Monday Morning Pleighbook: Brock Osweiler welcomes you to BROCKTOBER

Brock Osweiler has given us plenty to laugh about during his NFL career. On Sunday, nobody was laughing about our newfound and inevitably short quarterback sensation — Brocktober.

Osweiler was named the Dolphins’ starter against the Bears with Ryan Tannehill injured. An Osweiler start combined with a red-hot Khalil Mack on the other side of the football made it seem like it was about to be open season on That Ass.

However, that was not the case. Osweiler completed 28 of his 44 passes for 380 yards, three touchdowns, and two picks. The 31 points the Dolphins scored were the most by a team with Osweiler as the starter. Two of his touchdown passes went to the pride of Georgia State University, Albert Wilson, who proved himself to be the YAC God, racking up 155 total receiving yards.

The two were an unlikely dynamic duo, but that had more to do with Osweiler (being Not Good) than Wilson. In fact, we’re going to have to start calling Wilson “Scissors” because he showed he’s got all the cuts.

There’s just not a lot of players in the NFL that are going to make this play:

And then there was this 75-yarder, on which Wilson evaded five Bears in close quarters and outran the rest:

That play gave Wilson the two biggest plays after the catch this NFL season, with the other coming in Week 3 against the Raiders. Those plays also helped Brocktober live, though Kenyan Drake’s goal-line fumble nearly killed it. While that could have gotten Osweiler in a bind, he showed some leadership in the moment:

Osweiler’s career has been weird. Because of his height that nobody will let you forget about, and being Peyton Manning’s backup, a lot of folks figured he could end up being good. That certainly hasn’t been the case.

He turned down offers from the Broncos to be Peyton Manning’s replacement after Super Bowl 50. His patience paid off when he signed a meaty $72 million contract with the Texans over four years, which resulted in an 8-6 record and some doo doo performances, including a Monday Night Football game where he threw a fumble for seven yards and had just 131 yards on 41 pass attempts. The Texans realized that contract was awful after a season, and dumped him off to the Browns, who also wanted nothing to do with him, and cut him.

Sunday’s game is going to be the moment Osweiler shares with the grandkids. He’ll probably make Khalil Mack sound like the greatest athlete in the history of time and go on about how he was able to evade his terror. The Bears will probably be described as if they were playing up to 1985 standards, if not better assuming Trubisky becomes the best quarterback in franchise history (it’s a low bar).

In reality, Albert Wilson did a lot of the heavy lifting, and the Bears aren’t any of those things. Osweiler is still the quarterback best known for some of the worst games in NFL history, his height, and an all-time bad tattoo.

That’s also what made Brocktober so much fun. Nobody saw it coming.

Nathan Peterman won’t go away, and nobody’s going to complain — except maybe Bills fans.

Peterman entered the game after Josh Allen fell to injury, and he almost had us fooled. After throwing the go-ahead touchdown and the Texans scored an equalizer, The Peter Man showed his true colors with a pick-six:

That’s the Peter Man we know and love. He gave us more too, by throwing another interception just moments later. We got a full Peter Man experience.

Time for Bills head coach Sean McDermott’s expert evaluation after such a tough loss andddd:

He also made some bad ones!

This might be the dreadlock tackle of all dreadlock tackles. Jadeveon Clowney, a wearer of dreadlocks, had a brutal takedown of Chris Ivory. It literally looks like Clowney is doing that casual tug of the cord to unplug a vacuum cleaner when you’re done with it, because pulling the outlet from the wall is simply too much effort.

If you’re Ivory, you can be proud in this moment, despite the initial bad look. You have to have some damn good and strong hair to not lose that dreadlock at the hands of Clowney.

Though I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s got a slight headache today.

We’d probably be talking about this phenomenal catch by JuJu Smith-Schuster more had he been given the touchdown for it. However, that doesn’t change how nice it was, as he was able to corral the ball from Darqueze Dennard to set up an eventual James Conner touchdown:

And while we’re on the subject of Steelers players embarrassing Bengals...

Conner got Shawn Williams out of the paint, and pushed Vontaze Burfict into Jessie Bates with seemingly no effort.

He made it look so easy, too. It was a small part of his 111-yard, two touchdown day in their win that got them back in the AFC North race.

Le’Veon Bell is expected to make his return next week for the Steelers. He’s undoubtedly one of the best backs in the game, but the way Conner has been playing, he’s still got to get some burn. There’s not many guys throwing around the Vontaze Burficts of the world like that.

It wouldn’t be surprising if the Falcons would have lost on this play. In fact, it would be a fitting addition to a long list of bullshit ways the Falcons have lost games over the years.

Speaking as a Falcons fan, I’m glad they didn’t. This play is being regarded as pretty dumb, because it didn’t work — but it almost did.

Had it worked, we’d probably be calling Dirk Koetter a gutsy play-caller and a genius.

We’re not doing that.

Kirk Cousins got a rushing touchdown — that’s not a typo — and celebrated the best way he didn’t know how to:

After the game, Cousins said he was comfortable and honest about his “limitations as a dancer” while adding, “I was asking Diggsy about his dance … and didn’t really know what he was trying to do, and I tried to do both of them after the rushing touchdown.

The most important takeaway here: we’ve learned that Kirk Cousins refers to Stefon Diggs as “Diggsy.”

First, to set down some facts — Conor McGregor is Irish. American football is far from being an international sport.

With that said, we can still laugh at how McGregor threw this football with no stitches, from the middle of the ball, and like it weighed 40 pounds soaking wet:

John Elway would still probably sign him over whoever the best free agent quarterback available is.

Shazier suffered one of the more frightening injuries in recent memory last season when he went down on what appeared to be a routine play against the Bengals.

Fast forward to this season, and Shazier made his way back to Cincinnati, where he was able to thank many of the people who initially cared for him after his injury at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center.

“Coming back is kind of scary sometimes, so I’m actually happy to be here and see everyone’s face and I just want to let you guys know that I’m doing really well and I’m thankful,” Shazier told the staff who cared for him for two days before he traveled back to Pittsburgh for spinal stabilization surgery.

It’s been a long process for Shazier, who hopes to play football again one day. He’s also mentioned in the very tweet above that he has a ways to go to get to that point.

His injury is a reminder of how dangerous football is and how quickly careers can change. At the same time, his recovery has been nothing short of inspirational.