NFL Week Nine: Tannehill Transcends

The blog is a strange format. It is at once disposable -- a toss off -- and always accessible, retrievable, semi-permanent. That's why I began this page: as a way to organize my random thoughts. I live alone; my time away from the job -- what of it there is -- is my own. I carry on a dialogue with myself in solitude, Vita contemplativa. The blog helps.

NFL Week 9 put me in mind of a post I wrote about NFL Week 13 of the 2012 season. The topic was the bumper crop of rookie QBs: Luck, RG3, Tannehill, Weeden and Wilson. This past Sunday I watched games featuring three-fifths of said quarterbacks, now in their third year.

The two I didn't see, the two broadly considered the standout quarterbacks of the draft and the ones who garnered the most media attention in 2012, Andrew Luck and Robert Griffin III, are a study in contrasts. Luck's Colts are a perennial playoff contender; his play has been stellar. For a moment there this season, prior to a demolition meted out by the Steelers in NFL Week 8, Indianapolis looked good enough to contend for the AFC Championship. RG3 and his Redskins are the exact opposite. The team and the player, since their wildcard playoff elimination by the Seahawks in the 2012 season, a game that ended with RG3 suffering a catastrophic knee injury, seem to be constantly on the brink of collapse. At this point, it is not clear the Griffin will ever return to the form he displayed his rookie year, which is tragic, worthy of the talents of some modern-day Euripides.

But, quickly, to the games I televisually witnessed: I bounced back and forth between the two early Sunday match-ups: Cardinals vs. Cowboys; Chargers vs. Dolphins. Brandon Weeden, cast off from Cleveland, was filling in for an injured Tony Romo. Weeden played abominably. If Dallas still had Kyle Orton as its backup quarterback instead of allowing him to depart to Buffalo, the Cowboys would have beat Arizona. Without a passer who can complete throws to wideouts Dez Bryant and Terrance Williams, an opposing defense can isolate on the Herculean DeMarco Murray and limit his impact. And that's what happened last Sunday.

The most impressive performance I saw in NFL Week 9 was that of Ryan Tannehill. Granted, San Diego is in the midst of another mid-season crisis of confidence, something the Chargers seem to experience every year regardless of who the head coach is; nonetheless, the show that Tannehill put on -- 24 of 34 for 288 yards and three TDs; four rushes for 47 yards -- in Miami's 37-0 blowout of a team that dominated the Super Bowl Champion Seahawks in NFL Week 2 is a highlight of the season.

Russell Wilson, to conclude this "where are they now?" snapshot of the rookie QB standouts of 2012, played poorly against the Raiders. The Seahawks had to hold on at the end of the fourth quarter, narrowly averting disaster when Cooper Helfet botched the handling of an onside kick. Fortunately, Jermaine Kearse was right there to fall on the ball and Wilson took a knee to bleed the clock out.

Throughout the entire game Wilson threw high to his receivers. And it became apparent to me that he was unable to see the middle of the field. The Raiders blitzed the center of Seattle's line all day long, which is how most teams deal with Wilson. The word is out and it has been for a year now: Russell Wilson can't see downfield in the face of pressure. He can see the sideline routes, and he can pick up receivers over the middle if the pocket breaks down and he is able to scramble around for a couple of seconds.

Given the realities of poor play by the Seahawks offensive line one wonders what the rest of this year holds for the defending champs. I think there is some hope if Seattle goes all in with a Bill Walsh West Coast offense of an early vintage -- late '70s/early '80s. If you recall those teams they lived and died on the swing-out dump-off pass to a runner out of the backfield. You can tell that Darrell Bevell is trying to incorporate this into the offensive game plan with Marshawn Lynch. He needs to try harder.

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To conclude, a few brief thoughts about Tuesday's election. Yesterday I was thinking that I should write more about work. My workplace is a gold mine of dysfunction, as is every workplace. People are penned in together year after year, day in and day out, and made to perform the same barren routines. Most people don't read, don't think, don't aspire to anything other than the satisfaction of their own petty comforts. For the most part there is nothing grand or noble on display in the modern office.

I work for a union local, You would think that after Tuesday's huge victory by an anti-labor GOP -- Davis-Bacon is in the party's crosshairs -- there would be a sense of urgency, of renewed purpose. There was nothing of the sort. It was as if the home team Seahawks sustained a bad beating, and that was it. Nothing really was at stake; it was just another event in the media stream directly unrelated to our everyday lives.

The prevalence of this type of thinking is what guarantees more woe ahead for working people. As Bob Dylan sings, "It's not dark yet, but it's getting there."

Stellar Rookie QBs

Sunday morning of NFL Week 13 one of the things that stands out is all the amazing rookie quaterback play.   Since I began following the NFL in 1975 I can't think of a season when as many first-year QBs not only started but won.  I haven't read any of the coverage on this; what I'm saying is uninformed by the literature and dependent solely on my weekly devotional to the televisual.

The two marquee names are Robert Griffin III and Andrew Luck.  I was able to watch closely the Redskins-Cowboys game on Thanksgiving.  I had seen RG3 in the opener in New Orleans.  And while he was impressive, I was focused more on the poor play of the Saints.  But in Dallas RG3 amazed me.  The heart and soul of his team, he ran his Shanahanian offense with proficiency; he made great throws, ran the option well and took some brutal hits.  I am true believer.

I've yet to see an Andrew Luck game.  But from what I can tell of the highlight reels, he plays with intensity and can throw the long bomb with accuracy.  Most importantly, he has the Colts winning after last season's Manning-less meltdown.

Next up I would place the west coast rookie quarterback, Russell Wilson.  As a Seahawks fan I'm a student of Russell Wilson's play.  I was a skeptic at first.  In the opening games of the season it seemed as if he couldn't see down the field to throw the bomb.  I pined for Tarvaris Jackson who stood tall in the pocket and threw long.  But then Wilson made huge throws to beat Green Bay and New England and I became a true believer.  He is consistently excellent.  A little jittery now and again, he always has Seahawks in contention.

The last two, Miami's Ryan Tannehill and Cleveland's Brandon Weeden, are big, strong, classic-type quarterbacks who in a normal year would be getting a lot more attention.  I've seen Weeden a couple of times.  And despite the tendency to throw interceptions, he is impressive for a rookie.  To me he looks just as good as Sam Bradford or Mark Sanchez.  Last week I watched Tannehill beat the Seahawks with his arm.

So what's going on?  There has been a trend in recent years of rookie QBs leading their teams to the playoffs.  Think Roethlisberger, Flacco, Ryan, Sanchez, Dalton.  The easy answer is that the college game, which I don't follow, is becoming more "professional."  Reading a story, "The Hard Life of an N.F.L. Long Shot," in last week's New York Times Magazine I came across this: "I always heard that rookies are overwhelmed at first by the speed of the game at the pro level.  But everyone I asked about this had the same response.  'It’s not the speed,' the third-year linebacker Robert James told me. 'It only seems like the game is a lot faster because you’re always trying to figure out what you’re doing and where you’re supposed to be.  Once I began to learn the defenses, the game slowed down for me.' "

If this is true and success in the pro game is more mental than physical then the growing number of superlative rookie quarterbacks is proof that we are as a society getting smarter.  If the election in November was a national referendum on public ignorance and enlightenment won, then the rise of RG3 and Russell Wilson is another victory for fiat lux!