SLADE'S GRADES WEEK 7

Seven weeks of the NFL season are now in the books and things are starting to take shape.  The good teams are separating from the pack causing their fan bases to rethink booking that family vacation in mid-January.  No one wants to be the poor bastard who misses their team win a divisional round home game because they were ‘busy making holiday memories with their wife and kids’, gross.   The bad teams are sinking deeper into the Super-Mario-2-like quicksand of an early offseason, causing their fan bases to study more college QB prospect game film than Mel Kiper Jr. & Mike Mayock combined.  The middling teams are riding the parody rollercoaster of the NFL, looking like mentally tough challengers one week, and just plain mentally challenged the next.  Causing their fan bases to delude themselves into thinking that ‘any week now, their guys are going to put it all together and make their run’.  After all, who knows what pebble tossed into what pond could create the ripples of destiny that could lead your squad to a Lombardi Trophy?  We’ve seen it before.  Trent Green blows out his knee or Drew Bledsoe gets destroyed on a sideline tackle and two nobodies that you never heard of before named Warner and Brady respectively decide that would be a perfect moment for them to ignite a Hall of Fame career and lead their unassuming teams to a championship season.  Hell, maybe Drew Stanton or Matt Moore, or Case Keenum is that guy, and maybe this is your team’s year!  Probably not.  But maybe.  You’ve got to have hope in this life and that is why this is a great time of year to be a football fan.  Win/loss records are beginning to echo reality, but there is still enough time left on the clock and enough hope left in our hearts to not let a little thing like reality rain on our soon to come Super Bowl Parade.

Let’s take a closer look at week 7 in this week’s passes and fails.

*Grading scale:
Pass = A plus – C minus
Fail = D plus – F minus
(C’s gets degrees but D’s don’t)

Week 7 Passes:

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It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia:  A

Don’t look now but the Eagles have the best record in football at 6-1 and they just roughed up a not-that-terrible Washington Redskins team for all to see on Monday Night Football, giving them the season sweep over the Skins and a 3-game lead in the NFC East.  Doug Peterson looks like anything but a neophyte head coach with nary a season and half under his belt.  And Carson Wentz looks like anything but a 2^nd year signal caller out of a 1 AA school in North Dakota.  In fact he looks like an MVP candidate.  No really, he’s currently leading the NFL in TD passes with 17 and he’s not making a lot of mistakes like most young QBs do.  He only has 4 interceptions and seems to have a knack for making a play on 3^rd down.  With a creditable power running game behind a sturdy O-line and a menacing defense, this Eagles team isn’t just the team to beat in the NFC East, they are playing better ball than anyone in their conference.  A lot can happen between now and January but this team seems to have the Colonel’s Herb & Spice formula to success and have the Philly fans thinking playoffs. 

Rams May Be for Real: B-

The young LA Rams team is leading the league in scoring offense and have a division leading record of 5-2.  You can’t say enough about the job new head coach Sean McVay has done with this team so far this year.  The fact that McVay is just 31 years old is still staggering to me.  He’s like this decade’s version of Lane Kiffin minus the toxic personality.  I must admit that despite what they’ve already accomplished so far during this season’s campaign and the apparent change of culture McVay and his coaching staff has brought to this franchise, I am still somewhat apprehensive on buying them as a playoff ready platoon.  The stench of Jeff Fisher’s mustache still shrouds this organization for me and I fear at some point the other shoe will drop and it will rear its ugly 7-9 head.  This isn’t the first time a young offensive virtuoso turned head coach has started out hot.  Remember the 2009 Denver Broncos?  Josh McDaniels stormed on to the scene with a 6-0 record, then after their bye week they went on to win exactly 2 more games that season to finish a disappointing 8-8.  This Rams franchise hasn’t finished a season above 500 since 2003 so you must excuse me if I’m slightly skeptical of their legitimacy as a contender at this point in the season.  That’s at no fault of the current regime, if McVay and his coaches have indeed awoken the blue-chip talent on the Rams roster that sleepwalked through the Fisher administration and it’s here to stay, then he’ll be on my short list for Coach of the Year consideration.    

Raiders Stop the Bleeding: B

The Oakland Raiders and Kansas City Chiefs had one of the great Thursday night games in recent memory in week 7.  Alex Smith and Derek Carr threw it all over the lot and Amari Cooper and Tyreek Hill showed the country what true deep south speed looks like.  Although it ended somewhat controversially, the way the refs kept calling defensive penalties to give the Raiders one last shot after another made some Chiefs fans feel like heel ref Dangerous Danny Davis and Bobby the Brain Heenan may have had a hand in it, there is no arguing that it was an exciting tilt from wire to wire.  The Raiders were on a 4-game losing streak and absolutely needed to pull this one out against their division leading foe.   They may have lost Marshawn Lynch to a one game suspension but they gained a ton of confidence that they will surely need heading in to a 2-game road trip against fellow AFC wildcard contenders Buffalo and Miami.  At 3-4 they are nowhere near out of the woods yet but at least for now they’ve elevated themselves out of the ‘desperate’ category which was good enough to earn them a passing grade this week. 

Week 7 Fails:

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Elliott vs. The NFL:  F

I am so sick of the ‘will he or won’t he start his 6-game suspension’ saga that is the Ezekial Elliott case.  There are appeals and restraining orders involved, it’s an NFL suspension, not some dirt bag Doller Store wrongful termination dispute for Christ’s sake.  Every week the reports tell us ‘this will be the week that he starts his suspension’, then at the 11th hour some lawyer files some random paper work and some judge denies a request for a preliminary injunction (or some shit, I’m not a lawyer) and just like that the day is saved and Zeek can play, at least until next week.  It’s like the shitty plotline to an episode of Suits.  Come to think of it, it’s like the shitty plotline to every episode of Suits.  Poor Alfred Morris has been added and dropped from the waiver wire in your fantasy football league so many times his head must be spinning.  I understand there are processes to these things and the wheels of justice move slow and all of that, but seriously, I am beyond sick of hearing about it, shit or get off the pot, suspend him or don’t.  I sincerely apologize for the high curse-word count in this rant but I have officially run out of preverbal fucks to give.  At this point unless young Al Pacino crashes the courtroom and starts yelling at everyone that “They are out of order!” or middle aged Al Pacino crashes the court room and yells at everyone that if he was a younger man “He’d take a flamethrower to this place!” then I simply don’t want to hear about it anymore.  Hooah!

Injury to Insult:  F-

The Cleveland Browns lost a hideous game to the Titans in Cleveland last week 12-9 in overtime.  The Browns losing is nothing new, but this time something else happened, something new and devastating.  They lost the face of their franchise, left tackle Joe Thomas.  Thomas suffered a torn triceps and the Browns announced on Monday that he is projected to miss the rest of the season.  The injury ends what has been an amazing iron-man's streak.  Thomas has not only started every single game in his 11-year career, but dude’s never even taken a play off.  That is 167 games and 10,363 consecutive plays!! At the tackle position!!! On a notoriously and consistently bad football team!!!! He’s only been a part of one winning season in his whole career and that was in his rookie year of 2007, and they still missed the playoffs at 10-6.  Thomas never requested a trade or trashed talked any of the laundry list of bum QB’s that the team propped up behind him.  All he did was pack his all-pro lunch pail and went to work every day.  The league is a lot better with him on the field so hopefully his recovery is a fast one. 

Falcons Floundering:   D-

After starting the season 3-0 the Falcons have since lost 3 straight and are currently reeling in a suddenly competitive NFC South division.  Week 7 was the long awaited Super Bowl rematch against the Patriots.  The Falcons came into week 7 off of an even fresher collapse after blowing a 17-point halftime lead against the Dolphins and not many people gave them a shot against the champs in New England.  Those people were right.  The Falcons came out flatter than piss in a puddle on Sunday Night Football.  The defense got picked apart by Brady who completed 21/29 passes for 2 TDs and the Falcons offense was atrocious.  They were blanked for 3 + quarters and were only able to get anything going during garbage time late in the 4^th.  This is concerning for a team that for the first three weeks of the season looked like the runaway favorite to represent the NFC in the Super Bowl again.  Atlanta is hoping that relief will come next week in the form of a Jets team that is mediocre at best.  The words must-win get thrown around a lot in today’s NFL and usually its hyperbole, but the Falcons are squarely at a crossroads and their week 8 date in New York with the Jets will be a crucial test that they need to pass.