BOOM! Week 1!

Back in business and it feels so good!  The long, cold, dark offseason is finally over and it is football season again!!  Week 1 certainly did not disappoint as there was one OT game, five teams scoring 40 points or more, and the Cowboys whipping the Giants in Giants’ Stadium.  Ain’t nothing wrong with that!

In the fantasy world, everyone had to be impressed with the debut of Robert Griffin III.  It’s odd to say that he’s the second coming of a player who is only in his second year, but I’m going to go ahead and say that he is clearly the second coming of Cam Newton.  Also, it looks like the pundits were right about Julio Jones… that guy could prove to be a major stud this year.

But the big congrats this week go to BoomGoesTheDynamite!  All week Jens has been boasting about how awesome his team is, and he went out and proved it.  Boom had huge games from Tony Romo (23 pts), the aforementioned Julio Jones (22 pts), and Ray Rice (20 pts), finishing with a total of 117 points and besting the second highest scoring team of the week (Midnight Maulers) by only 2 points.  How the top two scoring teams were matched up head-to-head is beyond me.  That’s just tough luck, Jamie… normally scoring 115 points will garner a victory.  But nice job, Jensy!!  We’ll see if you can keep it up throughout the season…

This week we’ll examine which NFL team scored the most fantasy points, give out the first Best Bench of the season, and I give my take on the whole replacement ref situation.  But first, some player observations:

THAT’S THE WAY YOU DEBATE!

-Matt Ryan, QB – 31 pts – Midnight Maulers – There was not much that Matty Ice did wrong, throwing for 299 yards and 3 touchdowns, along with 25 yards rushing and a rushing TD!
-C.J. Spiller, RB – 25 pts – Coors Light Drunk Guys – No one could have predicted this one… Spiller rattled off 169 yards on the ground and 25 yards through the air, and added a touchdown.  Had he not lost a fumble, he would have ended up with the best score in the game – 27.

-Robert Griffin III, QB – 24 pts – SOFA KING GOOD – I’ll be honest, I didn’t believe the hype.  But 362 total yards and 2 touchdowns does a lot to change minds.

-Baltimore, DEF – 24 pts – Scottish Rebels – Continuing the list of the best players of the week being on the bench, the Ravens absolutely destroyed the Bengals with 4 sacks, 2 turnovers, a touchdown and only 13 points allowed.  Spoiler alert – they won’t be on the bench in Week 2.

-Cleveland, DEF – 24 pts – Free Agent – Cleveland gave Philadelphia all they could handle, notching 5 turnovers (4 interceptions and 1 fumble recovery), 2 sacks and a defensive touchdown.

SON OF A … WHAT THE?!?

-Mason Crosby, K – 2 pts – Coors Light Drunk Guys – The high-powered Green Bay offense only managed to have Crosby kick 2 extra points.  Ouch.

-Toby Gerhart, RB – 1 pt – Scottish Rebels – All week long, heck, all off-season long, word was that AP would play sparingly in the Week 1 game for the Vikings.  Turns out the only thing you could apply sparingly to in that game were Gerhart’s touches, and his ability to play football.  He finished with only 18 rushing yards and 8 receiving yards.  Go suck your head.

-Jason Witten, TE – 1 pt – Coors Light Drunk Guys – For a guy with a ruptured spleen, he actually played pretty well.  Seriously, Jason Lowery missed a week of work due to a hangover, but Jason Witten played in an NFL game with a ruptured spleen!  Now that’s a man!  (See the item below further highlighting Witten’s toughness).

WHAT’S IN A NAME?

Scoring a touchdown for the Lions on Sunday was a gentleman by the name of Joique Bell.  I am continually amazed and impressed by the unique names that black people come up with.  (LaDainian, Demarius, D’Brickashaw, etc.)  But this one is extra unique because I don’t even know how to pronounce it… is it two syllables – Joy-key, Joy-kay, Joke-y, Joy-cue? -- or is it just one syllable – Joik, Jock? – or maybe it’s three syllables – Joe-eye-kay, Joe-eye-cue?  Frankly I’m too lazy to research this one, so I’m just going with the one syllable option.

WHO IS THE BEST TEAM IN REALITY?

Through the magic of spreadsheets and pivot tables, I am going to be tracking the fantasy scoring by NFL team this season.  Ultimately I want to see if the team that scores the most points in the actual games also scores the most fantasy points.  The scores listed below encompass all offensive players that score a fantasy point, along with all kickers and team defenses.  For Week 1, here are the top 5 scoring NFL teams by actual game points:

1)      NY Jets – 48

2)      Baltimore – 44

3)      Chicago – 41

4)      Washington – 40

5)      Atlanta – 40

And here are the top 5 scoring NFL teams by fantasy points:

1)      Baltimore – 123

2)      Chicago – 122

3)      NY Jets – 116

4)      Washington – 115

5)      Atlanta – 114

So for Week 1, the top five scoring teams in the actual games were also the top five fantasy scoring teams, although in a slightly different order.  Not super surprising, but I’ll continue to track this all season long.  Also, if you are curious about the worst teams fantasy point-wise, they are: Seattle (59), Cincinnati (53), Miami (53), Cleveland (53) and Tennessee (49).

TOUGHEST COWBOY

Three cowboys were sitting around a campfire and starting arguing over who was the toughest.  The first cowboy said, “Just last week I was walking down a trail and a 15-foot rattler slid out from under a rock and made a move for me.  I grabbed that ol’ boy, ripped his head off, and sucked down the poison in one gulp.  And I’m still here today!” The second cowboy said, “Ah that’s nothing… just yesterday a bull got loose in the corral and gored six men before I got there, wrestled it down, and tied it up with my bare hands!”  The third cowboy just sat there quietly, slowly stirring the coals with his penis.

That third cowboy was Jason Witten.

GET OFF YOUR KNEES REF, YOU’RE BLOWING THE GAME!

In case you haven’t heard about it incessantly for the last 5 weeks, the NFL is currently using replacement referees due to a labor dispute with the regular referees’ labor union.  I’ve been doing some research to try to figure out exactly where the two sides are in the debate, but details are surprising scarce.  As near as I can tell, the refs want more money and a better pension, while the NFL wants to give not quite as much money and move to a 401-k retirement plan option.  (One report that I saw showed that the refs’ current average salary is $149K, and under the NFL’s proposal this would rise to $189K annually, which apparently isn’t enough.) 

As Timmy can surely attest, I have always had a healthy disdain for referees which really reached its pinnacle during my college years while attending NMSU basketball games.  I developed what I affectionately referred to as my “Referee Yelling Voice” at those games.  So here’s my take on this issue… Are the replacement refs going to make mistakes?  Absolutely.  But the regular refs make just as many!  (Remember the officiating when the Seahawks were in the Superbowl a couple years ago?  Freaking joke.)  In my opinion all refs suck and are going to blow calls, so I say use the refs that actually want to work the games.  Simple solution.  Replacements all the way!!

NEXT TIME GET THREE TOUCHDOWNS

After Kevin Ogletree’s awesome game on Wednesday night against the Giants, the Yahoo! Trend Tracker showed that he had been added 73,103 times on Thursday!  The amazing thing is that it also showed that he had been dropped 876 times.  Apparently 114 yards and two touchdowns just doesn’t cut it for some people… 

INAUGURAL BEST BENCH

My Scottish Rebels really gave quite a push to take the Best Bench title for the first week of the season.  With a runningback scoring 20 and a defense scoring 24 on the bench, I should have had it all wrapped up.  But the Coors Light Drunk Guys had other plans this week, and edged me out for the crown with a 41 point improvement, besting my Rebels improvement by 1!!  Shawn needed almost a complete roster overhaul…five changes for the Best Bench: CJ Spiller for C. Johnson (+21 pts), M. Bush for M. Jones-Drew (+8 pts), B. Celek for J. Witten (+5 pts), N. Washington for A. Brown (+4 pts) and M. Floyd for M. Wallace (+3 pts).

Get your waiver claims in, get your rosters set, and get ready for Week 2!!