David Sims is carrying us to Week 9 of the NFL

Just an inexcusable mistake by the Pittsburgh special teams to let the Ravens back in this game, allowing Jacoby Jones to take a kickoff back 108 yards for a touchdown right after Antonio Brown's touchdown. (Okay, Baltimore got away with a hold, but good luck finding a kick return without one of those).

Ravens back within 12 with over 13 minutes remaining.

 

Nope. Just embarrassed a few guys.

Still trolling the thread rather than talking football, LTL?

 

That is not true. They kept the team history at first. Turning over the history to the expansion team came later. It is bullshit, revisionist history by the NFL.

 

This brings up an interesting philosophical question - Does the history of the team belong to the owner or to the city?

Personally, I couldn't care less, and I identify the current Browns franchise with all the history of the previous franchise. But I also understand that the Ravens don't get to co-opt the history of the Colts.

Either way, I don't think it's anything to get fired up about.

 

Fair enough. It has been a pet peeve of mine since the league announced the plan to bring the expansion team to Cleveland.

 

Martavis Bryant now has five touchdown receptions in the three games he has been active this season. Three of them came in the red zone, where the team struggled during the six games he did not play.

It is getting harder and harder to give the coaching staff the benefit of the doubt for the decision not to use this guy for six games. That said, he is a big reason the Pittsburgh offense has been so dominant the last three games.

Kinda helps to have Roethlisberger tearing it up, with 11 touchdown passes in two games, and Antonio Brown making a claim to be the best receiver in the game. He may not be there, but he has to be in the discussion.

 

Ben Roethlisberger now has six touchdown passes in consecutive games, but he did only have 340 yards tonight, so he's slowing down.

 

With eight games left, yeah, there's still time. But today was awful. As for not pounding the ball, typical. Remember what they did in the Super Bowl and the fades to Crabtree. The 49ers still have a decent defense. But their offense is way out of sync. Kap is at his best when he's running the read option.

Well, at least the Giants won the World Series.

 

Agreed on both ends. The Steelers receivers are pretty explosive right now. The Ravens aren't exactly the Seahawks but they have played fairly respectable in the secondary.

 

As one of the resident Saints fanboys in the audience, the muck that the NFC has become has actually given me renewed hope for a championship run.

Don't laugh. If they continue to play defense like they have the past two games and this running game continues to prosper, the Saints are talented enough to make a serious run in the second half of the season.

The way their schedule is set up, if they win these next three games at home, they'll go to Pittsburgh Nov. 30 at 7-4 with all sorts of momentum, and they finish with Carolina (home), Chicago (away), Atlanta (home) and Tampa Bay (road).

After the way the season started, I'd do cartwheels if N.O. finished 11-5 or even 10-6, which now seems very doable. This could be a lot like 2011, where there wasn't a real favorite in the NFC, and Green Bay put it together in the second half of the season and rolled to the Super Bowl

 

Baltimore is second in the league in points allowed and in the middle of the pack in yards per game allowed. The Colts are in the middle of the pack in both even after what the Steelers did to them. It's not like Pittsburgh did this against two of the league's worst defenses.

Of course, they did stink up the field against some weak defenses earlier in the season, but that looks like a different team now. The defense has been forcing turnovers, which got the offense going against Houston and Baltimore. And they are converting in the red zone, something they struggled with tremendously through the first six games. The last three weeks have been what the Steelers' hoped they could be, a high-powered offense and a shaky defense that makes enough plays to help here and there.

 

Offensive genius Greg Roman seems to outsmart himself in big moments. We saw it in The Super Bowl and last year in NFC Championship