What a week! It’s been a little difficult to overreact to anything over the past few days, what with Gilligan and the Aussie boys in town this weekend. I’m extremely hung over and stringing together coherent sentences is proving to be difficult, but here we go.
We’ll start with the one and only Buffalo Bills. The Bills are really only here because they didn’t technically win. Although, in my eyes only losing by a TAINT (this is the new term for pick 6…) when Jeff Tuel Bag is you starting QB should qualify as a win. The Bills defense has vastly improved in recent weeks and with EJ “Hoops” Manuel’s return right over the horizon, the Bills have a legitimate shot at not finishing in last place.
Which brings us to the Miami Dolphins… I haven’t seen a circus like this since the Time Lord days in New York. They managed a win with the second most improbable finish that I can think of (the first being a pushing penalty in overtime). The Defense got a huge assist when I dropped them from my fantasy team and Cam Wake might just be the most feared man in all of Canada. Tanny just got sacked again so I think the o-line should spend less time picking on their own teammates and more time learning how to play football or the Matt Moore era may finally begin in Miami. Things are not looking up in the Sunshine State (outside of Tallahassee) so I predict that this might be the last time we read about another team’s performance before we learn how the Dolphins failed for the rest of the season.
And seeing as it was an odd-numbered week, the Jets come in second. Most of us forgot that this week was odd, so we picked the Jets to get smoked by the Saints. But in true Rex Ryan fashion, when there is a story hanging around the game that involves him, his team played great. I brought up the fact yesterday that this should be reason #1 to fire Rex, but it will more than likely lead to a large extension for him. Geno wasn’t asked to do much and Chris Ivory tore up his old team while the defense did what they do (every other week) leading to the most stunning upset of the week. The Jets are coming into their bye week on a high note, so expect a lot of time off and some fat and lazy players when they travel up to beautiful Orchard Park in a couple of weeks.
Now who would have predicted that outburst of offensive success from the New England Patriots? I sure didn’t (although Gilligan did predict a 30/35, 350 yd, 4 td day for Tommy while we drank in the parking lot before the game which is pretty darn close). Gronkowski seems to be back to being a beast, Ridley is awesome again (assuming he doesn’t get benched again), Danny Amendola made it through the game without getting hurt and Aaron Dobson actually looks like he might develop into a decent NFL receiver. The 55 points that the Pats hung on the lowly Steelers is the highest scoring output by any team in the league this year and Tom and Bill’s career post bye week record should be making the top teams in the AFC a little nervous. If this team can somehow finagle a bye in the playoffs, they might just somehow find themselves back in the AFC Championship game for the third straight year. Injuries on defense might slow that down. Once again, the Pats lost a key guy on that side of the ball when Steve Gregory broke his thumb, but really how big of a loss is that. If (and that’s a big if), Aqib Talib comes back and resumes his dominance of the NFL’s top receivers, the Pats stand a chance. If not, well at least we can say they won the division for the millionth year in a row…
Bonus section:
The ‘Noles rolled out of bed a demolished an overmatched Hurricanes team on Saturday night, making the “U” look like, well the “U”. Famous Jameis actually looked like a mortal man, but lucky for him the defense was awesome and bailed him out. In my eyes, this proves that the ‘Noles should be ranked at least #2 in the BCS because if either Oregon or Alabama got an average performance out of their QB against an undefeated, top 10 team they would lose. But Alabama get the legacy votes and the computers feel that the Pac-12 with such powerhouses like USC, ASU and Oregon State is a superior conference to the ACC…So I guess we’ll just have to wait for Oregon to lose to Stanford on Thursday.
Also, we here in Boston enjoyed yet another championship parade (our 8th since the year 2000) and Mike Napoli topped off a special day by running through the streets and bars of Boston shirtless and ripping butts. Good times…
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