Wow, what a wild weekend of football.
I don’t know about you, but it seemed like there was a wacky and impactful play in just about every game on Sunday. Quarterbacks were throwing pick-6s in their own end zones, guys were fumbling at the one-inch line, and Kirk Cousins threw for 509(!) yards in a primetime game.
Also, the Vikings are 5-0? Did we enter the Twilight Zone and no one told me?
Naturally, an eventful week of football means there’s plenty to talk about in today’s edition of The Skinny Post. So much football, in fact, that we could effectively call this week’s version The…Hefty Post?
Wow, that was bad. I’ll see myself out.
Alright! To football!
The Giants looked competent in a win over the Seahawks without Malik Nabers. Are you buying this team having turned a corner?
Michael: The Giants went into Seattle and came away with a nine-point win over the Seahawks without their star receiver Malik Nabers. They essentially won on a blocked field goal that they returned for a touchdown where, had they not blocked it, it likely would have sent the team into overtime and then who knows how it would have ended up. Luckily, the Giants didn’t have to worry about that.
Daniel Jones looked like the quarterback they’re paying him to be. He completed 23-of-34 passes for 257 yards and a pair of scores without tossing an interception. On the ground, former Iowa Hawkeye legend and rookie running back Tyrone Tracy Jr. rushed for 129 yards on 18 carries.
Defensively they did not take the ball away, but ultimately played well enough and traded blow-for-blow with the Seahawks until the very end where they made a clutch play to shut the door on them. My question here is: Is this what the Giants could look like the rest of the season? Was this just a bad game for the Seahawks? Should we hold any weight in this win at all for New York?
As our resident Giants hater, I’d love to hear your thoughts.
RJ: There is zero chance that I am willing to believe that the Giants are competent in any kind of way, but I am in no way here to rain on the parade from Sunday’s win. It was hard-fought and impressive. Multiple things can be true!
What was certainly impressive beyond the general things here was that Seattle looked so strong last Monday night. I’m hardly of the mindset that the Giants can challenge in the NFC East or NFC at large, but they have the chance to play a little spoiler for someone down the road.
Ultimately what I think this indicates most to me is that Brian Daboll’s group hasn’t completely quit on him. That is admirable, I suppose, but at the end of the day their ceiling is so obvious.
Aaron Rodgers is a disaster on the field now, not just off of it like beforehand
RJ: Sticking with our New York theme here… the Jets were awful on Sunday in London.
I know that Aaron Rodgers came back from what we found out to be a low-ankle sprain and that was fun, but he ultimately threw three interceptions. He said himself postgame that he was told it was the first time he ever threw multiple picks in the first quarter.
I’m a Cowboys fan as noted so I have doubted Rodgers and been burned many times (literally every one) so my point here is not coming from any biased perspective… is he… bad? Really bad?
You cannot convince me that current-day Aaron Rodgers is one of the top-half quarterbacks in the NFL, just talking about how he is as a functional quarterback. If you factor in the neverending tension and drama that is associated with him, obviously things are all the worse. The team announced Tuesday that they’re moving on from now-former head coach Robert Saleh, but was he really the issue?
Thank goodness for New Yorkers that both the Yankees and Mets are doing well, but think about that for a second: It is possible that the Jets have the most bleak outlook among all four New York football and baseball teams? Given that the Jets have the biggest star on their roster — all due respect to Aaron Judge — that is pretty unacceptable.
Rodgers was supposed to fix the Jets-ness of who the Jets are. So far he is more of the same.
Michael: So in all honesty, I do believe Rodgers is still a “more than fine” quarterback in the NFL. However, his interceptions against the Vikings were entirely his fault. His first interception was just a throw into the face of linebacker Andrew Van Ginkel. I know the play was a now screen and you have to turn and throw that ball, but he did it with full assumption that Ginkel, who has done this twice in his career up to this point, was not going to be there.
The second interception was a blatant overthrow. It was high enough that his own receiver couldn’t reach it with a full extension over his head. The final and game-ending interception was terribly underthrown to Mike Williams. You know, the same 6’4 Mike Williams who made a lot of money making big, LEAPING grabs for both Philip Rivers and Justin Herbert over the last seven years.
When Rodgers did make accurate and tight-window throws, his receivers did drop one or two, but the macro decisions that led to this loss were 100 percent on Rodgers. Washed? Maybe. Just maybe.
Caleb Williams did the Caleb Williams thing, but he did not gain much ground on Jayden Daniels for Offensive Rookie of the Year
Michael: It was a bye week for the Chargers so I spent this Sunday getting up before the sun and driving an hour south to spend time with friends. We took in the London game before watching the Bears beat the Panthers. My friend, a Bears fan from Chicago living here near the Twin Cities, was excited to finally see Caleb Williams do something special.
Luckily, he had the Panthers on tap and he did not disappoint.
Williams threw for 304 yards and two touchdowns on 20-of-29 passing. He also chipped in 34 yards on the ground and would have scored a rushing touchdown had an offensive lineman not been flagged for a penalty.
The rookie did not turn the ball over and he had several plays where he utilized his legs to avoid sacks and extend plays/drives. This was a performance you’d expect from this year’s No. 1 pick. However, I don’t think it made a dent in the early race for this year’s Offensive Rookie of the Year. Jayden Daniels and the Commanders did their thing. They scored 30+ points and took care of a lowly Browns team. Through five games. Daniels has thrown for 1,135 yards and rushed for 300 on the dot. He’s got four passing touchdowns and four rushing scores.
Compare that to Williams’ 1,091 passing yards and five scores and you’d think it’s pretty close, but Williams is far behind Daniels’ ground game with 113 yards and zero scores.
I really liked what I saw from Caleb on Sunday, but Daniels is still in another tier at this point of the season.
RJ: It was poetic that Caleb’s arrival came against the Carolina Panthers given all of how we got to this point. I am very happy to see Williams start to find himself and thrive and that Bears fans can finally exhale a little bit.
But there is no way he is catching Jayden Daniels for the time being. What we are seeing out of Washington is pretty remarkable and I am anxious to see if it is going to hold over the course of the season. Obviously if it doesn’t, that could open the door for Caleb to take ROTY, but it has been a while since we have had a good back and forth like this between the top two picks in a class. Overall I am here for it.
You kind of can’t help but feel like Chicago is still behind the rest of their division, which makes the conversation interesting. The NFC East is a bit, uh, strange right now while the Bears are 3-2 and still in last place. Sometimes the luck of the draw just goes against you.
Should we be panicking about the 49ers?
RJ: It is pretty wild to me that the San Francisco 49ers blew a game at home to the Arizona Cardinals. I have believed in Arizona a bit this year, but no one predicted this.
The 49ers have been great for so long, but we have all thought that the bottom coming out would have to happen at some point. Is that now? Is the bottom, bottom-ing? I don’t totally feel that way, but the 49ers teams of old would not throw games away like this.
Consider that San Francisco already has three losses on the season. They lost five games all of last year and four the year prior. At the very least this feels like the least indestructible version of who they have been.
Am I overreacting?
Michael: I don’t think it’s a crazy reaction over this. Yes, the 49ers do not have All-World running back Christian McCaffrey. However, they sure have Nick Bosa and George Kittle and Fred Warner and Deebo Samuel and Brandon Aiyuk. They have a lot of great players, some of the best at their respective positions, and that’s a lot more than many other teams can say about their rosters. The 49ers have plenty of talent to still be a phenomenal team and that’s why yes, I am panicking about the 49ers.
Brock Purdy, through all the discourse about him through the past two seasons, is still a pretty good quarterback. He’s been great in Kyle Shanahan’s system. But he’s still vulnerable to making mistakes that anybody else makes. The NFL is a game of inches, and one or two mistakes here or there that can turn the tide of a game. Sometimes the dice just doesn’t roll your way. Purdy is as susceptible as anyone to making mistakes in key situations that may lead to a loss. It just so happens that they’re coming at a more frequent clip this year than in past seasons.
The 49ers will probably be fine, but right now, they need to show me and the rest of the league that’s it’s just been a slow start and now the start of something else.
