NFL Update: NFC East Player Performance Partition (Part 1)
With Week 13 games fast approaching, it is a good idea to look at rising and falling players in the NFC East. The NFC East consists of the Dallas Cowboys, New York Giants, Philadelphia Eagles, and Washington Redskins.
First up, we will take a look at falling stars. Although they may have played well at times, mostly attitude problems and inexperience plagues their otherwise tremendous talent. Let’s take a look.
Firstly, we have a Dallas wide receiver that has been in headlines lately because of his meltdown in the fourth quarter of the game against the New Orleans Saints. Dez Bryant won’t apologize for his meltdown, calling it, in his terms, “passion.” Well, Dez,
it may have been passion, but most analysts are wondering “why was Bryant such a big focus on the offense on the most important drive of the game.” As to that, we have no idea. But the thing is, Bryant was thrown the ball six times and out of those six passes,
he caught the ball… not even once.
Although Bryant plays exceptionally well sometimes, he was basically down and out on Thursday against the Saints. He and QB Jon Kitna didn’t seem to understand what was going on with each other, and after the game Kitna tried to take blame for the
loss. But is seems like it was Bryant who didn’t perform to the best of his abilities.
Next up we have Redskins’ linebacker Perry Riley. It must be known that this rookie shows
a lot of potential. The only problem that he seems to have is playing without committing penalties. Riley seems to be at fault in Sunday’s loss against the Minnesota Vikings, even though he didn’t have the ball. He was called out for two penalties
on special teams, one of which was a blocking penalty that invalidated a 77 yard punt return TD by Brandon Banks. And the strangest thing was that the player that he was blocking in the backfield didn’t need to be blocked anyways, seeing as he was far away
from Banks. The nullified TD would have put the Skins ahead by three with only seven minutes left in the game. How frustrating…
Last, but certainly not least, on the list of falling players is the famous DeSean Jackson of Philly. One of the most explosive players in the NFL, he has only one major flaw. He is what most people would refer to as a “drama queen” (or is it king?). He
needs to learn how to show grace when things don’t go as he hoped they would. The Chicago Bears had a great way to keep Jackson from playing as well as usual. They placed their safeties (that’s right, multiple safeties because of Jackson’s superb skill) about
25 yards behind the line of scrimmage. That way, Jackson wouldn’t be able to beat them with a double move.
During the Eagles’ game against the Bears, Jackson made only two receptions for 26 yards. On top of the loss, there are rumors that Coach Andy Reid gave Jackson a dressing down after the game for unknown reasons. He then sulked at his locker and had an animated
conversation with QB Michael Vick. Jackson has to learn to increase his patience and that it is not wise to upset the head coach when his career is at the point it is now.
So that about does it for the players whose performances have been rapidly falling in the past couple of weeks as compared to their past, or those that are starting off well but with some glaring complications. In the next article, we will take a look at
the players that are getting better and better as time goes on.
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