Week 5 in the NFL started with an aesthetically unappealing game, unless you like bad offenses getting beaten up by good defenses while also getting in their own way. It ended with watching two great offensive teams go head-to-head on Monday Night Football. Once again, football found a way to redeem itself.
Thank goodness for football. And learning. Here’s what we saw in Week 5:
The Raiders let a big lead slip
The Las Vegas Raiders are 1-4. It’s too early to call it a lost season, but their loss to the Kansas City Chiefs on Monday night was their second divisional loss of the season and drops them to three games behind the Chiefs in 1st, and two behind the Los Angeles Chargers in 2nd. All three of their losses have been one-score games. They’ve been competitive, but the pendulum hasn’t swung their way.
Monday night should have been a moment where they were able to string together some momentum. The Raiders led 17-0 in the second quarter before the Chiefs brought it back to 20-10 at halftime and went on to score on five consecutive drives, ultimately winning the game 30-29. That’s now the second time this season that the Raiders have let a big lead slip. These things happen, but being in too many one-score games can be the death of a team – and the Raiders are learning that the hard way.
This team could so easily be sitting with a winning record right now, but mistakes have cost them and left them in a tough spot. If anyone can get out of this hole, it could be them, but not putting potential wins away will cost you.
Philadelphia Eagles remain perfect
Is there any stopping the Philadelphia Eagles? Probably. But not this week. The Eagles are 5-0 and still the only undefeated team in the NFL after a tight win 20-17 against the Arizona Cardinals on Sunday afternoon.
It wasn’t a perfect performance. The Eagles scored 14 points in the first half but struggled to consistently move the ball in the second as the Cardinals defense toughened up. Eventually, the Cardinals tied the game at 17-17 and had the last remaining undefeated team in the NFL on the ropes.
But good teams, with a little bit of luck, find ways to win. And that’s what the Eagles did. It was a testament to their character to grind it out – even if the Cardinals poor game management lent a helping hand.
Times up for Matt Rhule in Carolina
No one should be actively rooting for a head coach to be fired in the NFL – which is a conversation for another day – but the population of North Carolina got their wish on Monday morning with the news that the Panthers had fired their third-year head coach Matt Rhule. Following a 37-15 loss to the San Francisco 49ers on Sunday, the Panthers dropped to 1-4 on the season and 11-27 throughout Rhule’s three years at the helm.
Truthfully, this was always going to be the outcome for a Panthers team that is 31st in total DVOA and showed no real sign of improvement under Rhule. He was pegged as an offensive mastermind coming from Baylor, but the adjustment from college football to the NFL is tough and not everyone can make it. That doesn’t mean he’s a bad coach. He’ll bounce back and get a good job with a college team, but this breakup was necessary for both parties.
It does leave us with a few questions though. With the move coming precariously close to the trade deadline (three weeks away), will the Panthers look to go full rebuild under a new regime and trade away some prized assets like DJ Moore or Brian Burns? We shall see.
The New York Giants are 4-1?!
Hands up if you had the New York Giants starting the season 4-1? Anyone that has their hands up can put them down because you are obviously lying. No one saw this coming. Not even the most die hard Giants fan saw this coming. Sure, two of their four wins came against the Panthers and the Chicago Bears – two of the worst teams in the NFL, but those other two wins? The Tennessee Titans and Green Bay Packers. They may not be the best teams in the league right now, but they are no slouches.
Brian Daboll and his staff deserve every ounce of credit for extracting this sort of effort from a team that is facing a talent deficiency against most opponents. They were electric against the Packers, scoring 27 points on just eight possessions and holding Aaron Rodgers and the offense to just 22 points. They’re redefining what was meant to be a two-horse race between the Cowboys and the Eagles in the NFC East this season.
This might not last much longer, or it could be the start of a magical run, but maybe it’s time that we start to take the Giants a little more seriously, at least for the time being. As long as they have Saquon Barkley on the field, special things tend to happen when he touches the ball.
Congrats to the Giants, the surprise team through the first five weeks of the season.
A conversation about roughing the passer
Ugh. These conversations are never fun and I wish we never needed to have them. In a perfect world, we wouldn’t have to dissect refereeing decisions on a weekly basis. However, a perfect world this is not and we have to talk about some roughing the passer calls from this week.
Let’s start by saying, I have no issue with the NFL looking to protect players. In fact, I applaud it. Football is a violent sport, and we’ve seen over the last few weeks that some truly concerning things can happen on a football field. Players should be protected – maybe even from themselves – but there’s a fine line at play and the recent trend of roughing the passer calls, namely from this weekend, is absurd.
On Monday night, we saw the Chiefs’ Chris Jones strip-sack Derek Carr and recover the ball all in one motion, while landing on Carr. A perfectly clean, and timely sack. But one that was called for roughing the passer. It didn’t lead to points for the Raiders, but it could have easily derailed any momentum that the Chiefs had built. Instead, they harnessed that anger and channelled it into an impressive comeback. Regardless, THIS IS NOT A FLAG.
It just can’t be. Defensive players’ lives are already tough enough as is. Making it infinitely harder to do their job just isn’t right. Again, it’s easy to see why this shift is happening, but this is overkill. And it gets worse.
Grady Jarrett sacked Tom Brady as the Falcons mounted a comeback against the Buccaneers late in the fourth quarter. The sack would have resulted in a fourth down and forced the Buccaneers to punt. His momentum pulled Brady down as he swung to the floor, but it was a clean sack. Jarrett essentially carried Brady to the ground. However, flags fly and the sack is called for roughing the passer.
Arthur Smith, the Falcons head coach, was absolutely livid. And rightly so. Something has to change. Please.
-Thomas Valentine
Twitter: @tvalentinesport
Photo: Bobak Ha’Eri. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license.