Cards 23 Rams 20
Beanie played like a man on fire as did his offensive line. I've been begging for a running game like the one they ran against the Giants, but they've shown little interest in abiding. Today, he ran over and through the Rams. Yes the Rams run D is terrible, but Beanie only had 20 yards against them at the first meeting. So the 228 yards he got today is a marked improvement. They ran the ball 38 times vs passing it 26 times. That's what they should have been doing since Day 1. The pessimist in me says they won't do this again this year, however I'm more of an optimist these days and hope they will finally see the light.
By the way, notice how the Cards starting QB has a QB rating of 30 and they still win? When you run the football this well, QB play doesn't matter. (see Tim Tebow)
Speaking of Skelton, he still looks below average. He still has good pocket presence and places the ball well deep, but he struggles on shorter routes. He also is at 50% completion rate and a 64 QB rating. (those numbers are actually up from his career stats) So I don't see much controversy brewing when Kolb gets healthy. However, Kolb was starting to produce numbers similar to these before he got hurt. So we'll see if he's still got those accursed happy feet.
The LBs continue to improve as well as the DBs. Besides Jefferson, I've seen growth by all the players, and that includes Rashad Johnson. A.J. is getting worse. But PP21 is starting to become the complete player he looked like at LSU. This guy is the real deal. The D line used to be the only thing good about this defense, but now it looks like everyone else is catching up.
Patrick Peterson is a lock for rookie of the year, if they consider special teams. He ran his 4th punt return for a TD today which ties him for the most all time in one season. He'll break that record by two. Hyphen and PP21 are going to have a day real soon where both run one back. They are something special to watch.
Kuddos to Whiz for winning three of his last four. Winning takes a ton of the sting off, but it doesn't erase the six pitiful losses he shouldn't have (I don't blame him for the Giants one). At this point they should be
7-4. They should have beat the Skins, Hawks, and Vikings. I truly hope he has woken up from his 5 year slumber and finally runs the air out of the football like he did today. But I thought he figured it out after N.Y. and look how bad he was after that.
That being said, I predicted that this team would lose enough games to miss the playoffs and win too many to get a good draft position. And that they'd win ugly (in other words, the wins were useless at building an identity to carry them into next year). So far, minus today's game and N.Y., I was right. Let's hope I'm wrong from here on.
No comments:
Post a Comment