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NFL Week 9 is almost on the books. There is one more AFC (Patri * ts-Jets) game to play on Monday Night Football, but since we’re only covering NFC here, let’s go ahead and jumpstart the pecking order a bit this week. We have two new obituaries.
Obituary
the Lions
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There have already been two head coach layoffs this season. Bill O’Brien of the Texans was fired after Week 4, and Dan Quinn of the Falcons lost his job the following week. So who’s next?
Adam Gase (Jets) and Doug Marrone (Jaguars) are deserving candidates, but the owners of their squads are likely best served to allow them to keep their jobs for the rest of the season in an effort to continue losing and secure a draft also high. choose as possible to be able to take a quarterback.
There shouldn’t be such patience with Matt Patricia, who not only has a horrible record (12-27-1 and 2-13 against NFC North teams), but also seems to delude the kind of influence he wields. .
Lions head coach Matt Patricia was asked if there was anything about his training “that isn’t happening enough in the fourth quarter.”
“Yeah, I don’t think so,” Patricia said. “I think I probably got one of the biggest fourth quarter plays in NFL history.” pic.twitter.com/chcqBLXF6U
– Brad Galli (@BradGalli) September 13, 2020
The “Uh, I think I know football a bit” attitude reminds me of this:
Sunday, the Lions gave 487 yards to the Vikings, including 275 on the ground. During the Patricia era, her defenses in particular have not only been bad, but have moved in the wrong direction.
| Defense of Lions | Ranking of points | Rank of yards | Takeaway rank |
| 2018 | 16 | ten | 31 |
| 2019 | 26 | 31 | 24 |
| 2020 | 28 | 24 | 26 |
In May, I watched all of Darius Slay’s snaps throughout the 2019 season, and it was evident in every game whether the Lions were in man or zone coverage, depending on whether Slay was still behind the team’s top receiver. opposing, or not. Packers wide receiver Davante Adams even told Slay before playing if he was a man or a zone. Patricia didn’t bother to try to disguise the blanket a bit.
Patricia should have been fired in the 2020 offseason, and even now I’m not sure what they’re expecting.
Panthers
Matt Rhule is one of those coaches who doesn’t risk being canned despite his team having played nine games in their season is Matt Rhule, who got his team to play hard and has been competitive every time. match.
Heading into this season, we had the Panthers dead last in our pecking order, assuming their inexperienced high school was going to get ripped apart by a trio of crafty NFC South veterans in Drew Brees, Tom Brady and Matt Ryan. .
But they actually were a fun team to watch with a few pieces to build. I’m not sure if Teddy Bridgewater is the answer (maybe he is?), But they have a really intriguing WR trio with DJ Moore, Robby Anderson, and Curtis Samuel, to accompany a comeback in Christian. McCaffrey and a young defense that will only get better.
The Panthers faced the Chiefs in Kansas City on Sunday, however, the reality is they have lost four straight games and have no reasonable chance of fighting for a playoff berth. Maybe they were in the NFC East (which actually makes geographically logical).
Graveyard
Hierarchy
12) Cowboys (2-7): We already have a pair of obituaries this week, so again, we’ll delay burying the Cowboys for now, especially since (a) their defense looked genuinely competent against the Steelers on Sunday, and (b) the Eagles weren’t exactly running away with the division.
However, I will make a brief comment. Ezekiel Elliott looks cooked and his downward trajectory since his rookie season is clear.
| Ezekiel Elliott | Yards per portage | Course of more than 20 meters | Yards per catch |
| 2016 | 5.1 | 14 | 11.3 |
| 2017 | 4.1 | 5 | 10.3 |
| 2018 | 4.7 | 11 | 7.4 |
| 2019 | 4.5 | 4 | 7.8 |
| 2020 | 3.8 | 1 | 6.6 |
If you want to blame Elliott’s ineffectiveness on the Cowboys offensive line and their QB situation, okay, but that doesn’t explain why his replacement, Tony Pollard, was a more efficient runner at the same time. on the eye test and in the statistics sheet.
Last week: 14 ?
11) Football team (2-6): The football team lost Kyle Allen to a horrific leg injury (I chose not to watch her), and they went back to Alex Smith, whose numbers didn’t appear horrible, necessarily, but on the eye test, Smith didn’t look good. Of course, Smith is a great story, returning from a life-threatening leg injury to play another cliché in the NFL again.
The big story aside, Smith just isn’t nearly the same quarterback he was before the injury. His game still had an element of racing (or at least an element of escape), which is now gone. He’s now purely a pocket passer, a style that doesn’t accentuate his best attributes. The football team have said before that Smith will start moving forward, with Dwayne Haskins moving from No.3 to No.2, which leads me to conclude that the coaching staff really, really don’t like Haskins.
Last week: 12 ?
10) Giants (2-7): Giants should pressure the NFL to let them play the football team every week.
| Since 2017 | Record | Point differential | Differential in turnover |
| Giants vs football team | 6-2 (0.750) | +46 | +9 |
| Giants against everyone | 8-41 (.163) | -392 | -32 |
Last week: 13 ?
9) 49ers (4-5): The parallels between the 2020 49ers and the 2018 Eagles are starting to build. They have real concerns about their quarterback’s health and abilities, questions about their medical and coaching staff are being asked with so many players absent, and they don’t have their third-round pick of the year. next.
The big difference here is that one team took a Super Bowl lead, and one didn’t.
Last week: 8 ?
8) Eagles (3-4-1): In their week off, the Eagles saw the football team collapse, the Cowboys lose another game and the Giants helped ruin their draft position. They now have a prominent lead in the NFC East, lol:
| NFC East | Record | Division | GB |
| Eagles | 3-4-1 | 2-1 | – |
| Football team | 2-6 | 2-2 | 1.5 |
| giants | 2-7 | 2-2 | 2 |
| Cowboys | 2-7 | 1-2 | 1.5 |
In games played outside of the division, the NFC East teams are now 2-17-1 (.125). If the Eagles can just win of them more games this season, then one of the other teams in the division will have to find a way to pass at least 0.500 or better the rest of the way to beat them.
Does anyone see any of those other three teams winning four more games?
Last week: 9 ?
7) Bear (5-4): Three weeks ago, the Bears were 5-1 and looked like they could easily claim a playoff berth, even though they didn’t really look like a good football team. They are now 5-4 and are 2.5-point home dogs for a 3-5 team (the Vikings) at Week 10.
We all love Nick Foles, right? Good guy. Pretty girl. Super Bowl hero. Etc. etc. Buuuuuut, he’s not the answer as a regular NFL starter, and never really has been. In Chicago, there are calls to put him on the bench and get back to Mitch freaking Trubisky, and they’re probably not wrong.
Last week 7
6) Rams (5-3): The Rams’ next two opponents are the Seahawks at home, followed by a road game in Tampa. If they can win any of these, they’ll be in good shape to at least return to the playoffs this season. However, this is a team that feels their cap will always be capped by a quarterback.
Last week: 6
5) Buccaneers (6-3): Sunday night was a massacre:
| SNF | The Saints | Bucs |
| Points | 38 | 3 |
| Yards | 420 | 194 |
| First shots | 27 | 13 |
| HIGH | 40:04 | 19:56 |
Also, they kicked a pathetic 48 yard FG down 38 with less than 6 minutes to go, lol.
Last week: 3 ?
4) Cardinals (5-3): You know what? It might sound like an odd line, but there’s no shame in losing to the Miami Dolphins! If you’re a half-full glass, or have an overview or whatever, I’d come back from the Cards-Dolphins game encouraged by Kyler Murray’s quality. They’ve got a ways to go in some places in their roster, but they’re going to get some playoff experience this year, with a chance to make a run, and they’re set for a decade or more at quarterback.
Last week: 2 ?
3) Saints (6-2): Just when you think Drew Brees could be in serious decline, he’s passing 26 of 32 for 222 yards, 4 touchdowns, no INT against a Top 5 defense. Surely there is. some decline, but we move into the part of the season (usually around the beginning of November) where Brees starts to warm up and light up teams.
Last week: 5 ?
2) Packers (6-2): Concerns about the Packers’ inability to stop the race remain, and it could be their Achilles recovery in January, but I’ll say it for them – they are at least reacting to the losses. Since last season, the Packers are 5-0 after losses, and they have won their next game each time by at least two scores, with a points differential of +85.
Last week: 4 ?
1) Seahawks (6-2): The Seahawks would be the fourth-best team in the AFC, at best, behind at least the Chiefs, Steelers and Ravens. The NFC East has been a punchline all season, but really, the NFC as a whole just isn’t that good from top to bottom. There will likely be a team that goes 12-4 that gets a seed 1 this year. If so, it hasn’t happened in NFC since 2014 and has only happened once in the past decade.
Last week: 1
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