Zone Blitz: The Autumn Wind, or Your NFL Week 12 Open Thread

Matt Kocsan of Tailgating, Wagers and Lagers, and The Kocsan Quintet fame is joining me this week in Zone Blitz to discuss his Browns, the Autumn Wind, and any other football topics that pop into our heads. The Blitz has adopted some form changes throughout the year, but for this week, we're going back to our original conversational form. In the comments section, we'd like to encourage you to continue with the conversation, and as always, we'll also use this space as your official NFL Week 12 Open Thread. If you'd prefer to skip past our conversation, and jump straight to the thread, you may do so here.


BW: Monday- 12:40 PM
Matt, usually we take care of all angles related to the college game, but I wanted to give you a shot this week to sound off on the NFL, and specifically, your Cleveland Browns. While Tailgating and its structure has worked very well for us, I know that neither of us can afford to put that much time and effort into an NFL piece. There are no 5 questions, and there is no game that we're hypothetically heading to, so let's just let it fly, and see where we end up.

My biggest takeaway from this week is exactly how easy it is to be wrong. I know, I know, that statement is obvious, but often times we don't treat a statement like that as obvious. Even at this juncture of the season, when we supposedly know most everything about each team, and we are still given constant reminders that we really don't know much of anything at all.

This week's biggest addendum to this statement involves the Broncos and the Rams. The Rams are a team that is pretty beat up on both sides of the ball, was making a QB switch to a career backup, and is generally considered to be one of the bottom-feeders in the league. They get a Broncos team that has a load of name brand talent up and down their roster, and are led by an all-timer at QB. So, of course the Rams win handily, while Peyton Manning plays one of the worst regular season games of his career. The Rams have no clue on offense, thanks to Brian Schottenheimer, and they have a head coach who often times appears to be more concerned about looking decent in a loss than he is about actually winning, but the Rams now somehow lay claim to the 49ers, Seahawks, and now Broncos as 3 of their 4 victories on the season.

In Arizona, many of us were down on the Cardinals now that they've lost Carson Palmer, but I think we should have seen this one a little more clearly. The benefit for Arizona is that they have an elite defense that hasn't always looked elite this year. However, with no Palmer, and an offense that sputtered for most of the day, the defense stepped up in a big way, which really shouldn't be all that surprising. Bruce Arians said it last week, but despite the fact that Drew Stanton is their QB, the Cardinals are still good enough to get to and win a Super Bowl.

The biggest surprise from that game has to have been the reemergence of Michael Floyd. Floyd is a 1st round pick from a few years ago who broke out last year, and started the season strong. Plus, Bruce Arians absolutely loves the kid. Prior to the season, and even 4 weeks in, it looked like he had taken over as the #1 option on that team, ahead of Larry Fitzgerald. Since then, Floyd has been completely invisible, putting up 4 or fewer receptions for fewer than 50 yards since the calendar turned to October. This includes 3 games with 1 or 0 receptions. His role of down-the-field threat has even been mostly usurped by some rookie from tiny Pittsburg State in Kansas (John Brown). Yesterday, out of nowhere, and just as everyone in fantasy football has finally given up on him, he finally showed some signs that he may be breaking out of his funk. He still only managed 2 receptions, but both go for TDs. However, the guy on that team to still keep an eye on is Brown, who was receiving most of the targets, especially in the 2nd half.

Lastly, onto your Browns. Houston comes into Cleveland with a switch to Ryan Mallett at QB, and no Arian Foster. Yet they took it to the Browns, who from what I could see, looked completely out of sync. In my view, Brian Hoyer has proven to be an excellent backup QB. He's wildly inconsistent, not just from game to game, but sometimes from quarter to quarter. This, of course, represents a massive upgrade to what you've dealt with for years, but if this team wants to take the next step, they'll have to find a legit starter, whether that's Manziel or not. Also, I really like Mike Pettine, and I think he's already an excellent HC who's only going to get better. But what's up with their RB rotation? Last week they give Terrance West 26 carries, and he looked pretty darned good. Ben Tate has also looked decent at times, and has mostly been the starter, when healthy. So this week, of course it's Isaiah Crowell who gets the start, and the majority of touches. They're really going based on who practices best during the week?

What happened to your Browns yesterday, and what should we expect moving forward?


MK: Tuesday- 2:23 AM
First and foremost, thanks for inviting aboard for the week. You and, well, multiple dance partners have done a great job of keeping Zone Blitz going. I know how hard it is to get yourself up off the mat every week and do something like this, and it's made all the more impressive by the fact that the turnaround time on this serial is more or less a blink. We've got the whole week to bounce ideas around and to prep and to write when we go Tailgating. No such luxury here.

You concluded by asking me what I thought about the Browns and that's an almost irresistible invitation, but I'm going to keep my powder dry on that for just a minute. My takeaway from a bloody NFL Sunday--and more generally the football weekend, from a college Saturday littered with near-miss upsets, teams just a good or a bad break away from getting dinged--is that November is ugly. It's a cliche, it's a fairly awful poem written by Steve Sabol--well, actually, that's 'The Autumn Wind,' still--but it is hard to win games this time of year. Should we listen to it, anyway? We should listen to it.



Regardless of how bad the Raiders are (note: they are awful), going into last weekend I was searching for potential upsets on the board and not really finding many, but they were all over the place. At the beginning of the season, you tend to see them everywhere, because maybe there's an upstart team that you were high on going into the year. Now, though, that team has either become a favorite most weeks and you're crowing about it, or it's been thoroughly crushed and you're just sort of hoping no one will bring it up. I'm not saying that we should have seen the Rams over the Broncos coming, for all the reasons that you mentioned, but it probably shouldn't have shocked us, either. Say what you will about Jeff Fisher's Mustache and its ability to either overachieve and get to 8-8 or underachieve and finish at 8-8, what his teams always have--always, always, always--is depth in the front and back four. This is also part of the reason why his teams tend to be so boring, as they spend so many high value picks on players at these positions, but this is the dirty secret of The Elite Quarterbacks of the National Football League (TEQOTNFL): if an opponent can generate consistent pressure with four, then they're going to have a rough day at the office. They may not lose, but it's going to get ugly and this is the only way I can rationalize that the New York Giants somehow beat Tom Brady twice in the Super Bowl. (They also beat Aaron Rodgers doing the same thing in their most recent playoff run. Also, Eli Manning wasn't throwing a billion interceptions, but I digress.) It doesn't hurt, so to speak, when Julius Thomas, Montee Ball, and Emmanuel Sanders all have to leave the game with injuries, but as far as I know brother Peyton still had Wes Welker and Demaryius Thomas to throw to.

This is a big part of what makes Aaron Rodgers, as king of the TEQOTNFLs, so horrifying. We don't really need to talk for very long about the Packers because everyone else in the football world is doing it for us. Maybe it's just how the games have lined up this year, but has anyone else noticed that Green Bay, at 7-3, is plus-134 (as in points) at Lambeau and minus-29 away from home? It probably shouldn't surprise us that the teams to hang Ls on the Packers have been the Seahawks (at home) and the Lions (at home), both of whom are superlative up front and handle business in the secondary as well as anyone in the league. They both rank in the top five in the league in passing yards allowed. Injuries won't be the undoing of the Packers, because they've been so ravaged by them the last couple years that I think a meteor could hit Lambeau and Aaron Rodgers would shake it off like a bee sting and throw eight touchdown passes to himself, but there's a way to beat this team if you have the right personnel.

How the Cardinals might match up, as the current top-seed in the NFC, against Green Bay, is an interesting proposition, in that they're in the bottom four in the league in passing yards allowed--but strong against the run--though they haven't surrendered 175 yards through the air in their last three weeks. They won't meet in the regular season, but this is something to keep an eye on, even with Drew Stanton holding the reins right now in Arizona. It may be that a Carson Palmer injury stunts two different franchise revivals--albeit only temporarily in Cincinnati--but I can't be sure. Stanton's completion rate (53.4%) isn't very good, but the rest of his efficiency numbers are strong and I was fairly sure Detroit would walk out of Phoenix with a win last week. They didn't, and the Cardinals won an ugly game.

Speaking of ugly (again), now I'll turn to the Cleveland Browns. There's good news and there's bad news, and then some more good news and some worse news. They show up for division games. They gave a good account of themselves in early-season losses to Pittsburgh and Baltimore, and in their two most recent games against the Steelers and the Bengals, they pummeled them and won by three touchdowns; I can't tell you how much that means to us in a town where we've been shut out by divisional opponents for the season or only managed one win God knows how many times in the past decade. The bad news is that following those wins, they've scored single digits against Jacksonville and Houston, looking terrible in the process.

The Browns' success is based on the run--the ability to pound it on offense and to stop it on defense. They've sustained a lot of injuries this year, though, and almost all of them hinder both of those causes. On offense, the most obvious problem is Alex Mack, who's been on IR since October and whose play at center directs the Cleveland offense in ways that should be apparent to everyone by now. Defensively, though, they've been beaten up on the defensive line. They lost pass-rusher Armonty Bryant early in the season, but they lost defensive tackle Phil Taylor for the year prior to this week's game. Nose tackle John Hughes, a block-eater and run-stopper, is also on injured reserve; Jabaal Sheard is likely to follow soon. Karlos Dansby, a free agent signing from Arizona and the middle linebacker who's been so critical to turning Cleveland's defense into one of the top scoring units in the league, has a sprained MCL that should keep him out for a month and may prove fatal for his season, too. That loss would have been massive before, but we really can't spare him now, no matter how excited I am to see Josh Gordon returning to the field this week.

Maybe Gordon can open things up a bit. Hoyer has certainly been missing a big, physical target, throwing to the likes of Andrew Hawkins, Taylor Gabriel, and Travis Benjamin, who've all played admirably well this year, especially since Jordan Cameron has only played in six of ten games. I have nothing against Hoyer and I'm thrilled he's played as well as he has, but his numbers don't jump out at you for a reason. Mechanically, he's pretty sound, but he sways so much in-game--from quarter to quarter and even drive to drive. Every time Hoyer does something that gets you thinking, 'Maybe he could win this job for real,' there is an equal and opposite reaction that reminds you that Johnny Manziel is going to get his shot eventually. As for the runningbacks, I don't have a great answer for you on how Kyle Shanahan selects which back to feed each week, because Isaiah Crowell (The Crow, obviously) was basically a rumor for three weeks before receiving twenty-six carried in the last two games. West and Tate are nice pieces who have a place on this team, but I wonder if the coaching staff sees big play potential from Crowell and is tempted to use him more because the big plays through the air have dried up recently. Josh Gordon should help all this--he is, by any rational standard, one of the five or so best receivers in the league when he's on the field, and new league rules should make it easier for him to stay there--but given the fact that our front seven on defense is held together with duct tape right now, I don't know yet that the offense can provide the fireworks needed for a serious playoff push. They've already won more games than they have since 2007, and I'm deliriously happy about that, but I need to see something more when they visit, uh... first-place Atlanta, before I talk myself into serious playoff contention. Still, I'd have taken 6-4 if you offered it to me in September, and I see no reason to be disappointed in it right now.

...and this is why I didn't start with the Browns. I've already gone on far, far too long, and we haven't even touched the Patriots. Are they the counterweight to the Packers in the AFC? Luck makes sense as the next challenger to Rodgers, but are the Colts clearly in matchup hell against New England? I know you've got thoughts on a Steelers team that careens between dominant and feeble. And somehow the Kansas City Chiefs are 7-3 and the New Orleans Saints are 4-6 and each has a share of first place in their divisions. What's next?


BW: Tuesday- 8:54 PM
Thanks Matt, I appreciate that, and am glad that you're finally able to jump aboard.

Your comments on Jeff Fisher ring maddeningly true. That's a team that I thought was in for a big breakout this season, but immediately (again) lost Sam Bradford for the year, and couldn't get out of their own way on the offensive side of the ball. They were housed in week 1 by Minnesota, losing their top defensive player in Chris Long in the process, and they immediately left our collective consciousness. Their secondary really isn't that good, and lost best player Janoris Jenkins for a while, and they had that issue of only 1 sack through the first 5 weeks, which was an NFL record for futility.

However, despite all of that, they managed to play Dallas and Philly tough around their bye, and have since gone 3-2 with their wins coming against Seattle, San Francisco, and Denver. I guess this is one of those years where Jeff Fisher deserves some credit-- they're clearly playing hard for him-- but other than some really good teams early in his career in Tennessee, it does feel like Jeff Fisher has morphed into the coaching version of a really good backup QB, who no matter what happens throughout the season, will always end up right around 8-8.

As I'm writing this, it appears to be a bad day for RBs. You mentioned the Browns RB situation, but by the end of this morning, it seems that there has been some clarity on that front, as Ben Tate was released. It looks like they'll be going with more of the thunder and lightning approach from here on out with West and Crowell. Tate was a much needed signing in the offseason, but with both showing signs of having a legitimate future, it probably makes sense to cut their losses now and give each a chance to lead the backfield without having to look over their shoulder.

We received clarity on Adrian Peterson, as he's not playing this year. I suppose there's a chance that he'll win his appeal, but with the arbitrator apparently ruling that the league can keep him on the commissioner's exempt list until his hearing is heard, it doesn't look good for Peterson. What looks worse is that the Vikings apparently don't care, so even if manages to find his way back on the field, will he even have a role?

Then we have the LeGarrette Blount issue. When the Steelers signed him, it felt like they found a great compliment to Le'Veon Bell, especially with the way he ended last season. But it was painfully clear early on the type of negative influence he was having on the younger back, and after last night's actions, there was no other choice to be made. While Bell was having his breakout performance on MNF, single-handedly leading the Steelers back to the win (he touched the ball on 18 of the Steelers' final 28 plays following going down 24-13 late in the 3rd, racking 133 total yards during that stretch. It was one of the most single-handedly dominant performances you'll ever see from a RB/OL, and Blount wasn't happy about it. He left the field early, pouting after not receiving a single touch (I don't remember seeing him for a single snap), and tried to leave the locker room before the team even made it back. Considering that he started his career on thin ice, there was no chance that he was surviving that episode. Suddenly, Pittsburgh, along with Indy, feels like a potential landing spot for Ben Tate.

The good news is, the Titans .222 winning percentage helped to keep Tomlin's 2-10 career record in tact when facing teams with a winning percentage of .200 or lower. The better news is that Tomlin evidently doesn't realize that this is a problem. He ignores any learning-from-history question with typical coach speak, but it seems that he legitimately buys into his own talk. I'm not sure he has any idea how bad they are against bad teams, since he's so focused on "the next opponent". It's pretty baffling, really, his complete denial that this is an issue. But winning only 20% of your games vs teams that at the time of the matchup had only won 20% or fewer of their games is completely unacceptable for a franchise that legitimately starts every season with Super Bowl aspirations.

Can we really blame Luck for the struggles against NE? The Indy defense had no chance on Sunday night, which forced him to be perfect, something he was not. New England is so maddening in fantasy circles, but I'm not sure there's ever been a team in history that can look so different from week to week with so much success. The featuring of Jonas Gray is getting the headlines, but blanketing Revis on Wayne, then double-teaming Hilton and forcing the Colts to beat them with Coby Fleener was a genius defensive strategy. This week, they get the Lions, a team you rightfully mentioned that can ugly things up. Megatron and Revis both entered the league in 2007, but this is only their 3rd meeting. In the first Revis held him to 1 catch for 13 yards. Last year, which felt like a completely lost year for Revis, Calvin went 7 for 115 against the Bucs. If Calvin can find success, I think the Lions have a real shot.

Arizona has struggled against the pass this year, although the only two times they've really been carved up were against Peyton and against Chip Kelly. With Palmer out for the year, I got the sense on Sunday that the Cards defense is really going to bear down. They have the talent, especially in the secondary, to be dominant, and we finally started to see that this past weekend. When a guy like Carson Palmer goes down, the rest of the team has a tendency to step things up. Stanton isn't efficient, but they have the weapons to make a couple of big plays a game on offense, and a defense that's championship caliber. The Cardinals may not win the NFC, but they have to still be considered the favorites at this point, even over the surging Packers.

Alright Matt, it's about time I turned things over to you to close the show. One team we only touched on briefly is the Texans, who beat your Browns this week. They have a big game at home against the Bungles. You saw the game on Sunday, can they give Indy a run for their money with Ryan Mallett under center? The Chiefs have a game with the Raiders on Thursday, their first of two remaining against Oakland. However, they otherwise have a brutal stretch against Denver, @Arizona, @Pittsburgh, San Diego. They'll need to find a 10th win somewhere if they want to be playoff bound for the 2nd year in a row. The big game is in Seattle, where the Cardinals come to town. A win by Arizona puts them 4 up on Seattle. Can Seattle even make the playoffs as a WC should they lose to Arizona on Sunday? What else stands out to you as we shift gears to the week ahead?


MK: Wednesday- 2:24 PM
I'll keep this one relatively short, because I'm sure readers want to get into the comments section by now. Yesterday was a tough day for runningbacks, but maybe they should stop doing things that are varying degrees of dumb. Tate's departure probably had more to do with his play on the field than anything else--he apparently only carried the ball for 90 yards on his last fifty-three carries, dispersed over five games--but then complained about his lack of touches to the press (and not for the first time). Sorry, Ben. The Blount situation is weird, but then again, we're talking about a guy who coldcocked some kid from Boise State on national television and hotboxed a car with another member of the Steelers backfield and missed a flight to a preseason game, so walking off the field early doesn't seem that far outside the realm of possibility here.

Then there's Adrian Peterson. Moving on.

I like the Bengals to beat the Texans this week. Jeremy Hill, idiotic comments after the Browns game notwithstanding, is running well and I don't think they'll have to lean on Dalton too much in order to win. They really abused the Saints on Sunday, who I think have been playing more or less with their season on the line every game since that meltdown in Detroit a month ago; they responded vigorously, at first, but now they're on the verge of oh-for on a critical, three-game homestand. They keep losing, but fortunately, everyone in the NFC South is still terrible, and they get to play each of them (and, also, the Bears). Oh, by the way, the team that could look so different--in fantasy terms--from week-to-week, with so much success? The Saints, when they were really good, and not just sort of good.

Andrew Luck wasn't perfect against New England, but having been beaten by them by twenty-plus three times (including a playoff game), we're one more clunker away from just insufferable coverage from ESPN every time these two teams play. Ugh.

The Seahawks, I agree, are in a must-win. It's going to take (at least) ten wins to make the playoffs as a wild card in the NFC this year, and they can ill afford to lose a home game; they still have games on the road at San Francisco, Philadelphia, and Arizona, and it simply beggars belief that they'd win all of them. No, Pete Carroll can start making January travel plans if his teams lets Arizona come into Qwest Field and win this Sunday.

Let's close with some Fact or Crap, shall we, as we turn it over to the shouts from the balcony?

1.) The Detroit Lions will hold Tom Brady under his season average of 264.9 yards passing per game this Sunday.
2.) The Green Bay Packers will have triple the number of touchdowns the Oakland Raiders do at the end of the season. (Note: Currently, the ratio is 41:17.)
3.) The winner of the NFC South will finish below .500.
4.) Adrian Peterson will never play another down in a Vikings uniform.
5.) I must have done something really terrible to deserve a weekend where we get the Raiders on Thursday night, the Redskins in the national game at four o'clock, and the Giants in primetime Sunday.
6.) Blake Bortles will lead the NFL in interceptions this season.
7.) At least three of the four wild cards this season will have eleven wins.
8.) The Dolphins are the worst of the league's seven teams currently at 6-4.
9.) Kyle Orton will finish the season for Buffalo with a quarterback rating of greater than 90.
10.) The Patriots and Packers will finish with home-field advantage in each conference.
11.) Le'Veon Bell has actually been the best, most complete runningback in the NFL this season.
12.) The best uniform matchup of the weekend is Washington and San Francisco.
13.) No one will finish below .500 in the AFC North.
14.) The Bills should consider wearing white this weekend to take tactical advantage of the 70 inches of snow in Buffalo.
15.) Aaron Rodgers will finish the season average 9.0 YPA.

Thanks for inviting me in this week, and I hope to see you all back for Tailgating.

BW: Let us never forget that there are 4th graders all across New England who are still wondering when Tom Brady will finally win a big game.

Your Week 12 NFL Thread is now officially open for business.