Steelers Fade, Aaron Rodgers Rises (on One Leg), and More from Week 1

Leading 20-3 late in the third quarter, Chicago went three-and-out. Leading 20-10 in the fourth quarter, Chicago went three-and-out. Defense starts comebacks, offense stops them: the Green Bay defense, playing its first contest under new boss Mike Pettine, made plays when it mattered.

The Chicago defense, by contrast, folded in money time. Bears leading 23-17 with 2:29 remaining, Green Bay faced 3rd-and-10. A stop and the home crowd goes into panic mode. Instead, Randall Cobb turned a short pass into a 75-yard winning touchdown. When Cobb made his catch, there were six Bears between him and paydirt. By the time he crossed the goal line, only one, Khalil Mack, was diving at his heels; other Chicago defenders quit on the play when Cobb still had 20 yards to go.

More on the Bears-Packers tilt below.

As for the Steelers, it wasn’t just needing a blocked field goal at the end of overtime to escape with a tie against the Browns, who had lost 17 straight. When Pittsburgh got the block, the Steelers celebrated wildly: We did it, we did it, we tied a team that has lost 17 straight!

When your players are wildly celebrating a tie against football’s worst club, something is rotten by the banks of the Monongahela.

It wasn’t just six turnovers by the only franchise that has six Super Bowl trophies. It wasn’t just the inept Pittsburgh offense reduced to 3rd-and-30 in overtime. It wasn’t just the too-many-men-on-the-field penalty that stopped the clock for Cleveland with 24 seconds remaining in regulation, almost blowing the game. All these things, embarrassing as they are for a perennial contender, are sugarcoating the situation.

Consider that for the second consecutive season, Pittsburgh opened with a huge distraction involving Le’Veon Bell. In 2017, Bell did not report until a few days before the season began, and played poorly early, not having a 100-yard day till October. This season he hasn’t reported and is sending out tweets taunting the club.

Good sports management eliminates distractions. At New England, Rob Gronkowski isn’t any happier with his contract than Bell is at Pittsburgh. But that complaint was resolved in August, and Gronkowski played with focus in the opener. Pittsburgh head coach Mike Tomlin and general manager Kevin Colbert let the Bell situation fester and allowed themselves to be maneuvered into an impasse where they can’t trade Bell (long story), which gives Bell all the leverage. To top it off, Colbert announced various deadlines and red lines for negotiations, and then has ignored them. What botched management!

Last season the Steelers won a bye and a home-field playoff contest, then fell behind Jacksonville by 21 points as Pittsburgh played poorly and seemed bored. A Steelers’ touchdown as time expired made the final score appear close. This game was not close—the Steelers were blown off their own field.

The season before, Pittsburgh was punched out by New England in the AFC title game, as Tomlin was outcoached by Bill Belichick. Tomlin had prepared the Steelers for the kind of ball-control offense Belichick’s team employed the previous week versus Houston. When the Flying Elvii came out in a five-wide hurry-up mode, the Steelers looked shocked and never recovered. That Belichick changes game plans more week-to-week than any other NFL coach is not exactly a state secret. Yet the Steelers weren’t prepared.

The Steelers are on a 3-6 stretch in the postseason. All told, something’s not right. Many touts have picked Pittsburgh for the Super Bowl—right now it’s not clear if the Steelers can get out of the first month with a winning record.

In Tuesday Morning Quarterback news, last week yours truly foresaw a Super Bowl pairing of New Orleans versus Houston. Then comes opening day and both lose. Nevertheless, I am doubling down and saying I still think the Texans and Saints will meet in the Super Bowl. Of course, this column’s motto is All Predictions Wrong or Your Money Back.

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Stats of the Week #1. Since the start of the 2017 season, the Buccaneers are 3-10 with Jameis Winston at quarterback and 3-1 with Ryan Fitzpatrick.

Stats of the Week #2. Since the start of the 2017 season, Carolina is 0-3 versus New Orleans and 12-3 versus all other teams.

Stats of the Week #3. Houston is 0-7 versus the Patriots in New England.

Stats of the Week #4. Joe Flacco is 16-2 in Baltimore in September.

Stats of the Week #5. In 2014, New Orleans opened 0-2; in 2015 and 2016, opened 0-3; in 2017, opened 0-2; and in 2018, has opened 0-1.

Stats of the Week #6. The Falcons ended their 2017 season with a failed last-minute goal-line play in Philadelphia and began their 2018 season with a failed last-minute goal-line play in Philadelphia.

Stats of the Week #7. Since the start of the 2017 season, Atlanta is 0-2 versus the Eagles and 11-6 versus all other teams.

Stats of the Week #8. The Chiefs have beaten the Chargers nine consecutive times.

Stats of the Week #9. Cleveland, which had lost 13 consecutive opening games, did not lose its opening game!

Stats of the Week #10. The Philadelphia defense has gone 20 consecutive outings without allowing a score in the final two minutes.

Sweet Defensive Series of the Week. Eagles leading 18-12, Atlanta reached 1st-and-goal on the Nesharim 10 with 24 seconds remaining. The result was incompletion, incompletion, incompletion, penalty against Philadelphia, incompletion, and game over.

On all five snaps, Eagles defensive coordinator Jim Schwartz resisted the urge to blitz. Five consecutive times Schwartz dropped seven into coverage and left Matt Ryan no place to throw. On the game’s last snap, Atlanta was at the Philadelphia 5 with a second showing. Star receiver Julio Jones lined up in a double on the left; another Atlanta receiver cut in front of him to set a (legal) pick; Eagles cornerback Ron Darby went through the pick and forced Jones to the sideline, where he came down out of bounds after the catch.

In the situations such as the Eagles faced, many defensive coordinators call some crazy blitz to “make a play,” then end up making a play for the offense. Schwartz knew the clang of incompletions was what his team needed. Media attention went to the “Philly Philly” variant of Philadelphia’s “Philly Special” trick play in last year’s Super Bowl. The incompletions at the goal line at the end were what carried the day. On the game, Ryan was 1-of-9 passing in the red zone, but 20-of-34 everywhere else on the field.

Stretching back to the end of last season, the Eagles have posted consecutive victories against the 2017 Super Bowl entrants, New England and Atlanta, and in both games, a pass completion to quarterback Nick Foles was a key play.

Sour Drops of the Week. Chargers receivers had not one, not two, not three, but four “clean” drops against Kansas City—passes that hit the receiver square in the hands and were dropped like a live ferret. After the first three drops (at least one of which would have been a touchdown), just to prove it was no fluke, LA/B wide receiver Travis Benjamin dropped a perfectly thrown pass in the Chiefs’ end zone at the two-minute warning, effectively concluding the contest. Though the Bolts gained 418 yards passing, their receivers had a terrible day.

Sweet ‘n’ Sour Plays. New England leading Houston 7-3 in the second quarter, the Flying Elvii had 1st-and-10 on the Moo Cows’ 12. Two wide receivers lined up as in-line tight ends on the offensive right, an unusual set. On the playside, Houston cornerback Kevin Johnson turned around and gestured toward the free safety as if to say, “What should I do?” Call time out, that’s what you should do! Never turn your back on Tom Brady!

Seeing Johnson look away, Brady immediately signaled for the snap and tossed a flare to James White, who walked in for the touchdown as Houston defensive backs continued to argue amongst themselves. Sweet for the hosts, sour for the visitors.

Now New England leads 14-6 and gets possession on its 22 with 1:28 remaining before intermission. Nobody is better at two-minute drills than Brady. When New England gets possession with three or four minutes remaining in the first half, Brady would if he could offer to have officials eliminate time from the clock.

At 1:22, first New England surprised the Texans with consecutive running plays. Bill Belichick likes to begin two-minute drives with short plays to lull the defense into a false sense of security—see the winning drive against the Rams in Belichick’s first Super Bowl as a head coach.

Next came a 28-yard completion to Rob Gronkowski that didn’t look like a catch. Because the clock was inside two minutes, Houston coach Bill O’Brien could not challenge. But why didn’t O’Brien call timeout—he had all three—so there was time for the booth to signal a review? After the game, the league said that’s exactly what the booth was trying to do. At this juncture the Houston defense switched to playing soft, which is just what Brady wanted to see. Brady’s touchdown pass to Phillip Dorsett with 19 seconds remaining in the half put New England in command. Sweet for the hosts, sour for the visitors. On the upside, the unused Houston time outs can be donated to charity.

Inequality Could Be Reduced If Expensive Private Schools Were Forbidden to Have Classy Names. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh joins Trump justice Neil Gorsuch in being an alum of Georgetown Prep. This is a fine educational institution—it’s just the “Georgetown” part is fake. Georgetown Prep is 15 miles from Georgetown, on Maryland Route 355. TMQ maintains that if everything about this school were exactly the same—same quality of education—but the institution was called Route 355 Prep, the rich would have nothing to do with the place.

Scott Pruitt Is Gone Yet Looks Worse Every Day. Disgraced EPA head Scott Pruitt is gone; if only he were forgotten. Turns out he wasted $3.5 million of taxpayers’ money salving his ego with a 19-person security detail, first-class travel, and a preposterous $43,000 Cone of Silence for his office.

As TMQ noted a year ago this month, the flying wedges of bodyguards were not to protect Pruitt from ecoterrorists armed with post-consumer paperboard. Instead they were to make Pruitt “seem like royalty whose feet the little people must kiss,” while allowing him to cut to the heads of lines and his motorcade to speed through red lights. The Cone of Silence was so Pruitt could pretend he had some super-secret national security responsibility. The apparatus was actually used only once, for a routine phone call.

Pruitt was hardly the only government official who wanted a Praetorian guard for ego reasons. Betsy DeVos, Bill de Blasio, and Andrew Cuomo are among those who deploy large publicly funded security details to make themselves seem more important, and ride in motorcades so they appear to be visiting heads of state.

The Washington Post reports, as if this were reassuring, that Barack Obama’s EPA heads Gina McCarthy and Lisa Jackson only had “security teams composed of about a half-dozen agents.” Why does any EPA head need six bodyguards? To inflate the ego—and to exist in a bubble. Public officials surrounded by security never encounter anyone who doesn’t already agree with them.

In addition to wasting public funds, Pruitt demeaned EPA reform, thus achieving a negative double whammy.

Environmental regulation has been a major success for public policy, improving public health and reducing pollution; science-based thinking has achieved high standing with voters, as this American Academy of Arts and Sciences paper shows. But many environmental standards, and their underlying statutes, are decades out of date, designed for natural conditions that no longer exist. By acting like an idiot, Pruitt discredited the whole idea of reforming environmental rulemaking.

Sunday’s page-one lead story in the Washington Post asserted that merely attempting to streamline the EPA is some kind of metaphysical horror. Like many federal agencies, the EPA is overstaffed and would function better if it became lean. The Departments of Defense and State need lots of staff—they have the entire world to deal with. Regulatory agencies, by contrast, generally are overstaffed and move slowly because so many initials have to be added to even the slightest memo. In regulatory agencies such as the EPA, cutting budgets is good for taxpayers and cutting staff is good for effectiveness. But because Pruitt created conditions in which EPA reform could be associated with Pruitt’s malfeasance, cutting staff and budget can be depicted as a nefarious plot.

The Post suggested that it’s somehow appalling that an EPA official named Christopher Zarba recently retired. Zarba had been with the EPA for 38 years, so is at least in his 60s, the time when people retire. In another heavy-breathing article, the Post told readers an EPA official named Elizabeth Southerland was “protesting” Trump by leaving government. She’s 68 years old! (When Obama was president, Southerland ran an EPA water-quality office that failed to address problems in Flint, Michigan, yet somehow to the Post that was the EPA’s good old days.) The New York Times warns that EPA officials are leaving the agency “in droves”—or in taxis, as Groucho would add—giving as its example an officer named Ronnie Levin. She departed after 37 years, that is, at regularly scheduled retirement age. The technical journal Nature makes the preposterous, but politically correct, claim that regulatory-reform initiatives mean “science is under siege.” The proof? An EPA official just threw up his arms and walked into the sunset. His name is Dan Costa, and he’s 69 years old.

When federal officials well into their 60s retire, it isn’t shocking—it is the normal functioning of the HR department. But Pruitt has so poisoned the well of environmental regulatory reform that the Times, Post, and even Nature, which is peer-reviewed, can get away with intellectually lazy analysis that shifts the narrative from reform to scare stories.

Buck-Buck-Brawckkkkkkk. Scoring against Kansas City to pull within 38-28 with five minutes remaining, LA/B did not onside kick. That’s all the information you need to know who won.

Leading 20-3 late in the third quarter, Chicago punted on 4th-and-2. Leading 20-10 in the fourth quarter, Chicago punted on 4th-and-1. Sure, both spots were in Bears territory, but why does that matter? In both cases the red-hot Green Bay offense almost immediately passed the point where the ball would have been had Chicago tried and failed—while a conversion on either fourth down would have provided the spark of offense that stops a comeback.

Now it’s Chicago 20-17 and the Bears face 4th-and-2 on the Green Bay 14 with 2:42 remaining, Packers out of time outs. That cannot seriously be the Chicago placekicker trotting in! A field goal still leaves the home team able to win with a touchdown, whereas a first down would—what’s the phase I’m looking for—win the game. Victories don’t arrive in the mail, go win the game! Boom went the kick, and you know the rest.

Here’s the plus side of keeping the offense on the field. Game scoreless in the first half, R*dsk*ns coach Gruden the Younger had his charges go for it on 4th-and-inches at midfield. The try succeeded and set an aggressive tone for a big Washington win.

Do a Little Dance! TMQ’s Law of Short-Yardage holds: Do a little dance if you want to gain that yard. Fourth-and-short runs must involve misdirection. In high-profile college games Saturday, Pitt, facing Penn State, and Nebraska, facing Colorado, had to convert fourth-and-short. Both put in jumbo sets and just ran straight ahead, no shift, no misdirection. You don’t need any more information to know who won.

Oh How They Dread Watching Film of This. Minnesota leading 24-16 with 2:54 remaining, the Vikings lined up as if to go for it on 4th-and-1. Everyone in the state of Minnesota knew this would be a hard count in an attempt to draw the 49ers offside. Everyone except the 49ers, who jumped offside.

Jacksonville leading 20-15 with 45 seconds remaining, Jersey/A forced a punt—which it muffed. Jaguars’ ball, Jacksonville wins.

Weasel Coach Watch. Will Chip Kelly manage to be fired from three head coaching jobs in three seasons? (Discounting for his gap year.) UCLA made a huge commitment to Kelly though he’d just gone down in flames with the Eagles and Niners, and both franchises improved pretty much to the day Kelly departed. Now UCLA boosters are shocked by UCLA’s poor start. What possible clue could there have been?

Texas, the capital of football culture, has a weasel running the struggling Longhorns program (Tom Herman made a big public show of claiming intense commitment to the University of Houston, then broke his promises the moment money was waved) and a weasel running Texas A&M (Jimbo Fisher walked out on Florida State the moment money was waved).

Speaking of Texas football, Kenneth Starr is making yet another self-rehabilitation attempt. Why does Starr view it as essential that he continue to talk in detail about consensual sex between Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinski, while not talking about the football rape scandal—involving dozens of women, none of whom say they gave consent—that Starr helped cover up at Baylor?

Message Embedded in Football Score. In small college action Saturday, the final was Hope 41, Defiance 0.

Brooks Kraft/Corbis via Getty Images

If Pols and Celebs Are Plagiarists, Why Do Book Reviewers Serve as Enablers? This bestseller may be the most offensive novel ever published—not because of the content, because of the cover. More on that in a moment.

A hobby horse of this column is books sold as “by” a politician or celebrity. In most cases someone else is the true author, rendering the listed author a plagiarist. A bucking bronco of this columnist is that journalists and book reviewers cooperate with the falsehood that the celeb or politician is the author.

Politicians, business leaders, and others seeking leadership positions, or celebs seeking to be received as pensive, should be held to high standards. This is especially true since many of them demand strict standards in schools, then take credit for someone else’s writing. That is, they do what strict-standard schools should flunk a student for. And journalists and book reviewers play along!

Your columnist voted for Hillary Clinton in 2016 but has long been troubled by her self-serving pretense of being an author. Her official biographies in the Senate and State Department listed as among her chief achievements being the writer of books including It Takes a Village. This wasn’t a polite little lie, it was a bald-faced big lie. And the purpose of the lie was to deceive the public.

Clinton also claimed to have written Living History, which was a fine book, but not a book by the person who pretended to be the author. Claiming credit for someone else’s writing is plagiarism. Why is this behavior, forbidden by students, acceptable for the powerful? Why does the New York Times play along?

The contract for Living History was signed in December 2000, immediately after Clinton’s election to the Senate; the book arrived in stores in summer 2003. To be the actual author of a 562-page volume produced fast by writing standards, Clinton would have had to neglect her duties to the citizens of New York. Instead she lied about being the author, and establishment journalism was fine with that.

Often it is said that people believe what they hear from politicians or experts until it comes to a subject with which they are personally informed, and then they realize the expert or politician is a charlatan. I am personally informed on book writing. In 2016, I thought, “Hillary Clinton is highly qualified for the presidency, and has admirable policy positions. Yet she does something I personally know to be dishonorable. If this makes her a charlatan on the subject I know personally, what is she on everything else?”

Clinton is hardly alone. James Comey signed to “write” A Higher Loyalty in August 2017. The book shipped to warehouses in March 2018, so the manuscript had to be submitted to the publisher by January 2018. Six months from deal memo to completion of a long manuscript is blazing speed. How many ghosts toiled on the book Comey claimed to be author of? That is, that Comey blatantly lied about?

In “his” book, Comey repeatedly praises himself for possessing unimpeachable ethics. He now teaches “ethical leadership” at William & Mary. Comey has done something—plagiarism—that would cause a student to fail Comey’s class.

Perhaps all William & Mary cares about is tuition checks from parents who have been tricked into believing the college has high standards for faculty. Perhaps all celebs and politicians care about is being hailed as authors, which is prestigious. But why do newspapers, television shows, and, especially, book reviewers, go along with institutional untruth, pretending ersatz books are “by” the person engaged in self-praise? Being the enabler of a lie as bad as being the teller of the lie.

Fake authorship is another instance of devaluing the written word. The New York Times and its peers assist in devaluing the written word, then complain that the public doesn’t take the written word seriously anymore.

Perhaps you are thinking, “All the rich and powerful lie about ghostwriters.” They most certainly do not! John McCain, an honorable man, always made clear that Mark Salter was the actual author of their jointly composed books. Salter’s name was prominent on the cover. Rick Pitino’s new book lists the actual author on the cover. There are many similar examples of honesty.

Now to the offensive novel that Bill Clinton and James Patterson both claimed to be authors of. Bill didn’t spend months in the den with character sketches, plot charts, and chapter drafts. Did Patterson? Karen Heller of the Washington Post hilariously shows Patterson has long since stopped writing his books. Two fake authors—no waiting!

Repeatedly lying about being an author counts as among the tragic flaws that kept Hillary Clinton from the White House. In 2016, she ran against the sleazy lowlife Donald Trump. If she’d been a person of honor, she would have stood as a shining alternative. Instead she was just another cheater. Now Bill Clinton lies about being an author, too, a former president setting a terrible example for the young.

No one of integrity claims to be the author of the work of others. No one.

Pretty Plays of the Week. Leading 7-0, Kansas City faced 2nd-and-four on its 42. Speedster Sammy Watkins lined up as a tight end inline on the right. Speedster Tyreek Hill went in motion right. At the snap, Watkins ran into the right flat with his hand up, like he expected a hitch screen. Hill cut left across the short center on an “arrow” route. The Bolts’ defense reacted to Watkins and ignored Hill, who executed a 58-yard catch-and-run. Play designs don’t get any prettier.

Wait, they do! Chiefs leading 17-12, Kansas City had 1st-and-goal on the Chargers’ 1. Tailback Kareem Hunt split wide left like the play was something funky to him; Watkins again was tight-right. Hunt shifted back toward quarterback Patrick Mahomes. Yet another Kansas City speeder, De’Anthony Thomas, lined up next to Watkins. At the snap, Watkins went flat right, drawing the defense; Thomas sprinted left; Mahomes barely touched the snap then flipped it forward to Thomas, who walked into the end zone untouched. Because Thomas is 5-9, when he essentially ran a pass pattern behind the line of scrimmage, LA/B defenders lost track of him. Aesthetic beauty is possible in football play design; Sunday, the Kansas City Chiefs achieved this several times.

Ugly Plays of the Week. Whose offensive line is worse: the Bills’ or the Seahawks’? Considering Seattle is a serious team and Buffalo is not, one must say the Seahawks’ line is worse.

At Denver, Seattle right tackle Germain Ifedi, a recent first-round draft choice, had an atrocious game, several times barely slowing Broncos edge rusher Von Miller. On a fourth-quarter, third-down sack of Russell Wilson that was the pivotal play of the contest, Ifedi sort-of waved in Miller’s direction, then just laid on the ground and watched his man flatten the Blue Men Group quarterback.

The runner-up for worst offensive line was the Steelers’, whose rookie tackle R.J. Prince was repeatedly toasted by Cleveland’s Myles Garrett: A sack-strip by Garrett in the fourth quarter set up a Browns touchdown. Yet Pittsburgh coaches did not get Prince out or get him help.

On the upside, the Packers’ offensive line played poorly in the first half—the interception touchdown by Khalil Mack came on a three-man rush!—but was stout in the second half.

Hidden Play of the Week. Hidden plays are ones that never make highlight reels but stop or sustain drives.

On the Cincinnati opening possession of Bengals at Colts, Andy Dalton threw a pass that was intercepted. Indianapolis cornerback Chris Milton appeared to have a clear path to the end zone. Dalton hustled like crazy and tackled Milton at the Cincinnati 7. Two snaps later, Indianapolis turned it over—meaning Dalton’s tackle saved a touchdown, in a contest Cincinnati ultimately would be leading by four points in the closing minute. A blip in the stat sheet, Dalton’s tackle was the decisive play of the game. (Ed note: Colts defenders are historically bad at avoiding tackles by QBs.)

Ryan Fitzpatrick is being heaped with praise for his exceptional game: 417 yards passing, four touchdown passes, and a touchdown run. But his best was a hidden play. City of Tampa leading 48-40 with 2:42 remaining, the Saints out of time outs, Fitzpatrick was flushed from the pocket on 3rd-and-11 and ran for the first down. That was the decisive snap of the game; the rest was kneeling.

And In a Fitting Conclusion … Buffalo not only failed to score a point in the first half at Baltimore, the Bills failed to record a first down. In the closing seconds of the half, with possession of the ball at midfield trailing 0-26, Buffalo coach Sean McDermott allowed the clock to run out—though he had three timeouts. On the upside, the unused timeouts can be donated to charity.

By the fourth quarter, this contest had turned into Ohio State versus Rutgers, as the Bills, down 40-0, kicked a field goal to avoid being shut out. Two of the last three seasons have seen the Bills open at Baltimore. They’ve been outscored 6-64 in those games.

“Here’s Your New SUV, Satan. The Red Metallic Finish Looks Great with Your Robe.” Yours truly drives an Acura and is a satisfied customer. My Acura performs well and is super-reliable. But I was unsettled to learn that Satan, too, drives an Acura.

TV ads for the marque’s redesigned RDX have the Stones’ “Sympathy for the Devil,” performed by Motorhead, throbbing under the scenes. In the song, the devil brags about his role in the horrors of history and his success in corrupting humanity. Why does a car company want its product associated with lyrics such as Just as every cop is a criminal / And all the sinners saints.

The song has been cropped to remove those lines and take out the approving references to the Holocaust. But audiences clearly hear, “Hope you guess my name … what’s my name?” To which the song’s answer is, Lucifer.

Nike’s “Briscoe High” commercial from 2006 had Norman Greenbaum’s “Spirit in the Sky” playing below the scenes. The song had been edited to avoid its references to the Redeemer, among them, Prepare yourself you know it’s a must / Gotta have a friend in Jesus.



Of course, many people never listen to the lyrics of pop songs. Still, it may tell us something about modern corporate image-making that Nike thought Jesus was too controversial, while Acura wants Satan associated with its cars.

Adventures in Officiating. On a third-down incompletion, zebras called Myles Garrett of Cleveland for roughing the passer. Rather than kick a field goal, the Steelers had first-and-goal and scored a touchdown. The play sure looked like clean football. Considering the contest ended in a tie, this four-point swing in Pittsburgh’s favor seems a major officiating error.

Late in overtime, zebras called Garrett for an illegal block on a fumble return, costing the Browns field position with 36 ticks remaining. This call was correct. During a change of possession, normally legal blocks become illegal. Many NFL teams don’t coach-up players properly for the unusual blocking rules of turnovers.

The Potomac Drainage Basin Indigenous Persons leading 21-0 at Arizona, Alex Smith was going down under tackle in the end zone, for what should have been a safety. Smith wildly heave-hoed the ball forward. Zebras said there was a receiver in the area. Really? The rule says that to avoid intentional grounding, the pass must have a bona-fide chance of being complete. Arizona should have been awarded two points.

Next Week. Satan hires an agent for endorsement deals.