Saturday Six Pack: Walking Wounded Edition 10/29/11

This week, we face the dreaded BYE team, who is undefeated since its inception in 1782, or whenever taking a break between football games started.

We've gathered a few injuries here and there, and thankfully our bye week couldn't have come at a better time. So, while we rest this weekend, I'll try and conjure up some of the usual stuff for ya.

AJC: I got caught up in reading some of the.....comical comments on these two pages and wasted more time than I would've liked. There were a few interesting points in some of the comments, though. One of them suggested that MM was running the offense the way Smitty wanted, and that some of the offensive woes should fall on him. I'm not debating that here, that's for another time.

In any case, first up is the Falcons have 7 of their last 9 games played in domes. Matt Ryan has an NFL-best 26-6 record in domes since 2008. That's pretty awesome. On second thought, I'm not going to post the second article because it's silly. Basically DOL asks if we're the Raiders of the NFC South because they're always near the top in penalties. While we're 4th worst in penalties this year, we were one of the best in penalties last year. Nevermind that.

USA Today: Tony Gonzalez is, without a doubt, the best tight end to ever play the game. He's broken all kinds of records, including jumping to #2 on the all-time receptions list, but he still has one goal remaining. It doesn't take much to guess what that is. I can only hope we can deliver on his goal. The man deserves it more than anyone.

AHN: John Raffel of All Headline News writes about Matt Ryan proving his value by coming back into the game after his injury on Sunday. I don't think anyone around here would disagree with that. Something I learned in one of these articles was that Matt Ryan wears a brace on his left knee, something he started doing at BC. It could've possibly saved his season after Svitek stepped on him last week.

San Francisco Chronicle: Here is a really cool read about the replay booth officials. It basically explains what goes on during official reviews inside of two minutes and on scoring plays. It's a pretty serious operation up there, and it also talks about the pass interference play that was negated because Corey Peters tipped the ball with his fingernail. Props to the officials for catching that. It was such a slight difference that it's amazing that they were able to tell.

Crescent News: More Ryan praise. It's certainly deserved. The poor guy has taken a number of hits this year and gotten up after every single one. I'm still awestruck in how his ankle wasn't broken. But no, he pops up, is gone two minutes, and trots right back out and proceeds to win the game. Just beautiful.

Random Funny: Some of you younger folks will reminisce with me in saying that this is probably not the best way to teach your kid morals.