The Good, The Bad, The Ugly - Week 2

The season has flown by as we already have our eyes on the third week of the NFL season. It feels like not that long ago, we were spending Sundays with family and friends instead of in front of our televisions watching hours of America's favorite game.

Yeah I said it...Football >> Baseball

Head coach Doug Monroe has his Bills sitting at 2-0
(Photo courtesy of syracuse.com)

Well another week is in the books and it left us with plenty of ooh and ahh moments!

Its this week's Good, Bad, and Ugly

The Good
-Many surprising teams are off to a hot start starting 2-0 on the year. The Buffalo Bills, Houston Texans, and Arizona Cardinals are all surprise teams atop their division. The Bills have been led by a stout defense and a decent run game. Texans are relying on their defense to keep them in games and lastly the Cardinals have one of the better passing attacks in the league in addition to a pretty solid defense. As all three of these teams will likely level off in the coming weeks; I think the Cardinals are legit. As I mentioned before they have an above average passing attack led by Larry Fitzgerald, Malcom Floyd, and rookie John Brown. They have a phenomenal pass catching back in Andre Ellington. Oh and they have one of the top 5 defenses in the league. I think the Cardinals will definitely make some noise in the NFC West.

 

- For all the crap I throw at the Dallas Cowboy's you have to be amazed at the 180 that the team

seemed to have done in the past week. The Cowboy's "terrible" defense held the Titans to only 10 points and looked good doing it. In all honesty, one way to counter a terrible defense is to keep the ball away from the opposing offense and that is exactly what they did. Dallas decided to put the game on the on the shoulders of their running back, DeMarco Murray and did he ever deliver. Murray went off for 167 yards and a touchdown as he shredded the Titans defense. If Dallas can continue this ball control style type offense, and if Murray can stay healthy (a big "if" there), then Dallas could actually surprise some people and challenge for the NFC East title.

The Bad
-The Jets looked hot coming out of the gate, up 21-3 against Green Bay at Lambeau. The Packers defense couldn’t stop a thing as the Jets were clicking on all cylinders. The Jets decided to coast in the second half as out of nowhere Green Bay got the offense rolling and scored 21 unanswered points to go up 24-21. Down 7 with under 2 minutes to play down 31-24, Jets’ quarterback Geno Smith threw up a prayer to Jeremy Kerley in the endzone. Kerley comes down with and Packers fans hang their head as this game looks to be heading into overtime. It wasn’t until after the play that the refs said play should have stopped as the Jets called for a timeout prior to the snap. The timeout was given to the Jets as offensive coordinator, Marty Mornhinweg, comes running down the sideline to stop the clock. It seems that every the Jets have some play or instance define their season, whether it’s the Butt Fumble of 2012 or the drafting of Sanchize in 2009…this is another one of those “Jets” moments. 

-How bad does the New Orleans Saints defense look right now? Their Week 1 loss to Atlanta can be attributed to Atlanta’s high powered offense. However, I’m not sure what their last second loss to the Browns can be attributed to. Not to mention, Atlanta’s“high-powered” offense looked pedestrian against Cincinnati this past weekend. After giving up a record number of yards a few years ago, the Saints decided to go out and get defensive coordinator Rob Ryan which seemed to have fixed the issue last year. Fast forward to this year, and the Saints have given up over 800 yards to opposing offense, including over 300 to the Browns. I’m not sure what is going on in New Orleans, but Rob Ryan needs to find a solution or he could be fighting for his job at the end of this year.

The Ugly
-The recent case against Adrian Peterson further casts a shadow over what has been a miserable week for the NFL. I won’t rehash the details, as they’ve been on about every sports channel non-stop. Last week the Vikings made the correct move in deactivating Peterson against the Patriots. Earlier this week, Vikings’ owner Zygi Wilf, reinstated Peterson only to deactivate him again last night. One has to wonder, if the Vikings only activated because of how badly they got beat by New England. It wasn’t until public backlash caused Wilf to change course.

The NFL needs to step in on cases like this, early and before public backlash. If the decision is left up to the teams, of course they are going to keep their star players in. Take Carolina for example. Defensive tackle, Greg Hardy, played Week 1 despite being accused of domestic violence that makes what Ray Rice did seem like nothing. Yet again, it wasn’t until the public fired back, that Carolina eventually changed its decision and deactivated Hardy. 

There needs to be a policy in place where the league is the first to step up and discipline these players not the team. Until that happens, there will continue to be stories like this. These types of stories not only paint the NFL in a negative light, but are an embarrassment to people like myself who call themselves fans of the game.