It was a great Sunday in always beautiful Landover, Maryland. The stadium formerly known as FedEx Field was filled up with burgundy and gold. The Marcus Mariota led football team bounced back in dominant fashion. The team all around Marcus stepped up and made things easy for the quarterback. Dan Quinn was even taking hits on the sideline. Once I saw him with the bloody nose, I knew we were going to win. As a team, it’s impossible to not rally behind that and players agreed in their post game interviews. We once again proved we can take care of business against less than formidable opponents. It’s nice to be back in the win column. The weeks always go by a lot easier after a win on Sunday.
I feel an appropriate place to start is with Marcus’ performance. He yet again answered the call when his services were needed. He hasn’t blinked so far through two years. I genuinely do believe he would be the starting quarterback on at least 5 teams right now. The only mistake he made was coughing the ball up after trying to hurdle someone. In his defense, he did look really cool in midair, but in reality as a backup quarterback you need to be sliding in those situations. The last thing this already injury riddled team needs is Marcus getting hurt. It seems like he will be getting the start again this weekend against another team that wrote him off. It’s not very often you have the opportunity for two revenge games in back to back weeks. I have no doubts Marcus can win us another one Sunday.
Despite the final score, there was a lot of bad in this game. We were beating ourselves in the first half and seemed like we were being set up for a dog fight. From the fumble to broken coverages, drops that should have been picked, and missed kicks, it was a situation when against a good team will come to bite you. Luckily for us, the Raiders don’t qualify as what I’d consider a good football team. I still do not have a ton of confidence in our pass coverage. We’ve let secondary options have legacy games in back to back weeks. I didn’t expect to be saying this however I have become worried about Mikey. We lost Will Harris to a fractured fibula. He will be out for a significant amount of time. The team already signed Maryland Terrapin Darnell Savage to fill in. We really need to figure something out before we become last years Lions and lose half of our starters.
The Raiders having the worst offensive line in the league definitely helped our front 7 make plays. We didn’t let Jeanty have his coming out game. We were able to make contact with him behind the line of scrimmage on 11 of his 17 carries. A big piece of that is because of Daron Payne. So far, it’s looking like we made the right decision on who to keep from our four first round picks. But, we did have Geno looking like Lamar on too many plays for my liking. Some work could be done on collapsing the pocket. I did find it amusing to see Von Miller and Bobby both get sacks in this one. I wonder if this is the first time two guys over the age of 35 had sacks for the same team in a game. I assume the answer is no but I wouldn’t be shocked if this was the first time ever. Lastly, one more critique for our defense. We have 0 turnovers caused through three games. That is going to need to change once we get into the gauntlet of our schedule.
Our special teams stepped up big. This is exactly how you win football games when your starter is out. Deebo opened the game setting us up on the 30 yard yard line. Then, the rookie, Jaylin Lane, eased some nerves scoring his first career touchdown taking a punt 90 yards to the house. The last punt return touchdown we saw was in 2016 from Jameison Crowder. It took the rookie 3 games to do something that hasn’t been done in 9 years. He tied the record for the franchises longest punt return touchdown and became the first rookie since Desmond Howard in 1992 to house one. He is currently leading the league in punt return yards. All in all, it seems like we finally found a guy who is a real threat back there. I have a feeling this won’t be the last one he scores this year.
We got the run game going early. It’s hard to lose a football game when you control the clock and rush for 201 yards on the ground. Since 2010, we are 19-3 when the team combines for over 200 yards. McNichols’ 60 yard touchdown run in the first half gave us much needed cushion. This run included a whiff from last year’s safety Jeremy Chinn which definitely made me feel better about not spending the 8 million dollars to keep him around. Our running back room is a rag tag group, but they know how to get the job done. Everytime Bill touches the ball good things seem to happen. He’ll take a carry going nowhere, make a guy miss, and turn it into positive yards. I am very excited for him to become the featured back in this offense. However, his time will be postponed as he is another one of the names who has been on the injury report all week. He hasn’t been practicing and it is up in the air if we see him on Sunday.
One group I feel the need to formally apologize to is all people who took Terry anytime touchdown. I still do not understand how this was called back. His knee was clearly not down from every angle I saw on the replay. To make things worse for myself, I lost a fantasy game by .6 points with Terry in my lineup. If DraftKings and ESPN want to do what’s right, then they need to refund all Terry bets and give him back the 6 points. It’s the only way to ameliorate the situation. The group I was at the game with all had him to score. To say we were gutted was an understatement. At least the result of this egregious call was Bill getting in the endzone.
It’s seeming like we could be without Terry for sometime. It feels as if this is natural after we pay him 30+ million dollars. To put feelings aside, losing Terry for an extended period is really going to hurt us. Hopefully, the reports aren’t accurate and we’ll see him out on the field sooner rather than later. If they are correct, we are going to be getting our moneys worth out of Deebo and someone else is going to need to step up. Luke McCaffrey finally found the endzone on Sunday. It was a garbage time touchdown but still there’s never a bad time to score your first career touchdown. Terry ran over to grab the ball and make sure Luke got it back. We would really be up shits creek had we not traded for Deebo. Hopefully, Noah, Luke, or Jaylin can fill in for the time being and contribute enough to make up for Terry’s absence.
I don’t think it’s was Peter Carroll’s intention to pick up a rebuild project at 74 years old. With how the AFC West is looking this season, their current line to miss the playoffs at -650 seems like a free bet. This would have been a very bad loss for us to take. Fortunately, we avoided playing down to our opponent and handily won the game. Now, we move onto Atlanta this Sunday.
We’ve been placed in a position where Atlanta is hoping to have a bounce back game against us. If you were to base your NFL power rankings on just last week alone, then they would be dead last. Michael Penix has not looked like the franchise guy they hoped. A crazy stat is that he has never won an NFL game when the opposing team scores more than 7 points. So statistically speaking, all we need to do Sunday is score at least 8 points and we should be able to win this football game. I wish it was that easy. Also, that would make for arguably the most boring football game I’ve ever watched. But, all I care about is us winning so I guess I could get over it pretty quickly.
I am just going to go ahead and say what I think and hope I don’t regret it down the road. I don’t think the Atlanta Falcons are a good football team. I think we are being heavily disrespected with the current line Vegas is putting out. We are favored by 1.5 points. We haven’t lost to the them since 2018. This is one of the few teams in the NFL we have owned in that time span. They have two real threats on offense. And one of them is half a threat because Penix can barely manage to get him the ball. Bijan on the other hand will be a problem as he is for every team on Sundays.
Last year, we let him run all over us in the first half then had to dig ourselves out of a hole to eventually win in overtime sending us to the playoffs. I would prefer us to sell out for the run and let Penix beat us in the air because to be frank, I haven’t seen any evidence this year that he can win doing so. I will say the last thing I want to see on Sunday is Kirk Cousins on the field. You know that guy is itching to revive his career and against his former team would he all too fitting. My belief for this one is if we can stop Bijan or score 8 points, then we will win the game.
Now to get into the bets, I think I’ve already clearly outlined why I think betting our spread is a good idea. Penix is not a good quarterback and our defense is due for their first turnover of the year. For that reason, I will be taking him to throw an interception. If you want to get crazy, I think it will be Quan Martin who grabs it. Their number 1 corner, AJ Terrell, is banged up and unlikely to play. If we are going to be without Terry, then we will be seeing a lot of Deebo. If I can find a line, I will be taking his all purpose yards. If not, I’ll settle for receptions. Lastly, Luke McCaffrey first touchdown. He had the last one on Sunday. Let’s reverse it and get him in there to start the game.
I am classifying this game as one we cannot afford to lose. Throughout the week, it seemed like Jayden was going to be able to play, but seeing Marcus was nominated as a captain this Sunday essentially lets the cat out of the bag. I am glad they are being cautious and not rushing Jayden back. We are lucky to have Marcus and so far he’s looking like the best resigning of this offseason. No matter who is at quarterback; I like our guys. Good luck to everyone this weekend. Looking forward to writing next week about the win on Sunday.
Photo Credit: Jess Rapfogel / Getty