Not a whole lot of news this early in the season. Bruce Arians says out loud what anyone who saw Tom Brady play Sunday was thinking. The Patriots remain one of the most flexible teams, both offensively and defensively, in the NFL. And yet another ex Bear joins Brian Urlacher in the “quite likely brain dead asshole can’t shut up” clan as Mike Ditka apparently doesn’t understand why football players would protest over police brutality.
Here’s your lineup of games:
Thursday, September 17
- Cincinnati Bengals at Cleveland Browns, 8:20 p.m., NFL Network (CLE -6, 43.5)
Sunday, September 20
- Los Angeles Rams at Philadelphia Eagles, 1 p.m., FOX (LAR -1, 45.5)
- Carolina Panthers at Tampa Bay Buccaneers, 1 p.m., FOX (TB -9.5, 48.5)
- Denver Broncos at Pittsburgh Steelers, 1 p.m., CBS (PIT -7.5, 41.5)
- Atlanta Falcons at Dallas Cowboys, 1 p.m., FOX (DAL -4.5, 53)
- San Francisco 49ers at New York Jets, 1 p.m., FOX (SF -7, 42.5)
- Buffalo Bills at Miami Dolphins, 1 p.m., CBS (BUF -5.5, 41)
- Minnesota Vikings at Indianapolis Colts, 1 p.m., FOX (IND -3, 48)
- Detroit Lions at Green Bay Packers, 1 p.m., FOX (GB -6, 49.5)
- New York Giants at Chicago Bears, 1 p.m., CBS (CHI -5.5, 42.5)
- Jacksonville Jaguars at Tennessee Titans, 1 p.m., CBS (TEN -9, 42)
- Washington Football Team at Arizona Cardinals, 4:05 p.m. FOX (ARI -6.5, 46.5)
- Baltimore Ravens at Houston Texans, 4:25 p.m. CBS (BAL -7, 52)
- Kansas City Chiefs at Los Angeles Chargers, 4:25 p.m. CBS (KC -8.5, 47.5)
- New England Patriots at Seattle Seahawks, 8:20 p.m., NBC (SEA -4, 45)
Monday, September 21
- New Orleans Saints at Las Vegas Raiders, 8:15 p.m., ESPN (NO -6, 50.5)
I’m excited to get my first real look at NFL Joe Burrow tonight. And to see just what the hell happened to Baker Mayfield? It sucks that he was Freddie Kitchened, but he looked lost last week. I’m guessing, but I think he might be one of those guys (Tebow, Trubisky, possibly Darnold) who just doesn’t get the mental aspects of the game, from reading defenses to understanding route concepts, and, while he has the physical skills and footballiness coaches love, he won’t develop beyond a great college QB. Or it could just be coaching. Who knows?
I’m lucky enough to get another Packer game locally, which is nice. Too bad it’s against the Lions. I’m hesitant to get too excited by an excellent showing by the offense last week, but they did look pretty darn good. The defense though needs to buckle down, they looked super sloppy in the second half (although I want to attribute that to it being a garbage time lack of effort than anything else). My other local game is Denver/Pittsburgh which I’ll check out long enough to convince myself that the hype behind Drew Lock is only that … hype. Other than that, it looks like a ugly matchup.
Pats/Seahawks could be interesting. I love how Josh McDaniels can completely scrap an offense that he’s run for over a decade and come up with something that plays to his QB’s strengths. It worked last week, but that was against the Dolphins. Should be interesting to see what happens against the Seahawks.
Finally, Monday night isn’t too interesting to me, but I want to see if the Raiders are for real or if they just took advantage of a very, very bad Carolina defense last week.
How about you guys. Thoughts? Dreams? Hopes?