NFL Week One is the Loneliest Number

The Game Room
1

Here we go again. Another year of NFL football. Some major changes in the offseason, none more important than me no longer rooting for the Browns and instead me rooting heartedly against the Browns for giving $230 million dollars to a serial sexual harasser/assaulter who insists he did nothing wrong. I know my nfl allegiances is the #1 story of this NFL offseason. On the plus side, the biggest asshole in sports, Urban Meyer, slunk back into whatever septic system spawned his horrible form and is no longer in the NFL. Little Victories!

Other tidbits: Tom Brady misses 11 days of training camp over either marital issues or an appearance on Masked Singer. The WR market goes absolutely insane. It started with the “braintrust” at the Jags, who started the whole thing by giving a guy (Christian Kirk), who hasn’t had a single 1000 yard season in his career, one of the largest WR contracts in history. This led to inflated WR contracts, including major names being traded (goodbye Davante Adams; Enjoy Tua Tyreek Hill; Good Luck with Jalen Hurts AJ Brown; Good Job suckering the Cards Hollywood Brown) and making bank. And, of course, QB drama as Kyler Murray throws a fit to get a new contract and control over the roster, Russell Wilson leaves Seattle for Denver, and Baker Mayfield gets traded to the Panthers.

And there are a lot of interesting questions to be answered this year. Is the proliferation of mobile QBs with issues in the passing game, like Jalen Hurts, Trey Lance, Daniel Jones, Justin Fields, and Mitchie Trubisky going to lead to a change in NFL play? Can they find success? How much did the aforementioned walking pile of waste Urban Meyer hold back the Jags? Will Trevor Lawrence become a real live NFL quarterback like he was expected to be? Can NFL owners become even more sub-human? Jimmy Haslam and Dan Snyder are setting quite the bar. Oh for the days when billionaires getting handjobs at massage parlors was the owners’ biggest worries.

Enough blather, we have a whole season for that. Here’s your games, and lines, this week:

Thursday, September 8th 7:20 pm

Buffalo Bills (-2.5) at Los Angeles Rams (+2.5)

Sunday, September 9th

Early

New Orleans Saints (-5.5) at Atlanta Falcons (+5.5)
Cleveland Browns (+2.5) at Carolina Panthers (-2.5)
San Francisco 49ers (-6.5) at Chicago Bears (+6.5)
Pittsburgh Steelers (+6.5) at Cincinnati Bengals (-6.5)
Philadelphia Eagles (-3.5) at Detroit Lions (+3.5)
Indianapolis Colts (-7.5) at Houston Texans (+7.5)
New England Patriots (+3.5) at Miami Dolphins (-3.5)
Baltimore Ravens (-6.5) at New York Jets (+6.5)
Jacksonville Jaguars (+3.5) at Washington Commanders (-3.5)

Late

New York Giants (+5.5) at Tennessee Titans (-5.5)
Kansas City Chiefs (-4.5) at Arizona Cardinals (+4.5)
Las Vegas Raiders (+3.5) at Los Angeles Chargers (-3.5)
Green Bay Packers (-1.5) at Minnesota Vikings (+1.5)

Night

Tampa Bay Buccaneers (-1.5) at Dallas Cowboys (+1.5)

Monday Night Football

Denver Broncos (-5.5) at Seattle Seahawks (+5.5)

The NFL starts out with a premier game as everybody and their cousin’s Super Bowl participant prediction Buffalo Bills face the Champion St. Louis (oops, I forgot for a blissful second that Stan Kroenke was an utter lying douchebag), I mean LA Rams. Should be a helluva game and a great start to the season.

Of the Early Sunday games, the Browns v. the Panthers has that “revenge game” sizzle as Baker Mayfield takes the field against the team that would rather have a sexual assaulter than him as their QB. But I’m more interested in the Eagles v. Lions. I’m on the Dan Campbell bandwagon and I’m rooting for the Lions, and I’m fascinated to see if it was just poor WR play that had Jalen Hurts struggling in the passing game.

Of the Late games, clearly the Packer game is of most interest to me, but if I’m honest, the Chiefs/Cardinals game could be so much fun. They might put up 100+ points in that barnburner. Definitely worth a watch.

Sunday night will be interesting too. Seeing if Brady needs to knock off some rust, and if the Cowboys are for real will be intriguing.

Oddly enough, I find the Monday night game likely the most tedious. I get the whole revenge game (See Baker Mayfield), but the Seahawks are not a good team, and the game could be incredibly boring.

So, which games are catching your fantasy. What was your favorite off season story? Who in the NFL do you hate with the fire of a thousand suns? Let’s hear from you.

2

Colts are my boys. A lot of people are giving us no respect in the preseason, but Matt Ryan, I believe, will be a tremendous improvement over Carson Wentz at quarterback. We’re stocked at running back with Johnathan Taylor, and hopefully Shaquille Leonard returns soon from injury. The division is probably ours to lose.

But we need to start by beating teams we should beat, and that includes Week One against the Texans.

3

Meanwhile, the Washington Football Team now has a new name (the Commanders, which no one is really excited about, but it’s definitely better than the old name) and a new QB (Carson Wentz, which people are a bit excited about, as he has more potential than previous QBs) and there’s a feeling that the playoffs, and maybe even a winning record, are in reach.

I think the Commanders at home should handle the Jags without much drama, but we’ll see on Sunday.

4

Oddly enough, I have tickets to the Monday night game. It should be a little wild in person, but I don’t have much hope the Seahawks will actually win the game.

As for who I hate in the NFL, it’s got to be the Stealers. I hated them with I was a Baltimore Colt fan, and I have hated them ever since. Beating the Seahawks in our first Super Bowl didn’t help things.

5

The Cowboys have a depleted O-line, thanks to Jerry and Stephen Jones being Pollyanna-ish as usual, and Dak will get sacked 60 times this season.

6

My landlord and landlady have spent decades watching the Redskins. Last year, the Christmas present I got from them was a MyTowel set. This year, I should get back at them by getting them something that has a Commanders logo on it.

7

Long-suffering Lions fan here. I hope you’re right about Campbell-- I thought his “biting off kneecaps” talk at the start of last season made him sound like a cartoonish WWE heel, and his seemingly constant go-for-it calls on 4th down and 2-point conversion attempts were ridiculous. Yes, many coaches don’t take enough chances, and there’s certainly a time and place to go for it, but Campbell seemed like he was always forcing it.

The anticipation just before the first game of the season is usually the happiest time for a Lions fan before our hopes are once again gradually crushed, but I’m having trouble mustering up even a modicum of season-opener cautious optimism this year.

8

“Loneliest number”?! No way! It’s the only week we’re in first place! LOL

9

How dare you!

Fine, Geno Smith is their starting QB. It is impossible for the team to be any good.

10

Yikes…

11

I haven’t given up on the Ravens yet. (Yes, I’m from near cleveland) but also still love the Chiefs.
I’m hoping a team that did poorly last season will rally and surprise everyone.

12

Just consider last year’s Bengals.

13

The other evening I found myself sitting next to a guy wearing a Steelers shirt. He told me that Pittsburgh would be the surprise team in the AFC this year. I told him that any team with Mitch Trubisky as a starting qb wouldn’t be going anywhere. His argument was that Trubisky wasn’t as bad as his reputation, and that his stats proved it. I pointed out that, in the 50 games he has started, he’s thrown 64 TD passes but has also thrown 38 picks. The counter-argument was that those numbers aren’t that bad.

At that point, I closed the thread.

14

What a trap a middling QB can be.

They aren’t so bad they will be THE reason you lose a lot of games, but they’re also not good enough to be THE reason you win games, either.

Then again, despite his “two year” contract, it’s pretty clear he’s on a one-year deal. He costs almost nothing to cut after this season and gets the equivalent of ‘talented backup’ money even if they keep him for next season.

But, yeah, it takes a real homer to think the Steelers are some kind of sleeper team for whom Mitchell Trubisky is the missing secret sauce. It’s also a bit of an insult to the 1st round QB they drafted this year. Trubisky is clearly in a caretaker, “prove it” contract while the rookie is developing.

15

As a long suffering Buffalo fan I’m really looking forward to this season, It’s nice to actually have a legitimate reason to be optimistic Week 1 :grin: Go Bills!!

16

Nine home underdogs seems like a lot, but I’ll admit I don’t normally look at that kind of thing, just caught my eye.

17

Another Lions “fan” here who thinks 6 wins this season would be amazing. And I liked both his kneecaps attack and ridiculous aggression on 4th down. “Cartoonish” is the right descriptor, but I think more of that would benefit the league.

I’ll never cheer for the Steelers, but I don’t actively hate them as much now that their QB isn’t a rapist. One rapist out of the league, too many more to go.

And for my stupid SB pick, I’ll go with the Chargers. Herbert will continue to mature, solid running back and receivers, good defense. In other words, watch for them to finish out of the playoffs.

18

Well, those wouldn’t have been bad numbers during the Terry Bradshaw era. These days, however…

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Trubisky was the first quarterback taken in the draft that year. The next quarterback taken has 151 touchdowns to 37 interceptions.

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And the one after (rapist though he may be) has 104 TDs to 36 INTs despite playing no games last year and playing on a pretty bad team most of that time.

ETA: To be fair, that’s over 54 games, not 50.

For Mahomes, first 50 games would be 139 TDs to 30 INTs (might be off 1 or 2 either way on those). He had a lot of INTs this last year, so his TD-INT ratio actually got worse last year and still looks like that :open_mouth: