| Authored by Jeff Risdon - 1st December, 2008 - 2:10 pm
 Lots of pundits and obsessive fans love to try to ascertain lessons from every week of competition in the NFL. And Week 13 is no exception, with some unexpected results and major blowouts. But it’s far too premature to read much of anything into the results.
Here’s what we learned
-- Denver is good enough to beat any team, anywhere. They are also inconsistent enough to get blown out by awful teams, even at home. They’ve already won the AFC West, which means they’re in the playoffs. That should scare the other AFC teams because there is no more unpredictable team in the entire league; if the good Broncos, the one that pummeled the Jets on Sunday, show up they are a real tough out, but if the Broncos that lost 41-7 to New England and 31-10 at home to Oakland show up, it’s essentially a playoff bye week.
-- Arizona isn’t quite ready to hang with the big boys. The annihilation by Philadelphia exposed the Cards as paper tigers, and a team that simply cannot run the ball. Like Denver, they have already wrapped up their pathetic division (not mathematically, but it’s over) and will enter the playoffs with a scary offense capable of outscoring anyone. But unless the Cardinals are playing at the top of their game, their first-round opponent is going to basically get a bye week.
-- Carolina is another team capable of beating anyone, anywhere--provided they are on top of their game. Their linebackers and secondary play as a unit as well as any back seven in football, and the emergence of DeAngelo Williams as a legit between-the-tackles back should scare the rest of the NFC. Or not, if Jake Delhomme lays another giant ostrich egg as he is wont to do from time to time.
-- Tampa Bay has a good enough defense to beat anybody, and Jeff Garcia is truly one of those QBs who wins in spite of himself. Some of his throws aren’t even good enough to be called “ducks”, and few QB's make their receivers work harder to catch the ball, but the Bucs are unquestionably better with him at the helm. Their defense will eat one-dimensional offenses alive (ask the Saints), but the Bucs stand little chance against a team that can cover their two WRs with just 3 DBs (ask the Broncos). The Monday Night game next week between Tampa Bay and Carolina will likely decide the #2 seed, with the loser having to hold off the resurgent Cowboys for the #5 seed. And then there are the Falcons...
-- Atlanta answered a lot of questions with a big win on the road in San Diego although if you’re still expecting good things from the Chargers you’re about 6 weeks behind the curve. What we know is that Matt Ryan is for real,; their defense has great speed and plays better than the sum of its collective parts; and they aren’t going to beat themselves. Finish off the Saints next week and Falcons will own the tie-breaker with the Cowboys for the Wild Card, if it comes to that.
-- Dallas just might have finally figured out to get their bad stretch out of the way before December, a refreshing change for Cowboys fans. But we really don’t know how much to read into their nice 3-game rebound until we see how Team Chaos handles the next two weeks: at Pittsburgh, then home for the Giants.
-- Buffalo has quickly morphed into the 2007 Lions, and there are lots of common denominators as they head into next year poised to be the 2008 Lions: lots of merely adequate players at critical spots that are good enough to not purge, but not good enough to help an iffy team into a good team; a vanilla gameplan engineered by an overrated QB behind an OL that isn’t as good as they think they are; a general lack of football IQ on defense; a sore lack of proven winning leadership that includes the coaching staff; and they are a team that is not built to handle division rivals. We don’t know yet if it will get that bad in Buffalo, but this is a stock you should still be selling high, even after losing 5 of their last 6.
-- Minnesota is the best under-the-radar team, having won 6 of 8 with MVP candidate Adrian Peterson slicing his way thru 8 and even 9 man fronts with remarkable ease. Trust me, nobody wants to play the Vikings in the playoffs because it’s almost impossible to run the ball and eat clock to milk a lead against them. But we don’t know yet if they’ll make it to the playoffs even after the Chicago massacre: if the Williams boys are suspended they might not beat the putrid Lions next week.
About the only thing we can safely say, “We know this is true” is that the New York Giants and Tennessee Titans are the two least flawed, best equipped teams to make it to the Super Bowl. But that doesn’t mean we know after 12 games that either team will make it, or even win a playoff game. The point--don’t hurry into assuming anything about the next couple of months. We can also safely say that this should be one of the most thrilling, unpredictable finishes to the NFL season we’re ever going to see.
Jeff.Risdon@RealGM.com |
