Let’s recap from Sunday night to the early games and don’t miss the Saturday edition which will de full of numbers and stats entering the first tournament of the series; Kickoff is around the corner.
So the Sunday night game was competitive for until midpoint of the third quarter. After that Drew Bree’s and Sean Payton closed the game out with an unstoppable Alvin Kamari out of the backfield against man coverage from the Vikings and finishing up drives with Mark Ingram. So pretty solid backfield over in New Orleans and let’s not forget about the do-it-all Hill which has lines up as QB, TE, WR and over the backfield to add some trickeration to the offense. So it was a fun game to watch for the better part of the night in Minneapolis. Final score: Saints score 30 and win by ten.
In the afternoon games we had the best one of the day when the Packers visited the Rams in LA. After an odd start and the pack up by two, 10 to 8 at the end of the first quarter, the game got back on track and went down to the wire with the Rams beating Green Bay 29–27 to close the afternoon.
The two other afternoon games, Raiders-Colts and Cardinals-49ers, both had a safety!!! So basically the first week we don’t talk about it, safeties are scored so always expect the unexpected! Colts visiting the raiders was an interesting one until Doug Martin fumbled coming out of the red zone and still in Raider territory, which Andrew Luck and his offense capitalized with a TD that kinda sealed the game. Meanwhile the Cardinals extender their winning streak against San Francisco to 8 with an 18–15 win. For most of the fist half the game was 3–2 and then 5–3 which is pretty unusual not only for the sport in general but even more so in the high scoring game it has evolved to lately.
So surprise game called on the weekly preview and surprise it was! Bengals beat the Bucs in a last second game-winning field goal 37–34 but not without the Tampa Bay coming back after Winston got benched and Ryan Fitzpatrick showcased some more of his “Fitzmagic” from the beginning of the season when he opened up with two 400 yard games. Still wasn’t enough and the Buccaneers could not hold on to a late lead in Cincinnati for an upset. The other surprise game we called was played in Carolina but was not a close one. With OC Norv Turner adapting his offense to Cam Newton the Panthers cruised by the Ravens in a 36–21 win with a possible contender in the NFC South to fight New Orleans for that division or at least stay in the hunt for one of the two wildcard spots.
The game in England wasn’t as expected and the Eagles got the win over the dissapointing Jaguars 24–18. Travel nor kickoff time can be taken into consideration since the Jaguars have a winning record outside the US but this time the eagles were too much for them. Interesting to see if either team can conquer their division or will have to start thinking about the 2019 draft and next season prematurely.
That’s all for now and let’s get nerdy again for Saturday and the first of the crypto bowl series!!!