Perhaps 2012 is going to be the “Year of the Tight End.”
Fourteen tight ends scored touchdowns in Week 1, and of course, Rob Gronkowski and Jimmy Graham were among the 14.
Joining them on the list were Martellus Bennett, Kevin Boss, Scott Chandler, Vernon Davis, Jermichael Finley, Tony Gonzalez, Clay Harbor, Aaron Hernandez, Marcedes Lewis, Heath Miller, Dennis Pitta and Jacob Tamme.
So, we certainly picked the right season to bring back the tight end position.
Only six of the 12 JFL teams had touchdown-scoring tight ends starting this week, which means a few teams definitely earned an advantage at the tight end position.
For the Jawz Attack, the 12.1 points from Jermichael Finley helped make up for the 13.6 points scored by the Generals’ Aaron Hernandez. In a matchup that was decided by just 2.4 points, it was huge for the Attack to have Finley score a TD.
It was big for several JFL teams as four matchups came down to 10 points or less.
Four games were legitimately on the line on Monday night and it made for an exciting six hours of football — which is almost too much on Monday night.
Don’t get me wrong, I love football. But this six-plus hours of watching football on Monday night, including a West Coast game that doesn’t really finish up until nearly 2 a.m. is brutal.
Thankfully, this is just a one-time thing.
World of Noise is saying the same thing about his tough loss to the Money Man.
Things did not go to plan for the Jammers — at least not at first.
The same could be said for a few of his fantasy players, Matthew Stafford, Titus Young and Darren Sproles.
All three were on teams that surprisingly trailed in their games on Sunday.
Sproles and the Saints fell behind early and needed a huge rally to get the game close, but it wasn’t enough for the Saints.
It was enough for the Jammers as Sproles turned a two-point first half of fantasy into 18 total points with big returns and a touchdown catch. He still had zero rushing yards, amazingly.
The Lions were down to the Rams in what would have been a mega-upset had Stafford not put the woes of three first-half interceptions behind him by throwing for 355 yards and the game-winning TD.
Unfortunately for the Jammers, that TD was to Kevin Smith, who Team Boyer inserted in the lineup for a questionable Marshawn Lynch.
Lynch wound up playing, but Smith got Boyer 11.8 more points with a 21.9 points (62 yards, two TDs).
Boyer also got double-digits from Matt Forte (18.6) and Tom Brady (23.6) and looked to be on his way to a win, but Dustin Keller and Vincent Jackson combined for 6.4 points, giving the Jammers a chance at a comeback.
Julio Jones was a stud scoring 24 fantasy points and Tony Gonzalez had 12.3 to keep it close, and the comeback began Sunday night with 9.6 points from Antonio Brown and was capped on Monday night with 11 points from the Chargers and 4.1 points from Ronnie Brown.
The Jammers moves to 1-0 for the sixth time in seven seasons.
Perhaps the lights were shining too bright.
He’s an overwhelming favorite to be a top team in the JFL and he’s starting 0-1 for the second straight season.
Houserville took it to him, posting eight double-digit efforts — nearly a full sweep of nine as the Falcons’ defense scored 9.5 points — in a 20-point thrashing.
Behind 20 points from Demaryius Thomas and 19.5 points from Andre Johnson fueled the fire. Both were selected by Houserville in the first five rounds, Johnson second, Thomas fifth.
In fact, all five of his first five picks hit double-digits.
His first-round pick, Jimmy Graham, was part of the tight end touchdown parade, scoring 15.7 fantasy points. Percy Harvin, a third-round pick, added 15.6 points.
Doug Martin, who he grabbed in the fourth round, scored 12.6 points in his NFL debut.
His late-round gem of last season, Cam Newton, was rather tame compared to his 2011 Week 1 performance, scoring just 19.4 points on Sunday. Still, thanks to all the other double-digit performers, it didn’t hurt at all.
Despite all that, the news Team still had a chance, and actually led for a little bit Monday night, but that changed after the Ravens started destroying the Bengals, whose defense was starting for the News Team. The 0.5 points were brutal, but after Darren McFadden scored 14.4 points in the second Monday night game, it was just inevitable that the News Team was going to lose.
The Bengals would have had to put up a great defensive performance and scored 22 points to have won.
Outside of the defense, it was still a good week for the News Team. Aaron Rodgers was just as he was last season, scoring 30.7 points and Arian Foster tagged on another 19.7 points with his two-touchdown day.
Brandon Marshall also had the sort of day I thought he’d have — and the type of day he’ll have many more times this season.
The News Team can only hope those days lead to wins, not losses.
As for Houserville, this is a huge win. He had never beaten the News Team and now he’s got the win and the early-season division lead.
It may not shutup the un-shutup-able World of Noise, but at least he’ll look good trying to silence the Noise.
The Attack was sweating this one out.
After Ben Roethlisberger threw for his second touchdown of the night, the Attack appeared to have moved ahead for good, but that didn’t appear to be the case. Big Ben threw a pick to move the Attack’s point total backward.
Oh, no. Here we go again, he must have thought.
Fortunately for the Attack, it was just one interception and Big Ben didn’t turn the ball over again, securing the 102.3-99 win.
For the Attack, it was his first win against the Generals and his nine win in JFL history. He’s almost in double-digits in his third year in the JFL, and he’s only 19 wins away from surpassing the World of Noise, who is in his seventh season — that’s fodder for Dawson.
The Attack appeared to be in a bit of trouble after the 1 o’clock games because LeSean McCoy — Mr. Double-Digit — scored 13.8 in a miserable Eagles’ win and Pierre Garcon shocked the fantasy world with 19.7 points, but 17 came on one 88-yard TD catch. Without that, Garcon was a 2.7-point player.
Still, that didn’t help Jawz.
But late in the 1 o’clock games, Shonn Greene came alive with 15.4 points. I know you can say, “Hey, Jimmy. What did you say about Shonn Greene?”
And yes, I made fun of him. I said he was a fantasy dud, in so many words, and honestly, he was that on Sunday.
If it weren’t for the fact that the Bills absolutely laid an egg on Sunday, Greene would have had about 5 fantasy points. Instead, with 41 points on the board, the Jets his scored 9 points in the fourth quarter, including 8.5 points on a meaningless final Jets drive that ended in a Greene rushing TD.
So, yes, I’ll say I was wrong about him, but I was only wrong about Week 1. I think 8.5 garbage points for a 15.4-points scorer doesn’t tell me he’s a credible fantasy threat.
Now that I’m done defending myself, let’s talk about how the Jawz won. Plain and simple, it was Big Ben. Scoring 23.4, he lifted the Jawz past the Generals in the Sunday night game.
And it’s a good thing the Jawz went with his new QB and not his hangover from last season. Josh Freeman, despite a big Bucs win, scored just 13.8 points.
Surprisingly enough, Blaine Gabbert, who I consider and I’m sure the Jawz considers the third-team QB, scored at team-best 26.6 points. It was against a bad Vikings team, so I wouldn’t count on that weekly; nevertheless, it was a pretty good performance as he threw for 260 yards and two scores.
He’s definitely not starting for the Jawz any time soon, but if he can keep that up, it’s a good backup option for his other QBs if they go down.
Jawz also got lucky that Kevin Kolb threw a couple passes to Larry Fitzgerald when he came into the game. Before Kolb entered the game for an injured John Skelton, Fitzgerald had just 2 fantasy points. He finished with 7.1, which is not great, but in a close matchup, it made the difference.
But like the Eagles, it doesn’t matter how ugly it was, it’s still a win — and Jawz will take it.
Interestingly enough, I talked in the preview for this matchup how it was crazy that RG3 was facing Brees and the Saints, and the Toasters was facing the man with Brees.
Griffin had just one touchdown on the board and the text message from the Toasters was already in my inbox.
It was a great performance and made NFL history, but don’t be fooled — I’m not taking back any of the jokes I made about the Toasters’ first-round pick. Not yet.
Take away an 88-yard TD pass on a complete blown coverage, and RG3 has a less-impressive 22.2-point day.
Nevertheless, it happened and RG3’s 34.2 points were huge in this matchup.
And as I said, I compared this matchup to the Redskins-Saints, and it mimicked it throughout the weekend.
Behind RG3, the Toasters took a huge lead. Add in 16.2 points from Michael Bush, 21.6 from Stevan Ridley and 12.3 from Calvin Johnson, and the Dotts was cruising with the Ravens defense still set to go on Monday night.
But like the Saints, the Slackers powered back, scoring 21.9 points from Ray Rice, 7.4 from Torrey Smith and 8 from A.J. Green to make it close.
But a late defensive TD and a plethora of sacks by the Ravens gave the Toasters 20.5 and about a 10-point lead heading into the Chargers-Raiders game.
Basically, all the Slackers needed was an Antonio Gates TD to win it because you knew Gates would get the yardage.
That never came. The Chargers offense sputtered all night and Gates missed a few series thanks to a rib injury — surprised?
He finished with 5.1 points, leaving the Slackers 4.8 points shy of the Toasters.
Just like the Redskins, the Toasters were able to hold on a win in the final minutes.
For the Toasters, it’s his fourth straight season-opening win and fifth overall. And doing it against a projected division winner makes it all the better.
Chant it with me: “R-G-3… R-G-3… Dot-T-3!”
There had to be a bit of a sigh of relief on the part of the Chinese Organ Thieves on Monday night.
After Philip Rivers and Malcolm Floyd connected for the only Chargers TD of the game, 12 points were added to the Thieves’ score and he took the lead on Fear and Loathing.
If it weren’t for that TD catch, the Thieves may have lost this one.
And that would have hurt considering the fact that at the last minute he benched Adrian Peterson for Nate Washington.
I’m not sure about the replacement, but I am sure that I too would have been questionable about Peterson. And I too would have spent the 1 o’clock hour crying. Peterson busted loose for 84 yards and two TDs (20.9 fantasy points) Sunday.
It was rather shocking to me, as I’m sure it was for the Thieves.
For Fear, at the time, it was a relief as he had six players hit double-digits and build a decent lead heading into Monday night.
The biggest problem for the Fear was DeAngelo Williams who had 0.6 points on six carries for negative-1-yard rushing.
This blows my mind.
Not the negative-1 part, but the six rushes. Williams’ six rushes were nearly half the number of running plays run by the Panthers in a six-point loss. A team that has Cam Newton, Williams and Mike Tolbert ran the ball 13 times.
How does this happen?
One of the better running teams from 2011 gave up on it.
The Panthers probably should have won this game and it could have happened if they made more of an effort to run the ball.
If that happened, Fear might have won this matchup.
Also worth noting in this matchup is Jeremy Maclin’s 17-point performance. I said in the division preview that I liked him this season over DeSean Jackson, and so far, it is proving to be true. I did, however, say in the weekly preview that I thought Jackson would have the better day Sunday, so I’m half-right on the season.
Can I sneak an extra note in here?
Peyton Manning scored 28.8 points on the bench for the Thieves and I imagine we might start to see him in the starting lineup soon. The Thieves sat there on draft day just watching Manning be passed over by owner after owner, and finally, he had seen enough.
That move may prove to be the best move of the 2012 season.
And the misery continues.
World of Noise has now lost 13 of his last 15 games dating back to Week 13 of 2010.
During that span, the Noise had score 100 points or more just four times.
Four times. In 15 games. Amazing.
Houserville, chime in anytime you want, because you actually have the right to talk smack.
Noise, you’ve been suspended from making comments until you score 100 points.
For about two hours Sunday, the Noise looked like he was going to get that. Matt Ryan stormed out of the gates with a 41-point performance giving the Jammers nightmares of one Aaron Rodgers trade.
But that was virtually it for the Noise on Sunday. The only other double-digit scorer on Sunday was kicker Stephen Gostkowski with 11 points.
The Noise added a third double-digit scorer Monday with BenJarvus Green-Ellis, who had 91 yards and a TD for 15.7 points.
The rest of the team let him down, especially Michael Turner who had just 32 yards. I knew the Falcons were committed to passing, but I didn’t think it was by this much.
It will certainly be something to watch as the season goes along. If the Noise’s No. 1 overall pick in 2012 is a huge bust, it could seriously hurt his chances to compete.
T-Money, on the other hand, had strong performances all around, including double-digits from RBs Frank Gore (17.5) and Ahmad Bradshaw (15.7), which is big because with Fred Jackson, his first-round pick, going down with an injury that will keep him out for weeks, T-Money will need Gore and Bradshaw from here on out.
He’ll surely be using a WR in the FLEX for the next couple weeks.
He’ll also have some QB controversies each week, because Romo and Cutler showed in Week 1 that they’re ready to have big seasons. Romo scored 25.3 and Cutler had 29.1, and T-Money will have to make smart decisions each week.
From experience, I know that is a great problem to have.
T-Money will love it.
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