The Bobby Valentine Sport Show: Episode 21

The Bobby Valentine Sport Show: Episode 21

Hello everyone and welcome back to another episode of The Bobby Valentine Sport Show. I’m your host Frank Ramppen, and let’s get into another week of the NFL season.

So, week seven of the NFL season has just wrapped up, and we’re going to get into the talking points from this week as we’re almost halfway through the season. I talk about it every week; this NFL season always goes by so fast. Be prepared; halfway point is right around the corner, and the standings are starting to matter. We’re starting to look at Wild Card races, looking at the divisional races, seeing how those are shaping up. They’re going to start to matter as we head into the double-digit weeks, as I like to call them – week 10 on. That’s when things really start to get dicey; every game matters, and we’re going to get into that time.

It was a weird week again, a lot of teams on bye. I think there were only 11 games on Sunday, so a little bit light on the slate on Sunday, but a lot of action, a bunch of good games, and a lot of highlights that we’re going to get into right now. Let’s start that off with our play of the day.

This was unbelievable; this was early on in the day, pretty early in the window, still in the first quarter, in the Atlanta Falcons/Tampa Bay Buccaneers game. That was a very weird game in itself, a lot of defense, a lot of weird plays happened in that game. Desmond Ridder fumbled one through the end zone for a touchback, Drake London almost did the exact same thing, but he ended up scraping his finger on the ground. If you saw the play, you know what I’m talking about; he got flipped over trying to extend the ball to the one, the ball popped out; it was a really weird play.

But early on in the game, in a 7-7 ball game, Kyle Pitts, who has been the center of a lot of jokes throughout his career because he’s been a very highly touted tight end, played very well at the University of Florida, was a top pick, maybe top 10, I don’t even remember, but he hasn’t really panned out. He’s starting to come around a little bit over the past couple of weeks, and this happened on Sunday. We’re going to take a look at this: second and eight for Atlanta on their own 27-yard line. Here we go; we’re going to pick it up, ball game 7-7. Desmond Ridder fakes a handoff, looks across the middle, finds Kyle Pitts. At first, it’s like, wait, what just happened? You can’t really tell what’s going on there. Like, I don’t even know what really happened there; the ball got caught, I guess, but it looked weird. Here’s the replay: Desmond Ridder fires to Kyle Pitts, throw is behind him, and a one-handed catch. Initially, it looks like he pins this against his back, but if you see this last replay, he catches this ball like he’s throwing a behind-the-back pass in basketball. He doesn’t even pin this thing to his back; all he does is just catch it with his hands, almost like he’s doing one of those Rajon Rondo fake behind-the-back passes in the NBA. Unbelievable; I’ve never seen anything like that. He caught that ball as he was, wild, never seen anything like that. His momentum was taking him away; he just catches it, didn’t even pin it to his back, just all grip strength. Unbelievable; Rajon Rondo in the NFL, that’s what it looked like. That’s without a doubt our play of the day; couldn’t believe it when I saw it. It was unreal; still can’t even really believe it right now. Unbelievable play by Kyle Pitts, and maybe these past couple of weeks before this were good; he had another solid week, made that unreal catch. Maybe this is where it starts for Kyle Pitts on National tight end day 2023; maybe this is the beginning of the start.

Now that we’ve seen our play of the day, we’re going to move on to the next segment, the game of the week. There were a couple of options I could have picked here. There was a good game between the Atlanta Falcons and Tampa Bay Buccaneers; that was a pretty wild game, a lot of weird things happened in that. It ended up being a game-winning field goal to win it for the Atlanta Falcons. There was a crazy game that happened between, um, excuse me, what am I saying? Uh, Thursday night was a pretty crazy game between the New Orleans Saints and Jacksonville Jaguars. As well as Sunday night was pretty good; it ended up being kind of lopsided, the final score, but if you watched the game, it was pretty highly contested, and it was a really, really hyped matchup between Jalen Hurts and Tua Tagovailoa, two quarterbacks that played together at Alabama. You guys know that history where Tua came in to replace Jalen Hurts, who was the starting quarterback at Alabama in the national championship game at halftime as Jalen Hurts was struggling mightily. Tua came in, ramped up the offense, ended up winning the game in overtime, throwing a touchdown pass to Devonte Smith. It was pretty funny that that guy was in the game too; now he plays with Jalen Hurts. Now, he was in that game last night between the Dolphins and the Eagles.

But then the next year, Tua wins the starting job; Jalen Hurts still on the team. Tua gets hurt in the SEC Championship game when they’re losing to Georgia; Jalen Hurts has to come in, leads a comeback, and wins it in the fourth quarter. So it was pretty cool to see; they talked about that a lot in the broadcast yesterday, but that’s not our game of the week either. Our game of the week was an unbelievable shootout from honestly a very surprising game: the Colts and the Browns.

For more from this week in the NFL and how divisions are starting to shape up click the video below!