There were some crazy scores yesterday. In the NFL, but also in fantasy leagues. Some players are really good at their craft, and some teams are really bad at stopping it right now. Add in the teams with barely functional quarterbacking, and you get some ugly outcomes in the league and fantasy. Hope you were on the right side more than wrong.
Jaguars at Panthers: The season Christian McCaffrey is having is kind of ridiculous. Breakaways, twisting leaping touchdowns, catches. He's the offense. ... Can't explain Greg Olsen not catching any passes. Show the guy some love. ... Huge game for DJ Chark, good games for Westbrook and Fournette.
Cardinals at Bengals: Hey, called this one. In a best-ball league I had both David Johnson and handcuff Chase Edmonds in my lineup, unexpected. Big game for Tyler Boyd, as expected. Not a great game for Cardinals receivers. Auden Tate scored but also dropped a touchdown. OK but not great for Joe Mixon. Lack of touchdowns not helping. Andy Dalton is putting up some occasional late-game production in a lost cause.
Falcons at Texans: We knew the Falcons defense was bad and the Texans would light them up via the pass. 50-plus is pushing it. Monster game for Will Fuller, not leaving a lot for anyone else. Guy is great. Deshaun Watson too obvs. Meanwhile Matt Ryan also put up huge numbers, again, in a one-sided loss. Interesting season for the Falcons, who look like they're going to have a lot more high-scoring losses this season. Start players against Atlanta, there's your free advice.
Bucs at Saints: Perhaps Teddy Bridgewater heard the criticism and responded, or maybe he just ran into a Bucs defense that isn't too good. Anyway, huge games for Bridgewater and Michael Thomas, touchdown for Ted Ginn, decent PPR game for Alvin Kamara, Saints win again. For the Bucs, Mike Evans shutout by Marshon Lattimore and company while Chris Godwin went wild, again. Run game didn't happen. Somebody started O.J. Howard against me. Don't know why anyone is still starting O.J. Howard.
Vikings at Giants: Tough game to watch if you had Sterling Shepard going. He was wide open on a couple of occasions, including for a touchdown, and Daniel Jones overthrew him. Even tougher if you started Wayne Gallman, since he suffered a first-quarter concussion and that was it for him and the ground game. Nice game for Kirk Cousins and a couple of scores for Adam Thielen, squeaky wheel theory lives on, plus the fact that the Giants have a really bad pass defense.
Bears vs. Raiders: Unexpected. Big game for Josh Jacobs. The Bears seem to be underachieving these days, not to take anything away from the Raiders, who won with basically no wide receivers and not much of a defense, which evidently they'll be doing most of the season when they win. Not a bad game for Chase Daniel, but not good enough (and David Montgomery also didn't have too pretty a statistical outing).
Jets at Eagles: New York's season is a nice primer on the importance of having a viable backup quarterback. Yes, their actual backup Trevor Siemian also got hurt, but Siemian probably should be a No. 3 himself. Anyhoo, Jets offense was predictably hopeless but LeVeon Bell racked up some junk PPR stats and Adam Gase looked cross on the sidelines, as is his wont. Do you think he spends time thinking fondly of working with Peyton Manning? Going for the Dolphins to the Jets is kind of a lateral move. Not as good stats as you might have liked from the Eagles, although at least Ertz, Jeffrey and Howard got you something in the laugher. A reminder (running counter to most every Dolphins and Washington game this year) that sometimes starting too many players against a lousy team doesn't work out, because that team gifts the other a couple of defensive scores. I'll look at the numbers later in the week but I'm thinking defensive touchdowns are up.
Ravens at Steelers: Typical Ravens-Steelers games, with big plays, field goals, and drama. Mason Rudolph knocked out, somebody named Devlin Hodges came in and nearly led the team to victory. James Conner scored, JuJu Smith-Schuster scored, too bad he also cost the team dearly with an overtime fumble to set up Baltimore's game-winning field goal. Marquise Brown banged-up for Baltimore, he'd be missed if he weren't around. Baltimore gets the win, hope nobody dropped Justin Tucker this week.
Bills at Titans: Do these teams ever play without everyone thinking about the Music City Miracle? Or just me? Titans seemingly going for the winning touchdown in this one but had a couple of possible winners erased by penalties, then had a field goal blocked. Bills marched the field and Duke Williams, started in probably zero percent of fantasy leagues, caught the winning touchdown. Buffalo apparently going to win with defense and good fortune, not a great fantasy recipe, though Josh Allen's final numbers at least serviceable, John Brown too. One of those erased TDs for the Titans was by Derrick Henry, sorry if you lost a close one with him.
Patriots at Washington: Had to be a better use of everyone's time than this game. Decent one for Edelman, White, and yeah Tom Brady. Washington's lone touchdown scored by a guy not rostered anywhere on a jet sweep. Not enough garbage points for Chris Thompson. Terry McLaurin healthy, at least, so fire him up at Miami next week. New England might like Damien Harris later in the year, I'm still clinging to that. But for now they're content to let Brandon Bolden score touchdowns.
Broncos at Chargers: After not getting any breaks in a couple of heartbreaking losses, the Broncos got a few here including the Chargers repeatedly shooting themselves in the foot. It's what they do sometimes. Austin Ekeler had a ridiculous PPR day, Melvin Gordon and Keenan Allen and Philip Rivers all disappointed. Courtland Sutton had one big play (aided by a couple of blown tackles) for his nice game, Phillip Lindsay looked good. Chargers will be wondering what happened this week.
Packers at Cowboys: So huge game for Aaron Jones, as in 47 points in one of my leagues. On my bench. Dallas defense let down big-time against the run, with the result being that the passing game did very little; no touchdowns for Aaron Rodgers, a total of 4 catches for Allison, Valdes-Scantling and our possible sleeper Jake Kumerow. Green Bay wideouts did nothing, that was a surprise. Dallas put up huge passing numbers, enough so you might think Dak Prescott had a good game. He didn't, but I guess those who started him or his main wideouts need not care. Those guys were awesome.
Colts at Kansas City: Damn weird game. Colts worked the ground game with supposedly banged-up Marlon Mack looking about as good as I've ever seen him. Kansas City lost Sammy Watkins early and Patrick Mahomes took a couple of ugly looking hits. Mahomes now on pace for 35 touchdowns btw. But: Kansas City still had a lot of near misses in this game. Almost touchdown to Demarcus Robinson, barely overthrown. Almost touchdown to Damien Williams, nice throw but well-defended (and he's Damien Williams, not many running backs make that catch). Colts have the line to win that kind of game, not everyone does. But there was some good fortune involved. Kansas City-Houston next week (and Houston's got the better defense there, too).
Monday, Monday: Well, what can Monday give us for an encore. Odell Beckham and Nick Chubb and Baker Mayfield on one side, and San Francisco's weird running back and wide receiver committee and George Kittle on the other. Had a big week in a couple of leagues with Kittle still going, hurrah. I think San Francisco takes this one 24-20, but we probably won't be fortunate enough to get a game that good. We can hope.