Wednesday, September 19, 2007

NFL Week 2 Awards

The Jonny Unitas Award - Carson Palmer...35-50, 401 yds, 2 picks, 6 TD passes. And to think the Bengals lost the game!! To the Browns!! Who scored 51 points, after not scoring 51 in their prior 5 games COMBINED!! Marvin Lewis is now in his 5th season as Cincy's head coach, and they still dont have much of a defense, even though all their big offensive weapons (Carson, Chad, Housh, Rudi) arrived either at the same time as Lewis or before. What gives???

The Ryan Leaf Award - Josh McCown...8-16, 73 yds, 3 picks, 1 TD pass. Very reminiscent of last year's Art Shell Raiders; were it not for a 46 yd TD pass to Jerry Porter, these stats would have been much worse. Both Trent Green (4 picks, 2 TD's) and Tavaris Jackson (4 picks, 0 TD passes, 1 TD run) were also bad, but at least they crossed the 100 yd barrier. Not surprisingly, all 3 teams lost. Quite surprisingly, Minnesota and Oakland almost won.

The Walter Payton Award - Jamal Lewis...27 carries for 216 yds, 1 TD, 0 rec. Check the calendar, is it 2003 again? Where did this game come from? He even had a 66 yard TD run...is Cincy's D that bad? Hats off to Jamal, I certainly never expected a game like this from him at this stage of his career - I expected more games like week 1 (11 carries for 35 yds, longest run was 7 yards). We'll see if he can follow this up with further strong performances.

The Blair Thomas Award - Ladanian Tomlinson...18 carries for 43 yds, no TD's, 4 rec for 15 yds. Wow, two very poor rushing performances in a row to start his 2007 campaign. Granted, the defenses were Chicago and New England, but can't we expect more from the future Hall of Famer? Should we put some blame on Norv Turner's play calling? This week it's another tough matchup vs. the GB defense, but I still expect a 100yd performance. Also under consideration: UCLA alums Maurice Jones-Drew (11 carries, 31 yds) and DeShaun Foster (9 for just 22 yds) looked greatly inspired by their teams 44-6 drubbing at Utah the day before.

The Jerry Rice Award - Tie between Chad Johnson...11 rec, 209 yds, 2 TD's, and Steve Smith...8 rec, 153 yds, 3 TD's. Chad was the primary beneficiary of the Cleveland/Cincy air-show, while Smith was the entire Panther offense in their uninspired performance vs. the Texans. If you haven't seen it yet, make sure you catch a highlight of Smith's 3rd TD - he miraculously escapes from about 5 or 6 tacklers, and then immediately gets to top speed on the way to the endzone. He shows the strength of a 230lb RB in the body of a 185lb WR - truly an amazing play.

The Charles Rodgers Award - Lee Evans...2 rec, 17 yds, 0 TD's. I admit to not having seen any Buffalo games this year, so maybe someone out there in Cyber-land can answer this question for me - how is it that Evans has only 4 catches for just 22 yards after two games this year? Is Losman missing him? Is he not getting open? Typically, he has at least two 22 yard catches in a game. I'm totally shocked and baffled, I expect him to explode at some point soon, though maybe not against the strong N.E. D this week.