Sunday, October 3, 2010

Upon Further Review: the misery continues

If any of you happen to take a trip to Vegas in the near future, you might want to just place a bet down on the opposite of whatever BadNFL picks, because that is a surefire lock. I'm not even going to wait for the recaps to come out on this game, because I'm just too pissed and want to get this off my chest.

1. The Steelers imploded in the final 2 minutes. They had a 4-point lead and the ball with 2:40 left, and the Ravens had one timeout. In other words, it's looking pretty good, right? But the play-by-play at that point reads like the description of a poorly coached high school team. False start, false start, holding, interspersed with 3 bad runs. The result is that the Ravens get the ball back at the Steelers 39 yard line. Of course, given that it's the Steelers defense against Joe Flacco, at Heinz field, with no timeouts and only 1 minute remaining, I would normally like my chances. But the football gods knew that BadNFL picked the Steelers, and the Ravens scored on 4 easy plays -- that last of which saw T.J. "so washed up that he was cut by the offensively challenged Seahawks" Houshmandzadeh horribly burning the Steelers on a double move. Why a smart defensive unit like the Steelers falls for a double f'ing move with only 30 seconds left, up by 4 I have no idea. But it happened, and my prediction bombs again.

2. The Lions. I absolutely love that they play the Packers, in Lambeau, to a 2-point game this week. I guess they got all of their punt muffing, dual goal line pick-throwing, non-Percy Harvin covering incompetence out of their system last week, I guess. They've now easily covered in 3 of their 4 games, as have the Steelers. Guess which one in which they didn't? That's right, in weeks that BadNFL picked them.

3. Charlie Batch was not good -- he missed several deep balls that he should have had, looked very nervous in the pocket, and didn't generate much of anything through the air. Of course nobody is that surprised by that. But Mendenhall barely averaging over 3 yards per carry, a week after Peyton Hillis abused the Ravens' defense? Yep, makes sense, I guess.

4. Jeff Reed. At least one pattern continued: every team that BadNFL has picked this year has missed at least 1 FG, usually 2. Reed was 0/2, which didn't help anything.

5. What I should have picked: Jets -6 @ the Bills. I already said the Bills were the worst team in the league, so it's unclear why I wouldn't pick an OK team against them. The Jets absolutely abused them, and that one I should have seen coming.

3 comments:

  1. Epic. Watched the game and couldn't believe the Steelers choked it away down the stretch. They actually got ten yards from Mendenhall in two carries on that last drive, but the false starts pushed them right back after each one. Memo to the Steelers: You're not supposed to get false starts in your own end zone area AT HOME.

    I can't wait to see what next week's pick is!

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  2. Edit: I was wrong, Mendenhall only got five yards. I was thinking it was ten because after the runs and two false start penalties, the Steelers were right back where they started, but I forgot that the penalties were of the half-the-distance variety.

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  3. Yeah it was brutal to watch!

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