Sammy Watkins' Rib

Just two weeks ago San Diego looked like a shoo-in for the a wild card seed. But back to back loses and looking at their schedule, I think they have a tough road. Their last five games of the season are brutal with three of them on the road: @ Ravens, Patriots, Broncos @ 49ers @ Chiefs. We need to take care of the Chiefs next week to hold the tie breaker over them and home that the Dolphins ca beat the Chargers this week. And if we can beat the Dolphins the following week, our playoffs chances would likely rise to over 60 percent. The NFC North is a huge mess, but with the division playing the NFC South and AFC South this year it seems likely that they will produce at least one wild card which is why it is critical that we beat the chiefs this week and hope for as many san diego losses as possible.

Hopefully Orton can turn into our own Rich Gannon.

As good as Benjamin has been this year, I think you can tell that he is not a true difference maker like Watkins can be. Watkins already has one multi-TD game (should be 2) compared to Benjamin's zero. Watkins has (3) 100+ yard games to Benjamin's 1. And Watkins played with a terrible QB his first 4 games of the season, that is half the games he has played in this year so far. I think you could easily predict an extra 150 yards and 1 or 2 more TDs if Orton was the day 1 starter. Those numbers would look historically good for a rookie QB through 8 games.

It's not so much Benjamin's numbers coming down, he has actually been fairly consistent through his first 8 games. It is more telling of Sammy really starting to get going with the QB switch.

You have the numbers backwards. Sammy has the 590 yards and Benjamin 570, but moot point I guess. Of course, taking a look inside the numbers, we know that Sammy was hampered by the fact the EJ was our QB the first four games of the year. Sammy probably has a couple more TDs and 150 more yards if Orton was the QB from day one.

Still trying to wrap my brain around the Cardinals being 6-1 and the number one seed in the NFC. And they have started 3 different QBs this year correct?

Agree, but to be fair, as far as the angles go, a combination of Vick and Harvin are going to be hard to contain for anyone.

This is a bad game to judge Hackett on. Clearly the game plan was to run the heck out of the ball since we had the lead from the very beginning. Remember, we threw the ball to get that lead and we did it well. Once we had the lead it was pretty much run, run and run some more. Yes we sucked at it, but we constantly had field position and the game was in our hand even after the Jets got 5 good minutes of play and managed to get "close" down 7.

Yep. Thank you EJ! The Chiefs and Dolphins games are going to be BRUTAL. If we go 2-0 in those games I would practically guarantee playoffs at that point. Realistically we should be happy with a 1-1 spilt in the next two games. I think we can hang with Green Bay.

1) No turnovers! Finally. The last two weeks were brutal. 2) We forced 6 turnovers! Easily could have been 8. 3) Why isn't Chandler more consistently relevant and involved? He was a non factor today until the TD catch. This seems to happen far too often, and then every couple of weeks he shows up with 5 catches and 87 yards. 4) The D-line is very deep 5) At least half the sacks today were on Orton. He had time and space to get the ball off and just held on too long. Would love to see him throw it away more often.

If the game has any sort of meaning for New England in week 17, forget about it.

Two things I want to see: 1) Limit the turnovers to 1 or less. Orton seems to be a lock for one INT a game which I can live with as long as he is completing 68% of his passes. But he needs to hold onto the ball in the pocket. 2) Hope the dominant run defense returns from their absence last week.

Yep. It is one of the most underrated parts of his game. I think it is 50/50.

I agree that we find out who this team is on Sunday. You hate to call it a must win game in October, but it will be 'same old bills' if we lose. Our dominance over the NFC North so far means that all three of our loses are in conference loses. And we sit at 1-1 in the division. Lose tomorrow and we have a losing record in the division and 4 loses in conference. Definitely not a recipe for winning the division or making a wild card. Something tells me the Bears upset the Pats tomorrow, so it would be great to also win and keep the pressure on the Patriots.

A look at Lee's career numbers tells us that his rookie year was arguably his second best season total he had. Really kind of sad when you consider the 48 catches and 850 yards. He had two seasons over 1000 yards, but in one of them, it was just barely over (1,017) and he only managed 3 TDs. His career also ended up only lasting for 8 seasons. That is incredibly short for a receiver.

He had an intriguing pre-season with 69% completion percentage and 9.7 ypa He did throw a pick in the very limited work he saw earlier in the regular season.

What the heck numbers are you looking at?? Through 7 games Lee Evans had 11 receptions about 260 yards and 1 Td. He had zero 100 yard games, zero multi TD games and the most receptions he had in one game was 4. He also had a game with zero receptions on four targets. The only positive Lee Evans had through seven games was tremendous ypc average. Sammy Watkins numbers through 7 games: 35 receptions, 422 yards and 4 Tds. Three games with 7 or more receptions, two 100 yard games and one multi TD game. Honestly, those numbers are not eve close. It is one would suggest they are similar. Now, Lee Evans finished his rookie year strong. But still, Sammy would have to hit a brick wall for him to not best Lee's rookie numbers. The only one I could see Sammy and Lee being close in at the end of the season is TDs.

I agree with most of the OP outside of the premise that this team did/does not have a likely chance of finishing in the bottom 10 this season. I think going into the season one would have to realistically view the chances of finishing the season as one of the 10 worst teams at about a 50% likely hood. Heck, we are 4-3 but I am still not ready to guarantee more than 6 or 7 wins (lets see how these next two games go, Jets and Chiefs looked like much easier games a couple weeks ago). Six wins probably puts us right around 8-10 and 7 wins probably has us in the 11-13 range. And had we not made the QB change, which was probably not conceivable back at the time of the draft, we would probably be sitting at 3-4 or even 2-5. With that said, I can't see how anyone can argue against the Watkins trade. He is a very talented player. In only seven games you can already tell that he is the most talented players we have had on our team since, well, heck, probably the Super Bowl days. That is a long freaking time.

I fully expect us to view Russell Wilson and Andrew Luck in the future the same way we currently have viewed Manning and Brady over the last 10 years.

That entire drive was to insane. With all the negative things that were happening, sacks, false starts, intentional grounding, I would love to see the win probability graph for that final drive. It has to be all over the place.

I liked that the ball was out quickly. There was 1 second left on the clock when they called the play dead obviously since we kicked off. Had by chance Sammy had bobbled the ball or his toe was out, we would have had one more crack at it.

I was hoping the video would have the hit on Patterson on the ensuing kick off. Was it Duke Williams that leveled him?

Dixon has looked really good in his limited role so far this year. He seems to usually get 2-3 yards at minimum . And I think I trust his ball security. Brown will get playing time but we will have to see how much. Doesn't he have ball security issues? Not sure that is a good thing when we have 7 turnovers in the last two games. Good to know. He also had 35% less carries and his rushing average was half a yard less per carry that year compared to the year prior. Hope he can keep protecting the ball, I can deal with the decreased yards per carry.

I think you could actually argue that that can hurt you. You don't want your QB to dink and dunk down the field in most circumstances. This last three minutes really was amazing. Pretty much a summary of the game too. How many times did we shoot ourselves in the foot on that final drive? Yet we still somehow pulled it off. 1. Sack 2. False start 3. Sack 4. Chandler drops a first down pass 5. Intentional grounding And we scored a TD on that drive!? That says a ton about the QB. All three games Orton has played in he has put together some pretty impressive drives late in the game. Can't deny that. Just need him to hold onto the ball in the pocket. I can deal with him averaging 1 int a game because he moves the ball so well and is completing 68% of his passes.

The thing is, the Jets tend to play the Pats better then the Bills over the last 5 years are so. I think it is all about match-ups and scheme employed by Rex. But it doesn't necessarily translate to the Jets being able to dominate the Bills. Similarly, we match-up extremely well against the Dolphins. Yet, the Dolphins have always played the Pats better then the Bills.