Week 13 Thoughts

Well, the Seattle Seahawks-Minnesota Vikings game was a disaster. At least it was for those the Vikings. Things went great for the Seahawks.

A 38-7 Seahawks win.

There wasn't a single redeeming thing for the Vikings in this game. Not one positive. There was even an issue were their lone score. A terrific 101-yard kick return by Cordarrelle Patterson. It was a great, explosive play. It made the score 35-7 with 48 seconds to play in the third quarter. For reasons known only to himself, Patterson celebrated as if his play had won the game. He started Deion Sanders-highstepping 10-20 yards before he crossed the goal line. He leaped into the stands to celebrate his score. Patterson's celebrating just didn't look right with the score such as it was.

The Seahawks took advantage of a Vikings defense that was taken apart by injuries. They entered the game without nose tackle Linval Joseph and safety Andrew Sendejo. The Vikings seriously missed Joseph in the middle of the line. He's been one of their best defensive players all season. He's been one of the best defensive tackles in the league all season. His absence forced the Vikings to move Sharrif Floyd to the nose and put Tom Johnson in Floyd's 3-technique spot. That movement resulted in backups at both tackle spots. The Vikings defense was hurt even more when linebacker Anthony Barr aggravated a groin injury and safety Harrison Smith hurt his hamstring early in the game. They were only on the field for the Seahawks first possession. A possession that ended in a fumble by Seahawks running back Thomas Rawls. A fumble that was recovered by the Vikings safety Antone Exum. This was the lone highlight of the Vikings defense. Joseph, Barr, and Smith are the Vikings best defensive players. It's bad enough for a team to enter a game without their top players. They have all week to prepare for the absence of those players. It's far worse to lose top players during a game. They have to adjust on the fly. It was mentioned by the announcers that Barr came into the game tasked with spying Seahawks elusive quarterback Russell Wilson. I figured that Barr or Smith would be tapped for that duty. The Vikings lost both. Jason Trusnik replaced Barr. Jason Trusnik! Trusnik was a street free agent about a month ago. That's a huge drop in talent and completely wrecked the Vikings defensive game plan. The Seahawks basically faced a shell of the Vikings defense for the entire game.

A greater concern now than this game is whether Joseph, Barr, and Smith will be available on three days rest for the game against the Arizona Cardinals on Thursday night. A game that is in Arizona which means that one of those days of rest is a travel day. These Thursday night are just ridiculous. There's no time to prepare. More significantly there's no time for the players to recover. The NFL should be more interested in better games not more games.

Injuries thrashed the Vikings defense. An inability to produce anything resembling a drive on offense kept that defense on the field. The Vikings were further destroyed by an officiating crew that had no concept of reality. Both teams had nine penalties. The Vikings nine penalties cost them 95 yards. The opportunities that those nine penalties gave the Seahawks hurt much more. The nine Seahawks penalties cost them 65 yards. They never seemed costly because everything else was going so beautifully for them.

The first penalty that the officials thought that they saw came when the Seahawks were threatening with a 7-0 lead and about three minutes to play in the first half. Vikings defensive end Brian Robison sacked Russell Wilson for an 8-yard loss at the Minnesota 22-yard line. Wilson was still fighting Robison's tackle even though it looked like he was down. Robison didn't let go. Perhaps because the whistle hadn't been blown. Wilson even broke loose and ran for what he thought might be a score. Perhaps because the whistle hadn't been blown. For reasons known only to the official that threw the flag Robison was penalized for unnecessary roughness. Nothing about the play looked unnecessary or rough. If anything, Wilson's refusal to accept that he was sacked was the entirety of the action. Instead of 2nd-and-18 from the 22. The Seahawks had a 1st-and-ten from the 11-yard line. Two very different situations. Who knows? Maybe the Seahawks still get the touchdown that followed but the officials made it much easier with a penalty that wasn't. That score enabled by the officials really started the Seahawks big win. It was a close game before it and wasn't close after it.

The other official-manufactured sequence came at the end of the third quarter. It was already 28-0 so maybe it didn't impact the game much but that's not really the point. Any hope for a miraculous comeback was ended by the officials. The Vikings had only been on the Seahawks side of the field once in the game and they were finally approaching that territory again. They were on their own 46-yard line. A holding penalty on Brandon Fusco made it 1st-and-20 on the 36. That hurt but the officials hurt them more. An offensive pass interference penalty that wasn't on Mike Wallace made it 1st-and-30. An illegal block in the back on Mike Harris that wasn't made it 1st-and-38 at the 18-yard line. The Vikings were having a hell of a time battling the Seahawks as it was. That's really on them but they really shouldn't have to fight through the official's vivid imagination as well.

Pete Carroll might be the most annoying coach to watch when everything is going his way. Literally everything was going his team's way in this game. Yet he goes absolutely ballistic when a holding penalty was called on tight end Luke Willson that nullified a 53-yard touchdown run by Russell Wilson. Willson's blatant hold of Vikings corner Xavier Rhodes made Wilson's touchdown possible. That gum-chomping little elf is bouncing around the sideline with a 28-0 lead and he's upset over a clear penalty by his player. He's upset with the officials when he should have been upset with his player. That player cost his team another touchdown. Ridiculous.

It's impossible for the Vikings to take anything positive from this game. It was one of those games that just got out of control. It got out of control just before halftime and the Seahawks rolled in the second half. Their defense played great. Penalties, imagined and real, kept the Vikings behind on the down and distances regularly. The Seahawks defensive front could just tee off on Teddy Bridgewater. Anytime Adrian Peterson gets only eight carries. it's going to be a long day for the Vikings offense and this was a very long day for the Vikings offense. For the whole team.

I've seen teams piece together an offensive line with scraps due to injuries or poor play to give their quarterback some time to throw. The Seahawks have done that this year. They haven't been perfect but they have given their quarterback a chance. The Vikings were forced to deal with season-ending injuries to a couple of their linemen in the preseason but the same five players have now played together for 12 games. They have to play better. The coaches have to get those linemen to play better. Bridgewater can help himself, and his team, by getting rid of the ball quicker but the line has to give him a chance. The Vikings will have no chance in the playoffs, let alone make the playoffs, if Bridgewater has no chance to throw the ball.

A lot of of the talking heads will be raving about Russell Wilson and the Seahawks offense after this game. There's no doubt that they played well but they were going against a preseason-level defense. The Vikings defensive gameplan was thrashed when Anthony Barr and Harrison Smith were sitting with Linval Joseph on the sideline for all but that first Seahawks possession. Injuries even forced cornerback Terrence Newman to play a few snaps at safety. This game and Thursday night's game against the Arizona Cardinals was the two-game stretch of the season that worried me most. That stretch couldn't have started any worse. Hopefully some players can get healthy in less than three days.

The Minnesota Vikings don't seem like a team that gets too full of themselves mainly because Mike Zimmer isn't the sort of coach that allows his team to get too full of themselves. That being said three of the Vikings four losses came at a time in which they must have been pretty happy with themselves. The media was giving them some love and things were going well prior to those three games. They opened the season in San Francisco against a 49ers that had experienced a simply horrendous offseason. These were two teams that were trending in opposite directions. The Vikings were horrible in the game and the 49ers were much less horrible in a surprising win. Two weeks ago the Vikings were riding high on a five-game win streak. The Green Bay Packers were struggling. The Packers thumped the Vikings at home 30-13. The Vikings came into yesterday's game feeling really good with their division lead. They get thrashed by the Seahawks. The Vikings remaining loss was a close one to the Denver Broncos in week 4. This was a game in which they were a significant underdog on the road. It was a close loss to a Super Bowl contender that revealed more good than bad. It was a game that showed that they could play with the big boys of the NFL. It was a loss that triggered the five-game win streak. The Vikings shouldn't start feeling good about themselves until the season is over and they have won the games that matter most. They haven't done anything yet.

The best thing about this game was seeing Bud Grant at it. I just wish that he didn't have to see this Vikings team play such a disaster of a game.

Some other games yesterday were more entertaining.

The Tennessee Titans and Jacksonville Jaguars might be playing a lot of good games in the coming years. Division foes with talented, young quarterbacks. Marcus Mariota for the Titans. Blake Bortles for the Jaguars. Mariota was on the winning side of this shootout. 42-39.

Mariota:
20/29 for 268 yards and 3 TDs
9 carries for 112 yards and an 87-yard score

Bortles:
24/36 322 yards 5 TDs

Since the arrival of Andrew Luck in 2012 it's been the thinking of most that the Indianapolis Colts would control the AFC South for the foreseeable future. The Titans and Jaguars might have something to say about that with their promising young quarterbacks.

The fourth team in the AFC South has been one of the hotter teams in the league. The Houston Texans. They were cooled off by the Buffalo Bills 30-21.

The Texans are the lone AFC South team still looking for their talented, young quarterback. For now, they are tied with the Colts for the division lead.

There were two games that required some extra time to decide the winner.

The San Francisco 49ers stunned the Chicago Bears in Chicago when Torrey Smith caught a 71-yard touchdown toss from Blaine Gabbert in overtime. The Bears thought that they had this game won at the end of regulation but Robbie Gould missed a 36-yard field goal attempt as time expired. Overtime.

49ers quarterback Blaine Gabbert has been efficient since he replaced Colin Kaepernick at the position. The difference between the 49ers offense under Gabbert is that he's made enough splash plays to keep the team competitive. The 49ers defense has kept the scoring down so that a splash play here or there is enough to win a game here or there.

Gabbert dashed for a 44-yard touchdown with 1:42 left in regulation to tie the game at 20. Then he had the big toss to Smith to win it in overtime.

The other overtime game was the battle of New York. The Giants and Jets were both playing on their home field. The schedule said that the Giants were the home team for this game. The Giants scored all of their points in the second quarter. The Jets matched that total when Brandon Marshall caught a nine-yard touchdown from Ryan Fitzpatrick with 27 seconds to play. A 31-yard Randy Bullock field goal won it in overtime.

The St. Louis Rams were feeling pretty good about themselves about five weeks ago. They were 4-3 and thinking playoffs. They haven't won a game since. They are 4-8 after the Arizona Cardinals shut them down yesterday. 24-3. In St. Louis. Even in recent down years the Rams have given their division foes all that they could handle. They sure didn't manage that yesterday. Rams rookie running back Todd Gurley was a big reason for those happy feelings five weeks ago. He's been shut down in the five losses.

One would think that Rams head coach Jeff Fisher would be on the hot seat now. It's simply stunning that he can be mediocre so often and stay employed so long. It would also be nice to see him off of the Competition Committee. Any coach that employs Gregg Williams has no business on the Competition Committee.

The Atlanta Falcons continued their free fall. They started the season 5-0. They are now 6-6 after their 23-19 loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. With rookie quarterback Jameis Winston leading the way and running back Doug Martin running like he did a couple of years ago it looks like the Buccaneers are trending upwards. That might not be much of a surprise but I'd say that their rise is way ahead of schedule.

There were some entertaining games among the later window games.

The most entertaining was the one between the undefeated Carolina Panthers and the four-win New Orleans Saints. The Saints gave the Panthers a tough game in week 3 in Carolina. They gave the Panthers another tough game at home yesterday. The Panthers pulled out this back and forth game 41-38 on a 15-yard touchdown pass from Cam Newton to Jerricho Cotchery with a minute to play. The Panthers defense then kept the Saints from getting a shot at a game-tying field goal. This game might have been the greatest threat to the Panthers' win streak so far. Their final four games are against Atlanta, @New York Giants, @Atlanta, and Tampa Bay.

If Panthers receiver Ted Ginn Jr. drops another long distance toss (or any toss) from Cam Newton (or any quarterback) he should be kicked out of the league. No NFL receiver should have as much difficulty catching a football as Ginn routinely seems to have. It's ridiculous.

The New England Patriots played an interesting game with the Philadelphia Eagles. The 35-28 final score showed a close game. In reality the Patriots needed a furious late rally to make it close. The Patriots had a 14-0 lead in the second quarter. Then they were down 28-14 in the third quarter. The Eagles somewhat surprising lead was the result of a touchdown off of a blocked punt, a 99-yard interception return for a score, and an 83-yard punt return touchdown. The Patriots rally fell short and they were handed their second consecutive loss.

The Denver Broncos and San Diego Chargers could have gone home at the half. Both teams did all of their scoring in the first half. The Broncos won a less than lively game 17-3.

The other two AFC West teams played a more lively game. The Kansas City Chiefs scored 20 points in the fourth quarter to beat the Oakland Raiders 34-20. It was actually closer than the two-score margin. Chiefs safety, and former Raiders safety, Tyvon Branch intercepted Raiders quarterback Derek Carr and returned it 38 yards for a score to seal the game.

In the nightcap, the Pittsburgh Steelers took care of the Indianapolis Colts 45-10. Once the Steelers stopped handing the ball back to the Colts they started scoring.

There might not be a team in the league as explosive as the Steelers. Ben Roethlisberger has a variety of big play choices on every single snap. Antonio Brown is a matchup nightmare. With his size Martavis Bryant seems to be open on every single play. Markus Wheaton is emerging as the playmaker that he was drafted to be. The Steelers just seems to find a new receiving threat in every draft. The passing game is even more potent when 32-year old DeAngelo Williams is running like he did when he was 24 as he did last night. 134 yards on 26 carries. He also added another 31 yards on 5 catches. Scoring shouldn't be a problem for the Steelers. They just have to keep Roethlisberger healthy.

The Steelers have big games in the next two weeks. @Cincinnati and Denver.

Despite being 6-6 the Colts are tied for first with the Texans in the modest AFC South.

Hopefully this game silences the knuckleheads that suggested that Andrew Luck could be without a starting job when he was healthy enough to return to the field. Matthew Hasselbeck has done a fine job filling in for Luck but at 40 he's severely limited in what he can do on a weekly basis.

The 5-6, NFC East leading Washington Redskins host the fading, Tony Romo-less Dallas Cowboys tonight.