Midway through the season, the NFL season has not disappointed.
Midway through the season, the NFL season has not disappointed.
Each and every week, there have been teams soaring up and falling out of power rankings everywhere. Now that teams have enough of a body of work, it is time to sort out the mess that has been the best teams in the NFL this year.
The Super Bowl contenders have now turned into Wild Card teams.
After a week 1 trouncing of Aaron Rodgers, everyone was convinced that the Seahawks were once again the best team in the league and had a great chance to repeat. Here we sit at the end of week 9, and the ‘Hawks would be the last team in the playoffs if the season ended today and their home field advantage wouldn’t be utilized as a low seed. Russell Wilson is back to having the winner of the punt, pass and kick competition at receiver and the Seahawks defense struggles to get to the quarterback. This will give opposing mediocre receivers more time to shut up Richard Sherman and the Legion of Boom.
Then there were the Chargers, who beat the Seahawks in week 2 and started 4-1. Since then, they struggled to beat the Raiders and have lost three-straight games, including a 37-0 stomping by the Dolphins on Sunday. Philip Rivers inexplicably threw 3 interceptions against this past week and the Chargers are clearly in flux at 5-4 and out of the previous top-six spots in the AFC heading into the bye week. I question the Chargers defense majorly after being torn apart by Ryan Tannehill, who has been playing better lately, but against poor secondaries. Sunday, the Chargers looked like another one of those poor secondaries. Now, they were without rookie cornerback Jason Verrett, who both the Chargers and I like a lot, but I can’t completely excuse them for making a college wide receiver look like a Pro Bowl quarterback.
The 49ers are a very interesting case to me. They have an amazing amount of injuries on defense, which they do get a pass for. But, they just lost to Austin Davis at home. No disrespect to Austin Davis, he has done an incredible job as basically a third stringer in a starter’s role, but come on. Divisional games are tricky and all that, I get it. Hey, the Rams beat Seattle, right? True, but this is the first time in a while that being compared to Seattle is not a very good thing. For the record, of these teams, I’ll give the 9ers the best chance to right the ship once their defense gets healthy. Oh, and one last PSA, Kaepernick’s decision making skills, or lack there of, is what kept him from getting the guaranteed money that Andrew Luck will get.
The Bengals’ issues are very simple. Their best weapon got hurt and their quarterback is Andy Dalton. True 100-million dollar quarterbacks help their receivers make big money contracts, not the other way around. Again another contract that was given to satisfy the quarterback, but no guaranteed money (Although Kaepernick has 80 times more arm talent than Dalton). The Bengals are going to dance this dance many times until they realize that Andy Dalton can only do so much.
jw331813@ohio.edu
