By Jeremy Dennis
@menace524
That was a wild week of football, wasn’t it? For a weekend that was not supposed to contain a marquee match-up, there was a lot of crazy things that went down. Let’s hop on the boat in the River Styx and take pity on those down below.
Circle 1 - Limbo
The Pittsburgh Steelers and New Orleans Saints. As of this writing, the quarterbacks for these two clubs, Roethlisberger and Brees, will be out for the season and six weeks respectively. That leaves Mason Rudolph and Teddy Bridgewater at the helm for these teams. Both quarterbacks have shown that they have the talent to compete. However, both quarterbacks also lost this week. Let’s see if these guys can keep their respective teams competitive in 2019.
Circle 2 - Lust
John Gruden and the Oakland Raiders. After week one, the Black Hole was in a fervor. Oakland defeated Denver quite soundly and Raider Nation was ready to book plans for the Super Bowl. After the first quarter against the Chiefs, the great play continued as they led Kansas City 10-0. Mahomes dropped a 28-spot in the second quarter and that was all she wrote. Let’s see if Oakland can prove legitimacy against the Vikings on the road in Week 3.
Circle 3 - Gluttony
Bowl Games. A deal has been inked between the ACC and the American Athletic Conference to have a bowl game at Fenway Park in 2020. If you are scoring at home, there will be 43 bowl games in 2020. If you take out the championship game, there will be 84 different teams playing during bowl season. Aren’t there just 120ish teams in the FBS division? Ladies and Gentlemen! Welcome to the Miralax Bowl between 4-8 Wyoming and 5-7 South Alabama! Yeah, I will still bet on it though...
Circle 4 - Greed
Author’s note: I am going to use the exact writing I did last week because it is apparent that the Miami Dolphins have decided that playing football isn’t important. I will underline my
changes: C’mon New England Patriots, will you stop scoring on Miami already? After the first 30, you should have just let Jarrett Stidham run the football. Lord knows, he would have done it. Heck, you should have just knelt on the ball while the floundering fish tried to run some offense. 43 points later, the Patriots now have every fantasy football owner trying to get the entire offensive team on waivers.
Circle 5 - Anger
Me, again. As a matter of fact, this probably should be a weekly column of how I get hosed by back-door covers in the last 30 seconds of football games. Exhibit 1: Alabama-South Carolina. Last couple of minutes in the game and Alabama is covering 47-16 on a 25.5 point spread. The Crimson Tide have only allowed a field goal in the second half against the Gamecocks, so things are looking up. SC precedes to go on an 11-play, 76-yard drive and score with 11 seconds left to make the spread 24. Exhibit 2: Bears-Broncos. My Bears -2.5 is looking good here with less than three minutes to go. The vaunted Chicago defense hasn’t given up a touchdown all game until Joe Flacco converts two fourth downs and puts them in the end zone. THEN! The Broncos decided to go for two instead of overtime which they get. The Bears take the ball and win the game on a field goal. Chicago wins by two...
Circle 6 - Heresy
The aforementioned football schedule. Outside of Rams-Saints, there was not a game, college or pro, that had an interesting match-up. With apologies to the State of Iowa and Packers-Vikings, there just really wasn’t much to watch. Next week will be much better with Notre Dame-Georgia, Michigan-Wisconsin, Oakland-Minnesota, Baltimore-Kansas City, just to name a few.
Circle 7 - Violence
The fans residing in Tallahassee wearing the garnet and gold. Let’s think about this: Since the start of the 2018 season, the Florida State Seminoles have 6 wins and 9 losses. Have they had this poor of a stretch at any time since Bobby Bowden was coaching? If it has, I don’t remember it and I am old. Hell, I am a member of Generation X. What’s worse: the only win of this year for the Seminoles was an overtime victory against Louisiana-Monroe.
Circle 8 - Fraud
The Maryland Terrapins. You know what? I knew better. Every year, it seems like the Terps have a crazy-good start including beating Texas a couple of times. Then, once Week Three or Four comes around, they have about as much success playing football as our President does in predicting hurricanes. Yet, I thought this year would be different. WRONG! Temple beat them bloody on both sides of the ball. The turtles went from scoring 70 a game to 17.
Circle 9 - Treachery
Les Miles, what the hell was that?!? Kansas averaged 9 points in two games against vaunted foes like Indiana State and Coastal Carolina. A trip to Boston College was surely going to be a blood-bath. What ensued was Kansas rolling up 329 yards rushing and 48 points on the hapless Eagles. I might be a little bitter because I listed Boston College in my Top-10 college bets, but whatever.