Not a lot has gone right the San Diego Chargers this season, but one guy that continues his solid play week after week is free safety Eric Weddle. There probably isn’t a safety in the entire league that is as consistently good in all phases of the game as Weddle.

Weddle not making the Pro Bowl just demonstrates how horrible the selection process for the Pro Bowl has become. The best players don’t make the team, and in some cases really bad players make the team over players like Weddle.

Only four safeties in the league have more solo tackles than Weddle and none of them have played free safety exclusively. Weddle also has three interceptions, 12 passes defensed and two forced fumbles. Not many safeties have that combination of statistics.

According to Pro Football Focus, teams have completed just 19 passes on Weddle on 31 attempts for just 136 yards and one touchdown. Weddle has allowed one reception longer than 20 yards, hasn’t committed a penalty all season and is Pro Football Focus’ top-graded safety.

Read More »30

Sebastian Janikowski won the fan voting portion of the Pro Bowl voting, but lost out to Phil Dawson of the Cleveland Browns once players and coaches weighed in. Dawson was 28 for 29 on the season with his only miss being blocked, while Janikowski was 31 of 34 with his only misses coming from 51 yards or longer.

Dawson’s longest field goal was 53 yards to Janikowski’s 57 yards. While Dawson was a deserving candidate, there’s no way he clearly belonged ahead of the man affectionately known as Seabass to the Raider Nation.

Janikowski made his first Pro Bowl in 2011, his 12th professional season, and deserved to go again in 2012. Perhaps no kicker in the league has Janikowski’s combination of accuracy and range. It didn’t just happen for Janikowski overnight either, but he’s become automatic from inside 50 yards over the past few years.

Fans, opponents and the media all expect Janikowski to make anything inside 60 yards, and he’s made field goals of 55 and 57 yards this season. Dawson made the same number of kicks from 50 yards or more as Janikowski (six) even though the longest was just 53 yards.

Read More »18

It’s been a long and arduous season in Oakland. The Raiders are slogging through their first full year without Al Davis running the franchise, and it hasn’t been fun for the Raider Nation. The new regime was dealt a roster full of overpaid players and few draft picks, with the net result being four wins and 11 losses.

The Raiders have been giving the young players expanded playing time over the past several weeks and should also give Terrelle Pryor his first career start on Sunday. It made some sense to give Pryor more playing time before Carson Palmer was injured, and it makes even more sense now that the alternative is Matt Leinart.

The Raiders gain absolutely nothing by starting Leinart on Sunday against the San Diego Chargers, but there is something to be gained by starting Pryor. This is a decision that really shouldn’t be hard to make, which is why it seems odd that the Raiders are still considering starting Leinart.

Dennis Allen said via his media session on Wednesday that Leinart and Pryor split the reps with the first-team offense evenly: “We got a chance to see what Matt (Leinart) could do, and we might need to see a little more of Terrelle (Pryor).” Allen said. “But we’ll evaluate that as the week goes on.”

Read More »20

The NBA has done a pretty good job of making a mockery of its sport. LeBron James' idea that stars should team up instead of square off has infected all of sports and spread like a disease.

Prior to the 2011 NFL Draft, Von Miller, Aldon Smith and Marcell Dareus talked about teaming up down the line, according to Lindsay Jones of USA Today. I’m assuming Dareus is Chris Bosh, since he is both bigger and has considerably less star power than Miller and Smith.

It’s just a harmless idea until someone acts on it. For the sake of football, we can only hope that the players will never act on the idea and the NFL has created conditions that will never allow such a ridiculous idea to come to fruition.

Sadly, it doesn’t seem like that much of a stretch for Roger Goodell to turn into David Stern.

Read More »15

The Denver Broncos are scoring nearly 30 points per game and Peyton Manning is the front-runner for the NFL’s MVP award, but the offense is still a work in progress. That doesn’t seem fair to the rest of the NFL, does it?

Jeff Legwold of the Denver Post­ reports that Manning and the rest of the offense are still developing chemistry that can take years in some cases. It sounds crazy that the offense could get better, but Manning knows the Broncos can be better at adjusting to how teams try to slow them down.

The great players are never truly satisfied and always want to be better, so the fact that the Broncos haven’t lost since traveling to New England a million weeks ago is not enough for Manning. The Broncos still have a shot at the No. 1 seed in the AFC if the Houston Texans lose this weekend and the Broncos beat the Kansas City Chiefs. The latter seems like a certainty, but isn’t going to be enough to satisfy Manning.

Although Manning isn’t a young man anymore, the Broncos could just be scratching the surface of their offensive potential. It’s a scary thought for the rest of the NFL. Outside of Manning the Broncos are also a pretty young team and will probably remain contenders for the next couple of years under Manning’s guidance.

Read More »0

The best thing for the San Diego Chargers would be to lose and get better draft position, but on Sunday against the hapless New York Jets that was impossible. The two teams combined for only 448 yards of offense. Jamaal Charles of the Kansas City Chiefs had more rushing yards on Sunday than either team.

San Diego’s offense was typically bad with the usual sprinkling of big plays, but the defense sacked Greg McElroy 11 times. That’s shocking because the Chargers have hardly been sack masters this season—they entered the game 23rd in sacks and 27th in sack percentage.

The Chargers were lucky (or unlucky) enough to play a bad team with a quarterback making his first career start. The Jets have a terrible quarterback situation and McElroy was basically thrown to the wolves on Sunday. The Chargers simply couldn’t help themselves.

It was a sack parade as rookie defensive end Kendall Reyes had three-and-a-half sacks, Shaun Phillps had two-and-a-half sacks, Corey Liuget had two sacks, Larry English had a sack, Donald Butler had a sack, Melvin Ingram and Brandon Taylor each had a half sack.  

Read More »12

The Kansas City Chiefs have now gone outside what we previously believed was possible to lose a game. You might say the Chiefs are “impossibly bad” because there’s really no other way to describe racking up 352 rushing yards and 507 total yards in a 20-13 loss to the Indianapolis Colts.

Jamaal Charles had 226 rushing yards and Peyton Hillis had 101 rushing yards and yet the Chiefs couldn’t outrun their biggest problem: their quarterback. It hasn’t mattered if the quarterback has been Brady Quinn or Matt Cassel—you could probably stick punter Dustin Colquitt out there to hand off and he’d do just as well.

If a quarterback can’t perform when the team runs for 352 yards and plays good defense, it’s never going to happen. Quinn not only couldn’t perform, but one of his interceptions was returned for a touchdown and the other was downed in the end zone. Quinn’s net impact on the game was approximately -11 points.

There is good news: the Chiefs are a loss away from securing the No. 1 overall pick. With that pick it’s pretty clear that they need a young, promising quarterback. They also need a smart, creative offensive coordinator to pair with their young signal caller and a general manager that can rebuild a roster that has no shortage of talent.  

Read More »36

In a roundabout way, Josh McDaniels has the Denver Broncos in position to contend for their first Super Bowl since 2005. McDaniels gave the Broncos parting gifts that keep on giving.

As the result of moves made by McDaniels—both good and bad—the Broncos have Peyton Manning, Von Miller, Demaryius Thomas, Eric Decker and offensive coordinator Mike McCoy. All vital pieces to Denver’s current playoff run.

Denver’s last loss was also against McDaniels’ offense in New England in Week 5. Denver’s path to the Super Bowl will also probably run through McDaniels’ offense. It’s funny, but McDaniels’ fingerprints are all over Denver’s playoff run.

McDaniels traded away Jay Cutler and Brandon Marshall, which resulted in a terrible season and the No. 2 overall pick in the 2011 NFL draft. With that pick, the Broncos selected Miller, who broke the franchise record for sacks in a season on Sunday against the Browns—he now has 17.5 sacks on the season.

Read More »21