Week 1 of the 2014 NFL season is complete! The Seahawks won their game; some other teams won and lost and stuff, but who cares about them; and it's time for the first of possibly many power rankings! Be forewarned: After #3 I stopped ranking teams and just started talking about the interesting teams. Your team might not be on here.
1. Seattle Seahawks! The Seahawks looked to be in peak form on Thursday. Russell Wilson looked good, with the potential to be great, notching a 110.9 passer rating and a few nice runs on the ground. Lynch looked like one of those rare running backs who's actually effective independent of his blocking, blasting through the Packers for 110 yards and two scores; and Harvin looked like a deadly weapon, tearing shit up every which way. Even Zach Miller looked effective. And the defense was stifling, holding Aaron Rodgers to an Andrew Luck-esque (i.e. mediocre) 81.5 passer rating, and limiting the Packers to 80 yards rushing en route to a 36-16 victory.
2. Denver Broncos. The Broncos leapt out to a 24-0 lead early in the game before finishing the half at 24-7, which is what you'd expect from an elite team playing an average one. But then they nearly surrendered a comeback to Andrew "Poor Man's Vince Young" Luck*, only barely managing to close out the game 31-24. But the Broncos are still a great team, and they're still led by the cream of the quarterbacking crop in Peyton "Creamy" Manning. On a darker note, the Broncos' favorite pet Montee Ball put up a mediocre 67 yards on a staggering 23 (!) carries, for an abysmal 2.9 YPC. There have been worse games--lots of worse games, actually--but rarely with such a good quarterback opening up space. Oh yeah, and if Ball continues to rush at that volume (~250 total carries) and efficiency (or lack thereof), he will be the proud owner of the single lowest season Y/A since the merger. Or ever. Food for thought.
3. San Francisco 49ers. As much as I expect a little regression on the San Francisco front, it didn't come this week. Colin Kaepernick was the picture of efficiency, putting up an impressive 125.5 passer rating. The Niners also came impressively close to one of the most amazing team receiving statlines I've ever seen: if Stevie Johnson and Anquan Boldin had caught one more pass each, and Michael Crabtree had picked up two few yards, the Niners who caught a ball would have had, respectively, 9 catches for 99 yards, 4 for 44, 3, for 33, and 2 for 22. But they failed at this. Just like they've failed in two NFC Championships and a Super Bowl over the last three years. Honestly, the Niners have been failing more than Andrew Luck. Why are they this high, again?
X. Houston Texans. It's happening. It's happening. It's happening. Houston is back, baby, Or, you know. Here for the first time. And by "here" I mean championship contenders. Yes, they have Ryan Fitzpatrick starting at QB, and he only put up a game-manager-y 206 yds, 1 TD, and a 109.3 rating. Yes, Arian Foster, their productive workhorse back, was below 4 YPC. And yes, Andre Johnson, their star receiver, is like 36. (Okay, so he's 33.) But you know what the Texans have now that they didn't have last year? A competent QB. Because the thing I said above about Fitzpatrick being a game manager was a joke, because he was amazingly effective that game and the term "game manager" is almost universally wrongly applied. And you know what the Texans have now that they had last year and the year before? JJ Watt, the best player in the league and the single most dominant defender I have ever seen. Watt had a MONSTER game against the Redskins' offense (led by a deceptively effective Rob Griffey Jr. Jr., whose career passer rating even following his down year is still higher than fellow-top-two-draft-choice-in-2012 Andrew Luck), and I don't expect his monster games to stop. The thing about defensive players is that they can't always necessarily win games for their teams, because that's just hard to do unless you're a quarterback. But when you have a guy like Watt, who is CLEARLY the best defensive player in the league, and you give him the chance to make plays in close games? He WILL come through in a big way for you.
Y. Cincinnati Bengals. The Bengals went up five scores and somehow only established a margin of 15-0, because of course they were five field goals, because the Bengals. They almost got comebacked-on (like Andrew Luck, or the superior comeback engineer Vince Young, was on the Ravens instead of Flaccastrophe). At least Andy Dalton was competent. And at least the Bengals' D is pretty solid still.
Z. Atlanta Falcons. Whoa, shit, did we know Matt Ryan could do that? You might be saying, "Yes, Jesse, of course we knew, you big silly goose," but not so fast. Know how many times Matty Ice (HOLY SHIT I NEED TO NICKNAME Matt Stafford "Natty Ice"!! And while we're at it we can nickname Andrew Luck "Captain Undeserved Praise") has put up a 128.8+ passer rating in the past two seasons? Like zero. And by "like zero" I mean five times, including only once last year. Which isn't as few as I expected. What made the difference? Was it the return of his two stud receivers, Hulio Hones and Devin Hester (wait, what?), or the surprising effectiveness of their RB-by-committee? Either way, I can safely say I don't care.
A. Detroit Lions. Natty Ice was in prime form on Sunday, as Natty Ice threw for 346 yards and 2 TDs, while Natty Ice also put up a passer rating of 125.3, topping Andrew Luck's meager 83.1 in the chronologically preceding game. Natty Ice didn't get much help from his running game, which honestly looked pathetic (76 total yards, including 15 on 9 carries from the immortal Reggie Bush), but Natty Ice and the Lions seem to have adopted the "Saints Method" of offense; i.e., "don't fucking run the ball and just fucking throw it instead." The key differences, of course, between the Saints' offence and the Lions' offense (featuring Natty Ice) are that Brees is slightly more accurate than Natty Ice, and Natty Ice is throwing to the most physically dominant receiver of all time, and the best overall receiver since Randy Moss. That would, of course, be Golden Tate, who received an assist from the decidedly mediocre Calvin Johnson. Any way you slice it, that receiving corps is stacked, especially when you realize that Reggie Bush is at this point essentially a tight end who blocks from the backfield and catches screens. The point really is, with 346 yards of passing offense, who the fuck needs a running game? Detroit's defense also looks studly, and their defensive line might be the best in football (or, you know, the Rams).
B. New Orleans Saints. I have no idea how good this team is. I can safely say they're better than Andrew Luck, but beyond that it's a mystery. Should I be impressed that they held their own with the surprisingly good Atlanta offense? Or should I mock them for losing to a team which last year won approximately zero games? (Okay, four. Still.)
C. St. Louis Cardinals. Wait... Kurt Warner (is that right?) looked great out there, throwing 119 yards and a whopping 0 touchdowns to... Malcolm Floyd? I'm so confused. The Cardinals defense looks good once again this year, led by two players I've never heard of (Larry Foote and Tony Jefferson) despite having followed football so closely over the last decade that I have more restraining orders than the Seahawks have players. I'm more confused than Andrew Luck trying to talk to a girl.
D. Indianapolis Colts. The Colts started out weak, going down 24-0 through the first fifteen-plus-thirteen minutes and three seconds of the game, but were they going to let that stop them? Hell no. They have the quarterbacking situation which is frequently rated as either the #1 or #2 in the league, for no reason, despite having neither an elite starting quarterback nor a promising young backup in the wings. The Colts have always whined about their running game, and in this game it kind of deserved it, as the Colts' three best backs (Trent Richardson, Luck, and Ahmad Bradshaw) combined for 54 yards on the ground. The Colts do have what I strongly believe is the most underrated receiving corps in the NFL, by an absurdly wide margin, and all of them looked solid on Sunday. Andrew Luck did his best to channel his inner Vince Young (the Comeback Champion, whom Luck continually and fruitlessly tries to exceed), but in the end he was ultimately unsuccessful, and lapsed once more into the quiet failure of the weak. In a pun update, Luck's failure is also the Failure of the Week! So he won something. Like a six-year-old on the last-place team in a politically-correct soccer tournament.
E. Minnesota Vikings. What the fuck? Is Matt Cassel that good? Is Cordarrelle Patterson? Is that spelled right? Is Adrian Peterson suddenly no longer the best running back on the Vikings? Is Matt Cassel suddenly in the spacious ranks of NFL Starting QBs Who Are Better Than Luck? Is Luck suddenly a below-average starting QB? The answer to all these questions (except the first, which was rhetorical) are probably no, but I'm leaving them because they make me feel warm inside.
Peace.
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