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Today the NFC West continued its proud tradition of being the worst of the worst. This is how it went. The Seahawks struggled mightily (laughing from the audience) only to fall short of glory once again as they lost the the Cleavland Browns in overtime.

Thankfully for everyone, the Rams had the week off and did not have to endure another embarrasing loss.

The Niners showed that they are not capable of putting together 4 quarters of solid football once again as they fell to the 1-6 Falcons. They gave up 100 yards and a touchdown to Warrick Dunn. Need I say more?

The Arizona Cardinals kept their normal stride as they failed to mount any sustainable attack against a decent Bucks team.

The NFC west has the fewest total wins of any division in the NFL at this point of the season with a total of 9.

The AFC west is second to last in total wins with 13 to their credit.

Shaun Alexander continued to look terrible as he averaged around 2 yards per carry in what is becoming an embarrassment to the entire Seahawks organization.

Frank Gore did not play due to injury.

Out of all the divisions in the NFL, how bad is the NFC West? This is an interesting question that will be dealth with in parts.

First lets look at the teams who comprise this not so talented division. The four teams are listed in the order of their current standings in the division as of Week 6.

Arizona Cardinals: Record 3 - 3

Seattle Seahawks: Record 3 - 3

San Francisco 49er’s: Record 2 - 3

St. Louis Rams: Record 0-6

Arizona Cardinals

The Cardinals seem to be the strongest team in the division. Although they share the same win-loss record as Seattle, they beat the Seahawks earlier in the season and also beat the Rams. The Cardinals have looked better this year than they have looked in a long time. New coach Ken Wisenhunt has a certain presence to him and his team seems to be playing harder than I recall seeing them play since the days of coach Vince Tobin.

Unfortunately for the Cardinals, they lost starting quarterback Matt Leinart to a season ending injury two weeks ago and this past weekend, Kurt Warner was injured while hosting the Carolina Panthers. Although Kurt’s injury is to his non-throwing elbow, it is still affecting him. Kurt may be able to play next week, but the chances that he can remain healthy throughout the season are slim to none. This leaves the Cardinals with the “Two Tims”. Tim Rattay and Tim Hasslebeck that is. Neither Tim has been especially effective as a quarterback in the NFL.

Even with its injury problems mounting, the Cardinals are tied with the Seahawks for the lead in the pathetic NFC West, where the four teams have a combined 8-15 record. The only NFC West team that didn’t record a loss on Sunday was San Francisco. Why did San Fran do so well? They had a bye, that’s why.

Seattle Seahawks

Seattle is a team that has had high praise and expectations heaped upon it. It has won the division for the past 3 years and went to the SuperBowl one of them. Although they are in 2nd place with the same record as the 1st place Arizona Cardinals, they do not look like a playoff contender.

What is the problem with Seattle this year? There are more than one answer, but let’s look at the running game 1st. In 2005, the Seahawks were running the ball very well. Shaun Alexander was having a record breaking season and regularly rushing for over 100 yards per game. Unfortunatley, this is not the same team as 2005. Back then the Hawks had Steve Hutchinson next to Walter Jones on the left side of the offensive line. Even when teams knew they were going to run it at them it didn’t matter because they still couldn’t stop the Seahawks from running on them.

Shaun Alexander is having alot of the bad running blame pointed directly at him. Is it all Shaun’s fault? Yes and No. Is Shaun running as hard as he should? It doesn’t look like it. Is he hitting the hole and driving people backwards? Definitely not. Did he ever? Not really. When Shaun was at his best was when the line was opening big gaping holes for him to slip through. Is Seattle’s line capable of opening those big holes? It sure doesn’t look like it. 2 weeks ago in Pittsburg, Shaun had 25 yards on 11 carries. Last week against the formerly winless Saints, Shaun had 37 yards rushing on 14 carries. The Seahawks running game is more like a bad joke.

Let’s not forget the defense. Seattle ponied up some big bucks during the offseason to shore up its defense especially for the passing game and 3rd down conversions. So far, this defense doesn’t look any better than it did last year. It certainly couldn’t stop the faltering Saints. The Seahawks are still my favorite to take this division, but they don’t look like they can go any further.

San Francisco 49′ers

Here is the team that all of the analysts were gooing all over during the pre-season. Alex Smith coming in with more experience. Frank Gore who had a breakout season last year. A revamped defense looking ready to smother opposing teams. The addition of Darryl Jackson, the leading Seahawks receiver last year, added at wide receiver.

Where did all of the San Fran hype go? It appears that the 49ers can’t run the ball any better than they can pass it. They have struggled thus far this year to get the offense on track. It hasn’t helped that starting quarterback Alex Smith was injured 3 weeks ago and backup QB Trent Dilfer has been filling in.

The Seahawks took Alex Smith out of action and played the rest of the game against their former quarterback who did not perform well. He did not perform well the next week against the mighty defense of the Baltimore Ravens either. The 49′ers seem about equal with the Cardinals and the Seahawks and could just as easily win this division.

St. Louis Rams

The “Greatest Show On Turf”. Is this a comedy? It might as well be. The Lambs, oops, I mean Rams, at 0-6, have matched the worst start in the 70-year history of the franchise. The Rams look bad, real bad. They are riddled with injuries to their offensive line. The Rams defense can’t seem to stop much of any thing, and they are without their star running back Steven Jackson.

Marc Bulger has been hurt as well with broken ribs. Steven Jackson has a groin injury and will play again this season probably quite soon. Marc Bulger is slated to start this next game which just happens to be against the struggling Seahawks. The Rams have already kissed their season goodbye, but don’t think they won’t come out playing for pride and honor next week or the week after that. They have plenty of talent on offense when they are healthy and the defense played well against the Ravens last week. But playing well against the hapless Ravens offense isn’t saying much.

The lead singer of the Seattle rock band, Geoff Tate, will be performing the U.S. national anthem this Sunday, October 14 when the Seattle Seahawks host the New Orleans Saints at Qwest Field.

The game will be aired on NBC-TV’s “Sunday Night Football” beginning at 5:15 p.m. PST / 8:15 p.m. EST. Tate’s performance is expected to take place just prior to kick-off.

In what has become a tale of the Two Headed monster, Arizona Cardinal’s coach Ken Whisenhunt has proclaimed that quarterback Matt Leinart will continue to be the teams starter, with Kurt Warner remaining as the back-up and No huddle offense’s play caller. 

After a season opening road loss to the San Francisco 49’ers, Leinart helped engineer an improbable victory over the Seattle Seahawks with a 23-of-37 for 299 yards, one touchdown performance In the Cardinals home opener. This unexpected victory left the NFC West teams knotted at 1-1 records. Of course the victory was helped in large part by the Seahawks Matt Hassle back’s muffed handoff to Shawn Alexander with less than two minutes to go. 

Then in Baltimore, with Leinart falling behind 20-3 at halftime and 23-6 in the third quarter, Whisenhunt elected to insert Warner, the ex Super Bowl winner and two-time league MVP to run the Cardinal’s No huddle offense in an attempt to pull off an unexpected road win. 

And Warner delivered a pair of fourth quarter touchdowns to Anquan Boldin, followed by a game tying field goal with 1:50 left on the clock. Then the Ravens marched the length of the field to kick a winning 46 yard field goal after a questionable unsportsmanlike conduct penalty was called against the Cardinals. 

Billed as the showdown of the Steelers vs. their ex-coaching personnel in the Valley of the Sun. would first year coach Whisenhunt and his top assistant Russ Grimm who were passed over for the Steelers’ job in favor of Mike Tomlin be able to beat the ex-Super Bowl champions? 

And although Whisenhunt claimed no animosity towards the Pittsburg organization, the Cardinals offense saw a new wrinkle in their playbook enroute to victory. This time the quarterback rotations ended in Leinart’s favor. After Warner led the Cardinals No huddle offense to score a third quarter tying touchdown. Leinart returned in the fourth quarter to direct a 13-play, 82-yard touchdown drive with Edgerrin James’ scoring on a two yard run.

UPDATE: 10/12/07 : Funny how things work out.  I guess Matt will have to wait now that he has suffered a season ending injury and the Cardinals have signed Tim Rattay as backup to Kurt Warner.

The Seattle Seahawks got a desperately needed win on Sunday against a Bengals team who needed the win just as badly.  This was not the high scoring affair it was built up to be as both teams had trouble putting points on the board.

 Matt Hasselbeck was 24 of 37 passing for 248 yards and 3 TD’s.  He also had two interceptions.  Carson Palmer had even bigger numbers passing as he completed 27 of 43 attempts for a healthy 342 yards passing.  Unfortunately for the Bengals, Carson had one TD and 2 picks. 

Carson’s interceptions came at bad times as well. Not that there are any good times to throw an interception, but after you put together a nice drive all the way down the field and you are in scoring position, throwing a pickoff in the endzone can really kill a teams momentum.

Houshmandzadeh and Chad Johnson also had huge games with TJ catching 12 balls for 141 yards and a touchdown.  Chad Johnson caught 9 balls for 138 yards.  Although Seattle turned the ball over 2 times during this game, they were able to pull out the win in the final 1 minute of the game on a pass from Hasselbeck to Nate Burleson.

This win puts Seattle into 2nd place in the NFC West just behind the 49′ers who got pummeled by Pittsburg.  Seattle and San Fransisco have the same record at 2-1 each, but San Fran has two divisional victories while Seattle lost their only divisional game against the much improved Arizona Cardinals.

Last week, Seattle gave away the game with a botched handoff attempt between Matt Hasselbeck and Shaun Alexander.  Matt had called an impromptu fake audible but he ended up fooling half of his team including Shaun.  This put Arizona in prime position to kick a field goal with time expiring to steal the game.

 The Bengals defense looked better this week than they did last week when the Browns scored 51 points on Cinci in a crazy shootout but it now leaves the Bengals in a rough spot as they are now last in their division with a 1-2 record which is the same record the Browns hold.  Will the Bengals be able to rebound and rise to the level of the 3-0 Steelers or the 2-1 Ravens?  Possibly, but I won’t hold my breath.

The Minnesota Vikings rolled right over the Atlanta Falcons.  The final score was 24-3.  The Vikings defense trampled Joey Harrington.  They had six sacks and two interceptions returned for touchdowns.  Kevin Williams returned an interception for a 54-yard touchdown.  Antoine Winfield returned an interception for a 14-yard touchdown.  Adrian Peterson, the rookie running back, made an amazing catch and turned it into a 60-yard touchdown.  He also had 103 yards rushing.  Chester Taylor, the other running back for the Vikings, hurt his hip.  This should not really be a concern for the Vikings.  It does not look like a bad injury.  Plus they have Adrian Peterson.  Joey Harrington had a bad game.  I don’t think he made the Falcons forget about Michael Vick.  He went 23-32 for 199 yards.  He had no touchdowns and 2 interceptions.  The Vikings offense looked pretty good and their defense looked great.  The Falcons, I would consider watching the Atlanta Braves instead.

It was billed as the battle of two potential Superbowl contenders.  The New Orleans Saints versus the defending Superbowl champion Indianapolis Colts.  John Madden made the comment at the beginning of the game that the defenses were not going to be a factor and they may as well take a seat on the bench.

 As soon as I heard that I knew it wouldn’t be the case.  For the 1st half of the game things were pretty close.  In fact, it was mostly a battle of the defenses, not the prolific offenses as you would have expected.  The score at the end of the 1st half was tied at 10 apiece.  The colts got their 1st touchdown off of a nice pass down the field to Marvin Harrison in the end zone.  The Saints got their touchdown from their defense when Reggie Wayne was stripped of the ball by Jason David who also recovered the fumble and ran it back for a touchdown.  Both teams were able to put drives together that ended in field goals and neither offense looked very impressive.

 The second half was an entirely different game as the Colts dominant offense looked like the Superbowl champions of last season with Peyton Manning hooking up with Reggie Wayne for two TD passes and the running game of Joseph Adai proving to be extremely effective against a Saints defense that was clearly outmatched.

On the other side of the ball, the Saints offense continued to struggle the rest of the game and never did hit their stride.  The Colts defense play exceptionally well and didn’t look anything like last years defense which was the worst rush defense in the entire league.  Reggie Bush and Deuce McCallister were both innefective as was Drew Brees.  Marquis Colston was held in check and never did have any spectacular plays.  As the game wore on, the entire Saints team seemed to collapse with big holes showing up in the defense and the offense stalling on every drive or giving the ball away with interceptions.

For all of the hype of this opening game, only the Colts came out and showed that they still have what it takes to win a superbowl.  If their defense an continue to play at this level throughout the season, they very well could be the team to beat once again.  The Saints are going to have to regroup and figure out what went wrong in all areas of their game.  I still expect them to be a dangerous team this year, but certainly they have lost some credibility and have showed that they have glaring weaknesses.  I’m sure the rest of the league will pick up on this.

The Houston Astros beat the St. Louis Cardinals 2-1. Matt Albers, the Astros pitcher, is showing them that he wants to stay in the majors. He threw for seven innings and only gave up three hits. It was one of his best starts this year. Lance Berkman, the Astros first baseman, hit a homer in his second consecutive game. He is hitting very well lately. This is not good for the Cardinals. They are now down a few games in the division. They are behind the Brewers and the Cubs. The Astros will not make the playoffs but the Cardinals have a shot. The next few games are very important for the Cardinals. It will be interesting to see how they perform.

Does miles traveled have any relationship to how many games you win or lose?  Is it even on anyones radar?  Maybe it is a little esoteric, but it is fun to think about.

 According to the Ravens Touchdown Blog, the Ravens will travel the 9th most miles in the NFL during the 2007 season at 19,732 miles.

The Rams will travel the furthest by far at 34,352 miles with trips to Seattle, Arizona and San Francisco.

The least miles traveled will be the Jets at 9,186.

So let’s watch and see what impact this has on the Rams this season.

Jerome Bettis has admitted that he faked an injury to his knee during a training camp in 2000 so that he wouldn’t get cut and replaced with a new running back.

Jerome detailed how he faked a previous injury and fooled the entire coaching staff into believing it occured during the training camp in a short yardage play.

I’m really not sure why Jerome would admit this and what he feels his gain from this will be.  I think it is too bad he had to take this route but it is understandable when your carreer and income are on the line.

Read more here