I feel like an ass falling for it again, but yep, I picked Cincinnati over New England Sunday night only to realize just a few minutes into the game that I got that one wrong (I didn’t see much of the game, but followed the feed fairly closely via my phone).

It was an obvious oversight. Sure, the Patriots got crushed by Kansas City Monday night with Tom Brady looking like hell. But one should have been able to tell that Bill Belichick was right in his wheelhouse with his postgame press conference – during which all he did was repeat over and over that the Patriots were moving on to the Cincinnati game.

With his us-against-the-world mentality and a return to emphasizing the run and shorter, tight end-based passing game, the Patriots easily dismantled the Bengals – a team that continues to look like a contender at home and early on, only to drop trow when it has a chance to win a big game on television in prime time.

Make no mistake, this is a flawed Patriots team. But don’t count out Brady and Belichick just yet. They’ve still got a few weapons on board.

So, I’ll take the rap for this one. But there are a lot of other things that happened in week five that were dumb – things that I had nothing to do with. Here are a few observations:

  • Thursday night lowlights: When Green Bay beat Minnesota 42-10 Thursday night, it became the fifth straight poorly played blowout midweek game. This season’s games have been decided by 20, 20, 42, 31 and 32 points with the home team winning all but one of those contests. While the quality of Thursday night contests has been poor for a couple seasons now, the league has further created an issue by making most of these match-ups important division games – every Thursday contest save for Thanksgiving between now and December 4th’s Dallas/Chicago tilt features division foes. Whether it’s travel turnaround or some other factor, these games have mostly been terrible – yet because it’s another obvious, blatant money grab on the part of owners, there has as recently as a year ago actually been talk of increasing the Thursday slate rather than backing off. Dumb.
  • Still won’t learn: The ongoing sagas of Ray Rice and Adrian Peterson apparently have yet to convince even mid-to-bottom-of-the-roster talent to stay out of trouble. Miami’s Derrick Shelby and Minnesota’s Tom Johnson are among the latest to find themselves arrested for various alleged behavioral issues. The Dallas Cowboys are letting DB C.J. Spillman continue practicing and playing while he’s investigated for sexual assault, too. The Dolphins have suspended Shelby indefinitely, according to a recent report. Nine out of 10 NFL players – possibly more – are just regular guys who want to play football, make a living and have a life. But until the league and the teams crack down on the clowns who are giving them all a bad name, the league, the teams and players in general are going to continue having an image problem that threatens the long-term success of the product. Dumb.
  • Same old Lions? Detroit is the only team in the NFC North, it appears, with the talent to challenge Green Bay’s supremacy. But the team took a loss Sunday against Buffalo in a fashion that is so remindful of why the Lions have been able to shed the image they’ve been carrying for the past half-century. Most obvious was the three missed field goals by Alex Henery, who has already been cut. No less important was the ongoing use of injured star WR Calvin Johnson – who might already be healed, had coach Jim Caldwell sat him for a week or so when he originally hurt his angle. But he’s instead employed Megatron as a decoy for two games and yesterday Johnson aggravated the injury. Reports now indicate that the league’s top wideout could be out one to two weeks. Double-dumb.
  • Sticking with Geno? New York Jets coach Rex Ryan took the blame for his team’s 31-0 loss to San Diego Sunday. And I suppose what does the guy have to lose – at this point it looks like it’s going to get worse before it gets better for New York, which probably means he’ll be the second coach out of a job this season. But he announced after the game that he was sticking with career-killing QB Geno Smith – who despite having plenty of time on his hands and plenty of cash to, perhaps, pay a personal assistant to keep track of the clock for him – managed to miss a meeting the night before the game because of confusion over time zones. Smith was brutal again Sunday and, while Michael Vick was not much better, he would at least be something different as this team tries to find some offense. Next week’s game is against Denver – the same old-same old isn’t going to get it done in that one. Dumb.
  • RUN THE BALL!!! I’ve written on these pages before about Andy Reid’s occasional stubbornness and unwillingness to stick with the run game. The plague hit him again Sunday, when through the last 20 minutes of the game with San Francisco, Charles touched the ball one time. Granted, the 49ers ate up most of the clock in the fourth quarter, but in a one score game, with Charles a week removed from a three TD performance and averaging 5.5 yards per carry against San Francisco, Reid and Co. chose to put the game in the hands of QB Alex Smith rather than on the legs of Charles. Smith has been solid, but to me it’s more than foolish in a tight game for Smith to throw twice as many passes as Charles has runs. And in the fourth quarter, of the six plays KC did get to run, just one went to the star RB. I didn’t see a lot of the game, but from reading some highlights, it appears as though it was a game nobody wanted to win. Reading the game logs, however, makes me think the Chiefs over thought the game plan late.
  • Bumblin’ and Stumblin’: Count Chicago, Pittsburgh, Houston, and New Orleans as teams that either lost games they should have won or who had to comeback or hang on against teams they should have dominated on Sunday that looked like pretenders. There are a lot of mediocre football teams in the NFL this season.