UNOBSTRUCTED VIEW - NFL week 2

Presented by Dale Sims

Well the season has finally started and the foggy optimism that surrounded the off-season changes and the preseason games has been exposed in the cold light of games that count.  This is also a time when fans look at one game and either decide that their situation is hopeless or that the Super Bowl result is a given.

Looking Back

The first week of the season is just a beginning of what will be a long and exciting season.  There are some things that looked interesting in week one and there were certainly some surprises.  The eleven wins by road teams is certainly not a normal week in the NFL.  Three shutouts in one weekend are also unusual and emphasized the general lack of scoring.  The total number of points scored this weekend from a quick sample I looks like the lowest in perhaps a decade maybe more.

A tradition of week one games is that the defenses are typically ahead of the offenses in terms of being game ready.  The offense generally requires more in the way of timing and the nature of how preseason games are played is not adequate preparation.  Players do not get to play together on the field under game conditions and the speed in preseason games is dialed down from true game speed.

Certainly the Bears, Chargers, and Ravens all exemplified the ascendancy of the defense in week one with shutouts.  Only one team broke the thirty-point barrier and nineteen teams scored under twenty with the average team score being just over seventeen points a game, about three and a half points per game less than last seasons average.

There seems to have been a trend in the week one where quarterbacks seem to be rolling out more.  This works at lower levels of the game but is not a good strategy in today’s NFL game.  The problem is that it gives the offense only half the field to play with.  To try to make a play to the off side gives defenders too much time to recover to the ball, and without a quarterback with exceptional arm strength, will lead to interceptions. 

This can be used as a change of pace but as a regular strategy, it is not effective.  Some teams with questionable offensive lines seem to have independently arrived at this approach and it is a way to slow down a pass rush.  It does expose the quarterback to blitzes and stunts to the same side as the roll out, but obviously, gains to the same play on the offside.  The other consideration is that the offensive linemen are less clear on where the quarterback will set up; it makes blocking more difficult.

Some teams do this because they have mobile quarterbacks who can throw on the run; McNabb, Vick, and Culpepper all have this in their repertoire as a change of pace.  Other teams are using this hoping to protect their quarterbacks because of deficiencies in their offensive lines, Houston and Green Bay leap to mind as examples.  (It can also be used to make the quarterback reads easier, he only reads half the field, a maximum of two or three reads.)  If the trend continues, the offenses will become steadily less effective.

A Second Look

Although the Patriots managed to come from behind the Buffalo at New England game the Patriots being down by ten certainly was a half time shocker.  In a not so surprising turn of events the Patriots came back to win.  This is a team the Patriots should have dominated; expect them to be better next week.  The real frightening thing for the Patriots line is that the pass blocking was very poor, making Brady look decidedly human.

The Atlanta at Carolina game was a bit of a surprise, perhaps it should not have been.  From the Atlanta side they have made many moves to help their defense.  Certainly, John Abraham has helped them but they also improved their rushing defense in this game.  The Panthers were missing Steve Smith who accounted for almost half of their offense last year, and it showed.  Where the real surprise came was the thirteen-minute difference in the time of possession.

It is always difficult to win on the road but the Denver at St Louis result surely came as a surprise.  Denver in general and Jake Plummer in particular looked really bad against a St Louis defense that no one is expecting too much from.  They lost, as one would expect a team that commits five turnovers to do; this is the first week of the Jay Cutler watch in Denver.

Baltimore won on the road stifling the Tampa Bay offense.  The questions here that will be answered in future weeks is the Raven defense that good or is the Buccaneer offense that bad.  The likely answer will be a little of both, when healthy the Ravens have some of the best defensive players in the NFL.  Simms is still very early in his career, there are going to be some growing pains, and they have questions on their offensive line that have to be answered.

Another quarterback who needs to turn things around is Culpepper.  His physical recovery from last season is remarkable, but his mental recovery is not looking so good.  His late play in the fourth quarter of the Pittsburgh play was a reprise of the early 2005 season.  He was having problems with his reads and simply not seeing the field well.  He was never great in high-pressure situations in big games but this is a regression, and worrisome for the hopes of the Dolphins.

Observations

Week 1 is a bit different from any other week in the NFL; teams began preparing for each other literally weeks ago.  The result of this is sometimes surprising particularly early in the game and tests the abilities of a coaching staff to make game time adjustments.  You can get a good idea of the coaching quality by the ability of teams to make game adjustments coming out of half time.

The other unknown, is the team chemistry that exists as they go into the season.  Every year every team changes and the results are often much greater, one direction or another, than anyone can tell from the outside.  These subtle differences are hard to predict but they certainly show up in the scores.

Tennessee looks to be a team that has real potential for collapse.  The changes in the locker room in the off-season were substantial and the revolving quarterback situation makes that much worse.  Jeff Fisher is a very good coach but the front office looks to be jerking him around pretty good, it looks like he is destined to be one of the coaching casualties for this season.

Dale “at” footballforecasters.com