A wild day of football, one that produced some slugfests in fantasy leagues and the NFL itself. And even one game score that kind of looked like a fantasy matchup, Standard scoring anyway. Let's get into it.
Colts at Ravens: I'm not sure why Gardner Minshew isn't viewed as a legit starter by anyone. I know his work in Jacksonville was uneven, but there were some highlights down there, and yet he only gets signed for backup money. Whatever, he filled in fairly admirably and pulled out a wild win today. Big game for Zack Moss, with volume helping him against a tough (but banged-up) defense. Ravens offense didn't do enough and Gus Edwards first lost touchdown chances to his quarterback and then left with a concussion.
Titans at Browns: Nothing like a matchup with the Titans to fix any passing game woes. Meanwhile Tennessee can't protect Ryan Tannehill, making for a really bad situation when on the road against a good defense. Even Derrick Henry will have problems overcoming that. Browns defense once again shows it's really good. Give Jerome Ford a pass, nobody runs on the Titans these days. Start your quarterbacks and key receivers against them, though.
Falcons at Lions: A surprisingly low-scoring game. It's weird: the Lions frustrated Kansas City and now Atlanta in their games but got lit up by Seattle. Anyway, Atlanta passing game is a work in progress; hard to say if Desmond Ridder is the answer but we can say early results have been mixed. Not a great outing for Jahmyr Gibbs (Jared Goff with a rushing score didn't help) or Bijan Robinson; Amon-Ra St. Brown the lone offensive highlight.
Saints at Packers: Two guys I've been a little skeptical about who started out well are Jordan Love and Sam Howell. Love pulled this game out (after the Saints lost Derek Carr to injury and then missed a last-second field goal) but I think his future can still be called into question. But he made enough good throws during a comeback from 17-0, fair play to him. Carr is gonna miss time, Jameis Winston seems like one of the more capable backups around the league, I think Chris Olave should still be fine. Neither fill-in starting running back, AJ Dillon and Kendre Miller, were great, and the regular starters will be back in the lineup next week.
Texans at Jaguars: One of several shockers on the day. First, guess I underestimated C.J. Stroud. He's doing some impressive things to start his career, and at first I dismissed it as facing a bad defense and/or garbage points, and maybe the Jaguars have a bad defense (certainly not as good as anticipated). But this was a convincing road win over a team everyone thought would run away with the AFC South. Nope. Jags did put together some garbage points at least, helping those who started Trevor Lawrence, Christian Kirk and Evan Engram, among others.
Broncos at Dolphins: Denver papers should be fun this week. I'm not sure I have enough room to fully unpack this one, but suffice to say I was pretty confident the Dolphins offense would be good, just not quite 70 points good. Friend of mine in a league with best-ball lineups ended up facing both Raheem Mostert and DeVon Achane; their 97 points was more than his entire lineup. Usual goofy numbers from Tyreek Hill, another big day for Tua, and the Broncos have a whole lot of questions to deal with going forward. (They're stuck with Sean Payton and Russell Wilson for a little while, so they've got to figure something out.)
Chargers at Vikings: Wild game that started out slow but ended up fairly high-scoring and very wild. I'll start with Joshua Kelley though. Seems like the guy can't play, or at least the team doesn't think so. Couldn't ask for a better situation and matchup, and Kelley wound up carrying 11 times for 12 yards. For whatever reason, the team wasn't interested in trying to run the ball (did they see the Eagles run for 200-plus on Minnesota last week?) and they don't throw passes to running backs if Austin Ekeler isn't playing. So yeah, don't start Kelley anymore. On the bright side, you probably have Keenan Allen on a few teams if you followed our rankings, he's tearing it up these days. So is Justin Jefferson. Nice, busy game for Justin Herbert, even though the winning score was a little fortunate. Mike Williams had a big game but left due to injury, we'll see if Joshua Palmer will be the key beneficiary. Oh yeah, Alexander Mattison. Well, if you started him, it was a decent fantasy game. Unfortunately he didn't score and could have been charged with a couple of fumbles, so maybe he will start losing work to Cam Akers on this non-running team. Vikings the kings of last-minute wins a year ago and now last-minute losses.
Patriots at Jets: Ezekiel Elliott was more a tandem runner with Rhamondre Stevenson than in the past. The Patriots threw a long touchdown to a tight end I didn't even realize was on their roster. And Zach Wilson can't play and the Jets should have really lined up a better No. 2 option behind their 39-year-old quarterback.
Bills at Commanders: Sam Howell was the guy I doubted, and after 9 more sacks and 4 interceptions, yeah it's fair to say he's got some significant flaws. This Bills defense will make a lot of quarterbacks look bad and there are some friendly matchups ahead, but you also need to wonder if other defenses are going start exposing those flaws. Denver didn't a week ago, but clearly that's a defense with problems. Anyway, Bills picked apart Washington's secondary and won easily.
Panthers at Seahawks: Lot of offense in this game. I think I told some people to start Adam Thielen, or at least to draft him. Maybe I didn't recommend him too highly this week, but he can still play, and Andy Dalton can put up some production against suspect defenses. Big game for Kenneth Walker, a guy we were higher on that most, hopefully helping a lot of Index readers. Tyler Lockett dropped a touchdown, otherwise a good game for the Seattle offense.
Cowboys at Cardinals: Upset of the day. It took two weeks, but the Cardinals figured out that the way to attack the Dallas defense (obviously losing Trevon Diggs was a factor too) is to run at it. Cardinals ran early and often, took a lead, seemed to stun Dallas a little. Arizona deserves credit for playing a lot better than anyone expected (or than ownership wanted?) thus far.
Bears at Kansas City: As expected when maybe the league's best team hosts maybe its worst team, this was an ugly blowout. Every Kansas City player anyone might reasonably have considered starting scored. Isiah Pacheco not only scored but had another run down to the 2-yard-line, got stopped on a goal-line carry, and then watched Taylor Swift, I mean Travis Kelce, catch a short touchdown. The legions of Index readers who agonize about Pacheco will hopefully have noticed that although both Pacheco and Clyde Edwards-Helaire had 15 carries in this game, 11 of CEH's came in the final quarter plus with the score 41-0 and Blaine Gabbert at quarterback.
Steelers at Raiders: I'm about done with Najee Harris. It doesn't seem to all be on him; they're giving him the ball on these delayed runs and there's nowhere to go. Jaylen Warren looked a little better, has more juice, but he wasn't great last night either, and I don't think he looks like a heavy-workload back. This is probably what we're gonna get. Some good throws by Kenny Pickett, a huge game for Davante Adams. Top wide receivers are really tearing it up these days. Except for JaMarr Chase anyway. Josh Jacobs, I don't know. Doesn't seem like an automatic start right now. Either the blocking isn't there, he's thinking about next offseason already, plus they're not throwing it to him much. Steelers offense in general better than the first two weeks, at least.
Monday, Monday times two: Two more games tonight, one which should be higher-scoring, the other a Super Bowl rematch. Still some star potential playing, with the big questions being whether Joe Burrow will play and which running back, if any, the Eagles will feature. Final scores I'll go Eagles 27, Bucs 23 and Rams 20, Bengals 17, which might have been the Super Bowl final score if memory serves.