Monday Download (Week 2)

Your thoughts Tom?

A lot of upsets this week and a lot of teams lost star players, be it due to their own extra curricular activities or in-game injuries. So far, it seems like a lot of parity among the teams, excluding the Giants, who look to be one of the poorer teams in the NFL.





On Thursday we discovered that Steelers can't score, the Ravens don't seem too phased by off the field distractions (you can thank Ray Lewis for that).

The Bills are 2-0 and Sammy Watkins looks like a great pickup. If Moreno is out long term, Miami may need to generate some offense in other ways.

$770K not to play - crazy, I know

Carolina's defense shut the Lions out in the first half and Cam Newton did enough to lead them to the easy victory. Stafford looked stifled as the Panthers played without their Pro Bowler DE Greg Hardy, who was a very late surprise scratch after his domestic violence conviction. The conviction was no surprise to the Panthers, so I'm still not sure why the scratch was such a surprise.


Andy Dalton and the Bengals were too much for the Falcons. I hope Matt Ryan didn't use up all his offense last week. 10 points just won't get it done. Only problem for Cincy might be how long A.J. Green is out with his toe injury.

The Browns winning a game a fluke? Maybe. The Saints starting 0-2? Nope. Their defense stinks and their offense isn't as good as expected. At least not good enough to outscore their opponents.


An emotional week for the Vikings. Way too many turnovers. New England will always make you pay.

The Giants seem to invent new ways to lose games. They are truly innovators at their craft. How long before people start clamoring to bench Eli? Things may get so bad that he asks to go to the bench himself. Arizona, while not overwhelming on any front did enough to win. They'll need a healthy Carson Palmer back to really do anything.

Cowboys come back from a terrible week 1 to show they can at least score in bunches. If they give the ball to Murray 75% or more of the time, they should be just fine. Tennessee just needs to regroup. We'll give them another week before passing judgment.

Washington loses RGIII, but gets a better QB? I think so. Jacksonville may have used up all their mojo in the first half of last week's game against the Eagles.

Phillip Rivers does not fear Richard Sherman. The Super Bowl champs looked extremely vulnerable as San Diego outplayed them on all fronts.

When your leading scorer is your kicker and you win the game is that good or bad? Somehow the Rams managed to eek our a win against the Bucs. Or did the Bucs manage to give away the game in the fourth quarter? Either way, Rams win and Bucs go to 0-2.

Broncos win, but not by as much as expected. Is everyone catching up to them or are the Broncos just starting relatively slow compared to last year? I think the latter. KC is in for a long season.

Jets give up a nice lead on the road and Rodgers to Nelson connection is just too much in the end as the Packers win their first game of the year. Much has been said about the timeout called by the Jets, which negated a TD. In this day in age with all available technology, why can't the head coach just have a little electronic button signaling a timeout? Seems simple enough right?

The Texans look pretty good. J.J. Watt makes a strong case for playing iron man football (both sides of the ball). Raiders look like they are settling in nicely to their expected role as a bye week for the teams they are facing.

The 49ers blew a huge lead to the Bears; a team that had two WR's with a 75% of NOT playing actually play. One of them, Brandon Marshall also happened to have two fourth quarter TD's including the game winner. Kaepernick looked terrible and a usually strong defense looked beatable. This closed out a day of games where most teams proved that either there is nearly total parity in the NFL or it takes 4-5 games, before teams really gel together.