What a first week in the NFL!
Football season is back! Thank God because I was getting really sick of watching my Giants hit worse than the Bad News Bears on a nightly basis. Unfortunately for me, with football season, also comes watching the Niners play worse than the Little Giants before they run the play called the Annexation of Puerto Rico. What a brutal game to watch. Even though we must be careful not to overreact to week 1 (Michael Turner will never do that again…the Lions are just that bad), there are some thing we can take away from the first weekend.
1. Has there been an inter-conference shift in power?
Going into the season, the consensus was that the AFC was by far the superior conference. But at least for this weekend, that was not the case. The Colts and the Chargers, both heavy home favorites, lost to the Carolina Panthers and the Chicago Bears, respectively. Now neither the Panthers or the Bears are terrible teams, but to lose a home game to the non-NFC elite is a sign that things may be changing. Perhaps the AFC’s stranglehold on the NFC has been loosened a bit, or perhaps it was week 1 in the NFL and the AFC will continue to treat the NFC like its kid brother.
2. The NFC West is horrible
Seriously, it’s bad. This weekend, the Seahawks got blown out on the road against Buffalo, the Rams brought a pee wee football team dressed in its uniforms to Philadelphia, and the Cardinals and Niners played a game less aesthetically pleasing than Oprah in a thong. 8-8 may get it done in this division. I bet against the Hawks BIG this weekend because that -1 spread looked like a joke to me. Well I was right. Even though 65% of the action was on the Seahawks, it was clear that the Bills were a better team. They also have a quarterback who isn’t balding, which can’t hurt. Seriously, have you heard of Rogaine, Hasselbeck?
3. The Steelers are still good
As Kanye would say, they are like God with an extra “O.” I heard a lot of rumblings this off season that THIS was the year the Steelers relinqueshed the division to the up and coming Browns. So how did the Steelers respond? By beating everyone’s favorite sleeper this year by a greater margin than Einstein would beat Keanu Reeves in an IQ test. It’s obviously still early, but I see no way this team loses the division to a team that got blown off its own field by the Tony Simpsons, oops, I mean Romos.
4. It’s really hard to win on the road
I don’t get why people haven’t caught on to this. I see people picking road teams in Survivor pools or Pick ‘Em leagues all the time and I just don’t get it. Road teams have only won 5 games thus far and I bet they lose both Monday Night Games as well. People don’t seem to understand that teams playing at home just have more energy and are more focused (unless you are the Niners and then you play terribly no matter where you are geographically). The Niners could play a team that has been in a plane, without water, circling over the Sahara for 8 straight days in Candlestick (it will never be Monster Park to me) with the crowd going crazy for the whole 60 minutes and still look terrible. It really is a skill my team has.
5. Brett Favre plays football in the NFL
Not sure if you guys heard about this but Brett Favre decided to come back and play in the NFL. He plays for a team called the New York Jets and he recently threw two touchdown passes in a game. I know the media has been pretty hush hush about Favre’s whereabouts and his every day actions so I just thought I’d inform you.
So there are five things I observed in the NFL this week. Good to have football back!
Tags: AFC, Arizona Cardinals, Candlestick, Chicago Bears, Indianapolis Colts, Kanye West, Monster Park, NFC, NFC West, NFL, Niners, Oprah, Pittsburgh Steelers, San Francisco 49ers, Seattle Seahawks, St. Louis Rams, Week 1
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