Football season is finally here for realsies. This is the first time we’ve started a season without Tom Brady and Peyton Manning since 1997. Although since Manning only missed one season opening a few years ago, you can substitute Brady for anyone who started in 2011.
This is the first year we’ve started a season without Peyton Manning or Christian Ponder since 1997. Still, it feels weird.
We’re still looking for people to join our Pick 'em and Survival leagues. If you miss that before tonight missing one game isn’t really a big deal, you can still join. In fact missing a week isn’t even a big deal - we drop the worst weeks in case someone misses one entirely.
I’m very intrigued by tonight’s game. Mostly I want to see how Cam recovers from the beating he took at the Super Bowl.
Personally, I think Cam is going to regress quite a bit this year. Just looking at his raw stats from last year, he really racked up the stats against bad defensive teams. His five touchdown/300 yards passing games were against the Saints (worst PPG team in the league last year), the Giants (3rd worst), and Washington’s professional football team (16th). He also had good games against the Bucs (7th worst), Titans (6th worst), and Atlanta (19th). His defense got him 39 turnovers last year (best in the NFL, 6 more than the next highest team), and that doesn’t include the whopping 7 they got him in the playoff game against the Cards last year.
Carolina has the 12th most difficult schedule this year. They’ll have to face some pretty good (presumptively) defenses this year, including the Broncos/Chiefs/Vikings/Cards. He’ll still get to feast on the the Bucs, Falcons and Chargers, but I think it will be a tougher year for him this year. I think he’ll go back to what he usually is: 3400 yards, 20 td’s, mid 80’s passer rating and be in the 7th -12th highest rated QB.
A lot when very right for him last year, it will be interesting to see how this year goes.
Then explain the personal foul on #68 for Carolina. It wasn’t a late hit, because he was the first Panther to touch the Denver player who intercepted the pass. And it couldn’t have been unnecessary roughness, because he did his best to roll over the guy, even though a Denver player was tackling him.