The 6 Lamest Excuses so Far in This NFL Season

Excuses, excuses, excuses.

Both players and coaches are prone to making them anytime a game doesn't go their way. Sometimes, they're warranted, coming off more as explanations. Other times, they're simply lame, ways to deflect blame and responsibility.

Then, there are the other kinds of poor excuses, those that are simply bad examples of attempts to do something well or something clever but just fall flat.

Here are my awards for the lamest excuses players, coaches and teams have made so far this season.

Poorest Excuse by a Coach: Dallas Cowboys' Jason Garrett

In Week 13, Dallas Cowboys head coach Jason Garrett effectively iced his own kicker, Dan Bailey, who was about to attempt a 49-yard field goal to defeat the Arizona Cardinals with seven seconds remaining in regulation.

Just as Bailey's kick was about to take off, Garrett called a timeout. Bailey and the rest of the kicking unit didn't notice, and Bailey's kick was good. However, he had to re-kick because of the timeout, he missed it the second time and the Cowboys—fighting for a playoff spot—lost in overtime.

Garrett provided a number of explanations for his choice but never (publicly) admitted a mistake. He reportedly apologized to his team after the loss but wouldn't take responsibility when speaking to the media in his postgame press conference.

The fact that Garrett initially couldn't even provide a real reason for why he made the choice is just one baffling component of this entire debacle.

The Cowboys, at midfield, had 26 seconds and timeouts in their pocket and could have continued letting their offense, led by quarterback Tony Romo, march down the field in hopes of decisively ending the game.

However, instead of calling a timeout or even spiking the ball, Garrett allowed the clock to run and decided his mistrust of his quarterback was so great that he felt his rookie kicker would be more reliable in a low-percentage situation.

Why a head coach wouldn't allow his quarterback finish his drive, even one who is as mistake-prone as Romo has been in the past, is ridiculous. That he couldn't even explain his poor decision-making and bad block management is even worse.

Poorest Excuse for a Defensive Strategy: The New York Giants' Monday Night Flop

Faking injuries and flopping are no stranger to the world of sports, the NFL included. But when a team decides to employ such a strategy, it's usually executed with a level of subtlety.

Not so for the New York Giants in their Week 2 Monday night game against the St. Louis Rams. The Rams had found some early success running a no-huddle offense that had quickened the pace and not allowed the Giants defense to substitute players.

They were marching down the field near the end of the first quarter and the Giants needed to find a way to stop them. So two defenders, Deon Grant and Jacquian Williams, decided to perform a synchronized flop.

In the above video, you can see just how convincing Williams' performance was, realizing after he had gone to the ground that Grant also had decided to fake an injury and slowly picking himself back up.

While Grant had the better acting job, it was clearly a ploy to slow down the Rams and little more, and it even resulted in Ray Anderson, the NFL's executive vice president of football operations, sending a note to all 32 teams that fines would be levied on any organization that intentionally fakes injuries.

Great job, Williams and Grant. What was once a strategy—albeit a pathetic one—to slow an opponent just became one of the most embarrassing things a team has done all year, thanks to you.

Poorest Excuse for Facial Hair: New York Giants Quarterback Eli Manning

Facial hair has been making quite the comeback in the NFL in recent seasons, as the concept of the playoff beard has become trendy among players around the league.

While some have more success at growing impressive beards and mustaches than others, it is safe to assume that these adult men are aware of their ability or inability to grow a respectable follicular specimen.

For example, the Pittsburgh Steelers' Brett Keisel, who has the beardiest beard that ever bearded. It's massive, it's almost gross and it definitely makes him more intimidating.

But there's another who has had some gross facial hair this year, and that's New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning.

Manning, who has since smartly shaved it off, had some type of faintly-there wisp of a mustache and patchy tufts of hair on his chin and cheeks in Week 12 versus the New Orleans Saints.

It was unflattering, to say the least, and reminded one of a 14-year-old experimenting with his limited ability to grow facial hair in a misguided attempt to look older and tougher. Nice try, Eli, but leave the beards to the big boys.

Poorest Excuse for a Bad Season: The Madden Curse

Cleveland Browns running back Peyton Hillis is having a bad year.

He's in the middle of a contract dispute that has distracted him so much that his fellow teammates staged an intervention intended to get his head back in the game. He's missed games with a myriad of injuries and strep throat.

And when he is on the field, he's failed to make a difference and won't end his year anywhere close to his 1,654 all-purpose yardage total from 2010.

There are a number of reasons for his low production: his limited time on the field, the contract dispute being a major distraction, his heart perhaps not in the game as a result and, of course, the fact that the Browns just haven't managed to do anything on offense in general this year.

But the main thing everyone wants to point to when considering Hillis' struggles is the fact that he's on the cover of this year's edition of Madden NFL 12.

The Madden Curse has been brought up time and time again, as it seems that nearly every player who has graced its cover has at best had a down year and at worst suffered season-ending injuries in the following season.

There's such superstition among fans that Green Bay Packers fans voted for Hillis to be on the cover rather than their own quarterback Aaron Rodgers, in fear that Rodgers may befall a similar fate as those before him.

While it's convenient to point to a mysterious curse when the player on the cover of Madden undergoes misfortune, it's just not the case with Hillis.

It's just a way to cover up all the very real problems that have accumulated for him this season, leaving him nothing more than a disappointment to his team and himself.

Poorest Excuse for a Bad Season: Suck for Luck

Every year, a college player emerges as the clear favorite to be chosen as the No. 1 overall pick in the NFL Draft, and as such, 2011 is no different.

Year after year, that player (usually a quarterback) generates so much hype that it's like he's the second coming of Tom Brady or Peyton Manning, and the talk immediately turns to which teams may wind up with the worst record in the league and be the one to grab him.

This season, however, something different happened. A number of teams made it to the halfway point of the season with one or zero wins and talk began springing up that perhaps one or more of them were deliberately tanking the season to grab this year's consensus No. 1, Stanford quarterback Andrew Luck.

While it's intriguing to think that a team would be so interested in an upgrade at quarterback as to intentionally lose games to nab him, it's just simply not true. It's controversial and worth discussing, yes, but only to dismiss the theory as completely out-of-line.

No team, no matter how bad, no matter how much they've struggled and no matter how bad the overall morale of the locker room, takes the field week after week planning to lose, let alone actually, actively trying to lose, just to add a single player to their team next season.

It's ridiculous to think that the Indianapolis Colts, who haven't won a game this season, have employed losing as a strategy simply to draft Luck and have a successor or replacement for the aging and injured Peyton Manning.

Yes, it rhymes, but "Suck for Luck" is just a lazy way to avoid discussing which teams are truly bad and just how they got that way.

Poorest Excuse, Period: Detroit Lions' Ndamukong Suh and the Stomp

Detroit Lions defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh is one of the most intense and intimidating defenders in the league, and his aggressive style of play has caused him to earn a reputation as a dirty player.

He certainly lived up to that reputation in his team's Thanksgiving loss to the Green Bay Packers when Suh, who had fallen to the ground with Packers guard Evan Deitrich-Smith below him, smashed Deitrich-Smith's head off of the turf repeatedly while trying to get up and then stomping on his arm once he did.

Suh was ejected and suspended for two games for the stomp, but that didn't result in Suh admitting that he had done anything wrong.

Instead, he dodged and equivocated, stating he was simply trying to get up while Packers players were still holding on to him and trying to pull him back down. He also blamed the league and the officials for targeting him as an aggressive player and said that he in fact did not stomp Deitrich-Smith.

But he did. Suh did stomp him, he did get suspended and it was the most blatant example of dirty play this season. If Suh is going to learn from his mistakes, first he needs to admit he makes them.