Week 3 Wrap Up

By Brett | Permalink | No Comments | September 25th, 2006 | Trackback

We’re only a few weeks into the ‘06 season, but we’re already starting to learn a little bit about each of the teams in the NFL. We’re also learning that, much like most of the experts out there, we can’t pick winners to save our arse (let’s just forget that we ever had that conversation about the Giants going out to Seattle and coming home with a W).

Week 3 was notable for a few reasons. First, there were two milestone acheivements from QBs: Brett Favre getting his 400th TD pass, and Mark Brunell connecting on his first 22 passes. Second, while we’re not really starting to separate the contenders from the pretenders, we now have a firm grasp on which teams really suck — Tampa Bay, Detroit, Tennessee, and Cleveland. And, of course, the Raiders, but they were (mercifully) on a bye.

We took a few other nuggets away from this weekend’s games:

Jacksonville vs. Indy
The AFC North is looking very much like it did last year, and we’d be stunned if both of these teams aren’t in the playoffs again. We’ll also be stunned if either of them represent the AFC in the Super Bowl, because neither team can fix their biggest weakness. Indy can’t stop the run, and Jacksonville can’t score points.

Cincinnati vs. Pittsburgh
Carson Palmer took a beating in this one, but made enough clutch throws to come out of Pittsburgh with the win. This was a huge win for Cincinnati, and a bad loss for Pittsburgh. Ben Roethlisberger has looked awful in two games this year. The ground game is still there for the Steelers, but the passing game is nowhere to be seen.

Green Bay vs. Detroit
Green Bay sucks. Detroit sucks worse. What do you know? We figured it was the other way around.

Tennessee vs. Miami
After their week one loss to Pittsburgh, we figured Miami would be fine. They were a couple late turnovers and a questionable call away from beating the champs. After their week 2 loss to Buffalo, we thought, ok, they’ve got further to go than we thought. After beating Tennessee by 3 at home? This is, at best, a 6 win team.

Washington vs. Houston
The big story here was Brunell going 22-22 to start the game. The bigger story, though, in our opinion, was the return of Clinton Portis, who makes this offense work. We watched all 22 of Brunell’s throws. Exactly one of those throws as down the field. The rest were dump-offs, screens, and and quick tosses to the outside. Great job by Al Saunders of designing a gameplan that played into Brunell’s strenths. Of course, it helps that they were playing the Texans, but if Saunders can continue to gameplan like that –and we’re certain that he can, his brainfart last week against Dallas notwithstanding– the Skins can still be a bitch of a team to play.

Baltimore vs. Cleveland
Cleveland, at 0-3, isn’t as bad as we thought they were. Baltimore, at 3-0, isn’t as good as we thought they were. Didn’t matter in this one though.

NYG vs. Seattle
Looks like Seattle’s recovered from that Super Bowl hangover. The Giants could easily, easily be 0-3 right now. That team has some huge issues, not the least of which is bad chemistry.

Philadelphia vs. San Francisco
Frank Gore is going to start getting death threats from fantasy owners if he keeps fumbling at the 1 yard line. Brian Westbrook, on the other hand, is a fantasy owner’s wet dream right now.

St. Louis vs. Arizona
Two teams that really didn’t want to win this one. Strange ending. All we’ll say is, we’re glad that Kurt Warner isn’t the QB of our favorite team.

Denver vs. New England
The Jake Plummer era in Denver may not be as close to ending as some would like to think. He proved us wrong (but who the hell are we, anyway?) by getting a big win in Foxboro. Not sure that anyone is really noticing, but Denver’s defense is flat-out nasty. Oh, and New England played in this one, too, but you couldn’t really notice ‘em.

Chicago vs. Minnesota
Love what Brad Childress is doing in Minnesota right now. He and his staff got the better of the chess game in this one, and should have come out of it with a victory. The Bears defense is for real, but their tackling needs to improve. Offensively, if the Bears can’t get the ground game going soon –like, say, next Sunday against Seattle– they’re going to find themselves in trouble, because Rex Grossman easily could’ve ended up with 4 INTs in this game. There’s no reason this team should be throwing the ball over 40 times in a close game.

Carolina vs. Tampa Bay
Steve Smith is back. Get ready for Carolina to rattle off 10 wins over the next 14 weeks.

NYJ vs. Buffalo
Both of these teams are better than we thought they’d be. But JP Losman is fucking tool.

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