Bellwether's NFL musings Week 2 - 3

After two weeks of football, I can't claim to have any answers. There's just too little data to go on. Still, there's some thing's we have learned.

• Things I know for sure:
  The Rams are the worst team in the NFL
  The Packers will be good if Rogers stays healthy
  The Bears never have to apologize for reaching for Forte
  Jonathan Stewart is good at sports
  Jeff Fisher is one of the best coaches in the NFL
  The Steelers are always better than you think. Even if you already think they'll be good
  The Lions are always worse than you think. Even if you already think they'll be bad
  
  
• Things I'm pretty sure about:
  The Giants are a good football team
  
  The Pats are still the best team in the NFL
  The Denver/San Diego rematch Week 17 will decide the AFC West
  
  
• Despite several warts, Football Night in America is worth my time to see Olberman and Patrick reunited. That said, the actual Sunday night game is horribly overproduced.
  
  
• I'm not going to say that Fox just conjured the "passing levels" thing out of whole cloth, but they put more emphasis on it during yesterday's Bears game than the sum of times it's been mentioned in every other NFL broadcast in 30 years.
  
  
• I love the new coin toss rules. It's about time. A lot of teams are going to be deferring.
  
  
• Early returns have the AFC North winning it's annual battle against the NFC East in the contest to see which division has the most mind numblingly booring games.
  
  
• After all these years of transitioning from a legitimate media outlet into a marketing firm, there's been ONE segment on ESPN "programming" that I still liked, and now they've fucked that up too. SportsCenter's "Pump Up The Volume" is football highlights with local radio calls underneath. Now, about a third of the highlights have press conference or post game interview audio under them. On the horribly rare chance any of these meatheads say anything relevant, I guarentee it's important enough to play at another point in the show.
  
  *SIGH* I hate ESPN.
  
  
• Philly/Dallas did not disappoint. Any time the NFL wants to have an 75 point game, I'm there. We got one with San Diego/Denver too, and even though the Chargers got completely HOSED I picked the Broncos, so it all worked out.
  
  
• I believe New Orleans will beat Denver, Arizona will beat Washington, Cleveland will beat Baltimore, and Chicago will beat Tampa Bay.
  

Bellwether's NFL Musings Week 1 - 2

• Billy McMullen, Samie Parker, Courtney Taylor, and Logan Payne.
  
  Everyone who's heard of one of those guys, raise your hand
  
  Now, now, keep em up so I can count...
  
  nobody?
  
  Yeah, me either. Those are the four active Wide Receivers on the Seattle Seahawks' roster.
  
  Perhaps I'm basing my opinion on familiarity, but I'd take any 4 of the Bears 6 receivers over those 4 schlubs any day of the week. Arizona's going to win the NFC West.

• It's funny to me that Vince Young has realized what many in the national media still fail to, that he's bad at football.

• If you're New England, don't you have to feel like Hubris has come to bite you in the ass? I'm not one who actively roots against the Pats, I actually kinda like Bill Bellechek and his whole "cold, heartless, arrogant, bastard" personality. I still think they're one of, if not the best team in football, but Matt Cassel? Really? That's your backup plan? I understand you can't go out and sign a mulit-million dollar backup, but there are better options than Matt Cassel. Like Chris Simms, who they weren't interested in.
  
  Back when the Favre saga was in the "maybe he'll take 20MM from Green Bay to go away" phase, I told a few people that if I was the Pats, I'd have called him and asked if he'd be interested in being Tom Brady's backup. If Favre had a price to go away, maybe he had a price just to stay off the field. The Patriots would have given him the BEST chance to win another title, and there would have been plenty of opportunity for him to play when they were up 55-7 in the 4th quarter.
  
  Now realize, I don't think Favre ever, ever, ever would have agreed to this, but it would have been worth a phone call. Regardless, I'm sure the Pats can still win the Superbowl with Matt Cassel (seriously) but they could be in a much better position if they'd have signed a known commodity to back up Brady.
  
  
• I'm so pissed at the Bears for resigning Fred Miller. What the hell, guys? Fred Miller blows. Keep Kirk Barton and go with it. He's a backup tackle. Offensive tackles are so expensive that your #3 is almost certainly going to be bad. It's so much better to be bad and young than bad and old.
  
  
• I can't wait for MNF this week. Eagles at Cowboys? Yes sir!
  
  
• Kudos to the Falcons. At no point this season did I ever think they'd look as impressive as they did on Sunday. It just goes to show, the more things change, the more they stay the same the Lions still can't win on the road.
  
  
• I really enjoyed watching the Giants on Thursday night. They remind me of a late 80s early 90s NFL team... I can't fully qualify this. The Jacobs/Ward combo has a lot to do with it. The last team I remember who succeeded with Thunder/Thunder as their 1/2 combo were the Bettis/Fuamatu-Ma'afala Steeler teams. Again, though completely unqualifiable, this Giants team feels more like it would fit in Tecmo Super Bowl than any other team in the league.
  
  
• I think Denver will beat San Diego, San Francisco will beat Seattle, Buffalo will beat Jacksonville and Cincinnati will beat Tennessee.