Last Fan Standing: Week 2
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- Week 1---the be-all, end-all of professional football.
Right now, half the league is reserving Bay Area hotel rooms for Super Bowl L (my bad, Super Bowl 50. Good call by the way, "Super Bowl L" looks stupid. Wow the NFL got something right), while the other half is refreshing Todd McShay's big board for the 2016 draft.
Luckily, that's not how this works. There are 15 more games on the schedule, so spending the week looking at division standings is a waste of Wi-Fi. Five teams that lost in Week 1 a year ago ended up with at least 10 wins, including three that finished 12-4. It's important to learn from what we saw, but also breathe. If game 1 was really an omniscient indicator we'd still be talking about how the 49ers gave away a Super Bowl to the Titans by not running it on 4th down.
That ends the "Eagles will be okay, step off the ledge" portion of this post.
This is about the Last Fan Standing, in which case Week 1 IS the be-all, end-all. There's no coming back from a defeat here, and there's more than 7,000 fans that already got their legs taken out.
If you ignored the Bills 2014 Week 1 upset and thought Rex Ryan would lose his Buffalo debut. SIT DOWN.
If you thought Nick Foles could only complete a pass under Chip Kelly and disregarded the first two cardinal rules of the pool (no road teams, no divisional games). SIT DOWN.
If you picked Jameis over Marcus in the Battle of the Rookies, SIT DOWN.
And if you thought the preseason meant anything and didn't care about a road favorite on Monday night, wow I respect your loyalty, but also SIT DOWN.
Week 2 should be more kind to us. There are three games that you should feel more than comfortable locking in on. Since there's only one team you can no longer use, this should be a cakewalk.
The Bills used a pretty simple approach to force Andrew Luck into mistakes and destroy any rhythm the Colts' offense tried to create. They blitzed, blitzed, blitzed and blitzed. Buffalo hit a few big plays to jump in front 24-0 and didn't turn the ball over, leaving Indy with an uphill climb they couldn't make.
The Jets were similarly disruptive against the Browns. They won the turnover battle 5-1, and had great success running the ball. Chris Ivory and Bilal Powell combined for 4.8 yards per carry and two touchdowns. The Jets and Bills were both at home with a new coach and new quarterback; it looked like both teams just wanted it more.
Colts over the Jets
Luck is a bit of a step up from the Josh McCown-Johnny Manziel tag team Cleveland ran out on Sunday. The Colts are home, where Luck is 14 games above .500 in his career, compared to just 3 games over on the road. Luck has only lost back-to-back games once in his career, the first two games of last season but that's because Week 2 was the Eagles and Chip Kelly is a genius. Basically, it's Andrew Luck vs. Ryan Fitzpatrick.
Steelers over the 49ers
Last Thursday the Steelers' defense looked lost. It's possible any defense would have looked the same against Hurricane Brady on trophy night, but the decision not to cover Rob Gronkowski turned out to be a mistake. The secondary looked just as messy as last season. But the offense looked just as good, even without Le'Veon Bell and Martavis Bryant.
They've had the long week to try to clean up the defense, and the San Francisco 49ers are traveling post-Monday night football Tuesday morning football to Pittsburgh. The Niners might not be as bad as everyone assumed, but the Vikings also might not be any good. San Fran doesn't have the passing game to expose the back of the Steelers' defense.
Which team looked the worst in week 1? Was it those Vikings, who were a 2.5-point favorite and couldn't even muster 250 total yards of offense? The Raiders are always in this conversation. They were down 33-0 against the Bengals before a couple garbage-time scores, but the Bengals are an above-average team, 21 wins in the last two seasons, and Oakland lost their starting quarterback Derek Carr before halftime.
I pick the Tampa Bay Bucs. Yes, they were the worst team in football last season, actually no, tied for the worst team. Tied with the team they played, the Tennessee Titans. It didn't feel that way during the game. Marcus Mariota was a walking fire emoji. He was 10-for-13 with four touchdowns at halftime. Four touchdown passes by a rookie in their first game hasn't happened since 1961, Mariota did it in a half. Winston never had a shot. He spent most of the game running for his life behind that papier-mâché offensive line.
The Pick: Saints over the Bucs
Now the Bucs are playing in New Orleans against a team and quarterback with a little more experience than Mariota. Drew Brees is 13-6 against Tampa Bay, and his yards per attempt and quarterbacks rating are both above his career averages. The Saints had trouble with Lovie Smith when he coached the Super Bowl-contending Bears, but swept the Bucs last year in Smith's first season as head coach. Brees threw six interceptions to three touchdowns in those two games but won anyway. That's good news because the Saints were far from impressive last week in Arizona. Let's get that Superdome rocking! I'm in.
