I Guess Defense Does Win Championships

• So the Denver Broncos won the Super Bowl! I still don’t care, but at least it was a pretty good game. Both defenses were excellent, but it was Denver’s defense that was able to put points on the board.

This nice, studious looking gentleman is a monster.

• The Carolina Panthers, who averaged over 31 points a game in the regular season were held to just 10 points. Many of their wounds were self-inflicted, but Cam Newton and the offensive line were getting absolutely flattened all game long -- Denver had 13 quarterback knockdowns, four forced fumbles (recovered three), seven sacks, and an interception -- and somehow they looked even more dominant than those numbers indicate. (Here’s an interesting article on how Denver’s defensive scheme kept the Panthers in check all game long.)

• As good as the defenses were, the offenses were … not. Let’s start with Carolina. The Panthers amassed a total of 315 yards, but turned the ball over four times! They were 3-for-15 on third downs and gained 4.2 yards per play. It could have been a really interesting game if Carolina hadn’t continually shot itself in the foot with turnovers and penalties -- 12 for 102 yards!

Poor running back Mike Tolbert -- who hadn't fumbled in four
years -- fumbled twice in the first half.

• Eli and Peyton Manning already have a lot in common (playing quarterback, DNA, &c), but now they also share winning a Super Bowl on the backs of their defenses. For a fleeting, blood-chilling moment, I feared they might give the Super Bowl MVP to Peyton in some kind of maudlin gesture, but thank goodness it rightfully went to Von Miller.

Then they would have had even more in common, because even Eli
knows his Super Bowl MVPs belong to Justin Tuck. 

• Everyone knows that the Denver defense won the game for them, but the numbers for Peyton Manning and the offense are truly ghastly. Manning was 13-for-23 with one interception, zero touchdowns, and a 9.9 QBR (that’s out of 100, kids). The offense as a whole only gained 194 yards! TOTAL! The only offensive touchdown came after their defense gave them the ball on the four-yard line (so I’m going to count that as a defensive touchdown). I was happy for Denver’s defense getting the well-deserved win, but typing out these offensive stats makes me mad that this team won! HALF of their 14 drives were three-and-outs! They were 1-for-14 on third downs!!!!!!!!!!!

Can you give a title to only part of a team?

• Maybe that’s what Eli’s dismay was for when the Broncos scored the go-ahead touchdown with three minutes left in the game.

• Peyton is now the winningest quarterback in NFL history with a nice, even 200 wins. He’s also the only starting quarterback to win Super Bowls with more than one team.

That's cool and all, but I'm still stuck on how
horrible and undeserving he and the offense were.

• So remember Thomas Davis? The Carolina linebacker who broke his arm two weeks ago and swore he was going to play in the Super Bowl? Well, he did. He took a picture of his arm after the game, and it was disgusting.

If this is actually real, 1) ew; 2) those doctors might
want to work on their sewing skills. 

• Broncos cornerback Aqib Talib had a rough game. He was called for three penalties in the first half alone (two of which were personal fouls, and he could have easily been called for offsides on Carolina’s missed field goal attempt). One of his penalties was for trying to decapitate a Panthers receiver -- a foul he admits he committed intentionally because it only cost the team one-and-a-half yards.

• Talib’s awful and a jerk, but doesn’t he look like Oscar-winning British actor Ben Kingsley?

• Cam Newton is getting a facing a lot of criticism for his postgame press conference, which lasted all of two-and-a-half minutes before Newton walked out. I feel for him, but two things, Cam: 1) you ticked off a lot of people with your celebrations and attitude all season. That’s all fine and good when you’re winning, but you have to be prepared for the comeuppance when you lose. 2) Having to deal with the media moments after your heart’s been broken is part of the reason your salary is in the millions. I feel for you, but my sympathy’s quite limited.

• Cam’s many haters are having a field day right now, but Peyton Manning is not among them. He praised Cam’s postgame behavior, calling him “extremely humble” and “very nice.”

• I’ll take Cam Newton’s postgame behavior over Manning’s. Immediately after the game, Manning was interviewed and could not help plugging for Budweiser, a company in which he owns shares. Good God, Peyton, take a break. How much effing money do you need? You just reached the pinnacle of your career and probably played your last game after 18 seasons, and your first thought is to shill some product like a two-bit snake oil salesman?? (Oh, and you better believe Papa John was on the freaking Super Bowl field with Peyton.) You’d think Manning’s kids were starving on the street the way he pursues his damn endorsements. I was kind of happy for Peyton winning up until that moment.

• After the victory, Annabel Bowlen, the wife of Denver Broncos owner Pat Bowlen, took a moment to congratulate the, uh, team. She also served as a PSA to remind women everywhere to go easy on the plastic surgery.

Eek.

• In her defense, though, there must be a lot of pressure being the wife of an NFL owner -- some of them are dating women who are literally less than half their age.

I get so embarrassed and sad when I see these two.

• The NFL Honors aired the night before the Super Bowl. Charles Woodson won the Art Rooney Sportsmanship Award (yaay!), andJJ Watt won his third Defensive Player of the Year award (duh!). The only other interesting thing was Antonio Brown winning the Fantasy Player of the Year, and thanking himself. His hair is pretty interesting, too, I suppose.

• Don’t ask me about any of the commercials because ohmygosh I don't care. And I definitely don't care about the halftime show. Also, I wish the media would stop colluding to try to convince me that Beyonce is so amazing and so cool and so incredible. She's not. Her music isn’t very good and she insists on wearing unflattering leotards all the time.

She was great in Destiny's Child, though. For real.

• Well, alas, the season is over, and now we turn to the slow summer months of NFL players getting fired and arrested. For obvious reasons, next season will be much, much better than this season.

• Now that the Super Bowl over, it's time prepare for the 2016 season, when Green Bay will reclaim its rightful place atop the league. I’m ready. Jordy, you ready?

Conference Championships

• The weekend was pretty boring without the Green Bay Packers. There are going to have to be a lot of superfluous Jordy pictures in this post to keep my interest.

I couldn't be bothered to come up with a real title for this post.

• Both of the championship games were rather surprising. I definitely would not have picked the Denver Broncos and Peyton Manning’s lifeless, noodle arm against the reigning champion New England Patriots. That said, I’m ECSTATIC the Pats lost!

• The dominant Denver defense made it a long and rough day for Tom Brady. The New England quarterback was sacked four times and hit 20 times!! Brady had 310 yards, but completed fewer than half is throws, and threw two interceptions. (Goodbye, offensive line coach.)

• The Broncos weren’t any easier on the run game. Tom Brady is not exactly known for his mobility but he led the entire Patriots team in rushing!

• The Denver offense was exactly lights out -- with only 244 TOTAL yards -- but they didn’t need to be. The defense carried them all the way to the Super Bowl.

• Poor New England kicker Stephen Gostkowski bore a lot of the blame for the two-point loss. He missed an extra point after New England scored in the first quarter, a miss that would force the Pats to go for two after their fourth-quarter touchdown, which they failed to convert. And there are your two points. Gostkowski has been one of the league’s best kickers in the league, and the miss ended a streak of 523 straight extra points made. Poor guy.

• You want to know what makes it even more painful for the Patriots? This screenschot that shows Rob Gronkowski open on the failed two-point conversion.

• Awww, look how cute Peyton Manning’s son is! He came with his dad to the post-game press conference, but got a little shy.

• I had to get off Twitter after the game to avoid the schmaltzy Brady-Manning tributes. They play football; let’s stop pretending that they’re Robert E. Lee and Ulysses S. Grant or something.

These two stout-hearted men haveth set upon the iron o' grid
in many a great engagement. Whither these great souls shall
meet again henceforth, we trust only the Almighty knoweth.

• Last week, New England Patriots backup linebacker (and Notre Dame grad!) Darius Fleming played with 22 stitches in his leg, which he got while rescuing a woman trapped in her car. There was a car accident that left the woman’s car without power, and she was unable to escape her car. Fleming kicked out the window and helped her out of the car. What a good guy! Way to go, Darius!

Rescuing a woman in distress is just the kind of thing Jordy would do!

• The Carolina Panthers-Arizona Cardinals game was painful to watch, so I’ll cut to the chase: Arizona quarterback Carson Palmer had six turnovers on the way to a 49-15 soul-crushing defeat.

• I have, have, have to think that Palmer’s injured index finger on his throwing hand played a part. He injured the finger in Week 15 against Green Bay, after which he had a terrible game against the Seattle Seahawks (lost 36-6), a not-very-good-until-the-freaking-fourth-quarter game against Green Bay last week, then the stinker this week. The guy had 11 interceptions and four fumbles through 16 games in the regular season, and four interceptions and two fumbles on Sunday alone! It just has to be the finger injury. I can’t fathom another reason why the number one offense in the league and the quarterback with the third highest passer rating in the regular season suddenly looked so terrible.

• Although I really wanted the Cardinals to win, it was hard not to be impressed by the Panthers. Look, for example, at Carolina receiver Ted Ginn, Jr. on this Cam Newton interception. The guy absolutely flies down the field to stop the pick from becoming a pick-six. (In fact, the Cardinals didn’t gain any points off the turnover because on the next possession, Carson Palmer -- you’ll never guess -- threw an interception.) Keep in mind as Ginn is streaking down almost the entire length of the field that his team was up 17 points at the time.

• With five-and-a-half minutes left in the game, up 34-15, Carolina scored another touchdown …. and decided to go for two. Perhaps it was because Cardinals head coach Bruce Arians had reportedly called Carolina the worse second-half team in the league at halftime, but I don’t really care what anyone said --  if you go for two when you’re up 25 points, your kicker’s foot better be broken, otherwise you guys are being @$%holes. Poor show.

• The Panthers suffered a couple of tough injuries. Safety Roman Harper left the game with an eye injury after a hit to the head. The safety has had Lasik eye surgery, and the hit caused the corneal flap over his eye to shift, temporarily obscuring his vision. Harper says the injury won’t keep him out of the Super Bowl, but still.

• Panthers linebacker Thomas Davis also says his injury won’t keep him out of the Super Bowl, except, I’m not totally sure about that because his injury is a broken arm. I totally understand wanting to play in the Super Bowl -- it’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity -- and I admire his toughness,  but, uh, buddy, a broken arm is a really, really good reason to sit out a game that includes a lot of violent contact. I’m no doctor, but I would really strongly suggest cheering your team on from the safety of the sidelines.

• When asked what nickname he would give himself if he could, Carolina linebacker Luke Kuechly responded, “I don’t need a nickname. My name is Luke.” I think I’m going to go buy the mynameisluke.com domain and put a copyright on that same line for a book title (with a movie option) because that would be the coolest title ever.

My Name Is Luke™

• Kuechly’s pretty cool, right? So you can sorta understand this guy who really, really, really wanted to high-five Luke.

• I guess Carolina deserves to go to the Super Bowl, but I still feel really bad for Carson Palmer. He seems like such a nice guy. Seriously, watch this commercial of his and try to not like him.

• I like the above video, but really it was just an excuse to segue into Jordy’s own commercial. He’s so adorable! He’s a great dad, he spends his offseason farming, and he substitute taught with his new-found free time. (Those lucky third-grade bastards!) Isn’t he so awesome and sweet and manly and cool??

• Let’s just jump back a week and remember how Andy Reid titanicked the Kansas City Chiefs with his clock management late in the game. Remember how the Chiefs had the ball with 6:29 left, down two scores? And remember how, despite the previous sentence, they took 5 minutes and 16 seconds to score and refused to use their timeouts? And didn’t let the time crunch dissuade them from huddling on offense on the drive? And were essentially betting their postseason lives on recovering an onside kick? Well, after having a week to think on it, Andy Reid reiterated that the clock was “handled right” in the game.

• In Packer news, head coach Mike McCarthy had his season-ending press conference, and he didn’t pull any punches. He said what we were all thinking when he singled out Richard Rodgers and Davante Adams as players who “definitely need to step up.” But it was his comments on running back Eddie Lacy, who had weight issues all season, that caught the most attention: “Eddie Lacy has a lot of work to do. I think I’m stating the obvious. His offseason last season was not good enough. He has to get it done. He cannot play at the weight he did this year.”

Unless...

• There are also rumors that McCarthy is “fed up” with Ted Thompson’s extreme reluctance to sign free agents. This has long been a bone of contention for impatient Packers fans who disagree with Thompson’s rigid adherence to a draft-and-develop philosophy. Now, I understand the frustration when Green Bay has a crying need and they do nothing about it. But free agency is crapshoot with low odds. The players worth getting usually require overpaying, and the ones that don’t require overpaying … well, they’re free agents because other teams don’t want them. The Indianapolis Colts are a prime example. They were listed as early “winners” in the offseason, but few, if any, of their signings worked out. Here’s an excerpt from Bill Barnwell’s NFL teams’ Christmas wish lists article:

• Indianapolis Colts: Store credit or a full refund for Ryan Grigson's veteran shopping spree. Andre Johnson's 418 receiving yards are good for 97th in the league. Trent Cole has just three sacks. Frank Gore is averaging 3.6 yards per rushing attempt, the worst figure he has posted by a full half-yard over a professional season. And Todd Herremans lost his starting job after two games. Kendall Langford's snaps as a decent two-way defensive end might represent the best move Grigson made this offseason.

• Another example: Vernon Davis. The Packers, completely devoid of a reliable tight end -- Richard Rodgers was our #1, for Pete’s sake -- looked to be a reasonable landing place for Davis after he was released by the 49ers. Many Green Bay fans expressed frustration when Davis was snatched up by the Broncos. However, in 10 regular season games with Denver, Davis had 20 catches, 90 yards, and zero touchdowns. In his last four games, including two playoff games, Davis has zero catches. It’s not fun or exciting, but I do tend to see things Thompson’s way as far as free agency goes.

• Speaking of free agents, it looks likely that the Packers will let free agent cornerback Casey Hayward leave this summer, which makes me very sad. I love Casey, but the team has too much talent at cornerback, including two impressive rookies in Quinten Rollins and Damarious Randall. In fact, of all rookie corners, Rollins was top in opposing quarterbacks’ ratings. Yay, Q!  Way to go!

This gif is from Power Rangers. I didn't have to look that up or anything.
I just recognized them on sight. Pink Ranger, Blue Ranger, Green Ranger. 

• By the way, did we already talk about how amazing it is that Rollins only ever played one year of football in college?? That’s crazy! He was a basketball star at Miami, played one season of football, was named the MAC defensive player of the year, and then was drafted in the second round of the NFL draft.

• The most outrageous thing I read this week was Jordy Nelson telling the story of how his future wife dumped him when they were in seventh grade. What could she have been thinking? Did she think she could do better?? Did she not see the future Sideline Ninja in him? Was she so convinced that she could get him back? What! what could have made her do something so foolish? SHE NEVER DESERVED HIM!

Uh, We Might Have a Problem

• Okay, we have to face the facts: that was pretty bad. The defense was bad, the offense was terrible, and everything I feared would happen when Jordy Nelson first went down in preseason happened.

• The Denver Broncos defense held Aaron Rodgers and the Green Bay Packers to 77 yards passing, and just 140 overall. Denver (500 yards) had more than triple Green Bay’s total yardage.

• The Broncos had 24 first downs to Green Bay’s 14 (it felt like four), and 7.9 yards per play compared to 3.0 yards. To be clear, it sucked.

• The only way the Packers managed to move the ball was off of Denver penalties. The Broncos racked up 93 yards on 11 penalties, meaning that they had more penalty yardage than Aaron Rodgers had passing yards.

• Rodgers was facing a ton of pressure all night, which, combined with the receivers’ inability to get open, made for a very long night for the reigning league MVP. I seriously kept on counting how many players Denver had on the field because it felt like they were playing with an extra defender. They were bringing pressure on every single snap and still somehow also perfectly covering Green Bay’s receivers.

C'mon, Green Eyes! We need you to step up!

• Sunday night’s game was a faith-shaking wake-up call for Green Bay fans, and it was probably needed. As Cris Collinsworth mentioned during the broadcast, the Packers came into the game ranked 22nd in passing yards, total and per game, so the offensive issues are not out of the blue. The Packers do have a lot they need to figure out, but there are a few reasons that fans shouldn’t overreact to Sunday’s loss:
• Denver’s defense is the best in the league. They are really, really good, both up front and in the secondary. They lead the league in total yards allowed, yards per game, yards per attempt, touchdowns allowed, sacks, and sack yards. They are second in the league in opposing quarterback passing rating and in takeaways. As I said, very good.
• Peyton Manning was having a “shut the #$&% up” game after weeks of speculation from the media about his career being over, whether he should be benched, should he retire, &c. The normally affable Manning was curt and defensive in his media session the last week, clearly sick of answering the same questions about his declining play over and over. His game against the Packers (340 yards, 72% completion, 12 yards per attempt) was one of his best in a shaky season (he has 11 interceptions to seven touchdowns). It was a statement game on the national stage. Hopefully the Packers won’t be playing against any other aging icons who are trying to defend their legacy and prove an entire country wrong. 

• Combine Peyton’s game with the fact that the Packers lost their best cornerback, Sam Shields, to a shoulder injury early on in the game, and then his backup, Quinten Rollins, to the same injury. (Not a good night to be a Packers’ defensive back’s shoulder.) The injuries also forced some of Green Bay’s remaining defensive backs to play positions that were not their natural position. Casey Hayward, for example, typically covers the slot, but was forced to move to the outside after Shields went down.
• Side note: speaking of poor Casey, why the heck didn’t the Packers try to help him (and later Demarious Randall) cover Demaryius Thomas?? Single coverage was obviously not doing it against Thomas, and rolling over a little safety help wouldn’t have been amiss much earlier in the game. I felt bad watching them get beat over and over again.

• I am not a Richard Rodgers fan. I’ve tried to give the guy the benefit of the doubt, but his blocking is too often atrocious and he might as well be playing with concrete gloves. Furthermore, he was 100% responsible for the safety. It was his man who blew by him to strip Aaron Rodgers, then he couldn’t pick up the ball before it went into the endzone, then when he recovered it in the endzone, he tripped and fell. Geez. 

• Also, his face bothers me. I think it’s because after every time he drops a pass, he smiles serenely, and jogs slowly back to the huddle without a care in the world.

You can see he's even smiling while dropping passes.

• No rest for the weary/injured -- the Packers have will have another tough road game against the 7-0 Carolina Panthers.

• Ugh, the now 7-0 Broncos just acquired tight end Vernon Davis from the San Francisco 49ers. Like they need the help.

• Normally an interception isn’t a highlight for an offense, but check out Atlanta Falcons receiver Julio Jones insane speed in somehow catching the Tampa Bay Buccaneers defender who grabbed an interception in the endzone. He looks CGI'd!

Julio Jones isn't human. pic.twitter.com/wGAPc066DY

— Blake Hartung (@Hartung_B) November 1, 2015

• Let’s all take a moment to remember that the 1-7 Detroit Lions, the Detroit Lions who lost in London on Sunday 45-10 to the 3-5 Kansas City Chiefs, were in the playoffs last year, and one controversial call away from the divisional round. From the press conferences, it's hard to tell who's checked out more, head coach Jim Caldwell or quarterback Matthew Stafford.

• JJ Watt had 2.5 sacks on Sunday to go with nine quarterback hits in the Houston Texans’ win over the Tennessee Titans. The Titans had an, er, interesting approach to blocking the best defender in the league, putting a lineman one-on-one far more than most teams do (which is never). When asked how many times he had a one-on-one matchups in the game, Watt replied, “Well, how many hits did I have?”

Oh, snap.

• Does anyone inspire less confidence during a game winning drive than Matt Cassel? No, really, I’m trying to think of a current quarterback who would make a fan feel worse in that situation. The Seattle Seahawks kicked a field goal with 1:06 remaining to take a 13-12 lead over the Dallas Cowboys. There was absolutely no thrill or suspense when the Cowboys took over because no one had any faith in them. The Dallas offense went incomplete, incomplete, sack, false start, incomplete to end the game. Your fake confidence is fooling no one, Matt.

• Okay, I take it back. I can think of one other quarterback who inspires less confidence. The San Francisco 49ers have decided to start Blaine Gabbert at quarterback next week. Sooo they're playing for a draft pick, I guess.

• At the age of 39, Charles Woodson was named the defensive player of the month and leads the league in interceptions (he got the 65th of his career on Sunday), which is pretty amazing, but Charles doesn’t understand why everyone’s so surprised:

• There were so many injuries this week!! The Monday Morning Quarterback listed just some of the injuries:

• That list includes a player who was knocked unconscious on the field (Ricardo Lockette), my favorite Dolphins player (Cameron Wake), and a 15-year veteran receiver (Steve Smith). All three of those are season-ending, which brings up an interesting situation for Smith. Smith, who was already playing with broken ribs, has said he would retire after this season, but coach John Harbaugh seemed confident that Smith would be back. Just in case he’s not, he should take a bow:

• The Bears had to call the police after they cut nose tackle Jeremiah Ratliff when Ratliff returned to the facility, saying that he was the devil, wanted to kill everybody in the building, and wanted staffers’ kids to die. Ratliff apparently has a history of violent outbursts. The most incredible story about Ratliff that has come out in the past few days is how last season, he flipped out at practice, started screaming at teammates, destroyed a game clock on the sidelines, and shoved a coach to the ground -- and then-head coach Marc Trestman made Ratliff a team captain the next day. I’m totally speechless.

Trestman has written a book on leadership, by the way.

• New York Giants defensive end Jason Pierre-Paul returned to the team for the first time since severely injuring his hands in a Fourth of July fireworks accident. Pierre-Paul lost the index finger and part of the middle finger on his right hand, and seriously damaged the thumb as well. (Careful, the pictures are gruesome.) It’s a crazy story, but I do hope that he’s able to come back and play well.

• I was originally going to complain about the alternate uniforms that the Cleveland Browns wore in their 34-20 loss to the Arizona Cardinals. I mean, if your team name is the Browns, shouldn’t you have more than just two tiny stripes of brown on your jerseys? But then I saw the team name on the pants, and now these are kinda my favorite uniforms ever.

Every team should do that. It looks so cool!

• Holy wow, how about that New Orleans Saints-New York Giants game? The losing quarterback completed 73% of his passes, had 350 yards, and threw six touchdowns! Drew Brees had a 78% completion rate, 505 yards, and seven touchdowns!! And the game was decided by a punter and a kicker. New Orleans scored a touchdown to tie the game 49-49 with 36 seconds left. New York went three-and-out and had to punt with 20 seconds left, and the game looks like it’s going to overtime. The punt, however, was returned 24 yards, just across midfield. The returner FUMBLED, but New Orleans recovered the ball. There’s only five seconds left, which would pretty much mean the end of regulation, except that the Giants’ punter committed a facemask penalty!! That 15-yard-penalty put the Saints on the Giant’s 32-yard line. Kai Forbath, the New Orleans kicker who was signed two weeks ago and had yet to attempt a field goal for the Saints, knocked down a 50-yard field goal for the 52-49 win.

• Indianapolis Colts quarterback Andrew Luck has reportedly been playing with broken ribs since Week 3, which makes his poor play of late make a little more sense. The Colts, however, never disclosed a rib injury, and Luck hasn’t appeared on the injury report the past two weeks, which is a serious violation of the rules. It'll be interesting to see how the league decides to punish the Colts, assuming the report is true.

• With eight minutes left in the game, the Colts were down 23-6 to the undefeated Carolina Panthers. Then Indy scored a touchdown, forced a three-and-out, scored a touchdown, and forced another three-and-out! Then they had a nail-biting, grind-it-out, 16-play drive that ended in a field goal, sending the game to overtime! Then the Colts got the ball in overtime, scored a field goal, then Carolina scored a field goal. But then Andrew Luck threw another interception!! Gah! The Panthers kicked a field goal to win the game.  

• I really thought the stars were aligning for a incredible, season-saving Colts comeback. I mean, a series of crazy things had to happen:
• Carolina missed an extra point early in the fourth which meant the Colts only needed a field goal to send it to overtime rather than a touchdown.
• During the Colts game-tying drive at the end of the fourth, there was a catch that looked like it may not have been a catch, but there wasn't enough evidence to overturn.
• During that same drive, the Panthers tackled a Colts receiver in bounds, but the refs incorrectly called him out of bounds, stopping the clock with 19 seconds left and Indy out of timeouts.
• The Colts were doing all this against a defense like this:

• Linebacker extraordinaire Luke Kuechly dropped an interception in the endzone with two seconds left in regulation that would have ended the game right there.
• Ted Ginn Jr. dropped a touchdown in overtime that would have been the game winner.

• How could the football gods set us up for disappointment like that? A bedraggled and downtrodden team suddenly puts together an amazing fourth quarter against an undefeated opponent, gets several crazy turns of luck, only to lose on a field goal? That's not how Disney would have written it. Also, now Carolina is a game ahead of Green Bay in the NFC. Next week is huge.

• The loss dropped the Colts to 3-5. But no worries! They're in the AFC South, so they're still tied for the division lead! Haha, the joke's on the rest of the league and the winning teams that will lose a playoff spot to the AFC South!

• The AFC is pretty much wrapped up. The New England Patriots, Cincinnati Bengals, and Denver Broncos are all atop their respective divisions at 7-0. Only two other teams in the entire AFC have a winning record.

• One of those other teams is the Oakland Raiders! Perhaps it’s because their head coach, Jack del Rio, is a cartoon superhero come to life.

• And here’s what he looks like before he finds a phone booth:

• The Baltimore Ravens defeated the San Diego Chargers on a field goal, and kicker Justin Tucker thought that deserved a celebratory dance.

• I’m not even going to make fun of him because he kinda seems like the coolest, weirdest person ever. He’s a practicing Catholic opera singer who has his realtor license and writes scouting reports on his teammates' cornhole skills.

• The Minnesota Vikings scored a touchdown against the Chicago Bears to tie the game 20-20 with 1:49 left in the game. The Bears ideally would get into field goal range, burn the clock, then kick an easy field goal with time expiring. If you can’t do that and aren’t able to score, you want to at least run the clock down and take it to overtime. If you can’t score and can’t run the clock out, you at least want to take as much time off the clock as possible. What you really don’t want to do is lay a three-and-out that takes all of 49 seconds, punt the ball, allow gains of four, 35, and nine yards, and then watch as the opposing team kicks a field goal with time expiring. Chicago took the latter route.

• The Vikings are only one game behind the Packers in the NFC North. Just something to keep in mind.

• When the San Francisco 49ers lined up just outside their own endzone, the St. Louis Rams didn’t even bother to cover TWO San Fran receivers on either side of the field. And Colin Kaepernick still decided to stick with the run. The Rams scored a safety on the next play.

• Last season, Green Bay was 8th in passing yards. After Sunday’s game, they’re 27th. That’s what Jordy does.