the boiler better.

I joke, but a groin injury is, well, everyone else is using the word to describe everything bad that happened yesterday – brutal. (Maybe I find a gif of Nathan Explosion to go right here. If I were one of those old GeoSites webpages, I'd have the gifs floating all over the site for this piece. Just Nathan Explosion mouthing “It's brutal” over and over and over until you lose your mind or leave and never return. It might happen, either way. That would probably actually be worth it to be, in another life, after the Dolphins' performance yesterday.) Seriously, though. A torn groin is just about the worst. It ended Marshawn Lynch's career, effectively. Watt will bounce back, for sure. But damn. You can't sit, you can't stand. Everything hurts. And it's right there in your pelvis.

Poor guy.

Everything about the Week 1 Texans that worked so well – namely Danny Amendola and Tyrod Taylor – get hurt.

Golly jee. Just when football looks like anything can happen, right? Then the teams that shouldn't have been playing well start getting hurt.

Upsets

I was thinking about putting this reaction post off for a few hours and working on something else, maybe moping a little – fine, moping a lot – when I saw Brandon Perna's post titled something or other Upsets. And I was in a bad mood and I thought, Upsets! Everything played out the way it was supposed to this weekend! in that cynical, the Dolphins just lost what feels like a materially important game and didn't bother showing up, kind of way.

But, now I've taken some time and have given myself absolutely no distance from the crushing disappointment which 0 points at home against a division rival Miami had a chance to put back 2 games. And I feel no better at all. So let's take my grumpy ass and look at whether there actually were any upsets this weekend. Because I'm not sure whether it's that there weren't any or whether I'm just upset.

The Kansas City Chiefs at the Baltimore Ravens seems like the perfect game to start with, vis-a-vis upsets, right? Everyone in the football world besides – was it Mike Tirico who took the Ravens to win in the pregame broadcast? – thought the Chiefs were going to blow the doors off Baltimore. Hell, I thought the Chiefs were going to play that Chiefs style of ball where they get down early, stay patient, then finally drop the two or three or four scores in a row they need to go home winners.

Nope.

The game played out by the exact opposite script. And, really, it could not have been more fun.

I wouldn't call that an upset by any stretch of the imagination. These teams are very well matched, and Baltimore played like the winning team in the fourth quarter.

Can't believe the Chiefs let the Ravens Chief them, though.

Las Vegas Raiders at Pittsburgh Steelers, then. Surely that is an upset, right? The Steelers should pummel the Raiders! Looking at this score of 26 – 17, though, I don't know. I saw the Raiders play pretty damn hard on Monday night. Well, let's stick my feet to the fire – what did I write about the game on Saturday?

“The Steelers need to figure out how to score more than 30 points, because they're there to be found against these Rrrrraiders.” And then I called the Steelers to win in a low-scoring game.

Yeah. I'm usually wrong about most things.

An upset, though? I'm not upset. I almost like this Raiders team.

I might even like em to stay 3 – 0 next week and to put my Dolphins four feet in the ground. A good ol revenge game.

But then you've got games like New Orleans at Carolina (7 – 26) or the Titans and Seahawks (33 – 30) and they seem like upsets because of what we thought of each of these teams going in the game. The Titans looked incapable of moving the ball Week 1. New Orleans looked like worldbeaters. Seattle looked like their air game was going to be perfect, and we've been calling Darnold a bust since before his first snap. (Which I just do not understand how we can judge a quarterback before year 4 is over. It's because we have to, isn't it? We can't just say nothing about him. Or her, when that day comes. And I think – I hope – it's coming sooner than later.)

I don't think these are upsetting games. I think these are the kind of games I would put on to watch for fun if I had that ability.

I'm going with the hot take. There were no upsets, Week 2 of the 2021 season.

Real Talk

The reason I'm so willing to be cynical and meanhearted about this weekend is pretty obvious. I really wanted to be wrong about how the Dolphins game was going to go. Well, actually, I wanted to be wrong about about the outcome – not the way Miami would arrive at it. No points? Your quarterback has broken ribs (I know they're not broken. I'm being hyperbolic because I'm emotional!) after two drives. Eight damn plays!

Eight damn plays.

But let's be real. I Tweeted it, and it proved right: this game was over before the coin was even flipped. Miami beat themselves in the locker room. They beat themselves in the weight room. They beat themselves on the practice field and at film study. Not because they didn't prepare.

But because they had already decided they were going to lose.

All this talk about last year. About how we're not going to let what happened last year happen this year.

It was in the heads of the coaches, the players, the fans – hell, it was in the heads of the refs and the fucking dudes carrying the Sticks. The Chain Gang, I think they're known.

I hate it that Miami does this. It's every year. Every year! they pull one of these games. Shit. They might pull eight or nine of them a season. What is it? Because it's not the players – it's not the coaches. It happens irrespective of either regime or roster. It's bizarre. But, it's like fans always say of their team. Team X gonna Team X.

The Dolphins gonna Dolphins.

Defeat Monday – or whatever it is they call it when you didn't get Victory Monday – cannot be as bad for the fans as it is for the players. I say that, and I immediately question it. The players at least have practice to put the negative thoughts that can become Depression out of their heads, right? They have coaches and spouses and friends all buffeting them up. But we fans didn't actually suffer the loss. Brain chemicals being similar or even identical aside, there's no way what I'm feeling is worse than what Jerome Baker is feeling right now.

He was really playing his tail off in the first half.

My Radio Experiment

You're probably wondering about that, if you wonder anything other than when these damned things are going to end. It went miserably. Worse than I could have imagined. I was prepared for the internet to be spotty. Whatever. I was not prepared for the Dolphins broadcast, at some point in the second quarter, to switch from the play-by-play to generic ESPN radio. What the Hell? So I tried listening to the Bills broadcast and—

Well, let's get started, huh? The Bills radio broadcast may be the worst I've ever heard. The announcer didn't give the down and distance, the time on the play clock, the yardage lost or gained, the previous spot and then the new spot on any play. I never knew where on the field the ball was at any moment. I guess if you're following the box score and the play by play online, you can see all that and you don't need it. Because you won't hear me complain about this from the telecast. I wish they did, but you typically have your eyes on the game with them.

If you don't have you eyes on the game – like when you're listening to the radio – you kinda need it.

Other than that, they were boring, didn't have a lot of chemistry, and they were employees of a team that was currently putting me in what will probably be a bad mood for the rest of the week. So I'm sure I wasn't as fair as I could have been.

I shut it off when they went up 28 – 0. I thought there was no way Buffalo could score again.

I don't know how it happened. Can't bring myself even to watch the highlights. Burn it. Burn the tape. Burn every Buffalo game if you have to. Do the Sporano (RIP) and bury the motherfucking ball if you have to.

The Dolphins have to get over whatever is going on when they play the Bills the last six years.

Tannehill couldn't beat em either, if you remember.

So there you go, maybe you can understand why I'm in such a grumpy mood.

And I burned my damn salsa.

I was gloomily flipping back and forth between the Bengals/Bears and Browns/Texans games. Mostly the Bengals/Bears, because I wanted to watch the youngsters.

I didn't watch the game closely enough, but it seemed to me that Fields and Dalton were trading drives. Is that what happened? I'm writing this fresh of the bias of other reviewers. Maybe I'll correct myself in another post about how bad I am at this thing. Haha

But, anyway, the Dalton knee injury seemed pretty innocuous. He was running, moving well on the sideline. Even got back out on the field. His throwing motion looked weird, like the knee hurt, but you can play through that, after a few drives.

Unless the gameplan is to go every other drive with the rookie until he's ready to take the reins on his own.

My point, I think, is that it felt scripted. Everyone in the football universe knew that Justin Fields had to take the field. (How many times are we going to hear that pun, moving forward? Or is it going to end now that he's presumably the starter until he enters his rookie mistake season and Nagy benches him for Foles?) (The Foles thing was a joke. But, Jesus, I wouldn't be surprised.) Nagy can't be so stupid that he'd actually risk his job to fulfill whatever word he gave to Dalton. What probably happened is Nagy pulled Dalton aside on either Weds or Thurs and said, “Hey, buddy. So, I know we're both in a tight spot here. I didn't pick the kid. But playing you, no matter how well we do together, is going to get me fired. I love you. I do. But we're going to get the kid playing time and we're going to get you an injury so you can still get your beefy paycheck and no one thinks a rookie beat you out. Even though he did. Sorry, I didn't need to throw that last shot. Uh. Bye.”

That probably isn't what happened, but that's how I imagined it went, what with the looks they were giving each other on the sideline when Fields did well.

Which was regularly enough to keep the job, now that he's had it.

He made some mistakes. Rookie jitters, is what it looked like. Better to get them out of the way, now. Because right as I'm saying to the television that he's going to make all his rookie mistakes in a row, he knifes a dagger TD to Mooney.

Turns out I took notes about this game, I was so upset about having to listen to the Bills broadcast.

Roquan Smith is no good in pass coverage, huh? That was was the knock on him coming out of college. He's supposed to be a downhill banger in the run game and out of his depth in pass defense. That pick, the first of Burrow's three picks on three consecutive passes, was a thing of perfection. He played Burrow's eyes exactly how you're taught.

I wrote this, and it remained true for the rest of the game, even after Chase finally got in the endzone: Burrow throws an ugly pick – why is every pass contested? Why is every pass Burrows throws contested?

I keep finding myself rooting against the Bengals in the fourth quarter. I go into the game rooting for them to win, because I like to root for underdogs. And feel compelled to root for Ohio's football teams. Because I like to root for inevitable heartbreak. Like my father used to say – aim low, so when you miss you don't have as far to fall.

I like this thing I wrote: Sundays are less fun when Miami plays like they did today. Even more so after rooting for the Bengals and to a lesser degree the Texans.

I am annoyed.

And then, out of nowhere, after the offense throws two picks and they've not been doing anything really all day, the Cinci defense comes to life! Then Burrow throws another pick, and you're thinking there's just no way the defense will get another stop. The Bears kick the field goal, and yeah, this game is winding up toward being over. Down 17 points, nothing has been working. It felt, watching it, like the next six plays were all deep shots to Ja'Marr Chase. They weren't – obviously. If you look at the drive summary, it reads like they were driving and then took a deep shot.

But I'm telling you, watching it, it felt like every play they were dropping back and all eyes were on Chase to finally get targeted deep.

And then it came, and it felt like Garbage Time. But—

Then Fields throws a pick! and you're thinking the Bengals are gonna get themselves back in this game. Down 3 after the next offensive play, maybe this isn't Garbage Time after all. Maybe Cinci came to start 2 – 0 this year. It would be huge in the division, with BAL and PIT both suffering losses last week.

Spoiler alert: It wasn't meant to be. And no matter what the score says, it never really felt like it wouldn't end the way it did. Chicago took 8 plays to drain the last 3:39 off the clock like a piss they'd been holding all game.

It didn't feel good to watch, but it happened.

Then I got to watch the last 13 seconds of LAR vs IND. There would be no Indy Miracle, no repeat of Kenyan Drake's career highlight.

I know he wasn't in this game. I'm just being a Dolphins Homer.

I can imagine the headlines: Browns Scrape by Texans and Rookie Quarterback Davis Mills.

I said earlier that I was flipping back and forth from this game. I overspoke. I mostly watched commercials, then remembered that I actually wanted to watch Justin Fields.

One thing I would like to know, could I rewatch this game: were the Texans different with Mills than with Tyrod?

And I think I accidentally cursed Jarvis Landry. I Tweeted out wondering what Tua would look like throwing him the ball an they both go out with injuries. Yikes! Poor Cameron Wolfe, though. Accidentally tweeting the Dolphins fumbled to the 49ers. I did get a laugh at a response, though - they're playing so bad teams who aren't even in the stadium are recovering their turnovers.

During the 4 o'clock Hour I got to enjoy the Cowboys/Chargers tilt. (man, I am loving finally getting to use these sports tropes for myself. I'm a writer! No, I'm really not.)

Enjoy is the right word, too. I tweeted about it. I'm sure you saw and would have preferred that I didn't. Guess I thought that would replace notes. This weekend I learn the hard way – I don't remember everything I tweeted, and that feels creatively disingenuous. From memory it is, gang.

I have seen a lot of people leading up to Sunday and a few during Sunday's late games ask the question of how long it is going to take the Cowboys' Tony Pollard to eat into Zeke's carries. That time was last week, when Zeke was completely ineffectual against the Buccaneers. But it's the Buccaneers! his fans wail and bemoan. Yeah, well—If Zeke is supposed to be the thunder, where is the BOOM? I said it last week and I'll say it again. He looks small. He looks small and he has no umph, no real power, behind his shoulderpads anymore. Defenses don't respect the threat of running Zeke enough to acknowledge him in play-action. It's a problem.

Tony Pollard, on the other hand, is exactly the other story. He had three plays in a row pop for more than ten yards, yesterday. (If I remember correctly. There was a sequence at another point when they had five plays in a row go for 10+ yards leading to an effortless-looking Dallas score; and only two of those were Pollard. Two went to Lamb, and if I'm not wrong, the fifth did go to Zeke.) He doesn't often show his power, but what he does show is vision and speed and a quickness to the hole than the first level of the defense is too slow to get to too often. He gets to and through the second-level behind his blockers to a degree that Zeke just doesn't.

I realized, watching this game, that I really like this Cowboys defense, and it makes me kind of really like this team. You've got some genuinely good narratives going on, what with Dak's ankle and Zeke's sudden but inevitable decline; but none is more interesting or more satisfying to me than watching Dallas's defense. Because while the story of last week was the offense keeping up with Brady despite Tampa's ferocious D, the offense didn't score enough points to sacrifice so many words to their plays as I have.

I can't decide if Dan Quinn's linebackers looks like defensive backs, or whether his defensive backs play like linebackers. It is incredible, the job he is doing coaching down there so far this season. I think it was actually Nantz who pointed out that he took the ass-kickings his defense took in Atlanta and learned from them. But why is Nantz talking about Cover-4?

And the Chargers. The Chargers, the Chargers, the Chargers.

I walked away from that game feeling like I don't know them any better than I did going in. I didn't watch a single 2020 Chargers game. (Look, I had other things going on in my life than to watch that team go 8 – 8.) And I don't feel like I learned anything about Herbert or that entire operation, yesterday.

There was a point in that game where I was brooding about how Miami could have picked him, right? Herbert. I'm watching him, and I'm thinking about how I feel like I remember NFL Network's Daniel Jeremiah talking about how he could be the “next Mahomes.” and I'm watching him make Wow! throw after wow throw, but they're down, the whole game. I don't know. They have to find a way to get the ball on a consistent basis to literally anyone other than Keenan Allen.

Let me rephrase that, because it makes it sound like I'm saying they feed him the ball like Miami fed Jarvis Landry – because he was the only person who could do anything with it. I've got nothing against Keenan Allen. The guy is a workhorse – and because of it can't stay healthy.

What I mean is that I'd like to see someone else on the team make a play. Make a contested catch. Get open. Hell, get past the sticks on third down.

That sort of thing.

But maybe this sort of score is the sort Staley wants. Which doesn't seem right – he's from the McVay coaching tree, no? Where they pour points on you like molten gold and chain you in place with their defense?

The Chargers defense played well. The offense... I really don't know. I don't know! I watched the game, and I just don't know what I saw out of the offense.

Baltimore versus Kansas City was a true Heavyweight fight. That last drive of the game, where Baltimore has the ball and really just needs to get the first down, felt like overtime. It felt like if they gave the ball back to Kansas City they were doomed to lose.

I love seeing John Harbaugh run out onto the field, with the 4^th and one. You can clearly read his lips on the broadcast: “Lamar! Jackson! JACKSON! You want to go for this?” And the look on his face when his quarterback tells him Duh is priceless. Harbaugh really likes Lamar Jackson.

So you can come at the Baltimore Ravens with questions about his accuracy and his ability to read and and look-off safeties, and you can this and you can that – but the Ravens have a winner. And sometimes— Sometimes being a winner is enough. Evander Holyfield wasn't the best boxer to ever step in the ring. But he got the better of his betters by being a winner. By being in it til the last punch – and finding a way to be the one to throw the last punch often enough. Just often enough to get the title. Because what matters is getting it. You'll lose it eventually – whatever. Getting there....

And I've fallen in love with this Ravens team a little bit.

I resented them, I'm not gonna lie— I resented them going into this game. Goddam motherfucking Baltimore Ravens. Two weekends in a row I've gotta stomach the Ravens in Primetime. Fucking Ravens. But these last two weeks have felt like the kinds of games you'd watch Weeks 14/15, when Playoff seeding at the top is sorting itself out. And, goddammit, but they ran the ball in the fourth quarter, down, to take the lead and win it. And I just love that kind of football.

Give em credit where credit is due. Attrition has hit them hard, and it hasn't been their stars who are winning in their biggest moment. It's legitimately been Ty'Son Williams. You want to talk about doing it all right – this guy, whenever he makes a mistake, he cleans it up the next play. There was a sequence in the second half where they called a run to the right, and he follows his blocks to and out the sidelines. Collinsworth is losing his mind about how he has to cut that inside just past the tackle.

They call the same play immediately. This time, he cuts inside through the seam for a huge gain. That stuff matters. There are established dudes behind him on the roster, now. DeVante Freeman, Le'Veon Bell, Latavius Murry, these are dudes with serious playing time in the League. Three, four years ago, you'd say this backfield was a Fantasy team. Funny how time and attrition take their tolls on us.

But it's a big deal because Harbaugh could have put one of those dudes in to make that cut-back. He didn't.

Wrapping it up

That last sentence, up there, it kinda got me thinking: I need to wrap this up, and what better way than with a question I Tweeted out during the Dallas game.

Is Zeke the Case in Point argument for not giving a running back a second contract/long-term extension?

I think it was Greg Cosell I heard saying that under no circumstances would he give a running back a second or long-term contract with guarantees in it. Runners, by his estimation, are too easy to find for next to nothing – either late in the draft or literally for pennies on the dollar toward the salary cap.

Zeke hasn't been good in years. And he's not likely to get better. It's kind of the Albert Hainsworth question all over again. Pundits and fans (I guess I'm falling into both of those categories, if I'm doing this right) like to have opinions about how much money dudes should make. But there does seem to be a correlation between that huge second contract and diminishing returns on the field. Is that because we're just more athletic, just better at sports before 25, when that second contract is probably coming?

Doubtlessly.

Does that mean that we need to get players on their second contracts younger?

That would mean they'd need to be playing professionally from the time they were adults. That would mean no college ball.

Yeah, I'd be into that, actually.

But that isn't how I end this piece. Jeesh, V.

All of the Ravens runners not named Ty'Son are dudes who fell off a cliff after they came into major money. Are dudes like Emmitt Smith just the exception to the rule?

That is how you end the piece.

Thanks for getting this far, and for making my Week 2 Projections and Predix my highest viewed piece to date. That makes me smile even when the Dolphins make me cry. Thank you. I'll talk to you soon – after I have some educated things to say about the rest of the games. And again tomorrow to talk MNF.

Until then.