It’s not easy to change a person with a losing attitude, and the same goes for turning around a terrible team. With that thought in mind, what coach Bruce Arians is doing in Arizona is just short of amazing.
Matt Youmans
At this point, there’s not much left to like about the Dallas Cowboys, who are riding a broken-down donkey of a coach and following a quarterback, Tony Romo, who can’t shoot straight under pressure.
A sense of impending doom surrounded the Chicago Bears when Jay Cutler, who might or might not be the franchise’s future quarterback, limped off the field with a groin injury. With Cutler, it often appears to be loser’s limp, but this injury was legit.
Even when the odds are against Tom Brady, we expect him to succeed. He captains comebacks like no other quarterback in the NFL. So we expect him to succeed especially when the odds are against him.
On and off the field, the Washington Redskins are a mess. Full responsibility for that falls on the narrow shoulders of coach Mike Shanahan, a manipulator not to be taken at face value.
In the final football game of the year, Johnny Manziel will quarterback what is almost certain to be the last game of his college career when he leads Texas A&M against Duke. He’s going out with a bang, in a way.
It was not quite a blizzard, but it was bizarre. A thick white blanket covered the field in Philadelphia, and in elements better suited for a sled dog race in Alaska, LeSean McCoy seemed to run from Anchorage to Nome.
It will be a cold day in hell — also known as New Jersey — when a team shows up and beats the Seattle Seahawks in the Super Bowl. That’s the common narrative this week.
Truth is stranger than fiction, especially in college football. The first half of that sentence is a Mark Twain quote. The best coach in the nation, Nick Saban, probably would agree with both halves after failing to take Auburn to overtime and looking like a jackass in the process.
It’s that time when adversity sets in, hope disappears and some NFL teams get torn apart while facing the certainty of a losing year. But coach Tom Coughlin is not going to allow any of that nonsense to wreck the New York Giants, at least not yet.
Once famous only for being Florida State’s supremely talented freshman quarterback, Jameis Winston now has more concerns than how to read a defense.
Learning how to deal with devastating setbacks is an important aspect to the psychology of gambling. Absorbing bad beats is part of betting sports, and it helps to have a bottle of whiskey and a short memory.
After the party, the hangover is due to hit. And the better the party, the worse the headache gets. Right about now, it’s hitting quarterback Colin Kaepernick and the San Francisco 49ers right between the eyes.
Not that it’s a negative, but San Francisco 49ers coach Jim Harbaugh has a huge ego. He’s out to win games, not friends, and does not care if he annoys people with his arrogance and combative attitude.
It’s easy to envision the Green Bay Packers without Aaron Rodgers at quarterback, if only because we witnessed it five days ago. It was not pretty, and it’s almost impossible to picture them as a playoff team unless he returns before December.
Some point-spread decisions lack drama. A bet on Drew Brees and the New Orleans Saints was easy money, and there’s nothing better than cashing in without breaking a sweat. But it’s rarely that easy.
Money is obviously a great motivator, even for NFL quarterbacks who already have a ton of it. So with his job security being questioned in a contract year, Jay Cutler is playing hero and returning earlier than expected to rescue the Chicago Bears.