Andy Richardson
Two random thoughts to begin: First, after Randy Moss caught a touchdown in the back of the end zone at Miami yesterday, fans in the first row of the stands clapped him on the back and his helmet -- including a little kid decked out in a Dolphins hat and jersey. All I could think was, That's your team he's scoring against! And then I had a terrible thought: Maybe Moss is on his fantasy team! Is this the message we're sending our children? I weep.
The second is that you may notice that in the Weekly, we make a point of mentioning when a player is facing his former team. It doesn't always work out that that player does well, and it doesn't dramatically impact the rankings, but it's something to be aware of when setting a lineup. Especially when you hear Oakland's Ashley Lelie, after going for 92 yards and a touchdown in an upset win at Denver (the team that drafted him), saying "I’ve been dreaming for this moment ever since I left here. Ever since I left, this is what I wanted to do -- come back to Invesco and show I’ve still got it. Come back and kind of put it to the people who didn’t think I was good enough.” Not that anyone in any fantasy league anywhere started Lelie yesterday, but it's nice to hear somebody admit just how much they care about that kind of thing.
Jets-Titans: Jets underrated, or Titans overrated? Both I guess. New York's offense has just been performing surgery on opponents for more than a month now. It's scored 26 or more points in five straight (all wins), and every week goes off on one or two 7-8 minute drive that just seems to suck the confidence out of an opponent, if not win the game outright. They can run the ball, they can throw the ball, they've got a quarterback playing really well, three really good receivers, and two really good running backs. And that's not even talking about defensive tackle Kris Jenkins, who just seems to be dominating the line of scrimmage. Pretty much no one thought Favre was getting dealt to a better team back in August. How about now?
As for the Titans, this really wasn't that surprising. They were going to lose a game and when they lost it would probably be ugly. Even the '85 Bears got beat up in one game that season. Not that the Titans are that good, but they'll probably crush the Lions in three days and this game will be largely forgotten. Just now they'll need to stop talking about how no one respects them and instead just go out and play great football over the next month. They'll be fine.
Patriots-Dolphins: Great that the Dolphins lost by 20 points but still did better than most people expected. The game was actually close throughout -- well, until the end. Miami has some problems in the secondary, we knew that. They're probably not going to be a playoff team. Still, considering where they were a year ago, pretty impressive. They'll probably go 8-8 and have some good fantasy players; that's something.
As for Matt Cassel, what can you say? There's probably not even a small part of Bill Belichick thinking about hanging onto the 26-year-old Cassel another year and eventually shipping out 31-year-old Tom Brady coming off a reportedly botched knee surgery, but it's fun to talk about anyway, and you know there are fans thinking about it. Before you say it can't happen, look at Green Bay. Anyhoo, the Patriots slung the ball all over the yard, Randy Moss smirked about a defensive scheme that treated him like an ordinary wideout, and he and Terrell Owens probably texted each other last night: "No, I'M the best veteran No. 1 wideout!""No, I am!" "Will you be my BFF?" Both quarterbacks scrambled in for rushing touchdowns in this game; Cassel's wasn't surprising after he ran for 62 yards last week, but Pennington's kind of was. "Who needs to start in college?" thinks Cassel, who of course hadn't started since high school until this season. "It was nice having Randy Moss to throw to in college," thinks Pennington.
49ers-Cowboys: Which will get more play this week: an all New York Super Bowl, or how the Cowboys are baaaaaaacckkkk? I figure it will be the Giants-Jets talk for a couple of days, and then they'll switch to the Cowboys to dovetail with Dallas blowing out yet another hapless team on Thursday (they're home against Seattle). Anyway, the important thing is that Tony Romo is healthy and Terrell Owens isn't dead yet. Shaun Hill won't be the 49ers quarterback next season -- indeed, Alex Smith is looking good at this point -- and it's hard to start any Niners receivers because a different guy has a good game each week while the rest do nothing. And Roy Williams has caught only 9 balls in four games. Jason Witten (who has actually been outperformed by Williams in that span) may have aggravated his rib injury; something to keep an eye on before starting him on Thanksgiving.
Colts-Chargers: It's scary watching LaDainian Tomlinson carry the ball on one play and Darren Sproles carry it on the next. Sproles would make a lot of guys look slow, of course, but It's bad when it's your own team's struggling starter. I think we all know Norv Turner's not actually going to take away a bunch of carries from Tomlinson, but man, this team has to do something. Tomlinson also dropped a pretty important pass on the Chargers' final drive. Both defenses looked better than expected, for the first three quarters anyway -- happens some times when both teams realize the significance of the game. (Other times there are shootouts, like the Jets-Pats game last week.) And if Anthony Gonzalez got to play all his games on Sunday night, or if they'd finally keep him on the field more often, he might be really good. Another fantastic finish and clutch kick by Adam Vinatieri, another tough loss for Norv Turner, who looks strangely inured to them right now. He's probably saying to himself, "Well, another tough loss. And how in the world are we two games behind the Broncos?"
Random notes from other games I caught bits and pieces of: Matt Forte ran through the Rams defense like it wasn't even there. I guess in some respects, it isn't. There's ample reason to start third receivers and backup running backs against them each week. ... Do you think Donovan McNabb was bugged by all the overtime talk this week? Or maybe it was just facing a tough Ravens defense. My initial thought was that Kolb would start Thursday, but I've come around to thinking it will be McNabb. They're probably not going to win this year with Kolb, so may as well let McNabb finish out the year with some degree of dignity before shipping him out in the offseason. ... I feel bad for Calvin Johnson, because the Lions themselves are unwatchable, but he's the exact opposite -- big and talented and graceful out there. Bad as the Lions are to see play, it's almost worth it for the rare times he gets a chance to make a play. I hope they don't go winless, even though I'm leaning toward the idea that I'll be disappointed.
Andy watches as much football as he can each Sunday. If you've got some observations of your own, feel free to add your comments below.
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