Week seven of the NFL was one of the most thrilling weeks of NFL I can remember.
It started on Thursday night with a match-up decided by a blocked field goal and then continued with four matches in the early afternoon slot being determined in the final minute of the match, and all in the space of about five minutes.
While Green Bay, Baltimore and Indianapolis recorded convincing wins that seemed to affirm their positions as playoff contenders, the defending champion Seahawks were upset by St. Louis, New Orleans let slip a 13-point lead against the Lions and both Kyle Orton and Colt McCoy – a third string quarterback a month ago – led game winning drives for their sides.
After their shocking upset in St. Louis, the Seattle Seahawks are sitting at 3-3 and apparently the sky is falling. T
he Seahawks have now been behind or tied at the end of regulation in four of their six matches and looked scratchy in their victory against Washington.
Richard Sherman has not looked like the world beater he was a year ago, Marshawn Lynch has not passed 100 yards a match since the week one match-up against the Packers and the trading of Percy Harvin reveals friction inside the locker room.
It’s easy to look at the Seahawks record and write them off as down and out, but it isn’t that simple.
The Seahawks were beaten by special teams trickery on Monday, they held Austin Davis to just 152 yards, while Russell Wilson threw for 311 yards and ran for another 106. Furthermore, the claims about Lynch’s performance are not completely justified.
Yes it is true that he is averaging fewer carries per game than each of his past three seasons but he is averaging 4.6 yards a carry, the second best figure in his career and he has the second highest running DVOA in the league.
The Seahawks will come good. If they had have received the punt that the Rams ended up faking, Seattle wins the match. Even if Seattle were able to recover the fumble with a minute to go, I would back Wilson to drive his team into field goal range.
Seattle will face a relatively easy slate of teams over the next month before things get serious for the final six games of the season. They face the Cardinals twice, 49ers twice, Philadelphia and host St. Louis to finish the regular season.
These five matches will likely determine playoff seedings, with the number one position in the NFC West, the number one overall seed in the NFC and both wildcard spots likely to be taken by the teams here not named St. Louis and Dallas, who currently own the best record in football.
Interestingly, both of the NFC teams Seattle eliminated from last season’s playoffs, San Francisco and New Orleans, have also struggled in 2014.
Entering the season with high hopes following the signing of supposed defensive maestro Rob Ryan, the Saints hoped that this year was the year the boasted a defence to match their high powered offense. It was not to be, through week 6 the Saints had the worst defensive efficiency in the league, per Football Outsiders.
Holding a lead of 23-10 and after intercepting Matt Stafford twice it appeared as though the defence had finally turned things around and to be fair, it was a much-improved performance. Prior to the Lions final two touchdown drives, the Saints defence had held Stafford to just 204 passing yards and the rushing offense to just 51 yards on the ground.
The Saints should have won this game, they held a six-point lead with just over three minutes to go and all they had to do was convert for a few first downs to end the game.
Instead of playing conservatively, the Saints chose to throw the ball and after an incomplete pass on second and nine they chose to throw for the first down.
The play resulted in a first down, but not the one they would have wanted. Brees was intercepted and the rest is history, the Lions drove the required 23 yards and won the match.
It is very easy to criticise the Saints for their aggressive play calling but that would fly in the face of all the criticism of Mike Tomlin a few weeks ago for playing too conservatively in the final minutes of the Steelers loss to the Buccaneers.
Let’s instead focus on the pass by Brees, he was under pressure having just escaped an attempted sack and as he stepped up into the pocket it started to collapse around him. As the pocket started to collapse it was clear he just wanted to get rid of the football and with all his receivers tightly covered he didn’t have many options.
In hindsight, he probably should have taken a sack and forced the Lions to use their second timeout. Instead, he threw the ball to Marques Colston and could only look on as safety Glover Quinn cut underneath and swooped onto the football.
For every team except the Saints I would say that this loss, resigning them to 2-4, would likely put an end to their playoff hopes. But the Saints are playing in the woeful NFC South and are just one and a half games behind the Panthers, who were blown out by the Packers.
The Panthers also boast a terrible defence, in fact every team in this division does, through week six, the NFC South boasted Football Outsiders 28th, 30th, 31st and 32nd ranked defences in the league, that’s not something to be proud of.
The Panthers are currently only sitting at 3-3-1 thanks to the phenomenal play of Cam Newton, who has well and truly carried the team on his shoulders.
Who will take out the NFC South this season is anyone’s guess and despite sitting at 2-4 the Saints are just as likely to take it out as the other three teams, even with their 32nd ranked defence.
After a number of shock losses on Monday, the Browns losing to the Jaguars and Cincinnati being shut out by the Colts (this wasn’t a shock, but the nature of defeat was), the Buffalo Bills now sit in sixth place in the AFC standings. They sit in this position courtesy of a touchdown scored with one second to go against the Vikings.
Unlike the Saints, the Bills have built their success on the back of dominant defence. They are ranked seventh in terms of defensive efficiency and the defence has been the backbone of the team’s four wins.
There are concerns, however, that the Bills are 2014’s good-bad team, the team who beats all the bad teams but can’t overcome the top teams in the competition. This can already be seen in the Bills seven matches, wins over the Bears, Dolphins, Lions and Vikings and losses to the Chargers, Texans and Patriots.
Luckily for the Bills, they have a fairly soft schedule for their remaining nine games. The matches against Denver, New England and Green Bay can be provisionally put down as losses, but the remaining six are easily winnable for the Bills, as long as the defence continues to play at an outstanding level and Kyle Orton continues to manage the offense.
It is entirely possible for the Bills to finish 10-6 and take out the AFCs second wildcard position.
Week seven of the NFL was chaotic, but one moment that should never be missed among the chaos is Peyton Manning breaking Brett Favre’s record for most career touchdown passes in the NFL.
It is a fantastic effort and to put the achievement into perspective, it will take Colin Kaepernick until somewhere between 2035 and 2040 to eclipse this mark. Congratulations Peyton, now onto number 600.
Twitter: @fromthesheds
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