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SPF's Week Six Pre-Pregame Show

It's week 6 for the SPF teams.  Four teams are basically done, but the rest have critical games that will go a long way to determining how the rest of the season will play out for them.

Here's this week's slate (video links courtesy of NFL.COM)

Early Games

Miami Dolphins at Cleveland Browns
Washington Redskins at Green Bay Packers
Cincinnati Bengals at Kansas City Chiefs
Tennessee Titans at Tampa Bay Bucs
St. Louis Rams at Baltimore Ravens
Houston Texans at Jacksonville Jaguars

Late Games

Carolina Panthers at Arizona Cardinals
New England Patriots at Dallas Cowboys

Sunday Night
New Orleans Saints at Seattle Seahawks

Monday Night
NY Giants at Atlanta Falcons

Bye Week: Indianapolis Colts

SPF has stood by the Bengals all season, but this is the week that things need to start turning around.  Kansas City is a bad team.  The Bengals should be able to beat them.  Marvin Lewis is on the edge as you can see in this clip.  The Bengals have been playing incredibly sloppy football filled with turnovers.  T.J. Houshmandzadeh sounds frustrated as well while Carson Palmer seems as unflappable as ever.   There's an edge in all three of their voices.  It's high time to start winning.  SPF still thinks this is where the season turns around for Cincy.

The Redskins continue their clib back to relevance this season.  The second Joe Gibbs era has been much more volatile than the first, but all the pieces are there as the team showed in tearing down the Lions last week.  The Skins strong defense and an ever improving Jason Campbell should propel them to victory against the Pack.  This is the kind of game that the Redskins need to win to show that they are for real.  (Today's game features a battle between two Mississippians at QB.)

How bad are the Dolphins?  According to this piece, they have no big play ability on offense, and they can't stop the run on defense.  That about sums it up for this 0-5 debacle.  QB Trent Green is down, and he needs to stay down and retire.  Enter the Cleo Lemon era.  Cam Cameron sounds as uninspired as ever in discussing his new QB.  I guess that makes sense since he coached him in San Diego 3 years ago and still chose to bring in the 37 year old Green to start ahead of him this year.  This "get to know me" interview shows what an unknown this Arkansas St product is.  The way Cameron is talking up the Browns just shows how far the Dolphins have fallen as a franchise.  He sounds like he would rather be coaching back in college at Michigan.

Tennessee won an ugly game last week whilethe Bucs had an ugly loss.  Martin Fennelly and Roy Cummings of the Tampa Tribune are openly starting to question Jon Gruden again.  Cummings says that Gruden's offense is so complex that it demands veterans who in turn rarely stay healthy.  Fennelly worries as SPF has that the Bucs just have no margin for error.  Everything relies on Jeff Garcia especially now that Cadillac Williams and Michael Pittman are out.  Former Gator Earnest Graham's ascension into the starting RB's role is a great story considering his long road as an NFL player.  However Jeff Garcia doesn't sound nearly as excited as Kenneth Darby, his new backup RB.  Meanwhile, the Titans and Jeff Fisher sound confident.  They should be.

[RAMS] The Rams are right with the Dolphins and the Falcons at the bottom of the SPF barrel.  Coach Scott Linehan won't be back next year barring a miracle.  He sounds defeated whether talking about the team's 0-5 start, the team's injury situation,  the team's matchup with the Ravens, or the team's ability to turn things around.  This roster was built around Mike Martz's system.  Short of bringing him back to replace Linehan, which will never happen, the Rams may need to gut this team in the off season.  That's a tough thing to do to a fan base that is already starting to tune them out. 

Speaking of tuning out, only the Jaguars, the Rams, and the Raiders have had games blacked out this season.  The only team that has had more than one black out are the Jaguars.  Now, just as they begin a two game home stand against division opponents, the Jags are blacked out against the visiting Texans.  This is the reason why SPF is so negative while the rest of the Jax press sounds positive about the one loss Jags.  If they can't excited a football-frenzied fan base, then things are grim for this market.  This is a must win game for the Jags since they already lost at home to the Titans.  The Colts come to town next week off their bye making a win this week even more critical.

It's too bad for the Jags that the Texans have owned the Jags of late.  The Texans are also getting healthy after a few weeks of having a depleted roster.  Jack Del Rio can laud his team's dominance of the hapless Chiefs last week, but the Texans are a much tougher test.  Matt Schaub sounds ready for this week's challenge.

Carolina remains a sleeper team in the NFC South.  The Saints and the Falcons appear to be done, while the Bucs just haven't shown that they can overcome key injuries.  If losing Jake Delhomme for the season can wake up the Panthers running game and defense, then the Panthers might end up with the division crown by season's end.  They have to start this week by beating the beatable Cardinals.

In this week's big NFL game, the Cowboys host New England.  This is really the first test for the NFC's most exciting team.  As Randy Galloway writes, it's "put up or shut up" time.  Experts aren't giving the Cowboys a chance, and they didn't play particularly well against the Bills on Monday.  However, the Cowboys coaching staff is familiar with the Patriots from their time in San Diego.  The Cowboys do have one thing that might be able to stop the Pats - an ability to test their defense and an ability to defensively attack their offense.

The Saints and the Falcons both share the ignominy of playing against vastly superior teams on national TV.  SPF only has hope that the Falcons might catch the Giants napping.  The Seahawks will easily take care of the Saints.  Bobby Petrino is stuck without a lot of weapons and a team that is trying to mutiny against him.  The simple fact is that the team isn't that good.  Neither are the Saints, and Sean Payton doesn't seem to have many answers.  Reggie Bush is also trying, but failing to sound like a leader.

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