By: Lucas Kochevar
The Fall in Quality A topic for discussion around the league has been the parity. There hasn’t been a team that has separated far from the pack outside of the Eagles. The Bills, the Super Bowl favorite entering the year, have shown an obvious flaw in the run game and injuries have plagued them. The Rams have been very unimpressive with the lack of offensive production. These are just two examples of teams that are underachieving. Tom Brady in his press conference this week was the first player I’ve heard acknowledge the dip in play, “I think there’s a lot of bad football from what I watch. I watch a lot of bad football,” and he isn’t entirely wrong. The quarterback play we’ve seen this year has been very subpar in my eyes and I think that is the catalyst for many of the bad games we’ve seen. For example, we can look back at last night’s Thursday Night Football game between the Broncos and Colts. Matt Ryan and Russell Wilson, both guys were 3-3 against each other, both averaging around 290 yards passing, and both had 12 touchdowns with few interceptions. Ryan was a former MVP and, even though I’m low on Wilson, he has been a top ten quarterback for most of his career. Both guys played some of their worst football last night. The game was deemed as one of the worst games ever by many on Twitter and its hard to make the argument against that. In the past, both of these guys were solidified top ten QBs that you would like to build your team around. Now, father time has come for both of them and the quality in their play has drastically dropped. This can be said about many of the guys that I grew up watching, including guys that have recently retired. Now, there’s a surge in new, young quarterbacks getting shuffled into the league. With younger guys, comes inexperience and bad football. I think that’s the simplest way to explain this dip in play. Guys like Baker Mayfield and Davis Mills are starers. Marcus Mariota and Geno Smith are starters. Carson Wentz and Jimmy Garoppolo are starters. These guys are all fine quarterbacks, but they aren’t nearly as good as the group of guys I watched. Andrew Luck and Carson Palmer. Drew Brees and Matt Ryan. Philip Rivers and Ben Roethlisberger. These guys are all just on a different level and they were spread out across the league. There were young guys back then too, but not as many stopgap quarterbacks. It’s certainly a new era of player turnover. Another aspect in the dip of quality, I believe is the lack of quality offensive linemen. This position group has a very few elite players, but mostly it’s a lot of role players trying to catch on. The coaching around the league feels off with a lot of unproven guys trying to copy the coaching tree they came from and it simply doesn’t work. Similar to how no one has really branched off from Belichick, it’s very hard to leave and make a name for yourself. In the end, I think a dip in the quality of the player pool can be attributed to the poor play across some of the league LK’s Lock of the Week: New York Giants vs Green Bay Packers Under 41.5 The Chiefs managed to cash last week easily with a dominant win over the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, so the record stands at 1-0 for the season! Now, this week when I looked at the board there wasn’t one bet that stood out to me. For example, do you trust Andy Dalton to win by 6 points against Geno Smith? Or do you trust the Jacksonville Jaguars to win a game by 8 points? Personally, I trust neither. I didn’t trust a single line; however, I found the one most likely outcome in my eyes. The trends support me in this bet as the under is 22-5-2 in the Giants last 29 games and 4-1 in the Packers last 5 games. This season both teams combine to have one game go over and that was the Packers game last week vs New England. When I look past the numbers, I see two teams that don’t light up the scoreboard. Despite being 1st in rushing yards, the Giants are 31st in passing yards. The gameplan for their offense relies entirely on Saquon Barkley’s shoulders. On top of these stats, Daniel Jones will be playing on a hurt ankle and three of his top receivers will not make the trip to London. On the Green Bay side of things, they haven’t hit their full stride quite yet. With an extremely young receiving core, Aaron Rodgers hasn’t looked like the back-to-back MVP. The running back duo of AJ Dillon and Aaron Jones have been the most reliable targets for Rodgers and I don’t think that is sustainable long term. For me, this bet comes down to two offenses that aren’t lighting the world on fire and I have faith in the Green Bay defense to hold the Giants under ten points.
1 Comment
BK Style
10/8/2022 05:08:50 am
Hey LK Sports.. I agree...maybe too much guaranteed money makes for lackadaisical play affecting poor work out habits leading to long term injuries..ticket prices just too expensive for us in this bad economy for us again to tolerate this kind of play....
Reply
Leave a Reply. |
Lucas KochevarI love sports and I'm a local fan of the Falcons, Hawks, and Braves. You can find my quick thoughts and more on my twitter @lucaswkochevar |