AFCE – Week 2 Overreactions

The air here in New England is really starting to feel like fall and week two brought us three games that made everything feel right with the world from an NFL perspective. (It’s also great to have multiple scandals hanging over the league right now and not one of our AFC East teams is involved). Let’s get right to it.

In last place we find a team that has been no stranger to the basement since the retirement of their last competent quarterback, the Miami Dolphins. The Dolphins showed us who the Dolphins are this week, and that is a team that gets blown out by the Buffalo Bills. The Fins came into week two with their heads held high and their fans acting as though they are not fans of the Miami Dolphins. Well that was quick, Ryan Tannehill was terrible, throwing passes so inaccurate that Rick Vaughn was heard saying, “Man that guy needs to learn some control.” Mike Wallace had one nice catch, but he also had to get his facemask replaced at halftime due to the number of passes that bounced off of it. The Fins’ defense; who garnered all sorts of praise after shutting down the Pats, learned that slowing down the Buffalo Bills is a whole other ball of wax. All in all the Fins sucked and Plastic Joe settled his rear end right back on the hot seat. A few more weeks of this and the state of Florida’s highway department will be tasked with increasing the height of the suicide barriers on all local bridges.

Next up we have the Oakland Raid-, I mean the New York Jets. The Jets lost in such ridiculous fashion that the only other franchise in the league that could pull it off would be the Raiders. The Jets had an extraordinarily overrated team on the ropes- then they remembered that they were in fact the New York Jets and first blew an 18 point lead, got one of their best players ejected from the game, then mounted a miraculous comeback that was called off because their coaches and players don’t know the rules; a trifecta that will now go down in history as a “Jetfecta”. It’s sad, because Geno really has harnessed his lack of throwing ability and actually didn’t suck. The running game on the other hand…Now that was a bunch of suck that is sure to haunt Rex’s dreams like a bad case of athletes’ foot. All in all, the Jets are the Jets and this kind of embarrassment has become the norm in North Jersey.

Now we move on to the winners of the week. First up, the New England Patriots got back to their winning ways. It took a game against the Matt Cassel led and Adrian Peterson-less Minnesota Vikings to make that happen, but the Pats are building their way up to the championship caliber team that they always are. We saw three things this week that I for one did not think possible- 1.) Devin McCourty actually got to a ball on time instead of being a step late and ended up with a game turning interception. 2.) Chandler Jones took over a game on defense (and special teams). Mr. Jones was a beast, he made former #3 overall pick Ryan Khalil look like Nate Soldier and ensured that Cassel went home with brown stains in his pants. 3.) Domenique Easley not only played his second game (a feat that I thought would not happen until at least 2016), but he showed some flashes of real talent. Now if he can only not kill people like the last prominent Gator on the Pats, Bill might have actually come up with a decent pick for once. The Pats are trending upward, but they may have a real problem winning the division because…

The Buffalo Bills are playing like it’s 1992. Jim Kelly was in the house on Sunday and the emotional lift he provided was one that could not be measured. The Bills absolutely destroyed the Dolphins, who came into Orchard Park riding high after their own decimation of the “Team of the Decade”, the Pats. You know how the logic works, the Fins crushed the Pats and the Bills crushed the Fins, therefore when the Pats meet that stampeding herd from the great white north later the fall the score will no doubt end up somewhere around 100-6. The Bills’ defense- led by the Towers of Terror- made life a living hell for the great QB in the NFL, Ryan the Great all afternoon and made fantasy owners everywhere second guess their regrets for waiting so long to pick a defense. Now another thing happened on Sunday that makes me think that we may have entered some sort of alternate universe: both of the Bills’ stars from Clemson actually lived up to their talent and hype (if only for one day), hell even EJ Manuel looked like the guy we FSU fans were promised all those years ago when he came out of high school in Virginia Beach. The Bills are 2-0 and in first place, something the rest of the league ought to get used to, because this team has an owner to honor and they are looking forward to doing in the way that no team does like the Bills- losing the Super Bowl.

See you next week.