Doctor Psych's Week 5 recap

To put things in perspective, lets rank the Week 5 results by The NFL Win Scale:

A- Any road win against a play-off contender, solid home win
B- Any other road win, blow-out a bad team at home
C- You did just enough to win
D- Any road loss, close loss at home to a good team
F- Just plain embarrassing

Spoiler Alert: we have 4 F’s to hand out.

A.
Giants over the Texans: This one wasn’t close. The G-men went into Houston and dismantled a team with aspirations of winning the division and making a play off run.

B.
Jax over Buffalo: Sure the Bills aren’t very good, but they were desperate and started the game hot. Jax could have folded after being down 10-0 on the road, but to their credit they put up 36 to pull out the win. The Jags are 3-2 in the AFC South. Are they for real? Who knows? The Bills are done.

Falcons over Browns: The Dirty Birds covered on the road, can’t say that very often this year.

Lions over Rams: Any blow-out win in the NFL means something. If the Rams are serious about building for long-term success, then they need to trade Steven Jackson now for draft picks instead of praying to win the terrible NFC West and getting blown-out in the first round. I think Green Bay or New England may be willing to part with a late first/ second round pick.
Bears over Panthers: The Bears probably need 3-4 road wins to make the play-offs and now they have 2.

Ravens over Broncos: Sure the Broncos are up and down, but a late TD made the game look closer than it was. Kyle Orten moves the ball but seems to have trouble scoring, just the opposite of Alex Smith, who is great in the Red Zone but terrible everywhere else. Maybe they should get together and form one real NFL QB.

Eagles over 49ers: Eagles went across the country and beat a desperate San Fran team by winning the turnover battle 5-1. I still can’t believe Arizona, Seattle, or St. Louis will make the play-offs.

Jets over Vikings: For once it wasn’t the Jets to have the New York tabloids buzzing about them. This was a nice win for the Jets, they kept their composure with all of the excitement about Favre returning, a ‘sexting’ scandal with a former team employee, a Monday night game, and a rain delay.

C.
Colts over Chiefs: Don’t be fooled by the 10-point cover, Indy barely did enough to win this game. The Chiefs played Indy tight and hung around well into the 4th quarter. In fact, the Chiefs probably burned themselves by being too aggressive early. A failed on-side kick to start the game led to 3 Indy points. Later they gave up an easy FG to for it on 4th and 2 inside the Red Zone. If you add in a dropped TD pass and a missed FG, the Chiefs could have made this game much more interesting. On the Colts side of the ball, it seems that the new O-Coordinator is intent on running the ball when teams drop extra players back into pass coverage. That’s fine if the running game is working, but the Colts average 3.1 yards/carry for 97 total. Meanwhile Manning seems totally out of sync with his receivers.

Redskins over Packers: I give the Redskins credit for hanging around and pulling out a win, but you have to have some luck to come back from 10 down in the 4th quarter.

D. Bills, Browns, Rams, Chiefs, Packers, Panthers, Broncos, 49ers.

F.
Tampa Bay over Cincinnati: The Bengals had a 7 point lead with 2:28 to go in the 4th quarter and the Bucs had no time outs left. How do you come back from that? Two INT’s by Carson Palmer. Between the Reds getting swept and the Bengals collapse, there isn’t much to cheer for in the Queen City.

Arizona over New Orleans: Say what you want about Reggie Bush being out, he had nothing to do with the Cards D running back 3 TDs including 2 in the 4th quarter.

Tenn over Dallas: The Cowboys are a hot mess right now with sloppy play all over the field. Missed FGs, dumb penalties (excessive celebration), long kick-offs returns, 3 INT’s by Romo. If the Cowboys want to get back into the play-off hunt they will probably have to win 4 out of the next 5 (@Minn, NY Giants, Jax, @Green Bay, @NY Giants).

Oakland over San Diego: All it took for the Raiders to beat the Chargers: 2 blocked kicks and a 64 yard fumble return. The Chargers now have 3 bad losses with games left vs. New England, Tenn, @Houston, Denver, @Indy, KC and @Denver. They’ll be lucky to get to 9-7.