NFL - Perspective and Indicators

The Jets were electric and the Giants were boring but won anyway. Don’t get too giddy yet though, New York sports fans. I hate to be a party pooper but Houston is still too obviously Houston and the Skins, well, it’s hard to tell how bad they are. What’s missing in this first week of the season is perspective.

We’ll need to see a few more weeks of football before we can really begin to figure anything out. For example, the heretofore lowly 49ers upset the NFC Champion Arizona Cardinals. That’s a good indicator that they’ll be better and they have a good defense but did Arizona just have a bad game?

I just finished watching the Chargers look horrible while managing to just edge by the Raiders in Oakland. The Bills just absolutely threw one away against the lucky Pats. Are the Bills really that improved or are Brady and the Pats still rusty?

A really confusing game was the Bengals-Broncos match. I had expected the Bengals to be a possible playoff team this year while I thought the Broncos would be much better than everyone expects them to be, after the Cutler-Orton trade and the unhappy Brandon Marshall fiasco. But the Broncos won the game on a tipped ball in the last seconds in a very low-scoring game. What the heck does that mean?

Most Giants fans will remember the first three weeks of the 2007 Super Bowl season. They were marked by an atrocious Giants defense, a laughably bad defense. Then they magically transformed into something else. So, even when it seems pretty clear what you’re witnessing, it ain’t necessarily so.

But there are indicators. In the Jets case, all the indicators are good. The offensive line was dominant, the receivers aren’t that bad after all, and Mark Sanchez found a lot of them with no problem at all. (Well, there was that one pick but who’s counting). But how bad is that Houston secondary? Only time will tell.

The Giants indicators were good too but they certainly weren’t electric, especially on offense. While I know they played it smart, as they should, it was pretty much a yawner, except for that pass rush. The Umenyiora forced fumble and return for a TD was really good to see but then that was offset by the Skins fake punt for a TD. Does that mean anything? Will that be an isolated incident?

The Cowboys beat the Bucs by a good margin but their run defense looked kind of shaky, especially early. And Romo looked fantastic on those TD’s to Williams and Crayton but how bad was the Bucs pass defense? It looked pretty bad to me. And is Cadillac Williams really that tough? Hard to say, as Derrick Ward (remember him?) looked pretty good too.

We’ll get a whole giant helpingful of perspective next week though, as the G-Men face off against the Boyz. Early indications are that it will be a war. Only after that game will we be able to see just how good the Giants defensive front really is.

Then there’re the injuries, really season-shaking injuries, as the Bears lost Brian Urlacher and the Eagles lost McNabb for at least a couple of weeks. (I’ve had a cracked rib myself and my guess would be three weeks). Can the Eagles win with Kolb? Can the Bears survive without Urlacher? (My guess would be no).

Most distressing for me was the Vikings game against Mangini’s Browns. Adrian Peterson ran wild in the second half and Brett Favre looked fine, much to my dismay. I was kind of hoping for some “look-out” blocks in the Vikings offensive line and some bone-jarring sacks of Favre but it just never happened.

But are the Vikings really that good? Gimme a break, that was the horrible Browns on the other side of the field. Drew Brees threw 6 TD passes but, come on!! That was the winless Lions the Saints were shellacking.

The point is made, I think. The only thing that’s sure is that you’d better not place too much faith on what you thought you saw in Week 1. The eyes can be deceiving, especially in the wild and wacky world of the National Football League.

Football is more unpredictable than other sports, if just because of emotion. It’s a game dominated by emotion. And injuries. And both of those things are fairly unpredictable, even if you can almost guarantee that certain players will get hurt sometime in the course of the year, like McNabb, for example.

The Eagles at least have an answer for McNabb. And, because they weren’t too sure about either Kolb or Vick, eventually, they made a very smart move in picking up Jeff Garcia, who was very reliable in backing up McNabb a couple of years ago. The Eagles seem pretty serious about their chances of winning it all this year. All indications would seem to point in that direction anyway.

Aside from injuries, however, there is that emotion that makes the difference between winning and losing. It seems to come from the top too, from the ownership and the management and the quarterback. For examples, I’ll give you Dan Rooney and Rex Ryan and Tom Brady, or even Eli Manning, in a pinch.

Dan Rooney’s Steelers are always good, they always seem to play with passion and they always seem to have a good coach who believes in fundamentals and effort. Rex Ryan’s defenses always played with emotion and now his team, the Jets, seem to have been touched by his magic wand. And Brady just won’t lose (except when he’s on his back a lot), as he proved again last night.

So I’m psyched, definitely, for an eventful season. The Jets play the Patriots, the Giants play the Cowboys and all will be right with the world. I can forget about the unhappy Mets season, the incredible ugliness at the U.S. Open, and look forward to two tough teams in town. Now.