October 13, 2015

NFC Hierarchy/Obituary after Week 5

By Jimmy Kempski
PhillyVoice Staff

Seth Wenig/AP

It'd be nice if intentional grounding rules applied to Eli Manning.

Week 5 of the NFL season is in the books, and the really bad teams are starting to separate themselves from the rest of the pack. There was carnage this week, as we killed off three more teams. Here's this week's hierarchy/obituary:

OBITUARIES

DEAD - Saints

How does Rob Ryan keep getting work? It's one of the more baffling things in the NFL. Almost every year, Rob Ryan defenses are awful, and every year he somehow remains a defensive coordinator in this league. Here is his track record over more than a decade as a defensive coordinator in the NFL:

Rob Ryan's career	NFL rank (yards)	NFL rank (points)
Raiders 2004	30	31
Raiders 2005	27	25
Raiders 2006	3	18
Raiders 2007	22	26
Browns 2008	26	16
Browns 2009	31	21
Browns 2010	22	13
Cowboys 2011	16	14
Cowboys 2012	24	19
Saints 2013	4	4
Saints 2014	31	28
Saints 2015	32	29

Who's going to be the idiotic team that hires him in 2016?

DEAD - Lions

I had the Lions dead wrong this year. Two months ago, gambling sites had the Lions at 40-1 to win the Super Bowl. I named them as one of three good buys at the time, all of which look awful now. Oops. The Lions have been wretched. After throwing three interceptions last week, Detroit benched Matthew Stafford for... wait for it... Dan Orlovsky, who is apparently still in the NFL. You may remember Orlovsky from the time he ran out the back of the end zone:

The Lions are 0-5, and done.

DEAD - 49ers

At -65, the 49ers have the worst point differential in the NFL. On Monday night, Eli Manning begged them to steal a win on the road, but the Niners were like, "Nah, we're good."

This awful Niners season was extremely predictable. Anthony Davis, Justin Smith, Patrick Willis, and Chris Borland all retired. The Niners also lost Mike Iupati, Michael Crabtree, Chris Culliver, Frank Gore, Perrish Cox, and Dan Skuta in free agency. They also released train-wreck Aldon Smith.

Oh, and their coach left. That seems relevant too.

GRAVEYARD

Graveyard note: We killed off the Bears after Week 3, when they were 0-3 and had been outscored 105-46 on the season. They've eked out two straight wins (against two bad teams) to get to 2-3, and they have the 0-5 Lions this week. They're still terrible and only making it more difficult on themselves to draft a quarterback, but maaaaaybe we killed them off a little prematurely.

HIERARCHY

12) Buccaneers (2-3)

The Bucs have a pair of wins against the Jaguars and Saints (Woo!), and therefore, they have outlasted four teams in our hierarchy/obituary series. So... Good for them.

Last week : 14

11) Rams (2-3)

One week the Nick Foles fans scream, "Shouldn't have traded Nick Foles!!!"

The next week, the Anti-Foles crowd goes, "FoLOLes!"

This week it was the latter. 11 of 30 (36.7%) for 141 yards (4.7 YPA), 1 TD, 4 INT (one returned for a TD), 23.7 QB rating. Ew.

Last week: 8

10) Cowboys (2-3)

Last week: 9

9) Redskins (2-3)

A few weeks ago, we covered how Kirk Cousins will just throw the ball up for grabs when pressured.

For his career, Cousins throws an interception, on average, every 22.7 pass attempts. That is awful. It is by far and away the worst INT % in the NFL, among all opening day starters. Meanwhile, Cousins is very difficult is sack. He has the third-best career sack percentage of any opening day starter in the NFL.

We saw that Week 5 against Atlanta. Cousins was pressured, and he threw to a receiver he hoped would come open. The receiver slipped (he wouldn't have been open anyway), and Falcons CB Robert Alford ended the game.

Last week: 10

8) Eagles (2-3)

OMG, the Eagles are good again!!!

OK, but seriously though. The Saints defense has all the makings of being historically bad this season. The Eagles' Week 6 showdown against the Giants will show us if the offense is legitimately getting back on track, or if it was just a one-week aberration.

Last week: 11

7) Vikings (2-2)

The Vikings had a bye Week 5, and I'm already going to be over 1400 words on this thing, so let's make it a new rule that if a team had a bye the previous week, I get a bye from writing about them? Good? Good. Glad we agree.

Last week: 7

6) Giants (3-2)

On 2nd and 10 with 45 seconds to go, Eli Manning committed about as egregious an intentional grounding penalty as you'll see:

Here's the coaches film look of the Eli Manning grounding no-call, which really couldn't be more egregious. pic.twitter.com/i9kE2xbiDG
— Jimmy Kempski (@JimmyKempski) October 13, 2015

Clearly, there isn't a receiver within the same zip code, and he's not even close to being outside the tackle box:

For some reason, Eli Manning gets away with intentional grounding more than any other quarterback in the history of the NFL. Probably.

The most common moronic reply from my Giants fan followers that I received in real time after this egregious no-call occurred was that the defender "batted the ball down." The ball certainly hit the defender. I'll give them that. But it's not like it was a pass Manning was actually trying to complete that a defender swatted out of the air. There's certainly nothing in the rule book that says that if the ball hits a defender it's not grounding. If it were, quarterbacks would just chuck the ball at pass rushers' feet as they were getting sacked. From the rule book:

Intentional grounding of a forward pass is a foul: loss of down and 10 yards from previous spot if passer is in the field of play or loss of down at the spot of the foul if it occurs more than 10 yards behind the line or safety if passer is in his own end zone when ball is released.

Intentional grounding will be called when a passer, facing an imminent loss of yardage due to pressure from the defense, throws a forward pass without a realistic chance of completion.

Intentional grounding will not be called when a passer, while out of the pocket and facing an imminent loss of yardage, throws a pass that lands at or beyond the line of scrimmage, even if no offensive player(s) have a realistic chance to catch the ball (including if the ball lands out of bounds over the sideline or end line).

On the next play, the Giants get a far more manageable 3rd and 10 instead of 3rd and 20, pick up the first down, and eventually win.

That was such an Eli game. He throws a terrible pass that should have been intercepted, he gets away with an insanely obvious intentional grounding call, and then one of his receivers makes a ridiculously difficult catch in the end zone to win it.

In fairness, the Giants were victims of a terrible officiating that cost them a win Week 1 against the Cowboys. So I guess it evened out for them to some degree. The Giants should be 3-2 and the Cowboys should be 1-4.

Last week: 7

5) Seahawks (2-3)

The Seahawks have major offensive line issues. They have allowed 22 sacks already this season (on pace for 70), and even before Marshawn Lynch went on the shelf, he was averaging just 3.4 yards per carry.

Last week: 4

4) Panthers (4-0)

See bye rule above with the Vikings.

Last week: 5

3) Falcons (5-0)

The Falcons completed their sweep of the very bad NFC East Week 5, when they were the beneficiaries of Kirk Cousins being Kirk Cousins. And it actually gets easier. Here are the Falcons' next four opponents: