NFL Week in Review-First Edition

Just a few words about this column, which I am hoping to do as a weekly on Monday nights, once the eggs are cooling and the butter is getting hard on the Monday night game, which as I write this, the refrigerator light is certainly out on the Oakland Raiders, my beloved silver and black as they take another shellacking on opening night. I will try to recap the week that was in 500 words or less, my version of the old two minute highlight show that used to run at halftime of Monday Night Football, back in the days when Howard Cosell still manned the booth and before Sportscenter ran highlights on a seemingly endless loop, backed up by countless and mostly irrelevant opinions by a bunch of former players that rarely enlighten us, but prove the validity of hindsight being 20-20.

A word of caution, I don’t actually watch most of these games, and I only watch the highlights in passing, but I have watched plenty of sports and certainly enough football over the years to be able to get the important stuff from what I do take the time to check out. You won’t read about player stats, passer ratings, and if I even mention fantasy football somebody take out a gun and shoot my laptop right out from under me. I don’t gamble anymore so point spreads are irrelevant to me, and the only over/unders I’m interested in is my word count and my hours of sleep I get at night. This column is for my dad, who doesn’t watch the games but likes to keep up with what is going on, and for all of you out there like him, who want to be able to carry on a conversation around the proverbial water cooler without giving up your entire Sunday watching all the action on DirecTV, where you can now apparently not only get all the games for an exorbitant fee, but you can watch them all at once on a single channel. But I digress, and my word count for this innagural recap column may exceed 500 words, but this will be the last time I exceed my limit, I mean it. Just like I am now officially done betting on football, after now having to pull double lunch duty next week while my smug Bronco fan colleague gets a week free of manning the courtyard. No more betting on football, I mean it. Oh by the way, the word count limit is going to 1000, and I’m only going to bet on division games, and I mean that!

So here goes: Tom Brady is out for the season, and with him go the hopes of the six state New England region, not to mention all of the 21st centruy Patriot fans who will now be seen scraping the window stickers off of their cars and looking for a new bandwagon to jump on. The Patriots narrowly beat the woeful Chiefs but lost their franchise QB, the epitome of winning the surge but losing the war. The team that I have winning the Super Bowl this year, the San Diego Superchargers went down as well, at home no less to the Carolina Panthers. For now I’m staying on the bandwagon, I hear that Carolina may actually be decent so this loss may not prove as devastating to the lightning bolts as it may seem at first glance. The other AFC favorite, the Indianapolis Colts also lost at home, to the Chicago Bears, and to me this is the beginning of the end for the Colts. While star QB Payton Manning is recovering from injury and getting his timing and rhythm back, I sense a team that has had a nice run for the last 4-5 years, but has not made any substantial upgrades, which is about to catch up to them. The team that I like to usurp them is Tennessee, and my favorite young QB Vince Young, the Terry Bradshaw of his generation in that his stats are nothing to get the fantasy geeks fired up about, but he just knows how to win games, which to my old school way of thinking is all that matters.

For the NFC, the defending champion Giants are 1-0 and look poised to continue the run they began in January of last year that carried them all the way to the promised land, and the Cowboys won handily and look poised to challenge the Giants for conference supremacy in what should be a coming of age year for Tony Romo, much as last season was for Eli Manning. The Green Bay Packers got off to a rousing start in the post-Brett Favre era as Aaron Rodgers got the Pack back in the win column by defeating division rival and expected contender Minnesota.

Speaking of Favre, he won his opener with the Jets, but hold the celebrations as he merely beat the Miami Dolphins, last year’s worst team in football. This year’s worst team may be a battle between the former LA duo of the Rams and Raiders, both of whom got or are getting completely waxed by teams that probably won’t end up better than 8-8 by the time it is all over. 8 wins combined may be a stretch for these two teams however, I’m only hoping that I get to wear my new Jamarcus Russell jersey a few times before it becomes as obsolete as the Matt Leinart jerseys that are moving from the malls to the park and swaps here in AZ. Speaking of AZ, the always lowly Cardinals are actually in first place alone after a week one win, led by Kurt Warner, and while that may or may not hold, they are in probably the worst division in football and could actually become the first 7-9 team to make the NFL playoffs. Which would be fitting since the Arizona Diamondbacks could become the first 80-82 team to make the MLB playoffs, but we are getting into a different topic here.

All in all it was an interesting first week, and although I didn’t actually watch more than a few minutes of game action, I feel like I’ve got a handle on what went down and am looking forward to next week’s action. Hopefully you are as well, and hopefully there will be some decent games on the tube this weekend, which might prompt me to plant myself in front of the TV on Sunday, at least for a half or so. I’m just glad that I don’t know any Chiefs fans at work yet, because the last thing I want is to end up pulling double study hall duty next month after the Raiders-Chiefs game. Lastly, I’m taking the over on the word count and the under on my sleep count, and then I’m done gambling. That’s right, I really mean it.