Worst Monday Night Game Ever?

A friend of mine is quite adept at rating NFL teams appropriately. One of his measures of NFL teams' performances is what he calls "Sloppiness Scores". Monday night's game between Baltimore and Pittsburgh may have redefined sloppiness. Here is his take on that game and the teams in it. Are the Stillers really that good? Not necessarily....
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Man was that ugly!

If you've been reading along with us regardling sloppiness scores here in the blog (five times the number of turnovers...plus the number of incomplete passes), you hopefully had a heightened sense of the Baltimore Ravens bumbling Monday Night in Pittsburgh.

You know that a single digit number is great
You know that a number in the teens is passable (for a full game)
You know that anything over 20 is probably going to lead to a loss

Baltimore had a sloppiness score of 16, IN THE FIRST QUARTER!

Three turnovers and one incomplete pass in those first 15 minutes set the tone for one of the worst Monday Night games ever. The highlight was arguably seeing clips of Howard Cosell raving about Terry Bradshaw's Steelers hitting paydirt against the Denver Broncos eons ago. It was either that, or when Suzy Kolber used the "You want to get away?" commercial zinger describing the Ravens sideline.

Here's what the final numbers looked like:

*PITTSBURGH 38, BALTIMORE 7
Total Yardage: Baltimore 104, Pittsburgh 291
Sloppiness Score: Baltimore 35, Pittsburgh 12

The bad weather was certainly a key contributor, making "sloppiness" the ideal word for the night. Pittsburgh cashed in easy field position from all the early turnovers, setting up two and a half hours of filler material from the guys in the booth.

We wish they would have spent some time talking about the easy schedules these teams have played this year polluted their records. According to the Sagarin computer ratings at USA Today...

SCHEDULE STRENGTH (out of 32 teams)
Pittsburgh 31st
Baltimore 32nd

Neither team has played an opponent in the top half of the league if you throw out the game Baltimore gets credit for playing against Pittsburgh. They're a combined 0-0 against top 16 teams other than themselves!

With that in mind, you need to know that neither is as good as its record right now (Pittsburgh 6-2, Baltimore 4-4). Both will get a chance to prove that wrong later this year against powerful New England.

Since sloppiness is the perfect theme for this game, let's run the full season numbers for these teams on a game-by-game basis. It will shed some light on how Pittsburgh has managed to post a better record against a comparable schedule.

Baltimore 48, Cinicnnati 22 (another sloppy Monday Night game!)
Baltimore 12, NY Jets 38
Baltimore 14, Arizona 21
Baltimore 29, Cleveland 13
Baltimore 14, San Francisco 12
Baltimore 22, St. Louis 47
Baltimore 21, Buffalo 15
Baltimore 35 Pittsburgh 12
The Ravens offense exceeded 20 in five of their games, managing to beat St. Louis anyway because the Ravens defense popped a 47 on the helpless Rams (0-8 this year). Baltimore is 1-4 when exceeding a sloppines score of 20. There were three decent offense performances, and all of those were victories.

Pittsburgh 16, Cleveland 46
Pittsburgh 17, Buffalo 10
Pittsburgh 12, San Francisco 23
Pittsburgh 25, Arizona 24
Pittsburgh 4, Seattle 21
Pittsburgh 26, Denver 17
Pittsburgh 12, Cincinnati 13
Pittsburgh 12, Baltimore 35
Pittsburgh only exceeded 20 twice, and those were in their two losses. The Steelers are 6-0 when posting an offensive number of less than 20. They've posted 12 or less four times, which is very sharp at this level. Of course, this has been a very soft schedule. You can't think of Pittsburgh as a true theat to New England or Indianapolis unless they can post numbers like that against top opposition.

It's worth noting that Pittsburgh seems vulnerable if you take out their home games. Remember that their road opener came at Cleveland, in the game that got unqualified former Browns quarterback Charlie Frye demoted and traded in about 15 seconds...

PITTSBURGH ON THE ROAD:
Pittsburgh 16, Cleveland 46
Pittsburgh 25, Arizona 24
Pittsburgh 26, Denver 17
Pittsburgh 12, Cincinnati 13

That's sloppiness coin flips against poor Arizona and Cincinnati teams, and a loss to struggling Denver. This doesn't speak well for Pittsburgh's chances to thrive against tougher challenges later in the season.

It's neat how something simple like this can shed light in so many different areas. As long as someone's around to clean up the slop.

i think this sunday's nights game was pretty bad. unless you love the pats it was over within the first 5 minutes

Yeah,

Hardly seemed like a game worthy of replacing the Chicago/Seattle game that was supposed to be taking place there. Especially since New England is playing on Sunday Night again next Sunday against Philly. I didn't watch much of this game because I was watching Family Guy, but every times I switched back for score updates.....the score had been update by the Pats. It was insane.