A Lost Sunday

It was a lost Sunday. For the Giants and Jets, that is, and anybody silly enough to root for them. I knew the Giants would be in trouble, facing Drew Brees & Company with somebody named C.C. Brown at safety and, well, I never put much faith in Dockery. The Jets were a surprise flop though, losing in miserable fashion to one of the worst football teams in the league.

Mark Sanchez has regressed a lot from the quarterback he was against New England. It’s a shame really. He’s aiming the ball. He’s doing almost everything required of a quarterback badly. He even made Ryan Fitzpatrick, the Bills horrible quarterback, look good, a feat I would have thought was impossible before yesterday.

For the Jets, the game wasn’t the only bad news. They also lost Kris Jenkins, their huge defensive tackle, to a fairly serious knee injury. So there goes the run defense for the rest of the season too.

And it’s easy to second-guess but I would have got Sanchez out of there. He was clearly dazed and shaken, and not likely to come out of it, which he didn’t. He seems to have lost any confidence he may have had, and clearly, it’s time for a change. At the very least, it’s time to institute some rules, like Joba rules, in a way. Three picks and he’s out.

Not that it even makes a difference anymore. Any team that could lose so easily to one of the worst teams in the league cannot be expected to win many more. Forget the playoffs, forget even mediocrity, this team is bad, bad, bad. Of course, any team with a bad quarterback will be bad. We can only hope that the regression of Sanchez isn’t a reflection of the coach’s ability. Most people like Ryan, and I do too, but maybe he shows too much confidence in people? It’s optimism gone amok.

I have to admit that, while the Giants clock was being cleaned, I was enjoying every bit of it as my fantasy team roster includes Brees, Colston and Shockey. They all had their way with the Giants, especially Colston, who seemed to just outduel anybody covering him for the ball. I knew he was good but I didn’t realize he was great.

The Giants made every Saint look great though, so it’s hard to tell how really good Colston may be from yesterday’s game. I have to think the result would have been much different if there had been any kind of coverage at all. All I saw was guys in blue running with guys in gold, but when the ball was in the air, the guy in gold went up and got it. The blue guy stayed cemented to the ground.

Just about everybody who could have caught a pass caught one. Not just Colston and Shockey, but Meacham, Moore….Well, seven different players scored touchdowns for the Saints. It was pretty much a massacre.

It was sad to see Eli do so badly in his hometown. Equally as sad was to see him lose his cool with running back Ahmad Bradshaw, who zigged when he should’ve zagged on one play, resulting in horrific pressure on Manning and ultimately, an interception.

There is hope for the Giants though. The Saints may be the best team in the league, and they had an extra week to prepare for this game. They exposed every Giants weakness, quite often actually. But the Saints offensive line did its job pretty well too, keeping what had been a fierce defensive front in check all day. Even a hint of defensive pressure up front could have made a big difference.

I’ll try to take solace in the fact that, as bad as the locals were, there were some other teams that looked just as bad or worse. The first team that comes to mind is the Eagles, who lost to the awful Raiders, but the Titans were absolutely humiliated by the Patriots and the hapless Redskins lost to the previously winless Kansas City Chiefs.

The most revealing statistic of them all might be the fact that the Redskins had faced a winless team in each and every game they’d played this season but had only won two of them. Harried Skins head coach Jim Zorn was relieved of his play-calling responsibility yesterday and quarterback Jason Campbell was finally relieved at halftime in favor of Todd Collins, who at least led the Skins to some field goals.

What happened to the Eagles at Oakland is beyond me. I knew Oakland was capable of fielding a very decent pass defense, what with the highest-paid cornerback in the NFL residing in their secondary (Asomugha got hurt), but I didn’t realize they could stop the run. Evidently, it was not a big part of their game plan.

The Eagles did lose their offensive tackle, Jason Peters, in the first quarter, which probably doused any Eagle thoughts of running. But McNabb was sacked six times, indicating some really big problems up front. And Akers missed two field goals, McNabb called a timeout he didn’t have, and they still should have won that game.

The Cowboys had their bye week and got to watch everybody else lose. Not too shabby. They’re coming off two fairly good weeks of play, having lost a close one to the undefeated (for now) Broncos and having beat the Chiefs by six in Kansas City. They get an extra week to prepare for the very tough Atlanta Falcons next week, and they seem to have found a wide receiver they didn’t know they had.

The Yanks had the day off after beating the suddenly sorry Angels and seem a 50-50 chance of winning still another at 4PM today, Pettite vs. Saunders. Arod’s been great; he saved the game Saturday.

The Phils killed LA behind Lee to go up 2-1. They’ll face Wolf tonight behind big Joe Blanton. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Dodgers tie the series.