Growing up in the 80s, I remember a lot of high-scoring games. I was rooting for the Lynn Dickey Packers, and the games that stood out were a 48-47 Monday nighter against Washington and a 50-48 battle with the Bears. Think there was a slugfest with the Chargers in there. I thought of those days while watching Kansas City-New England last night, and each week where multiple teams are scoring 180-200 points in my fantasy leagues. It's an interesting (alarming? absurd?) time in the NFL.
Fantasy drafts are going to be interesting next year. Do you wait on quarterbacks? Or do you leap for one of handful of big producers early? Does everyone need to go to auctions so there's a fair shot at Todd Gurley, who's single-handedly winning matchups right now? Thoughts for the offseason, I guess.
Bucs at Falcons: Julio didn't get his touchdown, but a pretty big game for most every Falcon you could have started. A little too much spreading of the wealth for the Bucs, which was nice if you started either tight end but not great if you started the wideouts. Stuff happen. Bucs just a play from winning late, and that play was...interesting. Finally a good game from Peyton Barber. There will be a lot of good games against these teams.
Steelers at Bengals: Steelers win on a clever touchdown to Antonio Brown in the final seconds. It was set up by a penalty some called controversial, eh, I thought it was pretty blatant; defender wrapped the receiver up. Heartbreaking finish, but the Bengals didn't play well enough. Big game for James Conner, good enough for key Bengals.
Chargers at Browns: Chargers took the drama out of this one early on, and that game script worked out badly for guys who ended up not having to do quite as much (Ekeler, and also Rivers). Huge for Melvin Gordon. Browns threw a lot of passes at Landry and Callaway to little effect. Saw a comment that they maybe should have done more of the stuff that worked (passes to Njoku, Ratley, Johnson). Talent better than coaching. Anyway, disappointing output from the Chargers passing game, unless you happened to start Tyrell Williams.
Bills at Texans: In general, the Bills defense has played well. Sure, they got whipped by the Ravens and weren't good at Green Bay. But generally. So with their defensive ability and Houston's line troubles -- Deshaun Watson is getting really beat up out there -- not surprising it was a lesser performance by the Houston offense. Josh Allen suffered an elbow injury in this one or maybe Buffalo pulls out a win. DeAndre Hopkins at least did his thing. I see Buffalo's offense and wonder why Robert Woods and Sammy Watkins are playing elsewhere, while they've got Kelvin Benjamin. Even Chris Hogan would look nice in Buffalo.
Bears at Dolphins: Fumbles are pretty much the bane of fantasy owners. You have a guy having a good game, or maybe going to have a big game or a big season, and he puts the ball on the ground and suddenly his immediate future doesn't look as good. So Jordan Howard lost a goal-line fumble, and naturally Tarik Cohen went on to have a big day. And then Kenyan Drake lost a goal-line fumble, and we now can't complain quite as much about Frank Gore still having a sizable role. Anyway, Dolphins win; stunning in the way Buffalo's win in Minnesota was stunning. Happens in the NFL all the time. Never be too sure what's going to happen in a game. Some nice receiving numbers for the Bears, at least, in a losing effort.
Cardinals at Vikings: In a couple of drafts I was in back in August, Adam Thielen and Stefon Diggs went back to back. Diggs is great, but Thielen is simply amazing right now. You got some production out of David Johnson and Christian Kirk, which seems to be about the best you can hope for these days. Big game for Latavius, helped by the matchup and Dalvin Cook's absence.
Colts at Jets: Without looking it up I'm pretty sure the Jets have had big games from different players every week. This week it was Jermaine Kearse's turn, while Robby Anderson and Quincy Enunwa disappointed. Meanwhile another huge, miscue-filled game in a losing effort from Andrew Luck. He's a great fantasy quarterback. But it definitely isn't all good. But nice if you're using Rogers or Ebron. Not much from either team's running backs. I was a little too soon to drop the Jets defense a couple of weeks ago, although all their matchups won't be so good.
Seahawks versus Raiders across the pond: When your bad feeling about a team isn't quite bad enough, you have the Raiders. What a disaster. I can't see anybody on this roster you can happily use at this point. Maybe Jared Cook. Was clear entering the week that Seattle was playing better and the Raiders were terrible, but didn't account for just how bad. Unexpectedly, Seattle had a better game passing it than running. Raiders defense doesn't do much well, and it's probably not going to get better when the team begins to tune out Gruden (if it hasn't already happened). Trade Amari Cooper? Why not. Can only be a positive at this point.
Panthers at Washington: Picked up Kapri Bibbs before this game. Didn't start him, fortunately. Washington got a lead, so Adrian Peterson was better and did more. It's a storyline that will repeat occasionally with Chris Thompson, but at least he's Chris Thompson. Cam Newton finished with good fantasy numbers but didn't play well. Washington a little tough to figure out, they can look pretty bad one week and pretty solid the next. Guess that's the NFL. Decent PPR game for McCaffery. Nice game for Devin Funchess, and I should have known the week I picked up Niles Paul (-0.3 points) I should have actually picked up a different Washington No. 2 tight end, Vernon Davis (48 yards and a TD).
Rams at Broncos: Broncos were competitive, if it's really fair to say that while a team is giving up a 200-yard rusher for the second week in a row. Rams were able to go conservative, with Todd Gurley just taking things over from the get-go. Cooper Kupp hurt a knee in this game, that and the way the game went factored into relatively quiet numbers from Jared Goff and the passing game. Robert Woods and Emmanuel Sanders solid; Sanders had a touchdown taken away on a replay review, too. Rams roll on.
Jaguars at Cowboys: Kind of hard to explain this one. Not that Dak Prescott put up big passing numbers, but he should have really struggled. It's almost like Jacksonville forgot they had to account for a quarterback at all, and thus didn't. Plus their offense really struggled against what may have been the 2nd-best defense in the game...but it's still pretty good. Cole Beasley will be popular in all the leagues he was dropped in. Somebody else can have him.
Ravens at Titans: Yeah, no. In all seriousness, nice game for Alex Collins, Michael Crabtree and decent for Joe Flacco. Incredibly awful game for everything connected with the Titans offense. Nothing good to be said, except at least Tennessee is taking their show out of the country next week. Ravens play the Saints, so they'll face a better offense, anyway.
Kansas City at Patriots: Maybe there are some people out there who only vaguely know that this Patrick Mahomes guy is doing some impressive things. If so, I hope they watched last night's game, because there were a couple of wow plays in there -- throwing on the run, across his body, unleashing ropes downfield. I stood up for the touchdown to Hunt, a 13-point play that won me a matchup. I blinked and missed the late bomb to Hill (and he deserves the credit there, using his speed to just run around the helpless defensive back), laughed at the second touchdown to Hill which was a play designed for Hunt. And oh yeah Tom Brady and the Patriots were awesome too. Both defenses looked really bad. Both probably aren't quite as bad as the offenses made them look. But in today's NFL, I'm not sure there's much difference.
Monday, Monday: I need some points out of Aaron Rodgers, but just an ordinary game should do, so hopefully no shots to his knee early on. Hard to say until the inactives come out who's playing and who isn't, and then you have to wonder how the Packers will distribute running back snaps, how bad I'm going to feel about dropping C.J. Beathard for Kapri Bibbs in a best-ball league yesterday (thus far, pretty bad), and other such issues. San Francisco's defense doesn't do much well so I'm thinking it should be about Packers 27, 49ers 17.