How was your week

Posted: December 18, 2022 by Sports Time Radio in sports

Yesterday we had our first three NFL games of this season. Sadly, for me I was unable to watch then since AT&T U-verse decided to remove the NFL Network from my cable package a few years ago. Oddly they told me that it was to keep cost down, but yet my monthly rate still went up. Does that sound right? Anyway, judging from the scores and the highlights I saw they were at least decent games to watch.

The day started off with the Indianapolis Colts visiting the Minnesota Vikings. These were two teams headed in different directions as the Vikings will be in the playoffs and while a lot of people thought that the Colts would be a playoff team, they had a 3-9-1 record coming into this game. Oddy with the way the game started off you would’ve thought that these teams’ records were the opposite of what they were.

In the first half of the game Indianapolis scored on special teams with four field goals and a blocked punt that was returned for a touchdown as well as an interception that was returned for a touchdown. The Colts did a traditional touchdown as Matt Ryan threw a 1-yard touchdown pass. Going into halftime the Colts had a 33-0 lead on the Vikings.

33 points is a large deficit for any NFL team to make up and Minnesota has had some issues in its last few games, so it was actually looking like this game might’ve been over at halftime. Fortunately for the Vikings and their fans Minnesota had other ideas.

Kirk Cousins led the Vikings to five second half touchdowns, four passing and one rushing including a 64-yard touchdown pass to Dalvin Cook with 2:15 left in the game to tie the score at 36-36. That’s how regulation ended, and the game went into overtime.

Both teams possessed the football, but neither could score right away. In the end Minnesota ended coming all of the way back and won the game 39-36 on a 40-yard Greg Joseph field goal with 1:39 left in the overtime period.

The 33-point comeback by the Vikings was the largest in NFL history. Minnesota’s comeback exceeded the previous record of 32 points set by Buffalo Bills against the Houston Oilers in a 1992 playoff game.

Minnesota’s comeback win not only set a new record, but it also clinched the Vikings the NFC North title. This is the first time that the Vikings have won the NFC North in five years.

The second game of the day was the first of two division match ups as the Cleveland Browns were hosting the Baltimore Ravens in an AFC North match up.

The Ravens came into this game without the services of their starting quarterback Lamar Jackson. As for the Browns this would just be the second start of the season for their quarterback Deshaun Watson coming off his suspension.

It’s unclear if the fact that this game had a backup quarterback and a quarterback just getting his season started, but it didn’t seem to hold up to the excitement of the first game.

Cleveland got on the scoreboard first with a 47-yard field goal from Cade York. Justin Tucker tied the score for the Ravens with a 53-yard field goal, but Cleveland took the lead into halftime 6-3 as York added a 23-yard field goal.

The only touchdown of the game came in the 3rd quarter as Watson threw a 3-yard pass to Donavan People-Jones to give Cleveland a 13-3 lead.

Even with Tyler Huntley under center the Ravens were the favorite to win this game, but Cleveland and their defense was able to hold Baltimore to a field goal and picked up a division win over the Ravens.

The third and final NFL game of the night was another division matchup as two AFC East teams faced off with the Buffalo Bills hosting the Miami Dolphins.

Miami traded two field goals for Buffalo touchdown as the Bills had an early 7-6 lead in the 2nd quarter. The teams then went on to swap touchdowns and Buffalo went into halftime with a 21-13 lead.

In the 3rd quarter the Dolphins scored two touchdowns, but on the first touchdown Miami failed on their two-point conversion attempt. At the end of the 3rd quarter Miami had taken a 26-21 lead over the Bills.

The Dolphins started off the 4th quarter adding a field goal to their lead, but Josh Allen was able to throw a game tying 5-yard touchdown pass to Dawson Knox with 2:54 left in the game. Buffalo decided to go for the two-point conversion to tie the game and it was Allen who ran the football in for the conversion and the game was tied at 29 all.

So, we had our second game of the day that went into overtime, but just like the first overtime game neither team was able to find their way into the end zone when having the football first. In the end it was the Bills that pulled out the victory as Tyler Bass hit a 25-yard field goal with 5:56 left in the overtime period to give the Bils a 32-29 win.

Now this was just what you’d call a preview of Saturday NFL football. Next week the NFL has 11 games that will be played on Saturday. Now I’m sure this was set up because next Sunday is Christmas, so the bulk of the games will be played on Christmas Eve. Now there will be three games on Christmas day as the NFL has their schedule set up just like they did for Thanksgiving.

Well, since I was unable to watch the games yesterday if you did let me know what you think of the game or games that you watched.

Don’t forget to look me up on Twitter, I’m @Burketime.

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Comments
  1. I watched the latter half of the Minnesota- Indianapolis game and what a comeback it was! This, despite the fact that the referees blew a returned fumble call for an apparent tying TD by the Vikings. They ruled down by contact but I disagreed with the call but what the hell do I know?
    But it was certainly an exciting finish.
    I only watched a few minutes of the Buffalo game.

    Like

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