NFL Europe Week Ten Recap
Well it's back to Europe, for another installment of the web's exclusive NFL Europe Recap by a Brit who loves the Jets, Mets, Celtics and Tottenham Hotspur (they had a decent showing this year in the Premiere, no?) Anyway, somethimes I like to post an initial picture that has something to do with Europe and today, I wanted to show you the biergarten that singlehandedly made me realize as a younger man that yes, in fact you CAN drink beer like soda. Thank you, Augustiner Keller's!!! Enough of that, on to Bent's report!
In this week's “thrilling” Euro Action, the Frankfurt Galaxy booked their place in the World Bowl with a tense 14-13 win over the Berlin Thunder. Jets C Charles Missant, G Isaac Snell and DB James Taylor will face off against fellow Jets G Michael King and T Marko Cavka of the Amsterdam Admirals in next week's non-event. Sorry, I mean big event…*big* event.
With the Rhein Fire defeating Kliff Kingsbury and the Centurions 21-10 in a must-win game to stay in contention for a World Bowl berth, the Galaxy had to win to make it to the big game and just about managed to pull it out.
In the weekend's other game, neither team had much to play for but the Admirals warmed up for next week by losing 34-21 to the Hamburg Sea Devils.
Perhaps this week's big news is the Missant was benched in favour (sic) of Jason Nerys for the first time this season. However, I suspect this is a non-story as Missant and Nerys are good buddies and Missant's play has been solid of late. The two have been sharing time at the center position all year and I expect Nerys getting the start was a reward for his hard work this season from the coaching staff or perhaps Missant himself. Perhaps we will find out in this week's instalment of Missant's diary, which is now being linked to the Jets official site.
With Missant and Snell coming off the bench, the pattern continued for the Galaxy running game, as they ground out another 195 yards on 43 carries, led by Roger Robinson (Arizona) as ever, with 32 carries for 133 yards. After Berlin missed a potential go ahead field goal with 4:31 to go, Frankfurt's running game was able to run out all but 26 seconds of the clock to preserve the win. They also did not concede a sack, which is an improvement on the last three weeks. 2 short TD runs by Butchie Wallace (FA) either side of half time were enough to erase a 13-0 deficit.
Little John Flowers, the former Jet and current free agent, paced the Berlin attack with 61 yards rushing. Taylor registered a pass defensed (on a key 3rd and 11 from the Galaxy 29 late in the third) and also downed a punt but did not record a tackle.
In the Amsterdam versus Hamburg game, King started and Cavka came off the bench, as has been the pattern all year of the Admirals. Jets WR Jovan Witherspoon came off the bench for the Sea Devils.
Hamburg returned an interception and a fumble for scores to make the difference in the game. Larry Croom (Philadelphia – I think…can't be bothered to look it up) scored two TDs for the Admirals, who picked up a total of 102 yards on the ground and the line gave up 2 sacks. Cavka was called for one false start.
Witherspoon caught two passes for 14 yards for the Sea Devils. He also downed a punt and there were two other passes thrown his way that fell incomplete. I will reiterate my scouting report on Witherspoon – he has impressive size but just doesn't look interested. The Jets kept him on the practice squad most of last year, so they must have felt he had some potential.
In the Rhein game, Kingsbury got the start and split time at QB with Shane Boyd (Cleveland). He finished up with stats of 7-13-44 yds and has been pretty much underwhelming all spring. He also rushed for one yard on one carry, but did lead the Centurions only touchdown drive of the day. He did have a fumble, but managed to recover and throw an incompletion (making use of the relaxed intentional grounding rules they have here to protect QBs).
Rhein's Fredrick Jackson (Buffalo) rushed for 154 yards (including an 80 yard touchdown) to lead the Fire to the win. Two third quarter TDs in the space of three minutes overturned a 10-7 deficit, but sadly for the Fire, it was not to be.
Coming up…the big game this weekend pits the mighty Amsterdam Admirals against the “if they're mighty so are we” Frankfurt Galaxy. We at thejetsblog.com will be here with comprehensive in depth coverage. The chatroom will be open all weekend and there will be player profiles and a live running-diary of the days events. OK, perhaps not…there will probably be a post up here on about Wednesday, to tell you who won and how many holding penalties Marko Cavka had. Until then…
Filed under: Main Page, Opinion/Bent
“Tottenham Hotspur (they had a decent showing this year in the Premiere, no?) ”
Ah! Now you've got me going…you'll wish you never asked.
Bear in mind this *only* seems to happen to the teams I root for (Endless personnel disasters and defeating themselves in improbable fashion? Jets. Reach the world series and have your closer blow three games then suck for the next five years? Mets. Have two of your best prospects actually die as your best players all approach retirement and follow that up with a series of baffling personnel moves? Celtics. (nb – I like Ainge…all the baffling moves were pre-Ainge). You never even mentioned the LA Kings who reached the Stanley Cup only to lose 3 OT games and then fell apart every year since, including last year where they annihilated the record for lost man-hours to injury.)
Long story short, all my teams seem to be cursed. All year, Spurs fans (that's what we call Tottenham) have been saying this year would be different and I've been saying we'd blow it. So we managed to stay in 4th all year long, one place above the hated Arsenal and in position to qualify for the lucrative European Champions League for the first time ever. Amazing considering we almost always end up in the bottom half of the standings.
With three games to go, we needed one Arsenal loss to clinch, but they won all three, which meant we just had to win our last game to clinch fourth place, against the lowly West Ham. So what happens? Ten, yes TEN of our players fall ill with food poisoning the night before the game. Despite protests, the game goes ahead and Spurs, with a clearly evident total lack of any energy, despite it being perhaps the club's biggest game since 1991 go on to lose 2-1 to a late goal.
So a great year, filled with hope ends with a complete disaster of unbelievable “it could only happen to us” proportions. Sound familiar?
Just to compound my misery, Wayne Rooney gets injured in the last game of the season and will now miss most if not all of the world cup, so we won't be winning that either (always ends in a penalty shootout or a stupid disallowed goal or a dodgy hand-ball anyway).
*Sigh* Maybe one of my teams will win something one day…let's hope it's the Jets.
I will now gouge out both my eyes with a rusty melon baller.
Food poisoning? Oh that sucks… any thoughts that Arsenal or their fans might have participated in some “fowl play?”
If that is the case, I wonder why that stuff doesn't happen more often…
Yeah, they got the please involved but any wrong doing was cleared. Suspicious, but I think it was just plain rotten luck.