NFL Week Four Recap: We dedicate this whole thing to Eli Manning

In a game week where Eli Manning rushed for a touchdown – using his actual legs, we thought about dedicating this whole thing to him – but that’d be too easy. Here’s four takeaways from last night’s NFL action

By / NFL / 7 years ago

New England, New Mentality:

What was once a daunting task, travelling to Foxboro can now be booked via Thomas Cook as a leisurely Sunday break. That defence is absolutely putrid.

We took an unholy amount of stick for suggesting they wouldn’t be winning a Super Bowl last month, but there’s more chance of Hugh Grant doing stand-up comedy. The Patriots secondary couldn’t live with a below average Greg Olsen-less Carolina offence. Stephon Gilmore was done on numerous occasions for illegal contact. Safeties consistently made the wrong decisions when defending the deep ball and Cam Newton looked like he could actually move again.

He’ll probably start dabbing again. Thanks a lot, New England.

Subpar Superpowers:

The same thing is spouted every year. Team X and team Y will be unbeatable.

Unfortunately for the dreamers, football just isn’t like that. It’s happened once. It’s only happened once for good reason.

These are elite calibre athletes and by and large, luck and schematics are deciding factors in most football games. The Falcons fell to the Bills last night – leaving just the Chiefs with an untarnished record after just four weeks. Even they welcome a rugged Washington outfit tonight that have played reasonably well thus far.

There’s a lot of average-to-good teams this year. There’s one or two good teams. The rest? Meh.

La-La-Losers:

A couple of things had to happen for the Chargers to be a success in Los Angeles. They had to win games. They had to establish an atmosphere opposition teams didn’t like playing. They needed the remaining sports teams in Los Angeles to dip in form and they had to get media onside.

They’re 0-4. They’re playing in a 26,000-seater stadium where 60% of the fans are supporting the opposition. The Dodgers had their best season ever, USC has a stud quarterback and even the Rams are free-scoring and 3-1.

On top of that, head coach Anthony Lynn and quarterback Philip Rivers got smarmy with the press after they lost to Philadelphia.

Clemson Clutch:

Deshaun Watson was not the first quarterback taken in this year’s draft. He wasn’t even the second quarterback taken in this year’s draft. Selected twelfth overall in what was considered a weak class overall for signal-callers, Watson was written off as nothing more than a system quarterback with a decent arm.

Tennessee, a widely-considered stud-filled outfit went to Houston and gave up fifty-seven points. Watson threw for 283 yards with a superb seventy-three percent completion rate. He threw four touchdowns, with just one interception for an adjusted quarterback rating of 125.0. We’re sure Mitch Trubisky and Patrick Mahomes are excellent prospects. But we’re also fairly sure that Deshaun Watson has done very little wrong in the early stages of his.

Houston only needed a quarterback for the last three years to be really competitive. It looks like they have one. For the first time in a long time, Houston – we don’t have a problem.

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