NFL Week 1 Notes (Thursday – Sunday)
It’s so great to have NFL football back. I watched the Steelers/Dolphins game on Thursday, then on Sunday I hunkered down for the Falcons/Panthers, the Bucs/Ravens, the Cowboys/Jags, and finally the Colts/Giants.
Here are the thoughts I had:
My Bucs were just embarrassing. They couldn’t block a guy to save their life. Gruden has been in town how many years now and we’re still having to be carried by our defense. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a defensive guy at heart and I want us to be known for our defense. But I’d like to be able to at least score a few points and be respectable on offense. Every year we lose defensive coaches, have to cut defensive players because they are too expensive, and we draft mostly offensive guys. Yet, it never changes.
Props, though, to Steve McNair. He looked pretty good. If he can stay healthy, Baltimore could be a dangerous team.
Miami’s Culpepper looked good at times and appears to be physically back in shape. He made some big mistakes down the stretch, though. If he can work on those, he and Chambers look poised for some big numbers.
The Steelers D picked up right where they left off last season. Charlie Batch looked great in relief of Big Ben. I was a little surprised he was able to pull off that good of a game.
I am definitely not a Vick fan, but I’ll give him credit for having a good game. Game balls for that contest, though, go to Warrick Dunn and John Abraham. Abraham looked scary good and was just unstoppable. Dunn continues to play well above what he’s given credit for. Just behind Derrick Brooks, Dunn is one of my favorite players. I loved him at FSU and in Tampa earlier in his career. Everyone has always said he’s too small and can’t handle being an every-down back. Yet, when given the chance he always shines. Atlanta gave him the ball a lot more often last year and he responded with a career year. Even though many people thought his best days were long past him. Now Duckett is gone and he’s clearly the man. Jerious Norwood is a talented young guy who will take a few carries from Dunn, but it’s still Dunn’s team. To prove it, Dunn comes out of the gate with a big game – 29 carries for 132 yards. 10 more yards receiving.
Jake Delhomme didn’t look happy. Several mini-meltdowns on the sidelines. He was yelling up a storm.
The Jags are for real. I have a group of guys at work that I talk football with all the time. We recently gave our Super Bowl picks and I said I was going to go out on a limb with Jacksonville. It seems crazy because they play in the AFC and would have to beat teams like Pittsburgh, Indy, Cincy, and New England. But I think they can do it. They run the ball well, have an efficient passing offense, and – most importantly – play kickass defense.
Jacksonville’s Matt Jones may have a breakout year this season. He looked pretty good on Sunday.
The Cowboys showed their cracks on Sunday against a tough defense and they were pretty much what people expected. Drew Bledsoe is an older QB and venerable to injury. And that offensive line doesn’t block very well. Even without a T.O. meltdown, they may have trouble making it very far because they will have to face a lot of stout defenses.
Edge found out it’s harder to run in Arizona than it was in Indy. Still, Arizona looked great on offense. Kurt Warner again shows he can play QB very well as long as he’s on his feet.
Norv Turner seems to have brought some offense to San Fran. I’ll be interested to see if that can continue. Frank Gore was a stud.
The Bengals continue to look impressive. If that defense can keep playing well, they are going to be tough to beat. Their offensive line is unbelievable, they have great receivers and Carson Palmer is looking to take his place among the very top QBs like Peyton and Brady.
I’m wondering where KC is going to go with their QB situation. I know they have one of the best running games (and backs) in the league, but if they don’t have even a threat of pass Larry J will find himself running against 9 guys in the box. And I just don’t see Damon Huard providing any sort of passing efficiency. A trade for Volek, maybe? I’m not sure he would be great, but he’d be better than Huard.
Reggie Bush looked impressive in his regular season debut. Better than I thought he would. Of course, he was playing against a pretty crappy Browns team, but 61 yards rushing and 58 yards receiving is more than not bad for a guy who didn’t even start. And McAllister had 22 touches so it wasn’t like Bush got the majority of the plays. He just made the most of his opportunities.
Congrats to Donovan McNabb. He looked great in his first game in the post T.O. era. And Stallworth also looked good. He could have a big year in Philly. Too bad I sat him on the bench on one of my fantasy teams.
Hey, suddenly the Rams have a defense. That could be interesting.
It was a big day for kickers. I noticed several double-digit scoring kickers in my fantasy leagues. Including four field goals for Vinatieri and six for the Rams’ Jeff Wilkins.
The Patriots won a game with a safety? When’s the last time someone won a game with a safety?
That Giants/Colts game was fun to watch. The Colts didn’t look quite as good as last year. The D wasn’t nearly as intimidating and really didn’t hassle Eli like I thought they would. On the flip side, the Giants D line was all over Peyton. That may be because the Colts seemed to miss Edge. Their running game wasn’t remotely good enough to keep the Giants honest. They simply pinned back their ears and came after Peyton.
I was sort of pulling for Eli, but he made some mistakes late in the game just like he did last year. He will have to get better about not trying to force things late in games. But he did look very good hooking up with Plaxico.
The new commish, Roger Goodall, needs to make an immediate impact. He needs to step up this week and put an end to this crap about what constitutes a catch. It was an issue last year and it hasn’t gotten any better. There were two plays in the Cowboys/Jags games that were clearly catches (think one was an INT). I knew it, the players knew it, the announcers knew it, everyone knew it. Except the refs. They overturned both calls, making them incomplete. Not just letting the play stand because they couldn’t make up their mind. The refs actually said they were so positive they weren’t catches that they overturned the original calls.
Now I know there’s some weird rules about what makes a catch a catch. Some junk about a “football move” that’s really just an out that the refs have so that they can say it’s a judgment call. But if the two calls that I saw were technically correct, the rules should be changed. The average fan should be able to know what is and isn’t a catch. We don’t need any impossible to call rules like baseball’s balk rule or the NBA’s illegal defense. A catch is a catch. The two-feet in bounds is easy to understand. Other than that it should just be whether or not he had control of the ball before he went out of bounds or whether or not the ball hit the ground.
Overall, the play was fairly sloppy. I guess that’s to be expected the first week of the season. Offenses just didn’t play nearly as well as they should have. Of course, I’m just bitter because I’m probably going to lose 2 out of my 3 fantasy football games.
After 
