Teams to Watch

Now that the NFL is coming up on week 8, it is okay to begin to decide which teams are “for real” and which ones just got lucky at the beginning. After next Monday night we will be half way through the regular season, which is extremely hard to believe! With 9 games remaining, anything could happen, but now is when teams begin to either fall further back, or start to creep up.

The team I am most impressed with this year is the bears. Actually I’m not impressed with the whole team, just the defense. The Bears defense is one of the absolute best in the league and consistently holds opponents to very few points. Last night the Bears help the lines to 0 until the final seconds of the game, that’s a sign of a stealthy defense. The offense on the other hand isn’t as impressive. Jay Cutler in my opinion is one of the better quarterbacks in the league, but only sometimes. He has is glory games, but he also has some awful ones as well. However, their defense doesn’t need to be as p[proficient when their defense holds so well.

A team that I feel has just gotten lucky is the Minnesota Vikings. They only have two losses, and do keep putting up a fair number of points, but their schedule hasn’t been difficult at all, with the exception of one or two games.  The Vikings play a rougher schedule the second half of the season including two games against the Packers in the final 5 weeks of the season.

The Houston Texans are a team that I feel will begin to expand on their lead in the AFC west. With only one loss to the Packers, they rebounded from that game and had a remarkable game this past week. I would be surprise to see Matt Schaub and his offense continue to put up points against strong defenses and continue to win. I think they might make it two the playoffs with 3 or fewer losses. They are a strong team on both sides of the ball.

Lastly, I want to talk about the Packers. They got off two a really rough start losing three times the games they lost last year. But after theses past two weeks, I think there is a different team on the field. Aaron Rodgers has been completely lights out the past two weeks throwing a combined total of 9 touchdowns, and is looking like, if not better than he did last year. I think with an offense as proficient as they have been, they Pack roles into the playoffs on a high note. They play five divisional games to end their season and that very well could make or break their road to the Super Bowl. (WC 467)