Your Thursday Night NFL Football Open Thread

The Quest for 0-5 begins tonight! No, Jacksonville isn’t playing-I’m talking about not getting a W yet again in both my fantasy leagues. Will my tight end get zero points? Will I forget to play a defense? Will my starting QB get injured in the first quarter? Will I keep pretending that my losses are all due to that durned ‘bad luck’? Oh my, yes!

A reminder that the first London game of the year is this Sunday. I’ll leave it to a certain Hippo to remind you all of what sort of viewing that is.

Minutae:

-Nick Chubb practiced for the first time this week. The Browns need him desperately but there’s no timetable for his return.

-I’m not much of a fan of Mike Florio on tv (he comes across as a self-serious, very shrill fella) but I do listen to his PFT podcast in bits and pieces and was rewarded today when he said something along these lines, “Why was Aaron Rodgers not heavily recruited out of high school? Why did he slip in the draft? Why did he clash with Green Bay management? [other examples follow] BECAUSE HE’S AN ASSHOLE!” It had to be said by someone that has a relatively high profile in the football media community and he said it. Kudos to you, Florio.

-Roger Craig is on the list of ‘senior’ players that are eligible to get into the Hall of Fame. During his first seven years in the league his lowest total of yards from scrimmage (when coaches and media were biased towards ‘runners’) was his rookie year and it was a paltry 1,152. He had two seasons whereby he accrued 2000+ but like anyone that was given that much work (McCaffrey’s ears are burning) his body broke down after that. If Sayers and Davis are in the Hall, he needs to be.

-A wee fantasy insight-over the last 15 regular season games Mahomes has equaled the number of top 10 fantasy points finishes of one Tommy Cutlets with…one. Btw, Dimes has three and Jake Browning has five.

-Is it lousy overall QB-ing? Is it the number of rook signal-callers that have been thrust into starting roles right out of the gate? Is it two-high safety looks that have taken away the deep ball? As a group, all QB’s are averaging 202 yards passing so far this year. Since 2020 these numbers have gone south-249, 243, 228 and 217. The 156 TD passes thrown so far this year are the fewest since 2008.

To The Game!

Bucs/Falcons:

-I’ve always thought that the NFC South was a dirty grab bag of sub-par teams trading the division championship year after year but the Bucs are three time defending champions. As I suspected, nothing of any real importance is celebrated in Florida.

-Evans is the TD Maker but Godwin kills Atlanta’s secondary cb-he’s scored nine TD’s in his last eleven games vs the Falcons.

-That Bucs D sacked the hell out of Hurts last week to the tune of a half-dozen times. That might just be a reflection of the mess that is “Go Birds!” right now because they’d only got to a QB twice during the previous two games.

-Tampa Needs Turnovers! They’ve not lost a game when getting more takeaways than their opponent for the last 15 tilts.

-Screw Arthur Smith! (and Bijan as well, I guess) Only 26 more teams have rushed more than Atlanta so far this season. Go passing game!*

*Kyle Pitts had zero points in fantasy last week

It’s all you now.