When I begin to look back at week 1 there was one thing that seemed like a glaring problem with the new rules, I didn't see hardly any kick returns, and the ones I did see usually were tackled before the 20.
I have a problem with that because there are at least 3 big name guys (Devin Hester, Josh Cribbs, and now Patrick Peterson), as well as many not as big names (Courtney Roby, Deji Karim) who make their living as kick returners, if you take that away, much of their individual allure goes away.
I think they need to move the kick back to the 30 yard line, and if you want to make the game more exciting make a touchback be out to the 10 instead of the 20 so they are more inclined to take it out of the end zone.
The second thing I noticed was all of the upsets; you had the expected blow out of the Jags by the Patriots, and of the Saints over the 49ers.
But then you had the Carolina Panthers beating the Giants, the Miami Dolphins beating the Falcons, the Cleveland Browns beating the defending champion Packers, Arizona winning, over anyone, and my favorite the Seattle Seahawks beating the anointed ones, the Chargers.
I personally believe that is because all of these teams simply have better backups, with the exception of the Chargers defeat, where I believe Seattle is the better team, with the addition of Sidney Rice, the Seahawks have given Charlie Whitehurst (who will be the starter probably by week 8) another big target to play opposite of Mike Williams.
They also added TE Zach Miller giving them bookend TEs with John Carlson.
Now there are two things I would like to bring attention to that I saw in week 1.
The first is the QB who I have been following since the NFL Combine, Colin Kaepernick
(that's Cap-er-nick) who against the unyielding pass rush of the New Orleans Saints had a few good plays and didn't look half bad.
Now don't get me wrong, he looked like a rookie, but he made some good reads and dumped it underneath for a first down instead of trying to force it downfield on a couple of occasions, and when forced out of the pocket he kept his eyes downfield, and when nothing opened up, then he would run it himself.
The impressive thing in his runs, were that he is extremely gifted as a scrambler and did something his fellow number 7 never does that usually gets him injured, he slid down feet first.
And he was definitely better than Alex Smith.
Now he had two interceptions, the first one was just a bad pass, the second wasn't his fault as Nate Bussey just made an amazing break on the ball, and made a play that some safeties couldn't make.
Agree!
ReplyDelete