NFL Week 2 Review

This was a week of unbelievable drama. I am referring of course to my Fantasy team. I had made a couple of changes to my winning team from week one. I had brought in Eli Mitchell from the 49ers as a running back, once I heard that because of injuries to others he was their primary running back. The way the 49ers scheme up running plays and block as a whole team, I would back myself to make a few yards playing running back for them, so I thought he would be a good one to add to the squad on a waiver for a few weeks at least. I thrust him straight into the starting line up as one of three running backs, along with Mixon and Edwards-Helaire. That meant dropping one of my wide receivers to the bench, I chose Woods from the Rams, who had been steady in week one but unspectacular. So my only receivers were Tyler Lockett and Sterling Shepard – who got my team off to a solid start by scoring seventeen and a half points in the Thursday night game against Washington. The other big call I made was swapping my quarterbacks over, bringing Herbert off the bench to start instead of Tannehill. That was partly because Herbert had been the more impressive of the two in week one, but also because he was playing Dallas at home, whilst Tannehill was travelling to Seattle.

The projected scores had me down for a comfortable thirty point victory over my opponent Dayne. That prediction was due in part to the fact that Dayne still had Odell Beckham in his starting line-up, despite the fact that he would not be playing because of injury. Clearly not everybody is taking this as seriously as I am.

I was confident as Sunday’s games started, especially with Shepard’s points already in the bag. As soon as the action started though I had the feeling that it was going to be far from plain sailing. With Carolina’s defence and their wide receiver DJ Moore, along with running back Damien Harris from New England in his ranks, Dayne got off to the better start and not only was he ahead on current scores, but the projected final score at times had him in front too. This caused me to be checking my app several times throughout the evening, it seemed like each time I checked the team projected to win had changed. Every time one of our players did something significant it put us back in front.

It was starting to look like an embarrassing defeat to a team with a player missing, until the later games started, and Tyler Lockett started catching passes for Seattle. He was my star man with over thirty-one points, almost singlehandedly dragging me back to being on pace to win. Each week the doubts are about two things, whether my team will win, and perhaps more stressfully whether I have selected the highest scoring options from my squad. Herbert was doing nicely against Dallas in the game I was watching on Sky, but was not lighting it up from a fantasy point of view, so that left me thinking that Tannehill could catch fire in Seattle and end up scoring significantly more. As it happened, they both scored over fourteen points, with Herbert scoring about a quartre of a point more. The only mistake I made was dropping Woods whose twelve points was more than each of the three running backs that I went with.

My match was going to come down to what happened in the game where Kansas City went to Baltimore in the late game. I had Kelce and Edwards Helaire, but Dayne had Mahomes and their kicker Butker. Kelce lived up to being my number one pick once again, scoring just under twenty four points. Edwards-Helaire was disappointing though, scoring only two point six points. When I woke up just before seven o’clock in the morning, having stayed up until after one o’clock to watch the end of the Cowboys v Chargers game, the first thing I did was check the fantasy score. Despite twenty-four points by Mahomes we had done enough to hang on to win by two pint eight points. For a while there the dream of an unbeaten season looked under serious threat, but they say it is a sign of a good team that can win when they do not play well.

In the real league there were some fantastic games. That late night game saw the Ravens host the Chiefs and beat them 36-35. The Chiefs just could not stop the Ravens running, including their lightening fast quarterback Lamar Jackson. Tennessee looked like they were determined to make my bet on them look stupid, when they trailed in Seattle and looked like another hammering was coming their way. From the highlights it looked like a case of their running back Derrick Henry getting angry at the thought of losing the first two games of the season, several big plays from him helped them come back to tie the game and then win it in over time. Whilst the other team that are carrying the burden of my five pounds, the Rams, produced a decent win in Indianapolis.

The first game on Sky was San Francisco in Philadelphia, it was never going to be a high scoring thriller, but there was plenty of intrigue from me watching the game unfold. In the end the 49ers ground out a 17-11 win over the Eagles. Over in the AFC amazingly only two teams remain unbeaten after just the first two games of the season. Almost as amazing is that those two teams are the Las Vegas Raiders who produced their second win against a top team by winning in Pittsburgh and the Denver Broncos who efficiently dismissed Jacksonville.

The Panthers defence impressed as they limited the Saints to just seven points in beating them. Buffalo bounced back from their surprising opening day defeat to batter the Dolphins in Miami by 35-0. Whilst I watched the Cowboys edge out the Chargers 20-17, the highlights on the redzone were being dominated by a thriller as the Cardinals eventually edged out the Vikings 34-33, with the Vikings missing a kick to win it in the last seconds.

Tom Brady continues not to look like he has gone to Florida to retire, throwing five touchdown passes as his Tampa Bay offensive machine overwhelmed the Falcons 48-25. Meanwhile Brady’s old team were producing a 25-6 in New York against the Jets, the sort of win that the Patriots used to produce so many times each season. It will be interesting to see whether they can creep into play-off contention with the sort of no frills football that so many of their successful years were based on.

Before all that Washington were in the limelight, I was playing golf early the next morning, so I did not stay up to watch what turned out to be a bit of a thriller. Washington missing a kick in the dying seconds to win the game, only for the Giants to be flagged for offside, giving Washington another chance to take the field goal. As almost always seems to happen in that scenario, the second kick sailed through the uprights and Washington had their dramatic win over a divisional rival. There were plenty of complaints that the offside penalty was harsh. I always love hearing people complain about a call that has gone in favour of my team in any sport, because they never complain like that when my team has lost.

On Monday night football Green Bay rounded off week two by beating Detroit. That was a bounce back from Green Bay after their big loss in New Orleans the previous week, but it has to be noted that the win was ‘only’ against Detroit, who are still stuck close to the bottom of everybody’s ‘power rankings’.