Things off the field may be a mess, but the
action on the field has been tremendous this season so far. The New York Jets and Chicago Bears clash Monday night, but with the rest of the slate of games finished, we can take a quick look at who were the winners and losers of this week’s NFL games.
The winners had better enjoy it, because we know how fickle the football gods are. And the losers shouldn’t get too low because there is always next week.
We’ve got injuries, we’ve got big wins, we’ve got stymied offenses and we’ve got new faces.
Let’s see who ends up where coming out of the Week 3 games.
WINNER: San Diego Chargers
The Buffalo Bills were red-hot and in the lead in the AFC East. The San Diego Chargers were traveling cross-country and coming off a huge upset over the Seattle Seahawks, making them primed for a let down.
Instead the Chargers took control early and never let it go, scoring a 22-10 victory and a share of the AFC West lead.
The Chargers are a team considered on the verge of being a consistent playoff contender and the game in Buffalo, against a young team with a shaky quarterback and secondary, is one a playoff contender is supposed to win.
That it came on the heels of the win over Seattle as well as an injury to running back Ryan Mathews only highlights the versatility this team has—as does the fact that a week after tight end Antonio Gates went off, Eddie Royal was the main factor in the passing offense.
The Chargers are legitimate, there is no denying that. Now they just have to prove it on a weekly basis like the rest of the contenders.
LOSER: St Louis Rams
Which is worse, squandering a 21-point lead or having your tight end take a swing at your quarterback?
How about both? Losing a game against the Dallas Cowboys—they of the “no-defense defense”—is pretty brutal when you are up three touchdowns. There is no denying that.
But having Jared Cook—fresh off a dropped touchdown pass, mind you—shoved quarterback Austin Davis on the sideline, nearly starting a massive fight with his own team, as reported by SportingNews.com’s Troy Machir (check out the link for a nice Vine of it).
As Machir pointed out, the Rams were winning at the time.
Losing is bad. Fistfights on the sideline as well? That’s doubling down on bad.
WINNER: New York Giants
The relief was palpable in the locker room after the New York Giants beat the Houston Texans 30-17, and can you blame them? At 2-0, people were having flashbacks to 2013.
As I wrote at SportsOnEarth.com (who had me cover the game), the team had spent a lot of time last week trying to avoid putting extra pressure on themselves and it certainly seemed to work.
The offense still looks a tad shaky, and the timing might remain a work-in-progress, but the offensive line did an outstanding job protecting quarterback Eli Manning and opening holes for running back Rashad Jennings (who had a career high 176 yards on the ground).
After an early sack by Texans defensive end J.J. Watt, the line solidified and started rolling.
“Besides that,” Manning told us, “I was held up and we were running, getting five, six, seven yards a pop. A couple of ten-yard runs. That’s when the line is dominating. They were feeling it and excited.”
The defense also played well, despite injuries along the defensive front and the secondary looked sharp.
A big test comes Thursday night, as they head to Washington, DC for a divisional matchup—one which, in a wide-open NFC East, is just as critical to win as the game on Sunday.
LOSER: Robert Griffin III
Sorry Robert Griffin III, you may have just been Wally Pipped.
Kirk Cousins came in to replace you due to your dislocated ankle and, well, he looked really good.
Sure the team didn’t win, but Cousins seemed a much better fit in head coach Jay Gruden’s offense, putting up 427 yards and three touchdowns with just one interception.
Cousins didn’t get sacked, in part because his scrambling ability is limited, but was also very smart with the ball and made great decisions throughout the game regardless of the game situation.
This may not keep up. The Eagles aren’t exactly the Steel Curtain or Buddy Ryan’s 64 Bears defense and this week’s game against the New York Giants will be a tougher test. Beyond the Giants are the Seahawks and Cardinals—two very tough defenses.
So maybe Cousins is revealed as not as good as he looked Sunday and you’ll still have a job when you return.
WINNER: DeMarco Murray
Three games for the 2014 season and three 100-yard efforts for DeMarco Murray, who really has put to rest the idea that the team needs (per CBS Dallas Fort Worth) Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson anytime soon.
Murray is averaging 5.1 yards a carry (his career average is 5 yards per carry), and doing it against stacked boxes from defenses which are clearly not worried about quarterback Tony Romo and the passing offense.
It’s a contract year for Murray, so even if the Cowboys decide not to extend him or sign him to a new contract, the start he is off to this season is a big deal. At 26, he has many more years of football ahead of him and if he keeps this up, teams will definitely be clamoring for his services this offseason when he is a free agent.
LOSER: Green Bay Packers
The Green Bay Packers look off—that’s the simplest way to put it. Especially on offense.
So far the offense has lacked consistent explosiveness. Sure, there are the odd long catches by Jordy Nelson, such as what he had twice in Week 2 against the New York Jets. But even the victory over the Jets was a near thing, and the offense looked off for much of the game.
Aaron Rodgers is still holding the ball a bit too long, there have been injuries again along the offensive line and the run game has stalled out. Nothing seems to be going right for the Packers.
Losing to Seattle was something people wrote off as “well, it’s the Seahawks and it was in Seattle.”
Squeaking by New York was overlooked because of an explosive third quarter.
Losing to Detroit can’t be overlooked. It was a game the Packers could have won more than once. It wasn’t a blow out—it was 19-7.
Green Bay has to figure out what is going wrong and quickly—this is not a team used to sitting at the bottom of the NFC North standings and they head to Chicago for a Week 4 matchup with the Bears.
Dropping another NFC North game this early would be a huge problem.
WINNER: Andrew Luck
Can Andrew Luck carry the Indianapolis Colts?
Looks like the answer this week was “yes.”
It’s easy enough to downplay his 370 yard, four touchdown day because it was against the Jacksonville Jaguars, but we shouldn’t as Luck looked as good as he ever has and the Jacksonville front seven can be tough.
Luck did an excellent job of spreading the ball around and involving everyone in the offense.
Last week saw some people wonder how far Luck could take this team, given its deficiencies on defense and in the run game.
This week didn’t put it to rest exactly—people will always wonder until the Colts fix the problem—but it certainly proved once again that Luck can put this team on his shoulders when he needs to.
LOSER: EJ Manuel
Forget the stats and look at the footage.
Second-year quarterback EJ Manuel continues to be inconsistent, inaccurate and a mess in general.
Taking a safety with just under three and a half minutes to go effectively ended the game, though it’s hard to imagine the Bills coming back from a ten-point deficit anyway.
Manuel has had moments this season so far, but not enough of them. The more you watch him play the more you have to really wonder how much he is holding this offense back.
You want to give a young quarterback time to develop, but to do that, he has to show progress.
That hasn’t been happening with Manuel and on Sunday, that cost them the game.
WINNER: Teddy Bridgewater/Blake Bortles fans
It’s Teddy Time! Bortles time too!
Sunday saw the debut of two of the first-round quarterbacks taken in the 2014 NFL draft and in both cases the moves seemed to work out.
Both Blake Bortles and Teddy Bridgewater were guys for whom the plan was “sit a year, start next year.” Many fans and analysts didn’t much love that plan as the rookies sat behind unimpressive starters like Matt Cassel and Chad Henne.
Cassel went down with an ankle injury and Henne got pulled for being Chad Henne. While neither Bridgewater nor Bortles looked like the second coming of Joe Montana, both played well.
Bridgewater avoided any bad mistakes and moved the chains well, while Bortles showed that the Jaguars offense can be far more aggressive than it had been with Henne.
He turned the ball over twice, but he just looked like he could make things happen, where Henne just sort of seemed to be content to take what the defense gave him and even then, not always.
It’s going to be exciting to see these two guys develop and as a fan of both, I’m hoping they do really well.
LOSER: Stephen Tulloch
Really? You hurt yourself celebrating? (per USA Today’s Chris Chase)
Bad luck is bad luck, but it’s a special kind of bad luck which leads to a player hurting himself celebrating a sack.
This is a little problem for the Detroit Lions too, as Tahir Whitehead is still a little raw. I am a big fan of Whitehead, and I hope he blows offensive lines up. I’m not sure he’s ready though.
First thing the team should do, though, is instruct him on how not to injure himself when celebrating a good play.
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