Sacred Sundays is back for our 21st season overall, as well as the 8th season with all the same teams! Well, there have been some new names surfacing (J LUV U LONG TIME, Luck of the Irish, NASCAR Café Honey Mustard, Joe’s No Pats) so not necessarily the same teams, but eight seasons with all of the same owners. James begins his title defense run, with the aptly named “Sofa King”, and Jens has got to be hoping to come in first this season after the runner-up finish last year. Only two teams have ever gone back-to-back…American BadAss in 2007-08 and Joe’s Pats in 2017-18. Last year’s defending champion, Young Guns, ended up finishing in 7th. Two years ago though, Joe’s Pats nearly repeated as champs having won in 2021, but then finishing 2nd in 2022. On the flip side, John, Russ, Timmy and Rob were the four bottom finishers last season and the four teams who did not make the playoffs. Redemption season for at least one of you, I’m sure. Out of all ten teams in the league, only two teams have yet to claim a Sacred Sundays championship: sprouts and Wyld Ass Monkeys. Russ has two runner-up finishes and Rob’s best finish has been 4th. Can’t wait to see how things shake out this season!
The big congrats to open the season go to American BadAss who overcame a bit of a slow start but came roaring back to finish with a mighty solid score of 120 points! Led by Joe Mixon (25 pts), Dallas D (23 pts) and kicker Brandon Aubrey (21 pts), Jason took down a tough opponent in Big Sack No TDs by a final score of 120-110. Last year in Week 1, Wyld Ass Monkeys scored 104 points in a losing effort. Brutal to see 100+ point scorers lose in Week 1 for two years straight! Last season, scoring over 100 points led to victory 83.3% of the time and since 2007 scoring over 100 points wins 86.7% of the time. Scoring was pretty evenly distributed between divisions with the South outscoring the North 466-450 for Week 1.
Alright so lets jump right into this with a draft recap, player observations and of course, the Best Bench!
BIG TIME
-Josh Allen, QB – Scottish Rebels – 30 pts – The big man delivers in a big way, racking up 232 passing yards and 2 TD’s, plus 39 yards rushing and 2 more rushing TD’s!
-Saquon Barkley, RB – Big Sack No TDs – 30 pts – What a day for the ‘Quon as he tallied 109 rushing yards, 2 TD’s plus 23 receiving yards and another TD. He is the first Eagle to score 3 TD’s in his debut game since T.O. did it in 2004.
-Baker Mayfield, QB – Free Agent – 29 pts – Baker should be a hot commodity on the waiver wire if he can keep scoring like this! Finished with 289 yards and 4 TD’s! He only had 6 incompletions in 30 pass attempts. (Caveat – He was playing the Commanders. Much tougher week next week against Detroit.)
-Jayden Reed, WR – American BadAss – 28 pts – He only caught 4 passes but he made them count, going for 138 yards and a TD, plus adding a single rush attempt for 33 yards and a TD. Not bad for a 9th round wide receiver.
-Jayden Daniels, QB – Sofa King – 27 pts – Daniels did his damage on the ground, where he got 88 yards and 2 TD’s to go along with 184 passing yards. He faces the Giants in Week 2, so he could be poised for another big outing.
COME ON MAN
-Cincinnati, DEF – Joe’s No Pats – 2 pts – Disappointing performance when going against New England, where they only managed 1 sack, and gave up 16 points.
-D.K. Metcalf, WR – Big Sack No TDs – 2 pts – Nothing ever really got going for Metcalf as he caught 3 balls for just 29 yards.
-Mark Andrews, TE – Wyld Ass Monkeys – 1 pt – Just 2 catches for 14 yards, and his counterpart, Isaiah Likely, had a monster game.
-Amon-Ra St. Brown, WR – Joe’s No Pats – 1 pt – Well, he got the ball thrown his way 6 times, caught 3 of them, but only managed 13 yards. Oof.
-Drake London, WR – sprouts – 1 pt – Just 15 yards on two catches. One week is too early to panic, but dang, Atlanta did not look great.
-Dalton Kincaid, TE – Luck of the Irish – 1 pt – Kincaid just wasn’t involved in the Bills offense to start the season, catching just one ball for 11 yards.
-Chris Olave, WR – Sofa King – 1 pt – Derek Carr threw for 200 yards and 3 TD’s, but somehow only 2 were thrown to Olave, and for just 11 of those yards. Weird.
“I would punch myself in the nuts many, many, many times to be able to draft him” – Bill Belichick (probably) on the possibility of drafting Bo Jackson.
2024 DRAFT TIDBITS
-All NFL teams had at least two players selected in this year’s draft.
-The Kansas City Chiefs were the most selected team, with 10 total players drafted. (NASCAR Café Honey Mustard led the way with 7 of these picks).
-Three teams had 7 players selected: Houston, Miami and Philadelphia.
-Four teams only had 2 players selected: Denver, New England, New Orleans and New York Giants.
-Five teams had a player in every position selected: Kansas City, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Buffalo and Dallas.
-There were 20 quarterbacks selected. You would think that means every team drafted two, but you’d be wrong. American BadAss selected 3 QB’s and NASCAR Café only had one. (When Patrick Mahomes is your QB, you don’t need anything else).
-Two teams selected 6 wide receivers: Wyld Ass Monkeys and NASCAR Café.
-Three teams selected 2 defenses: Luck of the Irish, American BadAss, and J LUV U LONG TIME.
-Thankfully, no backup kickers were selected this year.
YAHOO DRAFT GRADES
Yahoo may need to recalibrate it’s grading criterion. This season’s three highest draft grades (Wyld Ass Monkeys ‘A+’, Sofa King ‘A+’ and Big Sack No TDs ‘A’) all lost in Week 1 and the three lowest grades (J LUV U LONG TIME ‘F’, NASCAR Café Honey Mustard ‘D-‘ and American BadAss ‘D’) all won. One week is certainly not enough to draw any conclusions, but dang! Also, Yahoo hilariously predicts final records with the top prediction going to Sofa King with a predicted record of 9-1-4. Yahoo predicts four ties from you James! Since 2007, a single team having multiple ties has happened only 5 times, and that was those teams finishing with 2 ties.
WEEK 1 UNWANTED DOMINATION
QB – Baker Mayfield, TB – 29 pts
WR – Allen Lazard, NYJ – 20 pts
WR – Jameson Williams, DET – 19 pts
RB – Alexander Mattison, LV – 11 pts
RB – Jamaal Williams, NO – 10 pts
TE – Isaiah Likely, BAL – 17 pts
K – Chris Boswell, PIT – 26 pts
DEF – Chicago – 28 pts
Total = 160 pts
LET’S HEAR IT FOR THE KICKERS!
Last season there were only 7 instances of a kicker scoring over 20 points, and the highest single week score from a kicker was 24. In just one week this season, we see FOUR kickers score over 20 points, with two beating last season's highest: Chris Boswell (26), Jake Moody (26), Blake Grupe (22) and Brandon Aubrey (21). Moody made six field goals including 2 from 50+, and Boswell also made six with 3 from 50+! This is the kind of kicker production I can get behind!
BEST BENCH
For being only the first week of the season, team management was strong this week with seven teams having just single-digit bench improvements this week. This week’s winner had a historic Best Bench, as it is something which has only happened 10 times previously with the most recent being 5 years ago in 2019. The feat accomplished was being both the Weekly High Score winner and the Best Bench. Exactly five years ago, Attack of Mahomes did it with a high score of 112 and a bench improvement of +36, and now this time it is American BadAss with a high score of 120 and a bench improvement possibility of +28 points! Jason needed to swap just two players to get there… J. Reed for T. Dell +23 and J. Conner for K. Williams +5. Nice work bro! Dominating starting rosters and the bench!
Get your waivers in and get ready for Week 2!
No comments:
Post a Comment