Thoughts on a Coltsless Sunday

• Vince Young is finally killing the Titans. Once Haynesworth went down, their D couldn’t carry the team anymore, and VY is getting exposed. He’s playing basically the same as he has for the last year and a half. He hasn’t changed, the Titans D has. Why can’t he ‘just win’ games now?
• I think it’s pretty clear why the Eagles let Jeff Garcia walk. His back injury doesn’t bode well for the Bucs.
• Jags are going down this week. I think the Colts win big. (ok, I know. I say that every week).
• Have any two 1 and 2 seeds ever fallen as hard and as fast as the Chargers and Ravens? Neither one of those teams is doing anything this year.
• I know the Bears won, but that fourth down play was crazy. You can’t exactly call that a high percentage deal. I doubt they complete that 5 times out of 50. (or 10% of the time for the fractionally challenged).
• Cutler is becoming a player. Grossman is terrifying (in the bad sense). Why would anyone kick to Hester? The Bears block special teams plays exquisitely.
• I think we all knew the Pats were coming back in that game; we’ve seen it from the Colts all the time. Really good teams don’t lose that game, and it had the same kind of certainty that the Colts/KC game had last week. I’m not going to comment again on the weaknesses of the Pats that came out this game. We all know what they are. The rest of the NFL does too. What’s important in this game is that the Pats handled the pressure well and won. STYLE POINTS DON’T MATTER. Wins matter. This win is just as good for the Pats at 31-28 as it would have been at 40-10. Brady made his best case of the year for MVP.
• It’s still amazing to me that the Dolphins would have traded Welker in order to draft Ted Ginn Jr. That exchange makes incredibly little sense. There is no one home in the front offices of the Dolphins.

Demond Sanders: Miami and Oakland should be kicked out of the league for those idiotic trades last year. Still, I wasn’t terribly surprised that the Eagles played the Pats so closely. The New England defense hasn’t been the same the last couple of years. Losing Roosevelt Colvin early in the game didn’t help any. The Eagles offensive line did a good job and their receivers made catches. The Colts did neither of these things in their game against the Pats.

The Patriots offense is hard to stop, but the Eagles and Colts showed you can slow them down by doing exactly what teams have done to the Colts for the past couple years. Take away the deep ball and force them to throw underneath. This shortens the game and forces the offense to play mistake-free. The Patriots won last night because they didn’t turn the ball over, but Brady had several balls that could have been intercepted. The Eagles may have won if they had managed to force just one turnover. Credit the Patriots for a tough win, but the quest for perfection just gets tougher from here.