Last Place Update

November 29, 2011 – Welcome to this week’s Last Place Update, where the 0-11 Indianapolis Colts maintained a stranglehold on their title as this week’s Kings of the Cellar.  Reggie Wayne had a great game, but the Colts just couldn’t get it done against Carolina.  Indy has a two game lead over the 2-9 Minnesota Vikings and St. Louis Rams.  The last time the Colts lost 11 games was in 1998, when they went 3-13. The last time Indy finished a season with 11 losses was in 1985, when they were 5-11 and had another number 18 at quarterback, Mike Pagel.

This week’s honorable mention goes to the St. Louis Rams for not learning from past mistakes.  They made the mistake of punting to Arizona’s Patrick Peterson in both games and he made the Rams pay with losses.

This week’s second honorable mention goes to the 4-7 San Diego Chargers, who snatched defeat from the jaws of victory and could have avoided overtime with that missed field goal attempt at the end of regulation.  The Chargers have now lost six straight, second longest only to the Colts.  San Diego faces the Jacksonville Jaguars on Monday night.  The Jags just fired Jack Del Rio and are struggling anyway.  The Chargers should break their losing streak, but Jacksonville is primed to deliver an upset. 

Next Loss

The Colts fired defensive coordinator Larry Coyer and changed quarterbacks.  Indy already has the daunting task of playing the New England Patriots in Foxboro.  The question isn’t who will win.  The question is will the Patriots give the Colts their second 62-7 drubbing of the season?  Maybe not.  Replacing Curtis Painter with Dan Orlovsky won’t help, but new defensive coordinator Mike Murphy might.

Minnesota hosts Tim Tebow and the Denver Broncos.  Tebow has defied all the negative expectations and delivered wins.  This game will be no different.  Tebow will win ugly and go to 6-1 as a starter.  Oh yeah…this is about Minnesota.  Well this is Minnesota’s best chance for a win for a few weeks.  After Denver, the Vikings face the Lions in Detroit and then host the high powered New Orleans Saints.  In fact, the Saints host the Lions on Sunday night.  The Minnesota’s near future doesn’t look so good.

The Rams go to sunny California to take on division rival San Francisco 49ers.  Both teams are stinging from painful losses, but the Niners will bounce back and give the Rams their tenth loss of the season.

Here are a couple of historical scores on this day for teams facing each other this week: November 29,

1970 – Los Angeles Rams 30 – San Francisco 13

1992 – Pittsburgh 21 – Cincinnati 9