Who’s Lying?

All right, how much of what we saw do we believe? I don’t believe any of it yet personally. Literally none of what we saw.

Is Rob Gronkowski going to score 3 touchdowns a game? Ok maybe that’s a bad example. Due to Belichick’s involvement, if you told me Gronk scored 3 TD’s a game for the season it wouldn’t surprise me. Seriously, how will the man in the hoodie punish the NFL? Turn Gronk on them. That’s what I’d do.

Anyway, back to what we are talking about here. While last week we had no numbers to base any decisions off of, now we have some. The only problem is that very few stand out to be absolutes. For example, we knew Buffalo’s defense would be very good. This is now, officially, a truth. They look like they could be WAY better than people expected.

But there are some, like Indianapolis, who got really beat up by the exact same Buffalo defense that we can say, that’s a lie! There is simply no way that an offense like that should perform the way it did. Not unless the Bills defense is in the “Potentially Historically Good” category, and I’m not quite there yet with them. I would be buying low on ever single Colt I could. This Jets defense they are about to face is no picnic either.

So let’s tell 3 truths and 3 lies.

Truth 1:
My top 3 “Snuggly Soft Defenses” are: Tampa Bay, New Orleans and Chicago. Good lord did Tampa Bay look bad. I mean where do we begin? They only let up 309 yards which isn’t terrible. But they gave up 42 points, ranking dead last in the league. That’s efficiently bad. If that happens again we may have found the Ying to the Buffalo Defense’s Yang.

New Orleans looked terrible too. 427 yards and 31 points in the first game points to a fantasy match up dream. Those numbers and rushing and passing numbers included helps it rank in the bottom of just about every category. Anybody that’s down on Drew Brees shouldn’t be. He’s going to be throwing a lot.

Chicago is a great city to visit in the summer time. Now it looks like the fall will be inviting to anybody playing the Bears. The 322 yards they gave up wasn’t terrible. The 31 points however, that’s not going away. Granted it was the Packers but that’s no excuse.

Truth 2:

Ameer Abdullah
He’s real. I promise. It’s not a hallucination and it’s not a mirage. This is not a drill! It wasn’t just that he was supper efficient in what he did. The guy scored on his first career carry for goodness sake. 7 Carries for 50 Yards and a TD. 4 Catches for 44 yards. Here’s something everybody that lives outside of Detroit forgot, 3 kickoff returns for 105 yards. So to recap, Ameer touched the ball 14 times, gained 199 yards and scored a touchdown. I think we need to give Ameer the ball more. That’s at least what I’m thinking if I’m Jim Caldwell since they’re playing the Vikings who gave up 230 yards on the ground last week.

Truth 3:
The Eagles Offense is pretty good. They didn’t play well in the first half. That much is clear. They still put up 399 yards on offense. 399! And they lost! Three different guys scored and two of them are running backs.

Actually that’s what’s interesting. If you combine the numbers of Demarco Murray, Ryan Matthews and Darren Sproles you get 16 Carries for 63 yards, 14 catches for 111 yards and 3 TDs. That was a down week. You may not always know who’s going to get the most touches, but if you have a Philadelphia RB, you are going to get something. Get them while you can.

Lie 1:
Jameis Winston isn’t that bad is he? I’m not ready to throw the towel in on the guy just yet. That would make no sense. It appears that the defense is going to have issues as we discussed above. That means lots of throwing because they are behind. Once Mike Evans is back on the field the dynamics of that offense could change significantly.

A Quarterback Rating of 64.0 really speaks to how poorly he played. However, this week we get to see what he can do against a terrible defense in New Orleans. This match up will determine in my mind if Jameis is in fact that bad or if it was just a case of a poor first game. Him being terrible again this week could change “Jameis Winston is terrible” from a lie to a truth really quickly.

Lie 2:
There is no way Ryan Tannehill is that bad. The Dolphins offense didn’t look very good on Sunday. I can’t decide if it’s that Washington’s Defense is that good (4th in Total Defense, 8th against the pass and the run) or if Tannehill isn’t the break out candidate we thought.

A quarterback rating of 93.5 is above his career average so I’m going to chalk this performance up to a better than expected Washington Defense and a bunch of new faces on the Dolphins offense. I wouldn’t cut bait on him yet. I think this is a definite lie.

Looking at his schedule though, it appears that the match ups he’ll face are going to be a little tougher than expected. I’d temper my expectations.

Lie 3:
Adrian Peterson is just fine thank you very much. For the first game action he saw in almost a year, those that picked Peterson 1st overall were incredibly disappointed. Heck I said he was going to have a monster week because the 49ers were going to be terrible.

It appears that thought was entirely incorrect. San Francisco comes out of the game 3rd in total defense, 7th against the run and 5th against the pass. I don’t think they are that good. It’s more of an indictment of Minnesota’s offense than anything else.

Peterson’s 3.1 yards per carry was awful but he did add 3 catches for 21 yards. I think he was rusty and there’s no way that this is what we should expect.