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Ten Piece Nuggets-Football

By: boom booms room staff on

Ok, ok.  You’re hungry for some Monday nuggets.  The kitchen opened a bit late while practicing social distancing, but into the grease we go.  Buffet style is so out of style, COVID -19 concerns you know.  We break that trend below.

  1.  The Houston Texans fired a coach/GM last Monday.  Yesterday, they played pretty well for interim coach Romeo Crennel against the visiting Jacksonville Jags and won their first game of 2020.  They’re 1-4 as the schedule gets easier than it started.  Yesterday, after their 5th loss without a win the Atlanta Falcons fired their coach and GM as well.  In Houston that was one person, in Atlanta that was Dan Quinn and Thomas Dimitroff.
  2. Quinn came to the Falcons four-plus years ago from his DC position in Seattle.  He immediately installed a mean and opportunistic defense.  It finished 2017, his year one, as the statistically rated 8th best in the NFL.  Unfortunately, it also finished year one blowing a 28-3 Super Bowl lead to the NE Patriots.  In subsequent years it finished 25th and 23rd.  After five games this year it’s been shredded game and time again.  It’s tied for dead last.  Worse, they’re 25 million over the projected cap for 2021 and that’s before any COVID-related cap reductions rumored to slow the payroll roll in the NFL.
  3.  New York and New York join the lowly Falcons as the only other teams that have yet to post a victory in the NFL this year.  Those Jets are some bad.  The Giants are pretty bad, too.  They grabbed defeat from the jaws of victory yesterday.  Back up QB Andy Dalton lead a last-second drive for Dallas including a 38-yard pass just prior to the game-winning Cowboys filed goal.
  4. Dalton finished the game because Dak Prescott didn’t.  If you missed why consider yourself among the lucky ones.  Officially, the Cowboys announced that Prescott suffered a compound fracture and dislocation of his right ankle, which means the bone penetrated his skin as part of the injury.  Unofficially, they didn’t announce that when Giant Logan Ryan tackled Prescott on a designed QB draw his foot came out of the pile still attached to his body but facing the wrong way relative to the rest of his leg.  You might not want to watch, but if you must, it’s right here.
  5. If you don’t need smelling salts from that video and if you’re a Seattle Seahawks fan you might want to invest in a box.  They’ve won 14 of their last 16 one-possession games going back into last season.  No other NFL team has played in more than 10 and none have won more than eight, save the Seahawks.  Russell Wilson was gold again down the stretch.  He led a 94-yard game-winning drive while converting two fourth downs along the way to pull victory from the jaws of defeat.  This time Minnesota was the last second victim, falling 27-26 at the sound of the final gun.
  6.  There isn’t a better 1-4 team in the league than Minnesota, but as Bill Parcels says, “you are what your record says you are.”  And at 1-4 the Vikings are staring up at all of their North Division foes.  The good news is that they are only 0-1 in the division.  The ground can be made up. The bad news is that their usually fine defense has surrendered 152 points.  Only the Cowboys and Giants are worse.
  7. Don’t look now, but there is a team coming together out west in a new town and in a new stadium.  And it can score points in bunches.  The formerly Oakland, now Las Vegas Raiders put 40 points up on their longtime division rival and reigning SB champion Kansas City Chiefs last evening.  Only Seattle, and Dallas, and Cleveland (yes Cleveland) have scored more.  NFL insiders have snickered for two full years as Mike Mayock and Jon Gruden have assembled a team built a bit differently than conventional wisdom tries to dictate.  Snicker away.  Their D is lacking, but their confidence in their direction isn’t.
  8.  Turning to the NCAA, when a Nick Saban Alabama defense and an LSU defense gives up 48 and 44 points on a given Saturday, one must ask, “is defense dead in NCAA football?”  In 2011, those teams met twice.  In the regular season LSU won in Tuscaloosa 9-6.  In the then BCS Championship game the Tide shut LSU out 21-0.  That’s 36 points scored by four teams in two games.  Saturday, four teams in two games, Alabama v Ole Miss, and Missouri v LSU combined to score exactly 200 points in their two games.
  9. Has the game changed that much in one decade?  The answer in a word is, yes.  The RPO, running QB’s, dual-threat QB’s, spread concepts, four and five wides, and matchup mismatches have given the offense the upper hand.  If you throw in a few overtime games to boot, betting the over has been all over the money.  Maybe the Pac 12 and Big 12 were just ahead of their time.
  10.  And, finally, LeBron, Anthony Davis, and a few other Lakers won the franchise’s 17th NBA title last evening.  Impressive.  It’s LeBron’s fourth NBA title and with them, he’s captured 4 MVPs in the final as well.  Impressive times four.  And, he wants his damn respect.  Someday he might get it.

Get back to work!