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Last night was great. It was an evening all about football, and even though it was just preseason action, I couldn't get enough. For much of the night, I was flipping between games or watching NFL Network's "RedZone" style coverage. Here's some quick observations about the evening.
10/13, 10/14 and 6/7 — that was the stat line for each of the three quarterbacks that played for the Browns last night. Each quarterback completed a very high percentage of their passes, and none of the three looked overwhelmed by the Rams’ defensive attack.
For Brandon Weeden, this game was a huge. He had to show that he belonged as the starting quarterback of the Browns, and you can’t really argue with what he did on just 14 pass attempts, which included 112 yards and a touchdown. I’ll admit it, the Browns looked like a competitive team out there, something I certainly didn’t expect.
On the other hand, there were some disappointing performances turned in last night. The Buccaneers looked simply outclassed in every stage of the game by the Baltimore Ravens. While the Ravens functioned like a well-oiled machine, the Bucs looked like a mistake prone squad that has much work to do.
With such limited playing time, it’s impossible to assess where Josh Freeman is, but Mike Glennon doesn’t look like the solution either. After going long early, Glennon cooled off, falling back to earth to finish with a sub-50% completion rate.
Possibly the biggest disappointment of the night was turned in by the Atlanta Falcons, although I still expect them to be a very good team during the season when their actual starters are playing. Still, the Cincinnati Bengals definitely looked like a deeper team than the Falcons, and Atlanta was never able to get anything productive going.
Obviously, these were just week one preseason games, and in the grand scheme of things they probably won’t mean much. Still, it was clear that some teams were in disciplined shape while others needed a lot of work cleaning up simple mistakes. That’s what will transfer most, and that’s what I’ll be keeping an eye on tonight during the next round of games.
