Rough week for a lot of reasons. A good one if you had, say, a lot of different players on horse-themed teams. But not great for a lot of backups starting for injured players, and supposed beneficiaries on those teams. And some tough injuries, too. Let's roll the videotape.
Dolphins at Falcons: You like that? The NFL, where one of the league's best rushing offenses against its worst rushing defense is not always a sure thing. Atlanta had the late quarterback switch to Kirk Cousins and the late-week downgrade to questionable and then out for Drake London. And accordingly, the offense looked out of sync from the get-go, oddly not running it too much, and then falling behind (with Tua Tagovailoa having the game of the season for him), and it was pretty much all Dolphins. Negative game script paid off for Kyle Pitts, but not Darnell Mooney, painfully for a guy propped up into the No. 1 role, and coming up small. Bounced from my survivor pool, so those who don't care won't need to hear me dwelling on that going forward.
Bears at Ravens: Ravens came out of their bye with some new focus on both sides of the ball, even though they didn't have Lamar Jackson. Tyler Huntley was a lot better than anticipated (Baltimore signing Cooper Rush to back up Lamar Jackson never made any sense, the guy must have a great agent or something). Good rushing numbers and touchdowns from the guys people were starting, not quite enough from the Bears passing game -- as in, lots of yards, which is nice, but no touchdown passes, which isn't. But Odunze and even DJ Moore OK in defeat. Zay in PPR, too.
Bills at Panthers: Good old butt kicking from the Bills. Biggest annoyance for me personally was a rushing touchdown from Josh Allen where the play before officials didn't give a score to Ray Davis even with the whole team carrying him into the end zone. Hard to figure why officials sometimes err on the side of giving players scores and sometimes seem to want to make them score it multiple times. Andy Dalton was poor, pass rush was all over him and the Bills (like the Ravens) came out of their bye with plenty of intensity. Huge game for James Cook and a long touchdown for Khalil Shakir helping him to a strong game.
Jets at Bengals: Softening the blow of losing Survivor on the Falcons was that my 2nd choice would probably have been the Bengals. They led almost throughout including by 14 in the fourth quarter, but when you don't have a defense and the other team has Breece Hall and a quarterback in Justin Fields who occasionally does look competent, you can occasionally lose a wild shootout. Tough loss for a Bengals team that probably couldn't afford to drop a home game against a team like the Jets. Mason Taylor worked out with a touchdown, most Bengals did too. A 39-38 game, so yeah. Chase Brown, Flacco and Ja'Marr especially nice. TD for Tee, but no other catches. Samaje Perine more run (literally) than expected, but the timeshare has been evolving of late.
49ers at Texans: We've kind of anticipated a defensive decline from San Francisco with their key injuries, and it showed up here, with a bunch of reserve receivers putting up yards and touchdowns for Houston and C.J. Stroud having one of his best games without his best wide receiver. George Kittle scored because he's really good or because it was Tight End Day, you be the judge. Woody Marks with a nice game, Christian McCaffrey with his first poor one. Houston defense pretty, pretty good.
Browns at Patriots: Browns defense is really good, but the Patriots offense and Drake Maye specifically is/are really good right now. They just kind of wore Cleveland down, with some tough drives early and easier ones late. Quinshon Judkins scored 3 TDs last week and it's hard to sit that down in fantasy leagues, but we knew it was going to be lot tougher in this matchup, plus he left with an injury. Three different tight ends scored in this one, either because it was tight end day or because (in the case of Cleveland) their wide receivers are just terrible.
Giants at Eagles: Huge game for Saquon Barkley, from an opening series 65-yard touchdown drive on. He left with a groin injury, which was just the 2nd-most momentous injury in this game, with Cam Skattebo dislocating an ankle on a play that I kind of wish I hadn't seen. Apparently FOX didn't replay it but NFL Redzone showed it once that I saw and a second time according to what I heard, Unpleasant. Overshadowed the loss for the Giants, who also lost a big play to Darius Slayton when it was still a game to a kind of ticky-tack offensive interference penalty. Couple of touchdowns for Dallas Goedert and a good day for DeVonta Smith; if one if their big three receivers is out, the others often do quite well. Eagles went with Tank Bigsby as the No. 2 after Barkley left, so I guess he's the waiver pickup to fight over (although Barkley himself says he's fine and could have returned, so go with that).
Bucs at Saints: I guess the Saints went into this game planning to switch to Tyler Shough. It was not a significantly worse outing for Spencer Rattler than any other, the entire Saints team was fumbling it away while the Bucs worked the run and brought a ton of defensive pressure. Not quite as much offense as you'd have liked from the Bucs passing game, but these things happen when the opposing offense isn't doing much of anything. Alvin Kamara and Rashid Shaheed (late) left due to injury, as if the Saints didn't bring little enough to the table.
Titans at Colts: This one was kind of close for a while, but whatever the over-under ended up settling on for Jonathan Taylor wasn't enough. Daniel Jones and the passing game also did pretty much whatever they wanted, with Michael Pittman especially fairing well. Some decent moments for the Titans but obviously not nearly enough, and their defense isn't doing anything well at the moment, either.
Cowboys at Broncos: For a little while this was a first team who has to punt or who turns it over loses type of game, but the Broncos kept moving the ball and scoring and eventually Dallas was going to be stopped. Good to day to have most Broncos, even though 5 of the touchdowns were by the No. 2 RB and 2/3 WR. Courtland Sutton did drop an easy one in the middle of the end zone, one play after having touchdown catch wiped out by an offensive interference penalty. Painful for those with Sutton, and also Dobbins. Jake Ferguson totally shut out, guess Denver thought taking him away would bug Dak.
Packers at Steelers: Regrettably, while I liked Aaron Rodgers' chances of putting up good numbers against his former team, I underestimated how Jordan Love would fare against his former teammate's new team. Love had his best game, with Tucker Kraft (yes, tight end day) blowing up. Christian Watson was also productive, throwing another body into the mix to hold Matthew Golden down in his rookie season. Green Bay doesn't care about our fantasy teams. I wonder if Aaron Rodgers was as uncomfortable in Pittsburgh's weird throwback uniforms as he looked. (Not a fan of Green Bay's all white ones either, the NFL needs to dial this stuff back. I know, they won't.)
Monday, Monday: Marcus Mariota against Kansas City, doesn't seem likely to go well. Deebo Samuel and Terry McLaurin should both play, which will maybe have some potential, at least against other, weaker opponents going forward. I'm not too keen on anything with the Washington offense, while Kansas City will probably be fine. Kansas City 27, Washington 16.