A five day drink fest culminated with me arriving home Sunday morning around 6 A.M. I did not go to any of my local, NFL friendly pubs on Sunday so I watched only the locally broad casted games. Here are some of my thoughts from those games.
Giants defeat Dolphins: If this game was played on a better field, the Giants would have won by a large margin. Their offensive line tore apart the Miami front 7 and Jacobs was running very hard. The Giants list Jacobs at 260 pounds. I am not sure if he is that heavy, but his muscle mass and height are impressive. He continues to run with anger and although not on display often in this game, is becoming a better blocker as the year progresses. Eli Manning did little to win the game, but maybe more importantly, did not lose the game when called upon to pass in the muck. The Dolphins still have some aging players that other teams may want via trades. Taylor and Thomas may be worth draft picks this off season and the Dolphins would be wise to listen to offers.
Watching the game, I would have guessed that half the fans at Wembley Stadium for this game were Americans living in Europe who jumped at the opportunity to see an NFL game. The rest being 30% Europeans who followed the NFL Europe league and now had the opportunity to watch an NFL game in person. The last 20% simply people who wanted to have a few beers and watch some organized violence. I am not sure of these numbers, just guessing.
The NFL has a great product. Passion, athleticism and teamwork are just three qualities that link NFL football and soccer. The one attribute that the NFL has that soccer does not, and is appealing to European countries, especially those that play rugby, is the violence that happens with every single play in the NFL. I am positive that a casual fan at the game last Sunday, a fan who never watched an NFL game before, saw the extreme level of contact and became hooked.
The NFL will never take over as the premier sport in Europe. Soccer is too popular and beautiful of a sport to lose its perch as #1. The NFL has to reach the fans by finding a way to get some NFL games on local television stations, especially during the playoffs. Have tutorials on rules and strategy before, during and after the games. The NFL Europe league was the equivalent of Triple AAA baseball so the more real NFL games Europeans get to watch, the better.
Bills defeat Jets: In what has become a common theme with Mangini, he had no confidence in his offensive line or running game when it mattered most. The Jets had the ball at the Buffalo 40 with 6 minutes to go. 3rd and 3 and I am thinking, ”this is certainly 4 down territory, give it to Jones twice and see what happens”. Wrong, incomplete pass and the Jets punted. Jones is running real hard all day behind an offensive line that had been pushing the Bill front 7 off the line and yet Mangini decided to throw and then punt. You are 1-6, at home, down by 3 late in the game and he decided to play it safe. After showing zero confidence in his line and running game repeatedly through the year, I wonder if it has creeped into his lineman’s heads, “we really do stink”. Even after the punt landed on the 3, did anyone really think that the Jets were going to stop Lynch before he got a couple of first downs? I didn’t. Congrats so far to Buffalo. They are playing hard week in and week out and seem to have a good core of young players to build on.
Packers defeat Broncos: The supposedly best CB tandem in the league got beat for the two long TD passes. First it was Champ Baily in the 1st Q and then Dre Bly in OT. I am still not sold on the Packers but I will say this. My mind is changing as I see them get a running game going. At the start of the season, I though Favre was through being an elite QB. I was wrong. Then I thought that without a running game, the Packers could not win. Wrong again. But, when the playoffs arrive, the Packers will need a decent running game to win and they may have found something in Ryan Grant. It was one game against a shaky run defense ,so let’s see how he does the next few games. If they get a ground game going, I will start to believe in this Packer team.
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5 comments:
Don't think I'd crown Buffalo just yet, they WERE playing the Jets.
I don't really think I crowned them. I said that they have a good core of young players that play hard. They did beat Baltimore last week and are two last second FGs away from being 5-2.
The more Europeans see NFL-caliber football the more they will wonder why the fuck they were entranced by the dive-fest 0-0 soccer games.
If Dick Jauron and Eric Mangini played each other in chess, it would not be a game of who wins first, but who loses more slowly . . .
Soccer is a pure, beautiful sport. Over the past 5 seasons or so, diving has been dramatically reduced due to referees giving yellow and red cards out to divers, but more importantly, players themselves are governing diving. You'll see a player dive in a game , and ten minutes later be taken out with a very hard tackle. Most soccer players are true to the game and admonish the act of diving. Do not knock an entire sport for the actions of the minority. That would be like condemning baseball because of steroid use in a small percentage of the athletes.
Soccer is for pussies.
Football is for men.
Hence, the "pitch" at Wembley is more than capable of withstanding a bunch of pussies doing ballet on it.
But when real men got on the field and played a real sport, it didn't hold up for shit.
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