NFL

Well, that was quite the week of games in the National Football League. The underdogs came to play and they came to win. The season to this point is an unpredictable one, and week 6 was a hard one to figure out. Some teams won, that most people would have given no chance. Teams that were on a role hit road blocks and some teams playoff hopes are starting to look bleak.

Cleveland Browns 35 – New York Giants 14
On Monday night the under achieving Browns beat the undefeated Giants. This was a sloppy game for both teams, lots on penalties and bad defense. The Browns haven’t shown life all year and up until this week the Giants have looked close to perfect. It was a close game until the fourth quarter, but Cleveland put up 15 unanswered points to steal the victory from the Giants. The highly touted Browns offense finally woke up, QB Derek Anderson threw for 310 yards and Braylon Edwards had 154 yards and a touchdown threw the air. Eli Manning for New York had by far his worst game of the year throwing for 3 interceptions and throwing for less then 200 yards. The key to the Browns victory was there 3rd down conversions, converting 9 of 13 for 69%, a lot of which were long yardage situations. Everyone in Cleveland hopes this game will catapult the Browns, they are talented and should be this good. No doubt the Giants fans are worried, but I think they are fine, every team has a bad game some times.

St Louis Rams 19 – Washington Redskins 17
This one is hard to explain, the Rams have been brutal and the Skins were on a roll. If you look at the box scores, before the outcome you could have easily assumed Washington won this game, but they didn’t. The Rams didn’t score an offensive touchdown, but they did get a fumble recovery TD by the defense. Neither team played overly well, both were bad at 3rd down conversions, there were 11 punts and 17 penalties in the game. The player of the game was easily Josh Brown, the kicker from St Louis, he went 4 for 4 on field goals. Brown hit a 49 yard field goal with no time left on the clock to give the Rams there 1st victory of the season. Basically the Rams stole this game, they only had 200 yards of offense, Steven Jackson had less then 80 yards on the ground and were 0 % in the Red Zone. Those aren’t winning numbers, but they did take advantage of Campbell’s one mistake when the recovered his fumble and returned it for a touchdown.  Basically I think this was one of those games, Washington may have been caught looking past St Louis and the Rams took advantage. The Rams fans should be happy, they got a win, and the for Washington fans hopefully your team learned a lesson that they will use for the rest of the season.

Arizona Cardinals 30 – Dallas Cowboys 24
This was the game of the week, and the underdog Cards pulled it out in over time. This game ended as dramatic as a football game can end, Cowboys Kicker Nick Folk hit a 52 yard field goal with no time remaining in regulation to force overtime. In overtime the Cardinals block a punt and scored a touchdown to beat the heavily favored Cowboys. If you like to watch passing offenses I hope you watched this game, combined the teams had 520 plus yards threw the air. Dallas is the best team on paper in the NFL, but they haven’t looked very good for 3 straight weeks now. Owens had less then 40 receiving yards and they only rushed for 73 yards as a team. The Cards on the other hand are playing great football and look like they might be surprise competitors in the NFC this season. Dallas lost this game on the defense and offensive lines and will need to fix that if they want to win a Super Bowl this year. That is not going to get any easier with QB Tony Romo being hurt and the suspension of “Pacman” Jones. The Cardinals need to keep working hard, they play in a weak division and look like they are the favorites to get into the playoffs.

San Diego Chargers 30 – New England Patriots 10
Not a big surprise that the Chargers won this game, but I was surprised at how easy it was. San Diego jumped out to a 27 – 3 lead and controlled the entire game. The Chargers scored with relative ease and the Patriots had no answer. For the Patriots it might be time to consider that they might struggle all year with Matt Cassel at QB. He can’t seem to get the ball to Randy Moss and on top of that the Patriot run game is almost non existent. For San Diego Rivers is playing great at QB and as Tomlinson gets healthier they will start to take control of the AFC. I never thought I would say this, but the Patriots will have to figure out a way to move the ball and play some defense or they will miss the playoffs. The Chargers started slow last year as well and I think this win will help them become the best team in the AFC for the rest of the year. New England is going to have to battle every week and if they don’t they might be in big trouble.

Week 6 was a perfect example of anything can happen in the NFL. Undefeated teams can lose and the underdogs can win. I should mention that the Detroit Lions almost made this list after they gave the Vikings a run, but came up short in the end. This was a great week of football and I can’t wait for week 7.