Week 2 Thoughts

Before I get to my rambling mess of thoughts on the weekend's NFL slate, I have something to confess. I have gone over to the dark side. For years I have seen commercial after commercial throw NFL Sunday Ticket in my face, and I have restrained myself from thinking too hard about purchasing it. This despite the fact that I root for a team in Seattle and live in New England. Basically, if the Seahawks aren't a night game I have a 0.5% chance of being able to watch them live.

I haven't been excited about switching to satellite TV. Cable has always seemed much simpler, and I've either been renting, or living in a large building that doesn't seem to allow for a dish to be mounted. The price has also given me pause. A couple of years ago DirecTV offered the ability to stream the games on a PlayStation 3 (which I have). The cost was north of $300. I was tempted for the first time, but at the time, finances were a bit tighter than I would have liked, and I wasn't able to justify the expense to myself.

Then this year came and I found out about a deal: Buy the $100 version of this year's Madden video game instead of the $60 version and receive a code to watch Sunday Ticket on any computer, tablet, or phone. I hemmed and hawed a bit, until my wife encouraged me to poop or get off the pot. Since I left it late I didn't get the game (and the code) until last week, so I missed week 1 with Sunday Ticket. But I had it all set to go during week 2 (ironically, when Seattle was the Sunday Night game).

Wow. Sunday Ticket has pushed the wheel and sliced bread down a few rungs on man's greatest accomplishments list. I was able to sit in front of a TV, keep tabs on each early game in my market, and then pull out my phone, check the current scores around the league, click on any game that looked interesting and watch it. Without Sunday Ticket, I would have gotten to see Miami-Indianapolis, the first 2.5 quarters of Washington-Green Bay, and the last quarter or so of Dallas-Kansas City. With Sunday Ticket I got to see these games, plus check in on multiple other contests: I saw the game winning touchdowns in both Chicago-Minnesota and Carolina-Buffalo live. This was only my first week playing with Sunday Ticket, but I'm already smitten.

Onto my week 2 thoughts:

Atlanta opened their game with the Rams with the performance I expected. But their second half (when they let the Rams back in it despite the 24-3 halftime lead) raises the concerns we heard before the season: 1) Has the defense improved at all, 2) Is there more depth to the offense behind the Matt Ryan air show, and 3) Can the Falcons hold a 20-point lead?

Washington is in trouble. Griffin isn't back, and he covered up for quite a bit last season. This team is not deep, and they have significant holes. Without last season's offense centered around Griffin's special abilities, this is a middling team.

Luckily for Washington, they play in the NFC East. The Cowboys are still up to their old tricks (don't give them the ball, and you can beat them). The Eagles have no defense (Philip Rivers approves this message). And the Giants are a hot mess with Eli trying to do way too much (10 turnovers for New York in 2 games). Even with Washington's poor opening showing, the playoffs aren't out of the question.

Is a 2-0 start impressive just because last year the same team underachieved horribly last season, going 2-14 in 2012? Is it impressive when everyone and their mother predicted a bounce-back year for this team? And is it impressive when it comes against Jacksonville and Dallas? I'm not trying to rain on Kansas City's parade, but let's pump the brakes a little until the schedule gets a little more teeth.

Carolina blows many winnable games. Some of that does fall on Cam Newton. But some of it has to fall on Ron Rivera and his staff as well. Once again, Rivera begs off a 4th and 1 that would ice the game for his team, despite his team having a strength both in its overall running game AND in short yardage situations specifically. Then, he sees his secondary frantically trying to communicate with each other on Buffalo's 1st and goal with 6 seconds left and his team up 6 points and fails to call a time out to settle things despite having 2 of them in his pocket.

I said that I was picking the Colts because I couldn't pick Ryan Tannehill over Andrew Luck. I still won't pick Tannehill over Luck, but a) Tannehill's better than I gave him credit for, and b) the Colts defense is going to be a serious problem in Indy's attempt to get back to the playoffs.

Cleveland needs more from the quarterback position than Brandon Weeden can give them.

Baltimore is going to have many of these closer-than-they'd-like wins against weaker competition until Flacco gets some more weapons to throw to.

I'm officially concerned about Houston's defense. One dimensional teams should not be able to put up 24+ points on them, but San Diego (no running game) and Tennessee (no passing game) did just that in back-to-back weeks.

Stop me if this sounds familiar: the Lions jump out to a first-half lead, only to see it undone when the offense goes cold and they start taking costly penalties.

For all the talent they have on that side of the ball, the Lions offense getting shut out in the second half by the Cardinals should be sounding alarms in Detroit.

Eli Manning is seriously pressing. But how can you blame him? He can't trust his running back to hang on to the ball, let alone contribute on offense, and his defense is having a rough go of slowing anyone else down.

I officially give up on any future New Orleans-Tampa Bay matchups. Last year (warning: fantasy football story) I started Josh Freeman in week 16 since the Saints defense was historically bad, and he gets me 1 point. Now the Tampa defense, which gave up 18 points to the Jets in week 1, hold Drew Brees to 1 touchdown and only 16 points?

The 49ers are having serious problems running the ball. Either they'll get the running game on track this week against Indy's soft defense, or it will be time to hit the panic button.

Don't use that game as an excuse to belittle Kaepernick. Yes, he struggled. He was facing the best secondary I've seen in quite a while and he has no receivers to throw to. Yes, Anquan Boldin is talented, but Seattle loves playing against physical wideouts like Boldin. They're built to combat them. It's the smaller, shifty guys that will give them (some) trouble.

But if you take away one message from that game it should be this, the NFC had better make sure Seattle doesn't get home field in the 2013 playoffs, because going into that field and getting a result may be the hardest task in the NFL right now. Yes it's only week 2 and things change, but Seattle's been a tough place to play even when the team is only good, and this team has the potential to be great.