- The Broncos (rob) and 49ers (me) both are West Coast teams that travel to the East to play early Sunday games, always good for some sleepy early-game fumbling around. It’s 10am PST when they start the game, meaning players need to be awake at upwards of 5 or 6am to get started, and I barely muster the alarm clock to even be awake to watch at 10am.
- ESPN released a new QB rating system recently that they call the Total QBR. You can check out week 2's numbers here. It's better than the original quarterback rating because it's got a reasonable scale: max is 100, average is 50. By scoring an 80, you can expect that quarterback to have been better than 80% of QBs out there for that week. You'll see Tony Romo at 94 (you get bonus weighting if your quarterbacking was especially clutch) and Luke McCown at the bottom with 0.4 (!). Some unexpected fellows are at the top with Tony and Tom Brady, like Ryan Fitzpatrick (shakes fist) and Jason Campbell...
- The Redskin’s defenders have mentioned that they will be purposefully targeting injuries on the various Cowboy’s players in their upcoming Monday night tilt. It’s nothing new, though it’s not exactly polite to make those kinds of intentions public. Though Tony Romo appears to have been fitted for a bullet-proof vest, I'm sure Alison is crossing her fingers for a return of John Kitna. A lot of the offense is hurting and may be in the infirmary at gametime, which is good news for Alison, bad news for the rest of us. About the only place the Cowboys are NOT short on manpower is the defensive front line, which will hopefully ruin Rex Grossman's day and bolster my BQBL points.
- Why didn’t any of us take the Bears! There’s been plenty of talk this week about how very many times Jay Cutler has been sacked and under pressure before throws, and when asked directly if he could even survive the season at this rate, he shook his head, “I don’t think so”. Not sure if that’s going to count for points in the ‘throwing your offensive line under the bus’ category, but things are getting bad - it could be just a matter of time. They replayed some highlights of the worst sacks in the past two games, and sometimes they’re just standing there, looking around while a rusher comes off untouched on the edge, straight at Cutler; it looks like they just plain have no interest in defending him. I wouldn’t either, he’s kind of a jerk. Are things going to meltdown for Chicago? Could we possibly see an upswing in the “You’re unBEARable” meme?
- There was actually an entire segment this week about how the Bills are “undefeated” and “really looking good” these past two weeks, putting up strong numbers that have been on par with Brady and the Patriots. They talked about how great they’re doing with unknown players like Fitzpatrick and uh... what’s his name runner and uh... what’s his name receiver. Look, I wasn’t trying to learn their names, I was thinking that these two games have been against the Chiefs and the Raiders. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. If the Bills’ season plays out how I envision it (since I have them on my BQBL roster) Sportscenter ought to be downright embarrassed later in the season to have showcased these dudes. Or maybe they were just trying to get in as much positive press for such a downtrodden franchise before they played the Patriots and got bloodied up. But let’s still face facts. As Marcellus Wiley said, “Sunday afternoon, the Bills will have 11 men on the field, and the Patriots will have 10 men and 1 machine named Tom Brady”. Though the Patriots pass defense has been somewhat suspect this season, I fully expect them to run over Buffalo like a herd of stampeding... no, it's too easy. Wildebeasts, then. Rhinos, maybe. Regardless, we'll be rooting for you this Sunday, Evil Team Evil.
