MNF Thoughts: Cardinals-Niners

A wildly entertaining game in the desert tonight between two teams that really aren't going to have history books written about them. The Cardinals' first MNF win since beating Tom Landry (!) had the following quick notes...

> A 104 yard kickoff return from Allen Rossum opened this one, and Cardinal Fan had to know there were in a dogfight. Emphasis on dog.

> Most of the game, the Niners were unable to get pressure and Kurt Warner was exceptionally accurate. That they scored only 29 tells you just how sloppy this one was.

> With 11:30 left and the Niners clinging to a one point lead, Frank Gore dropped a sure first down pass in the flat. When your best player can't make the play to more or less ice it... well, there was More To Come. Let's just say Gore's not going to remember this game fondly.

> How you know that the Cardinals aren't really a contender, Clue #8006 -- being unable to run the ball at all against the Niners. At home. Even with Tim Hightower taking nearly all of the snaps. Sheesh.

> Yes, Vernon Davis caught a touchdown pass tonight... then cost his team a 15 yard penalty for removing his helmet while celebrating. It didn't cost the Niners anything, and Singletary laughed about it on the sidelines... but man alive, is this guy a moron.

> 45% of the time that he plays a game, Kurt Warner throws for over 300 yards. Your second place guy on that list is Dan Fouts, at 28%. Now, others will break on to this list as they meet a 100 game minimum, but still, ye gads. Mr. Warner has had some moments.

> The teams combined for 20 flags tonight for 162 yards. Yes, the refs matched the level of play of the teams.

> In the first half of this game, Shaun Hill did something I've never seen in on a football game before. On a 3rd and 11, the Niners called a quarterback draw to the left. Hill got popped a few yards short of the sticks, and had his helmet removed in the contact. He then fought through the tackle and dove, without protection and head first, for the first down.

Hill's not terribly gifted physically, and he cost his team the game tonight with some breathtaking mistakes -- two in the fourth quarter, both of them inept, and others that were called back on penalties. He doesn't have the confidence of his coordinator, the pass-wacky Mike Martz, and there's a good reason for that, in that his decision-making is bad, even for a Martz QB.

But on the strength of diving for a first with a bare head, he's going to draw an NFL paycheck for five years. He also gets every ounce of performance out of his ability with offside snap draws, the ability to get rid of the ball under huge pressure -- tonight at one point, 17 hurries, no sacks -- and just pure ballsiness. You don't really want him quarterbacking your team, but many teams employ a lot worse. Of such things are practice squads made... and no, JT O No Sullivan is *not* getting this job back.

> Tonight's Niners team were physical on defense despite facing a red-hot Kurt Warner in the second half, covered the 9.5 point spread with ease, had any number of chances to win, and fought hard. They might be the second best team in this division. And oh, my, what a horrible, horrible division it is...

> Twice in the second half of this game, the Cardinals were over-aggressive at the line, drawing ticky-tack five yard flags that wound up costing them defensive turnovers and touchdowns. It's a snakebitten franchise, folks.

> The last five minutes of this game simply defied description. Hill threw an inexcusable pick. The Cardinals couldn't get a first, and punted. After some of the worst prevent defense pass coverage you have ever seen, the Niners get the ball to the 1 with 40 seconds left, and inexplicably take 20 seconds to spike it. No, I'm serious.

The Niners then bounce Gore to the left, and on not enough contact to take a man down in two-hand touch, their star loses his balance before he can get in. The Niners then spike it with two seconds left, and the final play of the game is an Andy Reid-esque fullback dive from the three with Michael Robinson. The Cards stopped it and escaped with the win.

Honestly, this was wild fun, but I can't wait to wager against this Cardinals team in the playoffs... even though, with a four-game lead in their division, they will have the franchise's first home playoff game since 1949.

Yes, 1949. The franchise was in Chicago then.

(Oh, and having Warner and the balls-nasty Anquan Boldin in my points league got me to second overall tonight... after being last in Week 1 after The Brady Moment. What a ride.)

Mike Singletary, America's Favorite New Coach

The rant in question is directed at tight end Vernon Davis, and shared by every unfortunate SOB who drafted Davis in their fantasy league.

But still... one teeny, tiny point. Mike, if you want winners, why the hell did you take the job in San Francisco?

NFL Roundup: How 'bout them Cowboys?

There's pleasant, there's fun, there's riotously enjoyable, and then there's the Cowboys getting absolutely dominated in a game they were supposed to win going away... and picking the game correctly to boot.

Oh, and Jerry Jones? Excellent use of the trade deadline, sir. Your acquisition of Roy Williams,, and the immediate long-term contract that you signed him to, in a week where he contributed nothing against a breathtakingly bad secondary... truly, sir, you have never occupied a warmer place in my heart.

The simple fact of the Cowboys right now is that there is no part of this team -- even the presumably dominant offensive line -- that can be counted on. Tony Romo was clearly making that group look better then they are (Brad Johnson was sacked five times today by the previously punchless Rams defense). Marion Barber got his 100 yards, but a lot of it was on one run. Felix Jones made that OL look better too -- and he's out for a few more games. The defense got killed on the ground. The secondary wasn't the huge issue here, but only because the Rams were content to play conservative and kill them with Stephen Jackson.

What's next? Well, let's face it... Jones just tried to fix a team with a bad back-up quarterback and secondary with another wideout. He even got him from Matt Millen's old team, to complete the transition. In post-game comments, Jones was blunt in his unhappiness.

He can't release players. And he just spent his Sunday watching a team that fired its coach on its bye week come back with two unexpected wins against presumably better clubs. Everyone also knows that Wade Phillips is on a Win Or Else leash after the past two playoff washouts. Finally, thanks to the Giants surviving the Niners today, they are two games back in the division, and in real trouble for making the playoffs.

Would Jones fire the coach? Will Romo come back next week at home against the Bucs, even if it's not a very good idea? Will Owens melt down? Is someone (Bill Cowher) getting a phone call with a Name Your Price offer?

Honestly, there's nothing these guys won't try or do. Which is, well, why today was such a gift from Heaven...

> As for the Rams... well, heck. They've won two in a row, and they play in a division with the Niners and and Seahawks. Start thinking playoffs, baby!

> Just when you thought the AFC was getting back to normal... the Colts go to Green Bay and played abysmal football, the Chargers get worked in Buffalo with LaDanian Tomlinson looking spent, Miami returning to seed at home against a presumably reeling Ravens team, the Raiders taking out the Jets in overtime... yeesh.

> So all hail your Titan Overlords, the Last Unbeaten Team, and the club that no one outside of Tennessee really and truly believes in. Maybe we should, given that they've got a dominant defense and some really good work going on in the running game -- they carried the ball 40 times for 332 yards today, albeit against the I-AA Chiefs. People call Kerry Collins a game manager, but he's more than that, given the strength of his arm and the fact that he's won some playoff games and gone to a Super Bowl.

But still, it's hard to shake the idea that some club is going to put together a good game and show all of the reasons why no one thought the Titans were going to go to the playoffs this year, let alone have a three-game lead in the division. Next week at home against the Colts should be Highly Interesting.

> By the box score, today's 29-17 Giants win over the Niners was by the book and easy; the only reason the Niners were even in the game was their second straight week with a blocked field goal returned for a touchdown. But having watched most of the game today, I saw something different.

Shh... you remember Old Eli, the guy who made bad reads and gave the other team a lot of chances to make interceptions? He's back....

The Giants won this game because the Niners are, make no mistake, a terrible team. The defense did the job on Frank Gore (11 carries for 11 yards), and they ran the ball 29 times for 126 yards and two touchdowns. But Manning was only 16 for 31 despite having all kinds of time and places to throw to, and this game was close until JT O'Sullivan made sure it wasn't. The NFC East is wide open, people.

> Continuing the Winless Dream at home today were your Cincinnati Bengals. How bad is this team? Cedric Benson qualified as the Bright Spot. They didn't sack Ben Roethlisberger, and everyone gets to sack him. They gave up 120 yards rushing to Mewelde Moore. Their fans are selling the tickets as fast as they can.

So, um... what does Marvin Lewis have to do to get fired?

> The wackiest game of the day might have been in Chicago, where the Bears rode their No Boring Outcome defense to a 48-41 win over the Vikings. This game might have single-handedly saved the year for a guy in my points league, who had Bernard Berrian (81 yards and a touch), Adrian Peterson (130 combined yards and 2 touchdowns), Greg Olsen (74 and a touch) and the Chicago defense (3 touchdowns, 2 sacks and 4 picks countered by 41 points allowed). Not exactly what anyone expected, really.

In between all of that was the continuing emergence of Kyle Orton, who tossed up another 283 yards, 2 touchdowns and no turnover game. If anyone has ever seen a previously terrible quarterback become reasonable this quickly... well, I can't remember it.

> If picking games in the NFC South were a fight, it would have been stopped by now on cuts. At least the Bucs were able to take out the awful, awful Seabags; it feels like the first right call that I've made in that division this year.

As for the Saints' um, effort in Carolina... well. at least their next game on the road is in London against the Chargers. So both teams can not show up for that one...

> The late game here in the Man Cave was the Raiders taking out the Jets in overtime, in a game that should have had Jets Fan tearing his hair out. On a day where they got 159 yards (!) from Thomas Jones, Brett Favre went back to terrible, with 2 back-breaking picks and bad accuracy (21 of 38). The Raiders took away the Jet wideouts (Laverneous Coles had 4 catches for 51 yards, while Jerricho Cotchery was made complete invisible with 1 catch for no yards by Nnamdi Asommugha).

But the really notable thing to me in this game was how the Raiders won it; it will tell you that they aren't going to win very often. With three minutes let in regulation, the home team went ahead on a 37-yard Sebastian Janikowski field goal. On the next drive, the Raiders defense allowed Favre to escape pressure for a miracle conversion, and failed to make the plays (i.e., dropping interceptions) that would have prevented a tying Jay Feely 52 yarder.

Oh, and they also did that irritating Ice The Kicker thing, on a Feely miss. Can someone please, for the love of football, stop this already?

In overtime, JeMarcus Russell finally made a play to Zach Miller (like all bad QBs, he over-relies on the tight end). Three downs from there, after some remarkably conservative playcalling given that they were only on the Jets 40, the Raiders send Janikowski out to make a 57 yarder. Miraculously, he does it for the win. Had he missed, you have to think the Jets would have been able to move the ball 15 to 20 yards for the win from there, but never mind. It's not like you keep the coaching job in Raider Land from your intellect.

Jets Fan, you just lost a game to a team with a special needs coach. Sure hope that you don't need this game later...

We Should All Find Opportunities To Be So Abundant

The next time you hear some honk talking about the incredible level of play in the National Football League (making sure to spread those six syllables out for a good 10 count)... remember this.

Chris Weinke is employed, and got a start today for the Niners. (To be fair, they were working with QB #4 for the year.)

He lost, of course, which now makes his career record a rousing 2-18. That makes him a fine option for Coach Hitler (the sobriquet is courtesy of the late and unlamented Kevan Barlow), who is now 16-32 in his three seasons, and delivered the following rousing quote post-game.

"I do have a contract. The speculation is what it is."

Why yes, Coach. And so is your record.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled fluffing.

Thank you, Coach Walsh

Any number of sites will be treating this passing at length, many of them better qualified to do it than me. When Walsh was in his glory, I was 3,000 miles away, wishing that my team could be like his.

Perhaps the best way to remember Walsh is to read Michael Lewis's fantastic book about football, "The Blind Side." In it, Lewis examines the chess match between Bill Parcells and Bill Walsh -- and in that chapter, you get to the point of really understanding and appreciating both men, and what they brought to coaching.

Walsh, simply, made you feel like it was OK to think about football. The way his offense worked, at its height, didn't look like a one-time gathering of world-changing talent, though of course they had that as well. It just looked like they were ahead of the game, smarter, more sophisticated.

In a time when offense looked like World War I-esque tests of wills to run it up the gut, or the same old Al Davisian deep outs and bombs, Walsh devised slants that looked like they should get their WRs killed, and yet they never did. Even when they were beating my team, it was hard to really work up a good hate on them.

His defenses were some of the most underrated in NFL history. His secondaries defined shutdown, to the point where an ordinary pass rush generated constant and effective pressure. His safety was Ronnie Lott. That, alone, made them not a finesse team. Since his offense usually provided a lead, his defense could play downhill all game -- and they did it well. For a "cerebral" coach, you rarely saw his line get trampled. Just because they were smart didn't mean they also couldn't play a little smashmouth.

His offense was not as revolutionary as you might be led to believe. Hints and touches of it were around as early as 1960, with an Eagle team that won a championship without being able to run the ball worth a damn. The AFL also had tons of stuff that Walsh used later.

But the mystique that he brought to it -- the hubris of scripting plays in advance, the simple but relentless mastery of the same sets, and the play-calling mix that always seemed to be on point -- was remarkable.

When the Niners came to power, I rooted for them as my back-up team, as did most of America, it seemed. There was a simple reason to this: either you rooted for the Niners or you rooted for the Cowboys, and rooting for the Cowboys was like rooting for a holier-than-thou version of the Yankees.

Besides, there was never a time, before Walsh, that the Niners created any kind of animosity around the league. They just weren't very good very often.

Since Bill lost the fastball and moved on, the Niner faithful have looked and behaved like the rich kid whose family hits hard times -- unable to accept that the glory years have gone forever.

There will also never be, I am certain, a coach that gets this far in front of the game, and maintains his lead for as long as Walsh did. The league is more competitive now, and the race to imitate any innovation is much faster.

He also, and this is true no matter who you root for, made the game better -- simply because he made it OK to think about pro football in all new ways. There isn't too many people who you can say that about.