By Stephen Nover
My 10 observations, rants and recollections from Week 5 of this NFL season.
10. Just when you start thinking you can believe in Blake Bortles and Joe Flacco you can’t.
9. Andrew Luck isn’t quite 100 percent yet, but he’s back to the point where he makes the Colts a respectable live ‘dog no matter how many injuries the team has.
8. It would have been an all-time bad beat for those not to win an Over bet on the Packers-Lions after Mason Crosby missed four field goals and an extra point. Three of Crosby’s failed field goals were from 42 yards and fewer. This is inside a dome, too. The total on the game was 51 and that’s where the combined score was with the Lions leading, 31-20, with 64 seconds left. The Packers had the ball at their own three-yard line. Four plays later, the Packers were at their own 23-yard line with 19 seconds left and no time-outs. Aaron Rodgers then completed a medium range strike to Equanimeous St. Brown, who ran 54 yards. The Lions couldn’t tackle St. Brown in bounds. So the clock stopped with seven seconds left. Time for one last end zone pass from Rodgers, right? Nope. Packers coach Mike McCarthy decided to raise Crosby’s obviously sagging confidence by letting him try for a 41-yard field goal – which he made sinking the Under.
7. Watching games in a Vegas sports books has its advantages. Namely being able to view every game. The flip side is you will encounter morons. My rant this week is Contortionist Guy. He’s the imbecile who tries to draw everybody’s attention by racing to a TV screen when there is a field goal being attempted in the game he’s interested in and physically contorting himself like he’s Houdini trying to get out of a straitjacket while the kick is on the way. He then either screams “Yeah” or the “F” word depending on how the kick goes. I just want to scream “A-hole.”
6. It doesn’t matter if it’s Mike Mularkey or Mike Vrabel, the Titans still can’t win on the road.
5. The Falcons are finding it hard to win a game without decent safeties anymore. They are 0-3 in their last three games despite Matt Ryan having a 9-to-0 touchdown-to-interception ratio. The Falcons have surrendered 41, 37 and 43 points during this span.
4. Why was Hue Jackson holding up two fingers after his Browns just nipped the Ravens in overtime when Greg Joseph’s knuckleball field goal from 37 yards was good? Was it to signal there were two seconds left when the game actually was over, or did Hue think the Browns had a scored a touchdown and he wanted to go for two points? Who knows with Hue. He is in that special pantheon along with Bill O’Brien and Vance Joseph as the worst coaches in the NFL.
3. Some hard-hitting defensive players can’t play effectively anymore in today’s sissified NFL world of penalizing someone for a good hit, or tackle. Put Vikings safety Andrew Sendejo on that list.
2. It has been three years and I’m still waiting for Adam Gase to show what an offensive guru he is. The Dolphins were 24th in yards gained in 2016, 25th last season and 28th this year. They have never averaged more than 22.7 points a game in Gase’s three years. They are averaging fewer than 20 points a game this season and there is no Jay Cutler to blame. Gase may want to try to fix the problem by introducting himself to Kenyan Drake.
1. Odell Beckham Jr. throws a better long pass than Eli Manning. Come to think of it, so does Opie Taylor.
