Week 5 rewind

I've said it before. It's a great time to be an NFL fan. Giant HD televisions in your house. The NFL Network. Red Zone. Games on Monday, Thursday, and all day Sunday. If you want to get lost in the season it's pretty easy.

Two of my new favorite ways to do that are NBC Sports' "NFL Turning Point" and  NFL.com's Game  Rewind.

"Turning Point" is a weekly show that the NBCSports channel started last year. Every Thursday night it features the highlights of three games. NFL Films highlights. Great sideline video. Great shots of the big hits and big plays. An immersive experience. And because the Patriots are almost always involved in one of the games of the week they are almost always one of the three games featured.

Game Rewind. for a small yearly fee, offers you the chance to watch the replay of any game you want any time you want over and over again on your laptop or iPad all season long. Have a little time and feel like watching the Pats win over the Bills again? It's there. Feel like watching the fake refs screw the Packers again? Also there. Want to watch all the Jet's losses? You got it. Not only can you watch the replay of the TV broadcast, but you can also watch the coaches film of every game. How much time does one have to watch replays of games? I've watched large chunks of the Pats-Broncos game three times already.

Here's what the tape showed:

GOOD

• A pass rush. That's right. A pass rush. The Pats unleashed the dogs and got after Peyton Manning. That means two things. 1. Belichick knows he doesn't have Ty Law, Rodney Harrison, and Asante Samuel to cover back there anymore. 2. He thinks he does have a pass rush when he needs it. And he does. Ninko, Jones, Mayo, and co. sacked Manning twice and were in his face all day. 
• Tom Brady and the hurry up. Actually, hurry up doesn't do justice to the offense the Pats ran against Denver. More like non-stop. The Pats ran 89 plays. I don't have time to look it up but I don't know if they have ever had more than that in a game. That's a lot. It was exhausting watching it while drinking myh margaritas.
• Rookie cornerback Alfonzo Dennard made his debut after a hamstring kept him out of the first four games of the season. Dennard is the guy who was arrested a few days before the draft and fell all the way to the Pats in the seventh round. He is a second or third-round talent. With an arrest on his record. That's a lot of potential and he showed it against Peyton Manning.
• Turnovers and tackles. The defense still has some issues, but as long as they are creating turnovers and making the tackles on 3rd-and-3 they are doing there job. They forced three more turnovers against Denver and are tops in the league in turnover ratio. And at least once a drive someone on the defense (often Spikes) makes a big hit to get off the field.
• Saving the best for last ... the running game. Back-to-back games over 200 yards rushing? Do the Pats really have that good of a running game? If they can get half of that against Seattle this week I think the answer is yes.

BAD

• Late touchdowns. You know you are reaching to find trouble when the biggest "bad" you got is that the defense gave up two fourth quarter touchdowns to Peyton Manning. So instead of a convincing 31-7 win the Pats had to settle for a convincing 31-21 win. I don't worry about garbage time touchdowns too much. Especially against a guy like Manning. He's down by 24 points, he's going to fling it. The question is still can the defense stop a team in a close game. That is still a very big question.