And down the stretch they come …Peter King SI.comMON NOV. 23, 2015
Jameis Winston has led the Bucs to a 5-5 record, a tiebreaker away from an NFC wild-card spot if the playoffs started todayPhoto: Elsa/Getty ImagesAbout six weeks ago, Denver linebacker DeMarcus Ware said his years in football had taught him this about the peaks and valleys of a season: “It’s great to be playing well now, but when I really want to be playing well is at the end of the year. Look at the league. In so many years, the Super Bowl teams are the teams playing best in late December, not now.”The four middle-of-the-pack teams I’d fear right now if I coached a team preparing to play one:1. Kansas City (5-5). Easy pickings here. The Chiefs started 1-5, but they’ve won four straight, by an average of 23 points. Last three wins: by 35, 16 and 30, the latter a 33-3 pulverizing of the Chargers in San Diego Sunday. I’ll have more about the Chiefs in the next couple of days—including the answer to this question: What in tarnation has gotten into this team?—but suffice to say that the running game has gotten good enough to succeed with interchangeable parts, and though Alex Smith isn’t throwing any deeper than usual, he is throwing with his usual efficiency. Smith hasn’t thrown an interception in the past seven games. Kansas City is 4-2 in conference games, the key tiebreaker, and I really like the remaining schedule: Buffalo (5-4), at Oakland (4-6), San Diego (2-8), at Baltimore (3-7), Cleveland (2-8), Oakland (4-6). Four home, two road. Would anyone be shocked if the Chiefs finished 10-6 and and beat up the AFC South champ in a wild-card game? I wouldn’t be.2. Indianapolis (5-5). There’s not a lot predictable about a season that has Andrew Luck going 2-5 and Matt Hasselbeck 3-0. So let’s not try to make a lot of sense of this. “You kept throwing haymakers!” coach Chuck Pagano told his team in the locker room after the 24-21 win at Atlanta. “You kept throwing haymakers, 52!” That would be veteran inside linebacker D’Qwell Jackson, who benefited from one of the brainlock interceptions of the year, Matt Ryan’s third of the day, to decide this game. Ryan, throwing from his end zone, woefully undershot his receiver and hit Jackson at the Falcons’ six-yard line. Jackson turned it into a touchdown. Seven straight Colts games have been decided by a touchdown or less, so Indy had better keep throwing. Slight problem to the Colt euphoria: Tampa Bay and Pittsburgh are on the schedule the next two weeks. Both are playing better than Atlanta.3. Houston (5-5). Aside from playing the Patriots in three weeks, the schedule can be dominated, and the Texans are just the team to do it. They’ve allowed 9.7 points per game over the past three (all wins), and it’s not just J.J. Watt. As a team, the Texans are the stingiest third-down team in the league, holding foes to 26.4-percent conversions. Like Watt, Whitney Mercilus and Jadeveon Clowney are playing exceedingly well against the run and pass, and that’s made all the difference. New England (home) and Indy (road) will be the toughest games down the stretch.4. Tampa Bay (5-5). The Bucs have turned into a force of nature. Who expected 45-17 over Philadelphia, at Philly? Who expected .500 before 2016? Not I. It’s exaggerating reality to say it’s all Jameis Winston, but he’s the biggest part of it, by far. On Sunday he threw five touchdown passes with no interceptions—against the team he grew up in Alabama rooting for. He loved Randall Cunningham and Donovan McNabb. “I just won a game in a place I always dreamed of playing in,” Winston said from Philadelphia. “My whole entire life I wondered what it would be like to play here.” The Bucs are 4-2 in their last six games, and Winston has thrown nine touchdown passes and just two interceptions over that time. Road games with the Colts, Rams and Panthers will determine the Bucs’ fate over the next six weeks, and it’s probably a year too soon for a playoff trip, particularly with the second team in the NFC North and Seattle to overcome in order to make it. But there’s nothing guaranteed in the NFL this year, other than New England and Carolina being home on the second playoff weekend.Story of the Week
Saundra Adams is raising Chancellor Lee Adams, the son of ex-Panther Rae CarruthPhoto: Jeff Siner/Charlotte Observer/TNS via Getty ImagesScott Fowler of the Charlotte Observer wrote a deep and emotional tale about the 16th birthday of a Charlotte boy named Chancellor Lee Adams.Former Panthers wide receiver Rae Carruth was convicted of conspiring to murder a woman named Cherica Adams in 1999. She was pregnant with Carruth's child on the night a man pulled up alongside Adams’ car and shot her four times. The son inside her, Chancellor Lee Adams, was born prematurely, oxygen-deprived at birth, and turned 16 last Monday. Just a great story, full of the kind of rich detail journalists hunger to uncover, with an absolute hero in Chancellor’s grandmother, Saundra Adams. I asked Fowler about how the story came to be:“I am fortunate to possess a long institutional memory about the Panthers. The Charlotte Observer hired me away from the Miami Herald in 1994, so I have covered all 21 Panther seasons in some capacity—as a beat writer or, since 1999, as a columnist. So I covered Carruth from the day he was drafted in the first round in 1997 up to and through his trial [which ended in January 2001]. Like the rest of Charlotte, I watched it all with a horrified fascination. In the locker room in his first two years, I considered Carruth something of a brooding loner—although I would have not told you he was dangerous.“The day of Nov. 16, 1999, is seared into my memory. That was the day Cherica Adams was shot and Chancellor Lee Adams was born. But you know how it goes. People forget. Saundra and Chancellor Lee have lived in Charlotte for Chancellor's entire life. They are heroes, for sure, living out their lives quietly in a small house without cable. It took an offhand conversation with another journalist about three months ago to remind me that Chancellor's 16th birthday was coming up.“I worked on the story off and on for about two months. Saundra Adams is a wonderful interview—introspective, detail-oriented by nature and with a capacity for forgiveness that few of us possess. She and Chancellor Lee made the story what it was, not me.“It was Saundra's suggestion for the photos for the story to be shot at Chancellor Lee's therapeutic riding class. Watching him at the horse-riding class was also instructive, because I wanted to write about what Chancellor Lee could do, not what he couldn't. Due to his speech difficulties, you cannot really conduct a traditional interview with him, so it was important to observe him in a familiar setting, I thought.“Finally, in nearly 30 years as a professional journalist, this was the first time I wrote the ending to a story first. But when I saw Chancellor literally riding into the sunset that day on a beautiful horse farm at twilight, I knew I had just seen the ending of the piece. I debated the phrase ‘rides off into the sunset’ a little, as I wondered if it would seem too corny or trite, but it is the phrase that has been most often re-quoted to me from readers emailing about it.”The Award SectionOFFENSIVE PLAYERS OF THE WEEK
Apologies to Doug Martin. How does one man have 84-yard and 58-yard runs, and 235 yards on the day, and not win this august honor? The judge is a strange judge.Thomas Rawls, running back, Seattle. With Marshawn Lynch an unexpected injury scratch, Rawls had the kind of day that will make the Seahawks consider letting Lynch walk after the season. His 255 rushing-receiving yards were the most by an NFL back in three years: 209 yards on 30 carries, with 46 yards on three receptions—with one touchdown on the ground and one through the air in Seattle’s 29-13 win over San Francisco.Cam Newton, quarterback, Carolina. He threw his 100th career touchdown pass in the first half against Washington—a half that was a milestone in another way. It was the first time that Newton threw at least three touchdown passes in a half. And he threw four—in the first 25 minutes. Newton was 16 of 24 for 187 yards, with four touchdowns and no picks, before halftime.Jameis Winston, quarterback, Tampa Bay. Don’t look now, but the first pick the draft this year has gone interception-free in five of his past six games. Playing against the team he idolized as a kid—visiting the Philly stadium complex for the first time in his life—Winston was 19 of 29 for 246 yards, with five touchdowns and no interceptions, for a rating of 131.6. I talk to guys after games quite often during the NFL season, and few have had as ebullient a tone of voice as Winston did when we spoke 50 minutes after Tampa Bay 45, Philadelphia 17.Brock Osweiler, quarterback, Denver. Ebullient … That was Osweiler too. Maybe not the same as Winston, but pretty excited, after starting his first NFL game on Sunday in Chicago, an important 17-15 Broncos victory. Osweiler, playing with the pressure of The Man Who Would Succeed Peyton Manning on his shoulders, had a tidy 20-of-27, 250-yard, two-touchdown performance. Most importantly, in 12 possessions, he didn’t throw an interception, nor did he fumble. A terrific performance with so much on the line.DEFENSIVE PLAYERS OF THE WEEKJ.J. Watt, defensive line, Houston. “He is so stupendous that you almost take it for granted, unfortunately,” Houston owner Bob McNair said after another tour de Watt performance in Houston’s 24-17 dismantling of the Jets. He sacked New York quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick twice, knocked him down three more times, had three more tackles for loss, and recorded a team-high eight tackles. McNair’s right. Just another day in the life and great career of the unquestioned best defensive player in football.Datone Jones, defensive end, Green Bay. A first-round pick by the Pack in 2013, Jones had one of his most impactful days as a pro, sacking Teddy Bridgewater twice—for losses of 28 yards—along with a pass defensed. He wasn’t alone. Green Bay had failed to sack an opposing quarterback for three straight games, and the Packers’ front snowed under Bridgewater for six sacks in one of their most impressive performances of the year.SPECIAL TEAMS PLAYERS OF THE WEEKMason Crosby, kicker, Green Bay. Great day for a kicker who’s made a nice home in the great north. Kicking outside in the chill of Minneapolis, Crosby converted field goals in every quarter—from 42, 47, 40, 42 and 52 yards—without missing in Green Bay’s decisive 30-13 win over the archrival Vikings.Andre Roberts, kick-returner/wide receiver, Washington. It’s been a roller-coaster year for Roberts, who has fallen out of favor in the regular offense. But at Charlotte on Sunday, with the Panthers on such a roll, Washington needed to make some plays on defense and special teams to have a chance. They made next to none on defense, but Roberts’ shifty and speedy 99-yard romp through the Carolina kickoff coverage late in the first quarter tied the game at 14 and gave Washington hope. For a few minutes, anyway.COACH OF THE WEEKMike Shula, offensive coordinator, Carolina. Just another day in paradise for the 10-0 Panthers on Sunday, with the 44-16 rout of Washington. No one—not Don Shula, not David Shula—expected the Panthers to be averaging 29.9 points per game at the 10-game mark of the season. With Cam Newton improvising to a mostly new cast of characters, Mike Shula made it his point to not allow anyone in the offensive meeting room to make excuses about all the new faces Newton had to use—even after Kelvin Benjamin was lost for the year with an ACL injury in the preseason. Even with the newness, look at Shula’s Panthers compared to the offensive powers (or so we thought entering the season) in the league: Denver 22 points per game, Green Bay 25 per game, Carolina 30 per game?GOATS OF THE WEEKCordarrelle Patterson, kick-returner/wide receiver, Minnesota. This didn’t cost the Vikings a vital NFC North game, but it was the dumbest play of Week 11. By far. After the Packers scored to go up 27-13 early in the fourth quarter, Patterson returned the kickoff 52 yards to the Vikes’ 49 … and followed up on that by head-butting the Green Bay kicker, Mason Crosby. Unsportsmanlike conduct. Loss of 15 yards. If anything will put Patterson, a talented but underachieving player, further in Mike Zimmer’s doghouse, this would be it.Mark Sanchez, quarterback, Philadelphia. I watch Sanchez play, and for a quarter I get excited, and I think he’s going to turn the corner—and then he just makes brain-locked plays, the kind that eventually made the Jets sour on him. That’s the same thing happening in Philadelphia with Chip Kelly, who has to have seen enough. In the span of five drives beginning late in the second quarter, Sanchez threw three interceptions, two deep inside Tampa territory. He’s just not the answer for what Kelly will do at quarterback in 2016.Doug Flutie’s parents died within an hour of each other on Wednesday
“Mom and Dad wanted me to do this game. They had this game circled on their calendar.”—NBC Notre Dame analyst Doug Flutie, in the open to Boston College-Notre Dame on Saturday night on NBC Sports Network.Flutie’s parents died within an hour of each other on Wednesday, both of heart attacks. His dad had been sick and died in a Massachusetts hospital, and his mom died soon afterward.I am always skeptical when someone grieving says, Oh, so-and-so would have wanted me to do this, so soon after the passing. I know Flutie some, and know the importance of Boston College and Fenway Park to his family. (Seriously: When Flutie attends games at Fenway, the guy still brings his glove to catch foul balls.) And I have to say absolutely that, yes, his parents would have been ticked off if Flutie sat home commiserating with relatives on the night Boston College played at Fenway Park for the first time in Flutie’s life.
