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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Touchdown! Touchdown! Touchdown! The Colts and -- touchdown! -- USC both win astounding shootouts.
Nov 21, 2005 | Touchdown!
Wha? Oh, sorry. I thought I was still watching one of this weekend's big games. The best teams in college and pro football both won amazingly entertaining shootouts. For some reason they reminded me of the XFL's gambit of trying to sell itself as a return to smashmouth football.
Remember the XFL?
I like a good defensive struggle as much as the next football purist -- a category to which I don't belong -- as long as it's really good defenses carrying the day rather than incompetent offenses.
But unless you're a Chicago Bears or Carolina Panthers fan, you'd have to be pretty damn pure if you wanted to hang around the water cooler Monday and talk about the Bears' 13-3 win over the Panthers Sunday and not the Indianapolis Colts out-touchdowning the Cincinnati Bengals 45-37.
And I didn't see unranked Georgia Tech's 14-10 upset on the road over No. 3 Miami Saturday, but is it possible it was more exciting than No. 16 Fresno State's near upset at top-ranked USC? The final in that one: 50-42. The second-half score alone was 37-21 Trojans.
You can't have scores like 50-42 or 45-37 without some defensive breakdowns, of course. But the nice thing about defensive breakdowns is they're more entertaining than offensive breakdowns. A long touchdown play caused by blown coverage is more fun than a pass sailing over the head of an open receiver or a running back running into his own blocker and losing three yards.
The Bengals and Colts both came into Sunday games with good defenses, not elite, but definitely upper-middle class. They'd both been vulnerable to the run and solid against the pass, which had served them well because their powerful offenses had put opponents in the position of having to throw.
But neither was a match for the other's offense Sunday. Peyton Manning and Carson Palmer were blowtorches. They both threw for well over 300 yards and averaged about nine yards per attempt. The Colts scored on their first five possessions. When the Bengals only managed two touchdowns and two field goals on theirs -- they even had to punt once! -- they looked doomed.
Twenty points in 28 and a half minutes, and you look doomed, down by 15. Now that's entertainment.
