NFL Week Six Status Meeting: Tremble Before Me!

TREMBLE BEFORE BREESUS CHRIST!

Smokey: Week six was a week of statements, be they declarations of domination, or yips of putridity. After completing three-eighths of the season (math!) we’re able to accurately the gauge where the season’s at, and we have a better idea of where the season’s going. For some, this is an encouraging time of the year; the spring of autumn.

The Saints showed the league they’re a complete package, the Patriots showed they still had the ’07 dickstreak in them. Tampa Bay, St. Louis and Kansas City proved beyond a shadow of a doubt that they do, in fact, suck. All in all though, the level of play was a bit off this weekend. There were moments of excitement peppered here and there, but overall a lot of sloppy play. The most dominant performance of them all might end being the Colts, whose stellar use of the bye week to go grocery shopping and hit up the Home Depot.

Now onward, to Mickey’s thoughts.

Smokey cont’d: One last thing and it’s about the Panthers. I get the feeling ol’ Smitty’s “I’m no longer a valuable asset to the team” thing will end up being a rather blunt object to the heads of the offensive coaching staff and he’ll hit his stride here shortly.

P.S. If anyone knows a good bar to watch the Panthers game in Chicago this weekend, lemme know.

Mickey: I spent much of my week/weekend traveling or trying to find a new apartment so my thoughts are all a’flutter right now. Throw in the fact JPrice is in Korea and Gideon is in Costa Rica, and you can see the Cube has a thin bench this week. My thoughts from the past NFL weekend:

- The blatant illegal/”cheap” shot Dante Wesley pulled was dumbfounding, even for a Panthers fan. I think he thought that since we won against the Skins the week before with an odd special teams punt play, we’d try it again, and maybe the refs wouldn’t notice. The illegality and brutish nature of it did inspire Smokey to send me a text that just read, “I like the dirty play I’m seeing.”

- My buddy Craig, a Denver fan, sent me to the following site yestiddy: Cold Hard Football Facts. Now, this is a site worth digesting, as it follows the Gideon model of using “statistics” and “logic” to determine the best teams or most efficient offenses or best defenses. Craig would like this site because its “Defensive Hog Stat” — which, since its inception 2 years ago, has accurately predicted the past two Super Bowl champs — has the Broncos leading the league. And you can’t argue with that kind of logic.

- Cold Hard Football Facts also brings a football mentality to the Moneyball stats, which I find adorably entertaining. It also seems like a site that should be exclusively sponsored by Coors Light. Some media agency out there clearly doesn’t have the right blog-reading sports fans moonlighting as media buyers and planners.

- The downside to this site is realizing just how shitty Carolina is. Tied for 21st (with the Lions) in Defensive Hog Index, 21st in Offensive Hog Index, 0-3 in the Quality Standings (your record versus teams with records over .500. Beat a below-.500 team, doesn’t count.), 31st in Bendability (yikes), and 21st in Scoreability. Throw in the fact that we’re 0-3 in games we were not favored in and 2-0 in games we were favored in, it’s pretty safe to say math and Vegas have us pegged as losers.

So whether you take a Silver Foxian view of stats (when asked to evaluate Moose’s performance so far this year, he said something along the lines of, “He’s played well enough to get us to 2-3″) or the CHFF approach to stats, we’re basically coming to the same conclusion: the Panthers are a sub-standard team.

And when we beat the Bills this weekend and improve to .500, you bet your ass I’ll be throwing logic out the window and believing we can make a late season push against quality opponents and end up in the 10-6 range.

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