NFL | 2006 | Week 11 - Review Notes

Injuries were certainly the theme in Week 11.

Donovan McNabb, Aaron Rodgers, LaMont Jordan, Bertrand Berry were all lost for the season. In addition, Brett Favre, Issac Bruce, Marques Colston, Alex Smith (TE), Hines Ward, Najeh Davenport, Kevin Jones, Deshaun Foster, David Martin, Adewale Ogunleye, Troy Vincent, Juran Bolden, Robert Gallery all were injured in action yesterday.

Here’s a run down of the monday morning notes at Pro Football Weekly:


• The Patriots’ new field turf is expected to help their offense.

  First of all, QB Tom Brady has a 19-1 lifetime record on artificial turf. Secondly, the team has traditionally scored a lot of points on turf — with 38 points at Cincinnati, 28 points at Buffalo and 31 at Minnesota this season.

• The Ravens plan on continuing their recent passing surge, even though they have many cold weather, outdoor games left. As as Jamal Lewis’ big day yesterday will attest, a increased focus on throwing the ball has opened up the running game for Lewis.
• Colts’ owner speaks about Peyton Manning and his improved mobility this season.
• Reggie Bush has been working on his straight ahead running game.
• This is a great line about what’s going on in Detriot:

  As if pulling recently released Corey Bradford off a fishing dock in Texas last week weren’t bizarre enough, the Lions’ mind-boggling handling of their wide receivers took an even more ludicrous turn when Mike Martz revealed that he’s worked backup QB Josh McCown in running routes in practice and won’t hesitate to use him in special circumstances on game day.

• New York Jets:

  We hear that the Jets’ victory at New England helped solidify the players’ trust in head coach Eric Mangini. Word is many of the players were really impressed with the Jets’ game plan and that excitement was building throughout the week of practice leading up to the game. When things went just as Mangini had planned, his hold as their leader grew exponentially in their minds.”

• T.J. Duckett:

  Our Redskins moles say that RB T.J. Duckett, long in hibernation, has looked good in practice and could warrant some more carries than just in a short-yardage role. Duckett, a free-agent-to-be, would love the opportunity to improve his stock in what could be a weak RB market in 2007. He led the Skins in rushing in Week 11 with 26 yards on five carries.

One final note, from Gary Kubiak’s press notes from week 11:

(on rotating RBs Samkon Gado and Wali Lundy) “We’re just trying to make sure those two guys play right down the middle. If we think one of them is getting winded we’ll put the other one in. It’s easy when you’re doing something good to say leave that guy in, but we told ourselves we’d stay committed to playing two of them. And we’re going to try to continue to do that.”