Sunday saw some very interesting storylines take place all over the NFL landscape specifically in New York and St. Louis.  Travis Rodgers from Yahoo! Sports Radio joined Chad in the Afternoon comment on some of those stories and to talk about what he has noticed through the first two weeks of the NFL season.

On Sunday, Greg Schiano and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers caused quite a stir in the closing seconds of the game when the defense continued to play tough and go for the ball after the Giants had already lined up in the victory formation.  The play ultimately caused Eli Manning to fall over in a play in which QB’s are pretty much never touched.  The postgame festivities involved Tampa Bay coach Greg Schiano and New York coach Tom Coughlin getting into a heated exchange of words.

Rodgers says he sides more with Schiano on this story.  Although rare for defenses to ever play tough once teams have lined up in the victory stance, the game was still up for grabs if Tampa Bay could get their hands on the ball.  Rodgers states that he doesn’t think there was any malicious intent on the part of the Bucs.  He thinks they were just going for that one in a million chance that they could cause New York to fumble the ball and they could wind up with it.  Crazy things happen in the NFL and it’s not crazy to think that the Bucs could catch the team off guard and jar the ball loose.  He instead places most of the blame on the Giants’ offensive line.  Their job is to protect the quarterback whether it’s the first play of the game, or the final, that is their primary responsibility.

Rodgers also talked about the closing seconds of the Washington-St. Louis game in which Redskins wide receiver Josh Brown and Rams Defensive Back got into a nice little tussle that resulted in a 15 yard personal foul penalty for Brown and the Rams. The play ultimately pushed kicker Billy Cundiff out of comfortable field goal range.  Instead of attempting a 47 yard field goal to tie, Cundiff was forced into a 62 yard field, which he ultimately pushed wide right and did get even close to 62 yards.

Rodgers was not subtle about why he feels Washington lost that game.

“That’s one of those rare times when you can point to one guy and say ‘You lost the game for us.’”

Take a listen to Rodgers breakdown of the best teams in the NFL through the first two games.