Point Blank – September 27

What a “Bettor Better Know” – NFL #3

There is some scrambling going on in the Power Ratings across the NFL handicapping community, and in particular in re-evaluating the notions that a QB needs to have some experience to be successful at this level. Carson Wentz and Trevor Siemian are both 3-0, each having a pair of underdog wins included; Dak Prescott is 2-1 with a dog win; and even Jacoby Brissett is 1-0. So there is plenty of work to do.

The focus today will go to the Eagles first, and if you pegged them to lead the NFL in scoring margin through the first three games, a decisive +65 that is 29 points better than anyone else, you would almost assuredly have been alone. So with the usual long Tuesday read ahead the Jukebox is plugged in for some background to ease you along, and if the team from Philadelphia is indeed flying high, how about some classic Steve Miller, this from Winterland back in 1974 - 

Item: Appreciating Jim Schwartz (it isn’t just Carson Wentz flying like an Eagle…)

I could write about Carson Wentz here, but you can read enough on that front elsewhere – he is playing with poise, already has the respect of the huddle, and shows the physical ability to execute just about anything that would be in an NFL playbook.  It is the story on the other side of the ball that comes front-and-center, a defense that was #28 in points allowed and 31 in yards in 2015 now elevated to #1 and #4 across those categories. 

There are two stories to focus on here, the current key naturally being how much impact Schwartz has had, but before that the focus goes to where this bunch has been. The Chip Kelly cycle was not a good time to be a Philadelphia defender, the team forced to be on the field far too long – they faced 43 more snaps than another other team in 2015, and the fact that they were wearing down near the end of the season became an item on this Tuesday review. They allowed 236 points over their final seven games.

Naturally that group relished the opportunity to play at a much more normal pace, and the upgrade from the overmatched Bill Davis to Schwartz has not taken long to become a showcase.

Schwartz may not be viewed properly by the betting markets because of that dismal 29-51 stint as a HC at Detroit, but he has done a first-rate job as a DC – in his last stop before taking over the Lions, Tennessee #1 in 2007 and #5 in 2008 on the Football Outsiders adjusted defensive ratings, and in his first season after being fired in Detroit he led Buffalo to #2 in that category. Rex Ryan, of course, chose to not keep him, and brought in his own guy in Dennis Thurman instead. For comparison think about someone like Wade Phillips, who also failed in a HC role, but earned a Super Bowl ring for his handling of that Denver defense LY.

It was one thing for the Eagles to have shackled Robert Griffin and the Browns in the opener, and then Jay Cutler and the limited Chicago personnel in Week #2, but on Sunday it was about as good of a game as we will see a defense play this season, the Steelers being held to three points, 15 first downs and 251 yards. There was a lot of swagger in that domination, and the follow-up is also worth charting because attitudes can mean as much as statistics. I’ll start with CB Nolan Carroll – 

 "We just wanted to make sure we played our style of football. It's really just about being physical. We knew that they have a reputation of being smash-mouth and physical. We feel like that's the same way we feel as well. That's how we approached this week. Practice this week was tough just because of the nature of this particular game and who we were playing. It was good to just go out there and set the tone." 

And from LB Jordan Hicks - "We made them one dimensional, and when that happens, our defensive line eats. Our defensive line just goes and goes, and it is tough to stop."

Now there is an early bye that comes at an interesting time – it allows Wentz to have a mini-camp, after he did not get all that much work with the first team offense in August, and also for Schwartz to do some tweaking. In particular pay attention to the attitude of the players around him as they buy in – their next time on the field just happens to be back in Detroit, where he is likely to bring a chip on his shoulder that may translate to that defensive huddle.

Item: The Vikings have scored one offensive TD in two road games, and won them both

Sub-Item: Kelvin Benjamin didn’t get a touch

The Eagles are still not playing the best defense in the league, that honor goes to the Vikings, and there isn’t a better way to spell it out than the fact that in their two road games they only managed to score a single offensive TD. And there is the fact that they rallied from double-figure deficits in each of those games, largely through that defense, but also from some found all-around fundamental play. 

When the summer preview tour was rolling along the Minnesota focus was on the experience of the coaching staff Mike Zimmer had assembled around him, and there is some game-feel that is easily visible when you watch the Vikings play – they do almost all of the little things right, and as the players build a trust in their staff to put them in a good position to win, there is a chance to elevate. Let’s use the words of the players following that 22-0 close-out of Carolina after the early 0-10 deficit, when the defense sacked Cam Newton eight times and also came up with three interceptions, as being as valuable as anything that could be measured statistically - 

From Everson Griffen, who had three of the sacks - “We got a great team, great coaching and we fight. No matter what situation we’re in, we stay patient and fight back.”

Chad Greenway - “It’s 90 percent coaching. They’re putting us in the right positions. And we have good players who are making the plays. Making ‘halftime adjustments’ is a little overblown in this league. I think reacting and learning from mistakes is what it’s really called. You’re not going to come in and change your scheme. But coach Zimmer has done a great job of educating us on his defense, so we understand how it works.’’

And Terrance Newman, who also played under Zimmer in Cincinnati - “I was one of the guys that was lobbying for Mike to get a head coaching job way back when. He’s as good as they come. He knows every facet of the game — offense, defense and special teams.”

In particular on Sunday was the way that they took Benjamin out of the flow. Through the first two games Benjamin had 13 catches for 199 yards and three TDs, and his rapport with Newton was showing the potential to go to a special level. On Sunday you can’t find Benjamin’s name in the box score, a rare shutout for a WR that means so much to his team.

Let’s go to Newton first - “For him not to have any touches is, you know, really baffling and wowing. Whatever they were doing was effective. We have to have answers for it so that can’t happen again. We have to get our playmakers involved in the game plan and it starts with me as the signal-caller.”

But perhaps even more important, in terms of better understanding the abilities of the other Panther WRs, is this rather up front take from Viking CB Captain Munnerlyn - “I just think we knew where Benjamin was the whole time. (Devin) Funchess, we weren’t worried about him. It was Kelvin Benjamin. I’m just gonna be honest. Me personally, and I never talk like this, I personally don’t think (Funchess is) that good. So we weren’t really worried about him. We were just worried about Benjamin and Ted (Ginn Jr.) and Philly (Brown). We knew those guys would come in, they would feed them well and we just tried to communicate and make plays.”

Item: The 49ers won the turnover battle at Carolina and Seattle both, and lost by 19 each time (where is Chip Kelly’s pace going to go from here)

The 49ers are not an easy team to rate right now, that opening win over the Rams one of those cases of an exaggerated Scoreboard/Box Score combination in terms of the true abilities of the teams, and also the fact that they have had a lot of fortuitive second-half circumstances go their way the last two weeks. The problem is that even with those bounces they just finished +1 in turnovers in back-to-back games, yet lost each 19 points anyway.

Last week it was a sequence for the ages in the fourth quarter vs. the Panthers, an offensive cycle in which they lost three yards over the span of four plays, yet scored 10 points. This past Sunday they trailed the Seahawks 37-3 midway through the fourth quarter, before getting nearly half of all of their offensive yards, 112 of 254, on those two late TD drives. Prior to those two trips they had only managed one first down on their previous five possessions, and of course they also had the benefit of Russell Wilson not playing from the middle of the third quarter on.

Even with that meaningless closing stretch the 49ers were -9 in net plays, after being -14 at Carolina. One of the notions that has been discussed here is if Kelly would maintain his fast pace with a team that is not suited for it, especially if that pace is going to lead to added opportunities for the opposition. Through the first two weeks the 49ers were #2 in SPS at 23.7, but that slowed to 25.8 on Sunday. Do not be surprised if the trend towards slower continues – even the most stubborn of coaches will recognize certain realities.

Item: Carson Palmer looks every bit of 36 years old (he'll be 37 soon)

I haven’t liked much of what I have seen from Palmer this season, and while there is a “duh” to that after he was sacked five times and threw four interceptions at Buffalo, one of the key notes that got filed away was from a performance that not many would have taken a second glance at, that seemingly easy rout of Tampa Bay last week.

Let’s go to the good folks at Pro Football Focus for more on that one - He was errant at times in this game, and he had the worst accuracy percentage (taking out drops and throw aways) of all QBs in Week 2 at the finish of the afternoon games at 58.6 percent.

Now it is time to not only put his opening 2016 salvo into perspective, but to also trace things back to a possible turning point, an injury at Philadelphia late in 2015. There is some good work on that front that was done by Vince Marotta at arizonasports.com that breaks it down well.  How has Palmer fared over those seven games? Just 6.1 net yards per pass (counting sacks); more interceptions (11) than TD passes (10); and a Passer Rating of 73.8. 

First take that with several grains of salt, because most of those games were against elite competition. But then adjust the seasoning with a little pepper to note that Palmer will turn 37 before the season is over, and for a guy that could never list mobility as a strong suit, that may be a genuine weakness at this stage. Now it becomes time to go back to Pro Football Focus, and it gets ominous again – while Palmer was not as good as the numbers appeared in the success vs. Tampa Bay, on Sunday he may have been even worse than that awful stat line indicated – 

Sometimes the numbers can lie, but with Palmer’s 35.9 QB rating they do anything but. While one of his four interceptions was a clear miscommunication with the receiver, he had several more dangerous passes that Bills’ defenders graciously let fall to the turf that easily could have upped his turnover count. Add to that a poor late game fumble that the Cards were lucky to recover and his complete ineffectiveness throwing deep (1-of-7 for 25 yards and 3 picks) and you have a day every bit as bad as his performance in last year’s championship game.

There may genuinely be something to see here – on paper the Cardinals are as good as any team in the NFL outside of the QB position, so they can go a long way with an even average performance by Palmer. But what if he becomes a hindrance?

Item: The Saints have talked a good game on Defense, they just can’t play one

The New Orleans defense has been under the microscope since the dismissal of Rob Ryan last year, with the rather obvious notion that things couldn’t possibly get worse, could they? The Saints were open about how they thought that the Dennis Allen schemes would give them a better chance to compete, and in particular I kept filing notions away about how physical their training camp was. 

That included the following from safety Kenny Vaccaro – “It’s been a hard camp. We’ve been physical, we’ve been hitting. I can’t imagine anybody practicing harder than we have these last three weeks. We’ve been in pads more than ever. We’ve hit, we’ve done live periods more than ever. We’re competing, we’re diving, we’re scratching, we’re crawling every period.” 

But Vaccaro is one of many injured pieces to the puzzle, and when added to Delvin Breaux, Dannell Ellerbe, Sheldon Rankins, and P. J. Williams, it doesn’t leave much. What it does call for is some perspective.

Most of those injuries have been in the secondary, which really has been a mess. But it wasn’t Julio Jones running free through that group Monday night – he only caught one pass for 16 yards, an almost shocking count when the offense put up 38 points and 442 yards. Instead it was the lack of any kind of leverage against the run, the Saints getting gashed for 217 yards at 7.0 per rush attempt. In one stretch the Falcons scored TDs on five consecutive possessions. 

And you know what? They sure sounded like a befuddled Rob Ryan defense again in the aftermath. From safety Roman Harper - "They were gashing us in the run game, and we know that everything they do offensively comes off the run game. We cannot let Freeman just be running up on our safeties like that. We can't do it. We got to stay in our gaps; we got to be sound. When the cutback comes, we got to be there. We got to have somebody there all game long, and we did not do that."

And DE Cameron Jordan - "He (Freeman) made some nice cuts, and some guys were taking some angles to pursue over the top, myself included of course. And when he cut back, we were unable to stop that because we were all aiming toward a different angle. We got to be aware of the type of running back he is. I'm sure he had good numbers because he made some good runs. That's on us."

Sean Payton has had a great run at New Orleans, and winning a Super Bowl buys a guy plenty of patience from the fan base. But the Saints are now 14-21 since the start of the 2014 season, 14 outright losses in games in which they were favored, and while past failures have been laid on the DC, at this point the inability to execute basic run gap defense does have to reflect on the top guy as well.

Vegas: Monday with the Review-Journal NFL box score page

I don’t know if anyone in Las Vegas puts more heart into the food that comes from their kitchen as Martin Swift and his crew at The Smashed Pig. That says something, and while that spot is a regular in the rotation, they go to the front of the line when the “10-day brined Corned Beef” is on the menu, which is about once a month these days. Yesterday happened to be one of those times.

The backstory here matters. What looks like a simple pub menu may be one of the most deceptive culinary listings you will ever read. Knocking out those basic sounding items is a chef who worked for Nobu in London for many years, and also some high-end properties in New York. Along the way Swift met and fell in love with Linda Rodriguez. Rodriguez was was the first female to ever study under Nobu Matsuhisa, then at his New York location, and later she was sent over to his London establishment, where she and Swift connected.

Swift and Rodriguez married, and were working as a team at Hachi, a Japanese restaurant at Red Rock Resort, but on the side kept developing the blueprints for a passion – to open a Gastropub in Las Vegas, a city that has pretenders in the category, but no one putting in that extra effort to make the concept shine. So they found a small spot downtown that would fit, and The Smashed Pig was born.

And shortly thereafter, Linda Rodriguez died.

The dream did not, however. Swift kept on with his vision, and it does not take long for your taste buds to realize what that vision is. Everything is made from scratch, not just the mains, but all of the sauces and the condiments, and there is a pride in what they do that is about as high as any dining establishment in this city. Hence why I noted the menu as being “deceptive” – there are some casual items taken to a very high level, and a daily specials board that allows for Swift, chef Hansel Tan, and the rest of the crew to get creative. In particular there is the nightly “Butcher’s Block for Two” special, which on most days is not even determined until early in the afternoon.

But this Monday, while having to look twice at those Philadelphia defensive numbers, was for the corned beef. They get their own special cut of brisket, brine it for 10 days until it reaches the proper stage, and then serve it with a cole slaw made specifically to match, and a couple of pickles (under the bun, not on the side). Don’t think of this as something sliced and piled on bread that you would find at most deli’s; this is fresh from the roast, with a nice slab cut to order, a wonderful mixture of spice and texture, the process enabling the fat to render through the meat. It works beautifully, and because fries are a big part of their program (naturally essential to their Fish-N-Chips), you can guess the quality control that comes with those.

And on the way out, always be sure to give a wink to Linda R., her photo stationed above the bar...

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