I saw enough of the Broncos-Saints game Sunday to know that it was a total farce of an NFL game. One team had all of its quarterbacks out and had a practice squad wide receiver playing quarterback.
The Saints scored a touchdown to take a 7-0 lead on their third possession, and at that point you knew the game was over. The Saints could have punted on first down the rest of the game and the Broncos still would not have been able to win. It was ridiculous watching a team quarterbacked by a wide receiver, Kendall Hinton, and the results were as bad as we knew it would be.
Hinton was 1 of 9 for 13 yards passing. No, that's not a misprint. A starting quarterback had 13 yards passing in an NFL game in which he played pretty much every snap. I suppose in hindsight given how the whole thing developed, the biggest surprise is that he actually completed a pass.
Hinton wasn't even the team's first choice to play quarterback once it was determined that the four quarterbacks on the roster would have to sit out due to COVID-19 protocols. The first choice was the team's offensive quality control coach who hadn't played quarterback since 2012, when he was in college.
You can't make this stuff up. The Broncos ran some read-option and triple-option plays, but this isn't the old Big 8 when Oklahoma and Nebraska would dominate opponents with that kind of offense. Of course, I would understand if you might have been confused considering the Saints are playing a tight end/wide receiver (Taysom Hill) at quarterback too because of an injury to Drew Brees, and their offense was similar to the Broncos at times.
Think about this — the NFL staged a game Sunday where the winning quarterback threw for 78 yards and the two quarterbacks combined to throw for 91 yards. That's how dumb things got this weekend, and yet the NFL rolled that product out there with a straight face because, well, the show must go on?
Give me a break.
That brings me to the Steelers-Ravens game scheduled for Tuesday night. I am not of the opinion that the NFL should make the Ravens forfeit because they aren't the only team who broke protocols. The virus is spreading everywhere, so to blame the players for what happened to them with respect to this COVID-19 outbreak is silly.
I do think, however, that this game needs to be canceled or postponed to a Week 18. I don't care that it isn't fair to the Steelers. Life isn't fair and this is a pandemic. A whole lot has happened that isn't fair and we continue to move forward, endure, adapt and overcome.
But what is the point of playing this game Tuesday night when the Ravens are one positive test from petitioning the NFL to see if they can suit up Ozzie Newsome for the game? The team is, by my count, going to be missing 23 players (between COVID and IR) for Tuesday's game, including seven starters on offense.
Ray Lewis, Terrell Suggs, Jamal Lewis, Jonathan Ogden and Ed Reed all might need to suit up in order for the Ravens to field a competitive team. This is ridiculous. The Ravens had eight consecutive days of at least one player with a positive test, including Sunday. They have been locked out of their facility and haven't been able to practice.
I get that the NFL doesn't want to go to the Week 18 scenario, but at some point, someone in that office in New York needs to ask themselves if a game like this is helping the brand. Is this good for the league's image to have a prime time-game where one team can't function anywhere close to what it needs to?
NBC should want this one to be a freebie and ask for a credit from the NFL. Why pay for this junk? I know it is Ravens-Steelers and those games, as I wrote last week, are always competitive regardless of the cast of characters, but this is Ravens-Steelers in name only. The Ravens are missing way too many players to be a legitimate NFL team on Tuesday night.
My guess is, with the weather expected to make it even more miserable, the Steelers will win this thing something like 20-3 in a game that is not that close. The Steelers will try to score early and then get the game over with and get out of it healthy. They will be, as the Saints were, content to just play it safe and not take unnecessary chances, and that will make for an awful football game.
The NFL doesn't want to cancel games, but these situations with the Broncos and Ravens have highlighted the fact that not every game is worth playing. Fans want to watch games that at least have a chance to be competitive. Teams that are missing so many key players at key positions have no prayer of making it competitive, and that's why these two games should have been canceled or postponed.
