This Is Something Special

What should have been the game of the week ended up being a showcase for how good Lamar Jackson is becoming in his second season. Forget all the noise and distractions about who did or didn’t consider him to be a quarterback. The guy is good and was a Heisman trophy winner at Louisville. I know that doesn’t mean much in the NFL, but the stuff he did in college showed me that he can be a quarterback in the league. Especially with how the position has evolved over the last decade. Jackson has been in the conversation for the MVP award this season, but he is now at the forefront. If Baltimore finishes with a 12-4 or 13-3 record, he is the MVP hands down. This will be two straight years of seeing a second year quarterback taking the league by storm and winning the MVP award. Last year of course was Patrick Mahomes. Stop bringing up idiotic debates when Jackson was about to be drafted. He’s was a quarterback then and is one now.

A Season Defining Game

I can’t say I’m surprised by this. Mainly the Denver Broncos having a 20-point lead and eventually losing it and the game. When you’re a bad team, these things tend to happen. The way in which the Minnesota Vikings instituted their comeback victory was quite impressive. You saw the worst of them in the first half. No cohesive offense. Bad defense and turnovers galore. The second half was exactly what we’ve seen out of them for most of the year. Usually a game like this will rally a team to a high seed in the conference or clinching a playoff spot out of nowhere. This Vikings team is legit and will be battling with Green Bay for supremacy in the NFC North down the stretch.

Under The Radar Season

Here are Derek Carr’s main stats through 10 games; 15 TD – 5 INT, 2,494 yards passing, 72% completion percentage, QB rating of 105.2 and he’s only been sacked 15 times. We always knew that he was capable of this. From what we saw last year we didn’t know if it would happen again. His 2016 season which was cut short due to an injury in the last game of the season is the biggest ‘what if’ moments of this franchise in recent memory. They were 12-3 at the time and about to make a playoff push that hadn’t been seen in quite some time in Oakland. That season he was only sacked 16 times and threw only 6 interceptions. This year is proving to be his best so far and that’s without having a guy like Antonio Brown who was supposed to be the go-to-guy for Carr. This will be quite the story to watch if Oakland makes the playoffs when no one expected it.