US-based British sports-writer Simon Veness anticipates two heavyweight clashes in the NFL's Week Four
US-based Simon Veness anticipates two heavyweight clashes in Week Four
Look back just a few short weeks to the official prediction season (about 10 days before the first game actually kicked off), and the names of New England, Dallas and Baltimore would have been firmly in the mix.
One team that would have been in the "Are you having a laugh?" category were the Denver Broncos, a team hit by internal strife (Jay Cutler, Brandon Marshall), pre-season injuries (Kyle Orton, Jabar Gaffney, Knowshon Moreno) and a head coach who appeared beset by problems at every turn (Josh McDaniels).
The Broncos' pre-season was wildly inconsistent, marked by an intense (losing) showdown with Chicago that saw Cutler return to lord it over his former team.
So, when two of this Sunday's biggest match-ups feature Baltimore at New England and Dallas at Denver (live on
SS2 from 5.30pm), you could be forgiven for thinking the final name in that quartet would be just making up the numbers.
Equally, the meeting of the Ravens and Patriots would probably (four weeks ago) have seemed like a pre-coronation parade for Bill Belichick's men, with New England most likely to have been seen as carrying all before them.
Fast forward through the first three weeks of this topsy-turvy, Keystone Cops edition of the NFL (and, if anyone thought this was a normal season, they didn't see Cleveland's quarterback display last Sunday, as well as what passed for an offence at Tampa Bay and the complete disappearance of the player formerly known as Terrell Owens), and you have a situation of pure role reversal.
The two unbeaten, dominant, 3-0 teams going into these two big head-to-head showdowns are actually Baltimore and Denver.
The two teams struggling to play catch-up and desperate not to fall back to .500 this early in the campaign are New England and Dallas.
It's a gridiron world turned on its axis. And all the better for it, too.
Fascinating
Come the early hours of Monday morning UK time (just in case either game goes to overtime - and the fact Game One is the only one to have gone beyond the normal 60-minute duration, while the next 47 have not come even close, is also hard to comprehend), we will know which two of these four are the Real Deal in 2009, and which ones have serious deficiencies to address.
At the moment, looking at the aftermath of a truly fascinating third round of games, you would have to say the Ravens and Broncos are in the box seats, and the Patriots and Cowboys are lost in a nightmarish game of musical chairs (i.e: struggling to find a seat at all).
Take a close look at last Sunday's victories for the two teams who edged to a 2-1 record and you see ball-clubs who had a touch of desperation about their play normally reserved for late-season playoff hopefuls.
At half-time, the Patriots led Atlanta by a shaky 13-10; the Cowboys actually trailed 7-0 to a Carolina team who would currently struggle to beat last year's Detroit Lions. Pretty it was not, and the boos that rained down during the interval at Dallas were indicative of a team facing a watershed.
Of course, that second 30 minutes in each case served as a welcome reinforcement of both New England and Dallas, and each team breathed a huge sigh of relief at dodging an early season bullet (as opposed to Cleveland, Kansas City, Tampa Bay and St Louis, who have not so much been hit by every bullet going but stood in front of an 88mm howitzer and forgotten to duck).
For the Ravens and Broncos, 2009 has been a journey of mystery and imagination (full marks to anyone who spots the second reference to Edgar Allan Poe so far this season!), with Baltimore discovering a massive passing game to go along with their pounding defence and running game while Denver have found new ways to win each week, keeping fans on the edge of their seats (and coach McDaniels wondering if he has John Elway at quarterback or John Major).
The truly delicious aspect of these two games, however, is the fact both of these perceptions could easily be turned on their heads once the dust has settled on Sunday night. Baltimore will be tested in every facet of their game by the Patriots. Joe Flacco will discover if he is genuinely to follow in the footsteps of the NFL's two most famous Joes (Montana and Namath), or if he has a lot more to learn if he is to go up against a Belichick outfit again this term.
Concern
Conversely, the Patriots will simply not allow themselves to consider they might be 2-2 on Monday morning, even though Tom Brady has played more like Tom Thumb at times this term. The lack of Wes Welker as his safety blanket has been a major concern in New England, but all the pieces should be back in place on Sunday, hence the twin excuses of injuries and a quarterback still re-finding his feet will have no further basis in reality.
Simply put - the last team standing of these two will have genuine Super Bowl credentials; the other will be forced into a spot of navel-gazing.
And then there is the little matter of the Broncos and Cowboys, a real Wild West set-to with overtones of anxiety in the Dallas camp. Denver can actually afford a slip-up in the increasingly wild AFC West, where San Diego can't seem to get their feet underneath them, Kansas City are already thinking about 2010 and who KNOWS what the Raiders are thinking.
For Wade Phillips' men, who have typically viewed December games with all the enthusiasm of the French nobility upon being introduced to Madame La Guillotine, another early-season stumble could easily be fatal in the ultra-competitive NFC East.
Therefore the second of these two showdowns also has huge potential for being a knock-down, drag-out kind of battle where the football may not be pretty but the end result is all-important.
So get ready for a double-helping of the kind of football we don't often see just a quarter of the way into the season. To borrow a phrase from Winston Churchill, it will be long, it will be hard, and there will be no withdrawals. And that's just the pre-show featuring Kevin Cadle and Nick Halling.
Stay tuned, now...
