Week 4 2012 Season

With week four now in the bag there are just five teams with a 100% record. Three teams have the good winning 100% record and two have the bad yet to win a game 100% record!

Let's start with the two teams that have not yet won a game this season and that is the Cleveland Browns and New Orleans Saints. Cleveland have showed a few glimpses that they may become a good team in the future with the performances of rookies like Trent Richardson their number one pick out of Alabama!

In his first four games Richardson has accounted for 344 yards and four touchdowns on 79 touches. Please note that by touches I mean rushing attempts and receptions. The question is even if the Browns did go on to have winning seasons would they finish any higher than fourth in their division with the Bengals new lease of life with Andy Dalton and A J Green not to mention the Steelers and Ravens!

The ongoing saga at New Orleans continues with yet another loss, this time at the hands of the Green Bay Packers. With their poor start to the season anyone would link that Drew Brees was on the cover of Madden again!

I have heard a few different reasons for their downfall but for me it all comes down to the loss of Sean Payton for the year, not just his play calling but his presence on the sideline and in the locker room. On a plus note if they continue at this pace, Payton will have the first draft pick on his return next year!

Something else that made me smile this week was the look on Rex Ryan's face as the Jets were shut down and shut out by the 49ers! It would appear that not even the great Tim Tebow could get their offense moving, with their shakey start to the season the question remains how long before it's Tebow's time?

Okay so here are all the results from the week four action:-

Cleveland 16 vs 23 Baltimore

New England 52 vs 28 Buffalo

Carolina 28 vs 30 Atlanta

Minnesota 20 vs 13 Detroit

Tennessee 14 vs 38 Houston

San Diego 37 vs 20 Kansas City

San Francisco 34 vs 0 New York Jets

Seattle 13 vs 19 St Louis

Cincinnati 27 vs 10 Jacksonville

Oakland 6 vs 37 Denver

Miami 21 vs 24 Arizona

New Orleans 27 vs 28 Green Bay

Washington 24 vs 22 Tampa Bay

New York Giants 17 vs 19 Philadelphia

Chicago 34 vs 18 Cowboys

As you can see from the results, the Cardinals, Texans and Falcons remain unbeaten with a quarter of the season played. I have to ask do we think all three teams will reach week six unbeaten?

With the fact we are now a quarter of the way through the 2012 season I think it is worth taking stock of the players who are both under and over performing respectively. I know there is one player that EJ briefly mentioned in last weeks podcast as under performing this season and that was Aaron Rodgers!

I think that it is fair to say that at this point he certainly is as he has thrown for only 1064 yards and seven touchdowns working out as an average of 250 yards a game and only 1.75 passing touchdowns. For a quarterback of his calibre you would expect a lot more from him at this point!

Another player who has disappointed me this season so far is Rob Gronkowski. After his amazing season last year I think we were all expecting his production to go through the roof this year however with only 260 yards and three touchdowns it is very disappointing.

On the flip side to this though are the players how have impressed me so far starting with Matt Ryan who has thrown for 1162 yards, 11 touchdowns and only two interceptions. On top of this Ryan has an accuracy percentage of 69.4%. These are great numbers for any quarterback and especially one that I appear to have overlooked this year!

Next up is not so much one player that has impressed but a total defence and that is the Seattle Seahawks who are second behind the Houston Texans in average yards conceded per game with an average of 275.8 yards a game. Seattle has given up the second fewest points in the league as well conceding only 58 points to opponents! For me it is even more impressive when you look at the fact they have faced the high flying Cardinals, the Cowboys, the Packers and the Rams.

It would be great to hear your thoughts on this as well so why not tweet me @AdriMallows or drop me an email at ballhawksnest@gmail.com

Now we move onto my favourite part of the week and that is the Ray Lewis and Megatron award winners aka the offensive impact player of the week and the defensive impact player of the week.

This week to be different I am going straight into my award winners and this week the Megatron award goes to Brian Hartline for his 12 receptions for 253 yards and a touchdown against Arizona. Hartline was very unlucky not to be on the winning side this week and he is starting to look like Tannehill's favourite target. I expect great things from him for the rest of the season!

The Ray Lewis award this week goes to the veteran Lance Briggs who helped tame the Cowboys offense with six tackles, one forced fumble and an interception which he returned for a score. The Chicago defence is often thought of being a one man team behind Brian Urlacher but we shouldn’t forget the hard work and graft Briggs puts in every week.

Well that's it from blog land this week football fans but be sure to check out 'Spitball' my weekly NFL podcast via www.ballhawksnest.weebly.com.