NFL Thoughts -- Week 15

Cardinals' QB John Skelton: 5-1. Kevin Kolb: 2-5. 'Nuff said. Given the young man a chance.

Tony Sparano is gone, but the Dolphins just keep on playing every game like it's their Superbowl. Miami beat the formerly high-flying Buffalo Bills on Sunday 30-23, behind Matt Moore's best game of the season and Reggie Bush's first 200-yard rushing game in as long as I can ever remember in the pros.

Sticking with the newly-departed coaches' teams, it's hard to read too much into the Chiefs ending the Packers' bid at a perfect season. But, I have to say that as I watched Aaron Rodgers over the past few weeks and certainly in his post-game presser on Sunday afternoon, he seems to have had a lot more invested in this run at perfection than he is letting on. It will be interesting to see if there are any long-term effects for the Packers who might have just lost the #1 thing that they as a team were keying on for most of 2011.

It's hard to get excited as an Eagles fan when the team's limited playoff hopes are based on Philly winning at Dallas next Sunday in a must-win game for both teams, and then beating the Skins at home to close things out. With the way this team has played in the 2011 regular season, anyone who looks at that and sees 2-0 just hasn't been watching this team this year, in particular on defense.

Nnami Asomugha was called for yet another holding penalty late in the first half as the Jets were trying to mount a comeback against an early Eagles onslaught on Sunday. That makes at least half a dozen times this year that Asomugha has blatantly held a receiver who had beaten him and was about to make an easy touchdown score. As much as getting value for Kevin Kolb is proving to have been a steal of a trade this past offseason, the Asomugha signing is without a doubt the Eagles' brass's worst move of 2011.

The NBC Sunday night coverage continues to be the worst commentating available on any major sports network. Especially painful continues to be the in-studio guys, with Tony Dungy seeming more suited for missionary work or possibly religious oration than commenting on NFL games, the Rich Eisen-like banality of Dan Patrick, and the contrived too-cool-for-school attitude of Rodney Harrison. These guys even make Chris Collinsworth's one-sided commentary seem professional and riveting.

Lesean McCoy punched in his 15th, 16th and 17th rushing touchdowns of the season this weekend, solidifying his spot atop the list of best non-quarterback fantasy football players in the NFL in 2011. McCoy's 20 total touchdowns now puts him comfortably ahead of Patriots' breakout tight end Rob Gronkowski's 15 receiving plus one rushing td, and even with Calvin Johnson's huge performance this weekend against the Raiders, Megatron remains a distant third with 14 total touchdowns. To think that this team with McCoy, Michael Vick and DeSean Jackson on offense, plus Jason Babin and his 17 sacks on defense to go along with Asante Samuel and big-name additions Asomugha and Dominick Rodgers-Cromartie at corner, would be sitting at 6-8 and hoping for a mathematical miracle to sneak into the postseason with a .500 record in an uncharacteristically weak NFC East, this is just everything that makes the NFL so great for all of us.

Speaking of great offensive threats in the league today, I think it's fair to say that Aaron Rodgers officially has competition for the league's MVP. While I think Rodgers would have won it walking away if the team went undefeated for the season given the year he is having, now that the Packers have fallen back down to the realm of mortal NFL teams, I don't see how what Drew Brees is doing right now can be ignored any longer. While Rodgers has thrown for 4360 yards (4th in the NFL), an NFL second-best 68.1% completion percentage, and an eye-popping 40 touchdowns vs just 6 interceptions through 14 games in 2011, Brees has been up to the task, posting 4780 passing yards -- on pace next week to break Dan Marino's all-time single-season passing yards record with a full game to spare -- and a mind-numbing 71.5% completion percentage. Though not as amazing as Rodgers' here through Week 15, Brees' touchdown to INT ratio is also a very impressive 37 touchdowns to just 11 picks. Each player has some areas where they are clearly the best, and I guess I might lean ever so slightly towards Rodgers if I had to pick at this moment, but in my mind with the Packers' loss, this race just got officially up for grabs thanks to the Chiefs on Sunday afternoon.

I thought Tim Tebow played pretty well -- for Tim Tebow -- against the Cheatriots on Sunday. In the end it was a big double-digit loss for the Broncos, but Tebow ended the day a robust 11 for 22 for a 50% completion percentage (his highest of any game this year), and with 194 total passing yards -- also, amazingly, his highest for the year. I imagine that John Elway was fairly unsure of how he should be reacting to his quarterback's performance against the AFC's best-looking team at the moment, but Tebow did run the ball well, and Tebow started off very strong before his team got bit by the turnover bug and gave a great team in New England too many chances to build up a lead.

That New York Giants loss this weekend at home to the hapless Redskins has got to go down as the most gutless performance of the entire NFL season so far. I mean, the Giants are at home in New York Jersey and playing the Redskins who just gave up 34 points at home to the Cheatriots last week and 34 also at home to the NY Jets the week before, and they manage to put a straight-out bagel until the final minutes of a game that was already long since over? I betcha Bill Cowher is on a plane out to Westchester County right now to look for a new house to buy. What an utter collapse.

It's a shame that right now the Bengals and Jets would play down to the third tiebreaker if each team wins out over its last two efforts in the 2011 regular season. With identical records of 8-6 overall, and identical conference marks at 6-5, the decision would turn on better overall winning percentage over common opponents, with the two teams even having performed identically there, but with the Jets being 2-0 against the Bills while the Bengals are only 1-0. Though it certainly feels like the wrong team and the wrong quarterback in Mark Sanchez are ahead in that seemingly silly category, this one really should still be decided on the field as the Jets are fixing to face the crosstown rival Giants in a do-or-die game at home followed by traveling to the keyed-up Dolphins in Week 17 who you know would just love to ruin the Jets' season (again), while the Bungles have on top the beatable Cardinals at home, followed by an end-of-season home-game clash with the Ravens, who might not be playing for anything that week after Baltimore's crushing by the Chargers on Sunday night.

Even with all the shenanigans and mathematical possibilities in the NFC East, the AFC West might be the most interesting division race in all of football here as we enter the home stretch. With the Broncos' loss to the Pats this weekend, and the Raiders failing to capitalize on last-second drive against the Lions, while the Chargers stepped up and crushed the AFC-North leading Ravens, and even the Chiefs sneaking a win against the heretofore undefeated Packers, things just got a whole lot narrower over there with two games still to play. Denver is still one game up with 2 winnable games left to play -- at Buffalo and at home against Romeo Crennel's rejuvenated Chiefs -- while, just one game behind at 7-7, Oakland (at Kansas City, and home vs. the Chargers) can obviously take care of its two closest rivals head-to-head, and San Diego faces the toughest path (at Detroit, and at Oakland) to finish the season. Even the Chiefs bringing up the rear still have games left against the Raiders at home and then at Denver to finish the regular season off, so what happens in that division is very much up in the air, especially if the Tebow magic fails to come back next week against a finished Bills squad.

Winning One-Against-Three

With all the (massive) problems the NFL has with its referees insisting on taking over the games of the biggest, best sport on the earth today, there is just something so satisfying about the Eagles going on national television on Sunday night and beating not just the Giants, but also beating the referees as well as NBC's color guy Chris Collinsworth.

Sure, the Eagles went out and did what they had to do on Sunday to beat their hated division rivals, taking the game 27-17 to nab a 7-3 record and sole possession of first place in the NFC East, which had been held almost the entire season previously by the Eli Manning and the Giants. One week after erupting for four passing touchdowns at another key divisional rival in the Redskins, Mike Vick did not throw a td pass on the day this weekend, but he ran for a crucial one and helped pace the team with 258 yards passing and, as usual, zero interceptions. Meanwhile, the Eagles defense was utterly stifling, as Eli Manning chipped in with a key fumble as well as three more interceptions, bringing his league-leading total to 17 picks on the year, if you throw out Brett Favre and his 886 interceptions so far in 2010, leaving the Giants for the most part completely unable to move the ball or do anything of any value offensively. At least until the refs stepped in, anyways.

With the Eagles leading the game 16-3 late in the third quarter and heading into the 4th, the game was such that it was clear that the Giants wouldn't find their way into the end zone no matter how much time they had to play on the day. The Eagles just shut the Giants' down, plain and simple, and every single time the Eagles needed a big play or a big stop on defense, they got it. The Eagles did what they've done a lot recently to the Giants -- won a huge game fairly late in the season, behind the power of multiple takeaways as they forced the Giants to make poor decision after poor decision in their undying quest to get at least somewhere near the end zone. And so the referees decided, in typical NFL fashion, to become the story of the game once again instead of just calling the game. They quickly awarded the Giants the ball back after overturning a pretty obvious fumble that would have effectively ended the game -- with Collinsworth all the while commenting on how genius it was of Tom Coughlin to challenge that play that every little league coach in the country would have challenged given the situation -- and then they reversed a call to give the Giants the ball after an Eagles player committed a dubious-at-best fumble, using their amazing powers of replay to get most calls wrong even on the slow-mo. What a joke. The Giants punched it in from the 10 two plays later, and then not four minutes later in gametime, there were the refs again, calling a pass interference call at the 1-yard line to bail out Eli Manning who had made a laughable heave down the field to avoid getting his head knocked off on a crucial third down play that -- once again -- would have and should have effectively ended the game. But those pesky refs were having none of it, and they did whatever they had to do over a 5-minute span or so to not just keep the New York team in it, but to quickly give them the fucking lead in a game that was a blowout to a degree that only someone who watched the entire game could understand.

But I think the most satisfying part of all for Eagles fans with the game on Sunday night had to be once again beating down Chris Collinsworth, unquestionably one of the biggest assheads in all of sports announcing. I've written about him before, because it is very difficult to measure whether his bias is greater than his stupidity, or vice versa, and Sunday night's performance out of Chrissy C. has got to rank right up there with his all-time bests. I mean, repeatedly pointing out that so many of Eli's interceptions this season have been on tips? Come on, Chris! You may want to suck Eli's wang, but the guy leads all under-40 quarterbacks in the NFL in interceptions this year! That doesn't happen because of tipped passes, even if you hate Philadelphia and would say anything good about their opponent in any game, even if it makes you look like a complete chucklehead. A real announcer of course would note that Eli is simply having an uncharacteristically sloppy year at the helm of his offense, as any monkey with half a brain who's actually watched the Giants' games this year would know, despite a few tips earlier in the season that probably could have been caught. But when Eli throws a ball two feet behind his receiver on a crossing route, and the guy spins around, leans back and gets a finger on the ball before it gets intercepted, that's not a great play by the quarterback that his receiver screwed him on. It's the opposite, Chrissy, which any non-ape in the booth with any modicum of impartiality already knows. Oh, and by the way, Chrissy, what about your unthinkable assertion during the timeout while Eagles' special teams man Ellis Hobbs was being tended to after a vicious helmet-to-helmet direct hit from Giants' dirty fuck Dave Tollefson, that the play was fully legal. Fully legal? You assyshit!! Hobbs is lucky as hell that he had movement in his extremities shortly after the injury caused by Tollefson -- the same dirty fuck who already knocked out at least one other quarterback already earlier in the season -- and Tollefson might as well crack out the checkbook now, cuz he'll be writing a nice $50k (at least) check within the next few days most likely. But it was a fully legal hit, right Chrissy? You heartless, thoughtless piece of shit.

Collinsworth, I know your head is already about 5 times taller than it is wide, and you're already one of the ugliest, stupidest bitches on television today in any capacity. But when I watch you, I and thousands of other intelligent viewers across the country literally mute the tv every time you open your big, fat, worthless yapper. If I could, I'd love to put your head in a vice like I assume your parents did when you were little to make you look like that and just squeeze it tighter and tighter and tighter until the air whooses right out of your ears. Lucky for you NBC is so clueless about football that they allow your stupid ass to be a part of the broadcast, along with other stellar commentators in the studio like Tony Dungy, Dan Patrick and Rodney Harrison. And even among those three fucking loser rejects, you're still far and away the bottom of the heap. Congratulations. Oh, and sorry about your team's loss of first place last night, too.