An Important Road Win

With a recent home loss to the division rival Denver Broncos, it seemed as though the Chargers were being seen as an after thought in the AFC. They shouldn’t be anymore as they came into Pittsburgh and defeated the Steelers with a last second field goal. Although it took three tries because of three consecutive offsides penalties by the Steelers. Nonetheless the Chargers are proving why they must be considered a threat in the AFC. Sure, Houston has a 9-game winning streak and Baltimore is still hanging around with a rookie QB at the helm. At the top of that group should be the second team from LA. They can be frustrating to watch at times with the talent they have, but they beat the Pittsburgh Steelers when they were ahead 23-7 at halftime. This was done without their star running back Melvin Gordon as well.

Defense Reigned Supreme

I knew it would happen at some point this season. I just didn’t think the Dallas Cowboys would be the ones to do it. What did they do? The managed to hold the New Orleans Saints to only 10 points scored and 176 yards on offense. Considering how good they’ve been all year, this was a stunning total for one of the best offenses in the NFL this year. What was the major reason for this kind of output? Well, it was simple. Dallas kept the ball for the majority of the game. It doesn’t take an astrophysicist to figure out that if you keep the ball from the opposing team, your chances of winning increase quite a bit. The Cowboys had the ball for over 36 minutes of the game. Even though the final was 13-10 in favor of Dallas, their defense was fresh and were constantly attacking the Saints. This gameplan could prove valuable to the rest of the league as they prepare for this offense.

A Regime Change In Lambeau 

You figured it would happen when the season was over. Little did we know that it would right after the Green Bay Packers home loss to the Arizona Cardinals. Yes, a game that was a must win and a should’ve won to boot was a loss. As a result head coach Mike McCarthy was fired. His 13-year reign is now over. The weather wasn’t ideal to be throwing the ball 50 times, but Aaron Rodgers did have 50 pass attempts. Their running game wasn’t effective at times, but it was giving them results in the previous two games. You’d think that would factor into the gameplan. It wasn’t a blowout, but they still thought they should throw the ball 50 times. My point in all this is that McCarthy seemed to have no sense of knowing when to adjust. He was hell bent on making his gameplan work no matter what. Sure, when you have one of the best quarterbacks in the league I can see how that has worked more times than not. Success in this league is now based on your adjustments. Look at Bill Belichik for goodness sake. If you’re not willing to throw that original gameplan out for the sake of winning a must win game then what’s the point? I’m sure McCarthy will get another chance to be a head coach. He did win a Super Bowl in those 13 years. He’ll have hopefully learned a lesson or two from this when that time comes.