Monday Night Recap

 

He may have won last night, but can you truly be a winner when you have Justin Bieber's haircut?

It certainly seemed like a good match-up. Well, at least at the time it seemed like a good match-up. Bitter division rivals? Yes. Two teams loaded with Pro Bowl caliber players? Definitely. A healthy distaste for one another? Without a doubt.  Anytime two 9-2, Super Bowl aspiring teams meet, fans should expect an epic game. What we got instead was something fairly similar to what would happen if I played my 20 month old daughter in a game of Madden.

The real question that must be asked here is, how in the world am I supposed to break this game down? Let's try this way. THE JETS WERE HORRIBLE! MARK SANCHEZ SUCKS! THE PATRIOTS WERE AMAZING! TOM BRADY IS AWESOME! That about sums it up I think. Looking back, I suppose it wasn't too far fetched to predict a big Patriots win. Lost in the shuffle of the Jets' shining 9-2 record was the fact that, in recent weeks, they had barely scraped by Houston and Denver while needing overtime to get past Cleveland and Detroit. Real impressive. In fact, the Jets have beaten only one team this year with a record above .500. That team, the New England Patriots. Of course, that was early in the year. This is now. And after getting murdered last night, one has to question whether the Jets are a contender or a fraud.

One other side note. I'm going to go ahead and take a large bite of crow in the case of Mark Sanchez. I spent all last year ripping this guy and calling him a huge pile of fecal matter. Mostly, he proved me right. How in the world could I allow ESPN to brainwash me?! How could I bail on such a surefire opinion? How could I be influenced by "clutch" wins against Detroit and Cleveland? I feel dumb. Hey remember when I wrote a blog post about my football thoughts? Yeah, go ahead and print that thing out and promptly deposit it into the trashcan where it belongs. In fact, I feel so embarrassed that maybe you should do that twice.

Despite the MNF debacle (did anybody watch the 4th quarter? Anybody? Didn't think so.) we did learn a lot about the AFC picture this week. Two huge match-ups (Jets vs. Pats, Ravens vs. Steelers) finally gave us some answers as to who is good, who wins their division, and who gets home field advantage. Obviously, the Patriots now have a firm grip on the AFC East. They also have control of home field advantage thanks to what is essentially a 2 game lead over the Steelers thanks to their head to head victory. The Steelers have a pretty easy schedule left (Big Ben likes it easy) but does have a big match-up left with the Jets.The Patriots have a tough game at Chicago (I REFUSE TO BELIEVE THEY ARE GOOD, I'M HOLDING OUT) and a home game the next week against Green Bay. It's shaping up to be a fantastic race in the AFC. I'm calling Patriots as the overall top seed with the Steelers getting the other bye. Kansas City and Jacksonville are your other two division winners with the Jets and Ravens securing the wild cards. And finally, thank God that Peyton Manning and the Colts are finally dead. For me, it's about ten years too late.

I'm curious to hear your thoughts. Who is going to win the AFC? There is a poll on the sidebar. VOTE!