No matter how long you play this game, you keep learning, sometimes the hard way. Be careful starting guys coming off injury. Be careful -- but not too careful -- with players in bad weather games. Play the hot hand, don't play the hot hand, invest in rookies with opportunity, be careful with rookies with opportunity. It was all on display in yesterday's games.
Nelson Agholor was a guy I started in a lot of places; shutout in a wind tunnel game. But similar bad conditions didn't trouble Aaron Rodgers. Dallas Goedert flopped coming back from injury, DeeJay Dallas scored twice with his big opportunity. So many chances to make right and wrong choices; here's hoping luck was in your favor in another wild week.
Steelers at Ravens: Great back-and-forth game. Hopefully -- and I say this as someone with the misfortune to have drafted him in a couple of leagues -- the Ravens will take notice of the fact that their running game was much, much better with Gus Edwards and J.K. Dobbins toting it as a duo than a trio with Mark Ingram slowing things down. Sorry, Mark. Pregame reports had Ingram probably missing Week 9 and you wonder if he'll have much of a role when he comes back. Lamar Jackson also did a lot of running, including a pretty cool touchdown run erased by a penalty. He ended up throwing a score to Marquise Brown (twice, first one ruled out of bounds, debatably). Final-play near touchdown to Willie Snead (100-yard game) broken up by a well-timed defensive play. Steelers got good numbers from JuJu and Claypool, with Diontae Johnson leaving early with an injury -- happens EVERY TIME I START THE GUY. Ravens lost Ronnie Stanley to injury, very big loss obviously.
Rams at Dolphins: I have a couple of nieces who go to Alabama, yes that's more than enough info, point is I have had an interest in Tua Tagovailoa's career for a while and am glad to see him get the win, even though he did virtually nothing beyond throw a touchdown pass a little behind his receiver. Presumably he'll throw for more than 93 yards in upcoming games. Every team is doing these little plays where players run across the formation, take a forward handoff that goes in the books as a pass, and score. The Rams tried one or seemed to try one but the timing was off, and it was the biggest play of the game. Instead of scoring, Jared Goff got absolutely clobbered and the Dolphins ran it back the other way for a touchdown, shortly thereafter returning a punt to basically put the game out of reach. Darrell Henderson left with a thigh injury, which also seems to happen quite a lot. Good numbers for Robert Woods, but Miami now has convincing wins over both the 49ers and Rams.
Jets at Kansas City: Ho hum. Said some stuff about maybe Patrick Mahomes not being as good as he could be in this one. Hopefully everyone started him anyway. I think the reason you draft Mahomes is that most weeks he's a top-5 quarterback, and then every once in a while he blows away the field and wins the week on his own. So much for a revenge game, LeVeon Bell carries 6 times for 7 yards, only his receptions gave him some small value (but very little). Neither ground game did anything. Braxton Berrios 8 catches for 34 yards, that's some stat line for a wide receiver. No qualms about using Kansas City in my Survivor Pool (I wonder if the people who picked Green Bay were "saving" Kansas City.)
Vikings at Packers: Upset special. Seemed ridiculously unlikely that Minnesota would win this game, but Dalvin Cook was zipping through defenders all day and did it all by his lonesome. Almost literally. Aaron Rodgers played pitch and catch with Davante Adams (if you started Rodgers over Mahomes you didn't get burned too badly) and Jamaal Williams and Robert Tonyan were also fine. Minnesota's passing game a bust. Packers passed up field goals a couple of times with Mason Crosby hurting, you wonder if that played any part in the outcome.
Colts at Lions: Colts defense with a healthy Darius Leonard much different than without him. He's a game-changer and he was making plays in this one. Kenny Golladay left early with a hip injury. Doesn't entirely excuse an ugly Pick Six by Matthew Stafford that basically ended the game, but helps explain (although fantasy-wise he was fine). Marvin Jones caught 2 TDs, too bad I benched him everywhere. Nice game from T.J. Hockenson. Most of Marvin Hall's production came on a deep bomb where the defender got twisted around, I'm not buying. The biggest things to discuss in this game are the rookie running backs. D'Andre Swift disappointed, carries went nowhere and just not many touches. And...Jonathan Taylor. Is he good? The Colts have a very good offensive line. Seemed to work OK for Jordan Wilkins, who kept coming in and cleaning up messes after Taylor got stuffed. Wilkins rushed for 89 yards and a touchdown and a 2-pointer. Nyheim Hines caught 2 TDs. Taylor got stuffed all game. Somebody needs to tell me that the problem isn't him, because thus far he doesn't look good.
Raiders at Browns: Presumably the high winds and rain were big factors here, with neither passing game doing anything. Running games were fine, but not a lot of scoring, at all. Jarvis Landry had a touchdown taken away by a lengthy review. Too lengthy. A disappointing game and I'll blame the weather and move on.
Titans at Bengals: This game also knocked a couple of people out of Survivor Pools. Bengals have a really good collection of offensive players right now, and the Titans are bad defensively. Cincinnati also doesn't seem to lose a ton when it goes from Joe Mixon to Giovani Bernard. Decent game from most skill players you needed to start in this one. Good Corey Davis game. Adam Humphries knocked out on a scary helmet to helmet hit.
Patriots at Bills: Teams with running quarterbacks, it seems, sometimes get a little too reliant on that running ability. New England, for example (also Baltimore and at times Buffalo) will call quarterback runs an awful lot when everyone can see it coming but they think it has better odds than a pass. New England lost middle linebacker JaWhaun Bentley, which had to be a factor in Buffalo running for nearly 200 yards -- 80-plus from the even committee of Zack Moss and Devin Singletary apiece. Won't happen every week, but New England run defense clearly not what it was (run all over by San Francisco a week ago, too). Kind of felt bad for Cam Newton's game-ending fumble in field goal range with New England potentially going in for a winning touchdown. Good defensive play though.
Chargers at Broncos: I feel bad for Anthony Lynn and the Chargers. Another blown late lead, another heartbreaking loss when a whole bunch of things had to go wrong in order for the other team to pull out a win. That said, Vic Fangio and the Broncos have lost a whole lot of similar games the last two years, so there's that. Justin Herbert did his thing and it sure seemed like the Chargers were golden. But they settled for a couple of field goals while running out the clock and suddenly the Broncos had a couple of completions, a couple of fortuitous penalties, and then it was one or do or die play to win, and Drew Lock (who we were ripping basically all game) pulled it off. Fun one to watch, unless you were rooting for the Chargers. Still, they're the ones with a franchise quarterback.
49ers at Seahawks: This game was never really that close, with Russell Wilson and DK Metcalf just outclassing Jimmy Garoppolo and company. DeeJay Dallas finished with nice numbers, the guy who was featured with all of Seattle's other injuries, hope you had him and started him. For San Francisco, nice game for Brandon Aiyuk and touchdowns for JaMycal Hasty and Jerick McKinnon, though rushing numbers weren't great and nobody exactly staked much of a claim to the backfield. George Kittle left late with an injury.
Saints at Bears: Another entertaining one, albeit not as compelling. It's like all the Bears games, a hard-hitting (more on that in a minute) slugfest in which whoever makes more plays late wins. Good Bears defense, painful to watch offense. Weird sequence where Javon Wims slugged a Saints defender totally out of the blue, starting a brawl that is certainly going to get Wims a suspension. Saints are a really ugly 5-2 that could easily be 2-5, but those wins count too I guess, especially with no wide receivers.
Cowboys at Eagles: Sometimes an unheralded youngster impresses in his first start; guys like Gardner Minshew and Nick Mullens come to mind. Then there's Ben DiNucci last night. I'm not going to pick on DiNucci beyond saying that his accuracy was not very good and he was fortunate not to throw multiple Pick Sixes. Of course Carson Wentz didn't play well either, looking for about a half that he deserved to be benched while taking awful sacks and heaving up risky passes. Eagles got the win while throwing just one pass to Dallas Goedert (who played more than 80 percent of the snaps by the way), and we were able to put this eyesore in the rear-view mirror, thank goodness.
Monday, Monday: Nobody cares about my Survivor Pool, but if you're in one this game probably has some people hanging on the outcome. Tampa Bay should win comfortably but the Giants defense has played well enough in a lot of games that just maybe they get in Tom Brady's face and make things interesting. But Daniel Jones against the Bucs defense could and should be very ugly. Tampa Bay 26, New York 17.