About four weeks ago, the talking heads were criticizing the New England Patriots saying the dynasty was over, the quarterback was in rapid decline, the head coach was a senile old man, yada, yada, yada. The Patriots are now 5-2, the same record as the other so-called top AFC teams, like the Chargers and Colts. However, the critics are squawking again because the Patriots only beat the New Jersey Jets by two points. I’m sorry but when is a victory over a division rival something to complain about? So the Patriots run defense had more leaks than Edward Snowden, but there were plenty of other things that they did well enough to win the game. They really need to focus on some other teams that are having issues like…

The Seattle Seahawks, last season’s Super Bowl Champion. Their “legion of boom” defense looks like it is headed for doom. The defensive players don’t seem to have that swagger that was so prominent last year. They lost to their division rival, the lowly St. Louis Rams who are currently being quarterbacked by Austin Davis who I referenced in last week’s NFL post. The kid played well and led his team to victory over a Seattle team that seems to have lost its identity. Where are those critics now?

The 49ers also seem to be floundering on both sides of the ball. I think Colin Kaepernick may have gone Hollywood a bit prematurely what with all the endorsements and women and such. It appears that he needs to spend more time studying his playbook and figuring out how to be a better quarterback, because right now his play is less than stellar. I don’t know what to say about the defense but they couldn’t do a darn thing against the Denver Broncos. True the Broncos are on a roll right now, but I expected a much tougher challenge than what the 49ers defense presented.

And speaking of the Broncos; congrats to Peyton Manning for breaking Brett Favre’s record for most passing touchdowns in a career. According to some sports analysts, it looks like the only quarterback with a shot to break Manning’s record would be Andrew Luck, but he is still very early in his career so it would be impossible to say at this point if he might ever be in the ball park. Anyway, the Broncos blew out the 49ers to the tune of 42 to 17. Shouldn’t the all-knowing critics be screaming that the Broncos are running up the score? I’m pretty sure that’s what they were shouting in 2007 when the Patriots went on their historic run. Oh that’s right; they hate Tom Brady but love Peyton Manning so he can do no wrong. I keep forgetting that… hypocrites!

Well it had to happen, like Icarus; I flew too close to the sun and got burned. That’s right I picked the Cleveland Browns to beat the winless Jacksonville Jaguars and Cleveland decided to go back to being Cleveland and managed to lose the game 6 to 24. I am not giving up on Brian Hoyer, but it’s games like the one this past Sunday that the Browns have a tendency to mess up. They make the easy things hard and the hard things easy which means that usually you don’t know what you are going to get from the Browns from one week to the next. But, hey it’s the NFL and on any given Sunday just about anything can happen. I’m sure that’s what the Bengals are thinking after they got shut out by the Colts, and they were supposed to be one of the most complete teams in the NFL. Oh well, to borrow a phrase from Coach Bill Belichick, we’re on to week eight…