NFL Week One Pick: Monday Night Football

Two games for Monday night. Had a pretty average day yesterday with the picks. One of the few people to nail the 49ers over the Packers, but a lot of surprises and upsets. I'll probably do a recap with my thoughts on Wednesday. But for now though, time to pick the Monday Night games.

NFL Week One Picks: Late Games

So now I'm going to move on the late games.

NFL Week One predictions; 1pm kick offs

So, classic, I take the Giants over Dallas, because Dalls won't run the ball.... and surprise, surprise, what do the Cowboys do? Yeah, great. 0-1 to start the season. There's only about 45 minutes till the Sunday games kick off so I'm going to have to pile through these somewhat, but even if I over run by a few minutes that shouldn't make too much of a big deal. Let's get started.

Week 1: Cowboys @ Giants

It's finally here. Week 1. The drought is over. I can almost sense the feeling in the air that football is returning. Granted, that might just be because it's 5am here and I just went outside wearing slippers and it's damn cold, but whatever.

Cowboys @ Giants
And we kick off the season with the Giants playing host to the Cowboys in a mid week game. It's a nice rivalry game to start off with and for the Giants I see this as being a perfect start to the defense of their crown.

See when I look at the Giants roster, I see all the great things they had from last season, minus the secondary. I have to admit, that looks suspect. But I still see a great running game, reasonably good protection, a monstrous defensive line and a wide receiver corps that is over flowing with talented players.

When I look at the Cowboys... eh not so much. I think defensively they have a solid amount of talent that will flex its muscles over the course of the season, but once again I see a group of receivers that has maybe one stand out in Miles Austin, one so-so in Dez Bryant, and then the solid Jason Witten. I see Tony Romo, who is prone to mistakes. I see an offensive line that I don't think will stand up well to the Giants pass rush.

The major bright spot for the Cowboys is the rushing attack, but let's not kid ourselves. The Cowboys don't really do rushing anymore. Whether that's influenced by Jerry Jones or not I couldn't tell you, but they seem fixated on proving that Romo is a worthy quarterback instead of playing their hot hand which is with DeMarco Murray and Felix Jones. And even if they did, I'm not sure the Cowboys line can create enough holes for those guys to run through.

We all know how difficult it is to defend a Super Bowl title. Every season is effectively a complete restart as even the best teams inevitably lose players to free agency as the Giants did, especially in the secondary. But I think enough of the core Giants defenders have remained in order to see them past the Cowboys, and I think Eli Manning retains enough weapons on offense to compliment that defense.

Giants win.

NFC East and South

Finally got a proper day to myself, no hassles, no messing about. Right, NFC East.

Actually, before I start, the last one of these I did was on the NFC North and since then the Packers have gone out and picked up Cedric Benson, I'm sure as part of a devious plan to ruin my predictions. Personally I think that's a really good move on their part as Benson is a good runner and a solid body in pass protection, which understandably is something the Packers are quite big on.

Now on to the NFC East. Promise.

Luck of the draw

The main reason I started this blog was to address some of what I perceived to be the major issues that I have with mainstream coverage of the NFL. One of the biggest problems I've always had is the elevation of certain people unfairly onto "Superstar" pedestals, that is to say that certain people are essentially manufactured into personalities that they are not, because it makes good TV and juicy articles on websites. The similar but in some ways opposite of this is to vilify certain individuals unwarrantedly because it sounds good and again generates mountains of comments and page views, regardless of how accurate or not the analysis is.

A Quick Rant

My next full post will be a look ahead at the NFC East, but just briefly I want to touch on something that came up after tonight's pre-season game involving the Broncos against the Bears.

Basically Peyton Manning took the field and did ok, nothing special, then got picked off. But what drives me nuts about football commentating and analysis is how the NFL Network crew, who naturally made a flurry of snide remarks about the receivers not being used to having accurate passes thrown to them during the short lived Tebow era, then proceeded to pour all the blame on the offensive line and the receivers.

Now in that respect, they're right; the Broncos have a bad O-line and their receivers are on their own unique level of terrible. But during the Tebow era it was all described as Tebow's fault and he was the sole cause of all the problems. Now that Manning has arrived however, oh now everyone has suddenly changed their tune. Despite the fact that Manning had a fairly average showing, suddenly it was all the fault of everyone else and Manning was perfect.

This kind of thing just makes my blood boil. When it's Tebow throwing to those receivers, he gets all the flak and the receivers are painted as being blameless. Enter the golden boy Manning and all of a sudden everyone has reversed course. It's total hypocrisy and the trouble is that it leaves an indelible impression on fans who turn to the TV experts for guidance.

And high school coaches wonder why parents are so ignorant to the game, or college coaches wondering why news reporters covering them are the same. There's your reason why. Shit like that.

NFC North 2012

TA DA!

Yes, well, perhaps not quite the fanfare I'd anticipated. Anyway, finally I am back to writing this blog as the football season slowly begins to lurch into action with the Hall of Fame Game tonight between the Cardinals and Dog the Bounty Hunters new favourite team, the Saints. So it's only appropriate that I pick this day to jump back on the saddle and actually produce a meaningful post.

I'm not sure whether the time away has been good or not. I was pretty burned out on football, just sick and tired of watching game after game of draftees in College. But at the same time I kind of regret spending so much time away, as I've really not followed football at all during the off season. I forgot that Raheem Morris had been fired from the Buccaneers for example. Football has lost some of it's lustre, but I'm hoping that getting back to the meat of football will bring that back.

I'm going to ease myself in today by taking a quick look at the NFC North and how I think the teams will get on. Begin!

Back

So it's August now and training camps are back in full swing. The Football season awaits us, finally. To be honest I haven't followed much of the off season goings on for the first time in years, mainly because I'm busy and I'm burned out with all the non-news that is generated about every last little scrap that the press generates.

But now I'm finally getting back in the swing of things and my plan over the course of training camp is to look at each division and assess where I think they're headed this season. So keep an eye out over the coming days, as I'm going to start in the NFC North, go clockwise around the states, and then do the same for the AFC.

It's good to be back and good to be excited about football again.

Update; 07/16/12

It seems bizarre but the blog has actually been attracting more views without me doing anything!

I am here though. Inevitably the blog feel to the way side during the off season, as I suspected it might. Other things consume my time, as they seem to for most amatuer football bloggers who, unlike our over paid, integrity challenged comrades in the mainstream, do not have all day to sit about thinking of ways to turn innocuous comments by football players into overblown media stories.

I have followed some of the off season buzz, but granted not a lot. It seems that most of the hype has surrounded the ludicrous deal that was given to Drew Brees, a deal the Saints can never hope to reap the benefits of. When I look at the offseason free agent market and think what the Saints could have brought in for that kind of money, I'm a little stunned.

I've also had little interest in some of the stupider articles that come out of the offseason. I've seen at least four or five articles belonging to major news sites that were nothing more than simply taking the opinion of a local beat writer and trying to pretend that is factually representative of how an entire football organisation views a certain situation.

There have also been a steady stream of misquotes and twists of what certain players have said about their teams, seasons, or team mates. It really is depressing to read some of the pure drivel that gets written.

And of course, player after stupid player has been arrested or otherwise run a foul of the law. Apparently getting paid millions of dollars a year is not enough to afford a taxi cab. Nor is getting regularly drug tested enough of a hint to some players, as if the advice of their coaches wasn't enough, that they should be staying away from drugs.

Ah well, stupid is as stupid does I guess.

Over the course of the next few weeks I expect the volume of posts on this blog to go up a little as the football season slowly lurches back out of the dark days of summer and into the bright and bountiful months of winter.

Or something like that.