It was a bad week for the NFL. A week dominated by bad news off the field ended with a weekend full of games more memorable for a flurry of injuries to big-name players, many of whom will be out several weeks, and for nationally televised, flag-ridden games that, at times, made the football unwatchable. The NFL is still at the top of the professional sports popularity poll, but many more weeks like this one and the league’s critics who say it’s on a downhill spiral may get their collective wish.
Here are some things we observed:
- Just how tone deaf are the Vikings owners? Less than two weeks after video surfaced of Ray Rice hitting his now-wife harder than Marcos Maidana and Floyd Mayweather hit each other last weekend, reports surfaced that Adrian Peterson beat the tar out of one of his children with a stick. After doing the right thing and deactivating Peterson for last week’s game with New England, ownership not only reversed course and made the ridiculously transparent decision to reinstate Peterson for week three, but forced coach Mike Zimmer and general manager Rick Spielman into the position of defending the move behind the ridiculous assertion of letting the legal process play out.
Sorry – but that doesn’t hold water based on decisions this bumbling front office made in releasing AJ Jefferson and suspending Chris Cook for participation in previous domestic incidents. The decision made the Wilfs look bad. No less than Keith Olbermann took the team to task for its sorry, obviously money-and-record driven decision. This team didn’t even have the good sense to remove the logo of one of its sponsors while it made the sad effort at defending its decision Monday – a move that may have played a role in Radisson hotels suspending its involvement with the team for the time being. This is my hometown team, but the Wilfs sometimes make it hard to remain a fan. I didn’t think I’d say this anytime soon, but I hope NFL Commish Roger Goodell steps in and saves this team from itself by making sure Peterson is sidelined for at least several more games.
- On the field, the Vikings also have a ways to go. I like what I see from Mike Zimmer and Norv Turner enough to believe that this team will improve throughout the season, though the Peterson situation could hamper that progress. But it was clear on Sunday that there’s a gap between Minnesota and New England.
- What’s going on in Indianapolis? The Colts had the Eagles dead to rights Monday night, but the coaching staff wouldn’t let Andrew Luck step on Philly’s neck, much less snap it. Indy ran more than passed during the game, despite having the third-year number one pick overall from 2012 at QB. The degree to which that staff has turned him into a game manager – particularly in light of the less-than-dominant running of Ahmad Bradshaw (despite two TDs) and Trent Richardson – is damn near criminal. The Colts, I think, are still the best team in the AFC South, but now they’re looking up at 2-0 Houston and 1-1 Tennessee.
- San Diego is for real. Are they going to knock off Denver for the division? I don’t know if they are that “for real” yet, but the win over Seattle was convincing. Now, the Seahawks are not as good on the road as they are at home. And they probably were due to be brought back to earth. But this puts the Chargers in the upper echelon of a winnable AFC. And just like the NFC West is the strongest division in football, there will be some important and exciting games played in the AFC’s west coast this season too.
- Will Colin Kaepernick emerge? That Sunday night game should have been put away by the end of the third quarter. The long drive to start the second half should have resulted in a TD. If it had, it would have been much harder for the Bears to stage their improbable comeback. And Kaepernick, since his stellar first half-season as a starter, seems to have stagnated a bit in his development – at least in my eyes.
- Flag-fest – Speaking of that game, the NFL has to do something about its points of emphasis. This was an important, nationally televised game and it was almost unwatchable for portions of the first half because of all of the penalties. Boo to the league for that on top of everything else it is facing this season.
- Vaunted new defense? What’s going on with Green Bay’s supposedly new-and-improved defense? Julius Peppers was supposed to give that team the boost it needed. Sure, the Packers came back and won the game, but the Jets and the eminently average Geno Smith eviscerated them for much of the first half. I thought the Packers would comfortably win the NFC North heading into the season. I’m not quite as convinced now.
- Saints ain’t so hot either: I wasn’t surprised New Orleans didn’t look as good in Cleveland as it does on turf. I was surprised Drew Brees and Co. couldn’t find a way to eke out the win against a young Browns team. The Saints led both this game and the opener against Atlanta late and blew both. The defense has been brutal and that 0-2 start is going to haunt them at some point.
- The Lovie Smith era is off to a rough start in Tampa. This is a team that I thought had the potential to surprise some people with a potentially elite defense. But now the Bucs find themselves 0-2 after losing to teams quarterbacked by Derek Anderson and Austin Davis — and both of those games were at home.
- Is a quarterback controversy brewing in Washington? There are plenty of Kirk Cousins supporters out there, and now he’ll get his chance to showcase his skills. With Robert Griffin III going down with a dislocated ankle, Cousins is the starter for the foreseeable future. If he plays well, some will call for him to keep the job.
- That was an ugly outing for Tennessee on Sunday. Coming off a convincing win at Kansas City in Week 1, the Titans came out flat at home against Dallas. They somehow managed to make the Cowboys defense look respectable, if only for one week.
- Lots of pundits wrote off Carolina this year as a team likely to regress. But after shutting down the high-powered Lions offense, it’s clear the Panthers still have one of the league’s top defenses. They’ll remain competitive this year, especially if the offense can find some rhythm, too.
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Do some people actually still watch Keith Olbermann? The guy was fired from Al Gore’s network for being too hateful and extreme. I haven’t followed every detail of the Peterson case, but I’d caution against some bandwagon, herd-driven overreaction of the type we’ve seen play out repeatedly in sports media in recent years (e.g. more sober, less craven, less knee jerking minds are now walking back some of the ridiculous Penn State punishments). Parents have been spanking their kids with belts, switches, and rods for centuries; and it was pervasive in American culture at least as recently as the late 20th Century (a trip to the grocery store or other kid-filled public venues indicates that parents should probably be spanking a lot more than they do, even if it’s just with their hand). Occasionally a parent will slip and accidentally do more harm than was intended, or in a different place than intended. I don’t think that’s child abuse, and it shouldn’t be placed on the same level as people routinely injuring their children. It’s also not the same thing as a man beating up his wife, or punching out his girlfriend in an elevator. Hopefully the ever craven Goodell, always quick to scramble and try to get ahead of the current PC curve on the media’s selected issue of the day, especially when his own butt is under fire, doesn’t go all in with some zero tolerance policy on a topic as broad and nuanced as “domestic abuse”, a direction it sounded like he was headed in when he announced the lifetime ban for a second offense shortly before this story broke. Teams have discretion on suspending players, but I’m not crazy about about the notion of suspensions for merely being accused of something, without a conviction, unless there’s something extreme like deaths involved. It would be a shame if Peterson’s career was ended because he got a little overzealous spanking his kids a couple of times.
Oh and for the record, believe it or not the Cowboys defense actually looked respectable in week one against SF too. Offensive turnovers were the problem that game, something they improved on in week two.