NFL Week 16
 

Vick just became the first QB in NFL history to rush for 1,000 yards in a season, and the Falcons just became the first team in 21 years (and 4th in history) to have two 1,000-yard rushers.

Hey CMR, Carolina just tossed the sweep three times in four plays in the freakin' NFL, but we can't do it once all dadgum season long. :mad:

Edit your post! It's week 16!

Ack. Fixed.

The Panthers have now run the football 11 straight times in their opening drive.

Just damn. They didn't even bother to have a QB on the field on the last play.

Panthers 7-3. They held the ball for 10:36 on their opening drive. 14 runs, 2 passes. They even ran two plays from what looked like a lot like the old Single Wing formation, with a RB lined up deep, taking the direct snap, and no QB on the field.

Second drive, they just went back to the single-wing style formation on 3rd and 5 with no QB...and ran for the first down. :(

hey, could anybody keep me updated on the Lions fans walkout today? its supposed to be a protest, at 8:57 left to go in the second people get up and leave.

Goddamn, the Patriots can't tackle worth shit this year.

Given the lack of Lions' fans actually at the game, I doubt anyone will notice if this walkout happens.

Dear Atlanta Defense:

When they take the QB out, and line the RB up for a direct snap, they're going to run to the side where the TE and wing are lined up.

Sincerely:

Anyone Who Is Watching The Game

For those not watching, the Panthers have run the same play out of the single-wing at least 5 times now, including 3rd & 3 and 3rd & 5 situations, and I think it has gone for 4 yards or more every single time.

Clearly Dan Henning is an offensive genius.

Okay, maybe not. More like the Falcons defense isn't exactly the most cerebral unit in league history.

Tom Kowolski of Booth Newspapers just reported that only about 40 people walked out. Pathetic. Apathetic.

Good. The team on the field is a big enough embarassment.

Dear Lawyer Milloy,
You're 33 years old and have had a nice career. But either remember how to tackle somebody or fucking retire.

Sincerely,
Anybody watching the ATL-CAR game that isn't pulling for the Panthers

The Falcons FINALLY stopped that single-wing play!

Wow... that has to be the strangest punt formation I've ever seen (by the Falcons just now)

Nice 37 yard td run on 4th and 2 by Vince Young. But the Titans are still losing to the Bills 26-20 in the 3rd;(

It's your basic fantasy nightmare for me around here ... I need Jacksonville to lose this week and/or next week to improve the Chiefs chances of making the playoffs, but I need Maurice Jones-Drew to continue doing his thing to win the championship in my fantasy league, which plays the title game in week 17.

That kid is impressive -- he doesn't look like he should be able to do the things he does.

Wow. Colts lose to Texans on a last play FG.

Anyone notice their dooming started after I lost that bet? :D

OH FUCKNO!

whew.

Maroney's back :)

(BTW, the Oh FUCKNO and whew, on a scramble, Brady dove and got speared by a Jaguars player, helmet right in the back.. looked oawful, but he only mised one play)

I couldn't help but chuckle at the final image of the Falcons loss to Carolina: team owner Arthur Blank standing alone on the sidelines, rubbing his chin sort of like a beaten Mr. Burns, wondering exactly what he would say when he fired Jim Moron.

Is Rich Gannon doing the commentary on that game? This is a reference to Rich Gannon pronouncing "offense" as "owfense".

Anyway, my stupid joke aside, I'm stuck watching the Ravens and Steelers, where Rich Gannon is doing the commentary. The Ravens have dominated this entire game, and I'm tired of watching this. Of course, I'm waiting for the Broncos and Bengals, but I'm really tempted to just switch over to FOX and catch the 49ers-Cardinals game until this crappy game in Pittsburgh is over.

You know, I do understand why the NFL sticks with the local team's game until its bitter end, but I'd imagine that not too many Pittsburgh fans really care to see the end of this one. It's 24-7, 3:30 to go, and Baltimore is about to score again. Sadly, we can't get switched to another game until this is over. Why, oh why did I move to Pennsylvania? :)

I'd also like to add that even though Joey Porter tries to act like a hard ass, he's just a little bitch.

1:55 to play in Jax, the Jag with the ball at their own 45, FG ties TD wins

Maybe he was contemplating giving the entire Falcon Nation a Christmas Present.

Will 790 be doing any of its normal shows tomorrow, Jon? If so, this one would be quite entertaining.

BALL GAME! Pats win the Division.

That was a TOUGH review. Looked to my (admittedly biased) eyes, like Green HIT Gerrard's arm forward, not natural motion. I think whatever the ruling was on the field, it was going to stand.

That was pretty good.


I don't know what the hell I just watched... Atlanta should be embarrassed. Carolina is terrible. I shudder to think what will happen if Carolina tries to run it 55 times vs the Saints next week.

Oh, good, the disasterbacle in Pittsburgh is over. Let's get to Denver and have the Broncos tear up the Bengals!

Blank needs to fire his ass right now...no point in waiting until next week. Get rid of him now and get a head start on the coaching search.

Ugh. Cutler makes a rookie mistake and throws an interception on the first play of the game. Cincinnati should get an early lead off of this, but maybe the Broncos can hold them to a field goal.

DARRENT WILLIAMS INTERCEPTION! DEFENSE HOLDS!

This picture from Yahoo! pretty much sums up the Falcons' day:

I don't know for sure, but I would strongly doubt it. I can't recall any of the sportstalks doing local shows in Atlanta on Christmas unless it fell on Sunday (and then only a pre-NFL thing).

Tennessee Titans win another game by some strange play call at the end of the game by the Bills. They had no timeouts and elected to go for it on 4th and 5 when they were within field goal range. Needless to say, it was intercepted and the Titans had come back in this game as well. Amazing.

This may be the most disappointing loss for Atlanta in the last 5 years. It is one thing to get blown out, but the Panthers just controlled the clock, beat up the defense and were within 7 points striking distance, but the team couldn't dent that. Just sad.

There was a 15-20 mph wind that was about 45 degrees cross/in their face.

By the way, J.P. Losman is a very underrated quarterback. He made some spectacular plays in the game.

That sums up the Jim Mora era.

I know that, but since they had no timeouts and the kicker didn't miss a field goal in the game, wouldn't you take that risk, instead of throwing in the wind. Hell a run would have been even better.

Maybe I'm a bit of a homer, but I saw flashes of brilliance from him at Tulane, and I was pretty sure that he would turn into a good NFL quarterback. He won't ever be a superstar, but he is certainly underrated.

The Bengals would probably be in control of this game already, but Carson Palmer has been wildly inaccurate so far, and Chad Johnson also dropped one easy long pass. The Broncos are doing absolutely nothing. Disappointing. :(

You have to fire the GM, too. The only thing he spent money on in the post season were players to stop the run. He has to have failed more than any GM in history.

But Vick going 9 for 20, 109 yds and 2 picks gets no blame in that debacle at home against a bad team?

Matt Millen.

If there's one Christmas wish that I have, it's for you to not comment on the Falcons unless you watch the games.

Sure he does. He wasn't the chief problem, though.

Completing 9 passes with those receivers is a freakin' Christmas miracle.

I mean, the Colts gave up nearly as much yds rushing (again) in their embarassing loss to the Texans but had a 100 yd rusher and Manning still was able to go 21 for 27 with 3 tds. Strange game.

Touche. But no one refers to Matt Millen as a genius like they do Rich McKay.

Amen!


Which I always found interesting, especially since he couldn't draft a WR or an offensive line to save his life in Tampa, and now in Atlanta.

Losing ugly is losing ugly. What's your point? Did the Texans actually remove their quarterback on 3 and medium, not once but several times, and direct snap to the running back for a first down over and over again? How exactly was that Vick's fault, Bucc? Vick did not have a good game, but he also didn't have the ball very often.

Even saying he did good against the Cowboys (except for one pass)? :)

Wait a minute (before I get completely buried by the Georgia contigency here). They talk about Carolina having a "balanced" attacked. I don't see it when its QB did nothing but hand-off or get out of the way. Vick has managed in the past to win games like this and had expected then to do so again but I would suspect that 2 picks had to hurt two of the drives.

For the record, I'm not slamming on him (as I had done in the past). I think the Dallas game showed he can keep a team competitive. But if the Falcons and their moron coach couldn't adjust to the run then it would be up to the offense to do something with what time they had.

VPI, sorry, it seems like a hot topic today (i.e., the Falcons game), I just find it interesting to see see and the reactions, as if I stumbled into a local Falcons board.

We're going to be up 17-14 at the half but I'm not pleased at all. Chris Henry has dropped 2 touchdown passes, one albeit overthrown. And Palmer overthrew another to Housh that ended up in the hands of CB Darrent Williams. Palmer has thrown so many bad balls today it's unbelievable. If we win we are in the playoffs but it feels like the only player that has stepped up today on offense is Rudi.

If we play the same way in the second half, Denver wins.

I know, I agree with you and everyone else (after reading up more elsewhere). The Falcons ran 42 plays, even in the limited time they had. The Colts ran 45 plays even though had a little more time. My point was that the bad play-calling had to be on both sides of the ball, does it not?

The 2nd pick was on the final hail mary of the game.

Looking at the 2nd half drives
2nd & 8 from their own 40, Vick sacked to force 3rd & long, incomplete to Lelie and then a punt.

Falcons didn't see the ball again for 8 minutes, until there were 41 secs left in the 3rd quarter.

They reach midfield & then try to hit the homerun to Lelie on the goal line, passed is knocked away. Just good defense, a decently thrown ball & a pretty good effort by Lelie, it just didn't connect. Next play? Sacked for an 11 yd loss when nobody could get open. Another punt, with CAR holding the ball for 5 minutes, a clipping call on the penalty wipes out Rossum's return & pushes the Falcons back to their own 11 with 8:51 left.

3rd & 1 from the 19 after Vick gains 9 yds on 2 runs, Dunn is stopped cold.
Another punt. ATL gets it back with 3:40 left at their own 38. A couple of completions & a couple of runs later it's 3rd &4 at the CAR 35, which is when Vick overthrew Jenkins. On 4th & 4 he misses Crumpler who was pretty well covered. They get it back at their own 14 with 0:14 left, time for White to make little effort on the first pass & little effort on the last play, which was the interception.

Falcons only had the ball 4x in the first half
1st - FG drive, then Vick sacked to end the drive, then the interception that set up the Panthers FG, then Dunn stuffed on 3rd & 1.

And then you have to throw into the analysis that the Falcons didn't start a drive outside their own 21 yd until the 4th quarter & still their best field position all day was their own 38.

Bottom line -- Vick certainly didn't strap them on his back & carry them today, but he had pretty much zero help from the entire offense all day either. The line couldn't run block on short yardage, they couldn't pass block when it mattered, and the receivers couldn't get open at all.

Nice to see the panthers get back to basics, and win one on the road. amazingly enough the 2 teams from the south that went to the playoffs last season won't be making it this season, panthers and falcons. They are both equally bad teams.

Thanks, Jon, I did take the time to read the PBP and your summary makes sense (and I understand better how the game must have looked live). Other game summaries focused solely on the ball control of the Panthers, I did find this statement, "There has been not sanctuary for the Falcons offense as they have been shutdown just about the whole day. Between the ball control of the Panthers, and the ineptitude of the Falcons offense, this game has been a disaster for Atlanta." That does sound like Mora simply got out-coached.

'Nuf said. I said too much and should have kept quiet, happy that the Saints are still winning. I still can't figure out the Colts game though.

Except for the first sentence, I agree. The Cincinnati offense hasn't been very good. They're fortunate that the Denver offense has been worse. Neither defense is really doing anything great, but they're not making mistakes either.

This game is back and forth, but the Broncos have the edge if things keep going this way.

And that's a familiar sight for people watching the Falcons.

No need to apologize AFAIC, though. The Falcons are pretty low on the list of things that I actually give a shit about, it just happened that I had the game on throughout while I was doing some odds & ends holiday preparation. And watching this one, regardless of interest level, it was pretty plain how inept they were, how woefully unprepared they were & even worse, how completely incapable of making any in-game adjustments they were.

I like that Mike Shanahan is letting Jay Cutler air the ball out a lot, but I'd like to see some more 15- or 20-yard pass attempts rather than so many 50-yard bombs. They're great when they work, but they also cause a lot of incompletions. Unless he's throwing to Tony Scheffler, it's like everything Cutler throws is either for 5 yards or 50 yards. It's a little strange.

Woo, the Broncos just put together a 99-yard drive to take the lead back from the Bengals. This is an entertaining game in snowy Denver.

I was surprised to see it snowing in Denver. We are 50 miles south and 1000-feet higher and it's relatively mild and clear, even though there are clouds hanging over the mountains.

And no penalty on the play...

Phillip Rivers looks like he could be hitting the end of rookie season (yes I know technically it's his third year) slump, which would spell disaster for my Chargers if it lasts and they come up against the Ravens defense in the playoffs.

Shocked again at how bad the Colts run defense looked today. Not a good offensive line for the Texans, and Ron Dayne gained 150 plus yards. Enough said.

Ridiculous ending in the Broncos/Bengals game

Haha. Who Dey.

Chargers need a TD and they let him get behind them?!?!?

THE SINGLE MOST FRUSTRATING GAME I HAVE EVER WATCHED.. Cinci should have coasted in that one.

I love the new Martyball. Rivers may be too young and inexperiences for the playoffs, though.

Julio Riddols is right. Cincinnati should have coasted. It's amazing that Denver was even in that game, much less having the lead for so long. This game was the perfect demonstration that penalties seriously hurt you. The Bengals committed so many penalties that prolonged Denver drives or killed Cincinnati drives.

Either Jim Nantz or Phil Simms mentioned it early in the game: the Broncos are winning football games because they don't commit many penalties. They're not great on offense, they're not really great on defense, yet they win. It was the same thing today.

Not that anyone would care, but it seems that the Cardinals got credit for making a field goal that they actually missed. Did anyone see it? My dad claims that it was completely obvious...but then again, he actually thought the 49ers would make the playoffs this year before week 5, so I don't know how much credibility I give him. I think it's horrible that they would blow a call like that, and equally horrible that Nolan wouldn't challenge it if it was so blatant.

And it wasn't so much that they had the killing penalties, which did hurt a lot, but Palmer missed on 4 easy easy touchdown passes, not to mention the one he hit with Chris Henry that was called back on Illegal Motion.. Then, after all that.. After all the missed opportunities, and the team scratching and fighting to overcome their own mistakes, they should have had the tie.. but then, how the hell else do they lose in the end, but a botched snap on an extra point attempt. A play as small as that killed their chances after they fought that damn hard to beat Denver AND overcome themselves.

It looks like the Lions will claim the top draft pick if they lose next week. San Diego's comeback win gives them a little breathing room under Oakland in the strength-of-schedule race.

That, combined with a very favorable schedule next week should make the difference. A lot of results broke their way today - it was looking like it could well be a coin-toss finish going in.

If the second NFC wild card spot is claimed by a 7-9 team (six or seven teams would finish 7-9 in that event), the New York Giants win that tie-breaker.

The AFC wild card is wide open, with Denver, the Jets and Cincinnati in okay shape (only Denver and the Jets control their own destiny). Tennessee, Jacksonville and Kansas City are all long shots with about the same chance of getting in (a win plus a lot of help). A Jets win tomorrow would make that extremely remote for all three teams.

The NFC wild card is far beyond anything I've ever seen before.

How the fuck do you blow a FG call? Are you kidding me?

This will obviously be a rule change next season where a team CAN challenge a FG call.:rolleyes:

I don't understand why a ball that goes over the goal post is good, since it's not like baseball where the foul pole is actually fair. BTW, this wasn't the case on this kick which was wide by about a football or two.

And the sorry Seahawks lost too just to rub it in.:mad::mad::mad:

Did the fans in Detroit actually walk-out at the half? Or were they all talk?

Meh. I didn't get to watch the 49ers-Arizona game (got stuck watching CIN-DEN), but saw the score throughout and was disheartened.

Did the 49er's really play that bad, or did they just get some unlucky breaks against the Cardinals?

We got our ass kicked in the first half. Arizona scored on all 4 of their possessions. We were a little better in the 2nd half, but 3rd down on offense and defense was brutal.

We just don't matchup well with them since they have 3 very good WR's and we have a very spotty secondary.

??? Admittedly I came in late, but I watched him hit Jackson and LT in the hands on 2 consecutive throws on their next-to-last drive that they both dropped. Not sure it's all on Rivers.

Giants lose, Falcons lose, and I still feel no better about the Eagles' chances (I don't think they beat Dallas tomorrow, and despite today the Falcons still scare me. With all the possible combos, I have no idea what their chances would be at 8-8).

edit: actually, I think if both the Eagles and Giants finished 8-8, the Eagles would be screwed by common opponents, and they'd already have lost to ATL. I think they'd need a CAR win vs NRL to get CAR in the mix instead of ATL, or GRE/STL to also be in there to make it a conference record rather than HTH tiebreaker...ugh.

I agree. I've never felt like so many opportunities were blown, then to have us come back... to lose on a botched snap. I cannot take it if we don't make the playoffs...

Vick sucks. Mora sucks. Falcons football is a disaster. Every single game is hideously boring and they seemingly can't do much right. Then again, I'm a Jets fan stuck in Atlanta.

If they could do that next week it would be great

Accept it now....we aren't making the playoffs. That game was the final nail. IF there's a glimmer next week, Pittsburgh will finish their season by ruining ours again.

it would sum up the eagles season in a nutshell for them to lose the final two games and miss the playoffs. and it'd probably be for the best, end our season now rather than suffer the pain of getting excited about the playoffs then losing badly. :(

It was reported that less than 50 actually got up and left. It was a non-factor.

I am a big Bengals fan, but they got what they deserved yesterday. Maybe all those turnovers were karma for all the shitheads they have drafted and kept. The last couple of weeks, Palmer (my favorite player) and Rudi have been way too turnover prone. IF they sneak into the playoffs, they'll get trounced early I'd imagine.

I've uploaded the latest playoff picture (and 2007 draft order):

http://www.solecismic.com/playoff2006.php

Geez...

The last thing we need is to get down early by two scores to the Geagles.

I LOVE ANTHONY HENRY!

"

Balls

Nice play Romo.

FFS

Woot!

LJ Smith.

From? RUTGERS.