News:

Week 1 of 2024 seemed like a medley of many previous season openers. It had all the drama of the Lev Bell holdout season with Lamb and Aiyuk getting their big bags of money and Chase not getting his. We had the intrigue of numerous fantasy starters not even waiting until the games started to be injured. We had rookie phenoms fizzle and a few old guys on new teams sizzle. Round 1 of the Puka or Kupp debate seems to be resolved until at least Week 7. Bigplay led the way in fantasy scoring this week but we’ll have to wait to see whether this is a new movie or one we’ve already seen before.

Random Thought of the Week:

Cincinnati does not look like a very good offensive team (again) and people generally seem pretty calm and unconcerned about it (again), which is puzzling to me. The fantasy mood is they are just “slow starters” and that everything will be fine. Meanwhile Burrow and Chase look pretty disinterested out there. Sleepy Joe Mixon suddenly looks like Walter Payton on his new team and their play-off run is very quietly coming up on nearly two full calendar years ago. I’m a bit more than not at all worried.

Somewhat related, are we ready to accept Deshaun Watson is never going to be close to the player he was in Texas? People can roll their eyes sarcastically when I refer to his body language if they want but this guy’s says Playing football is a completely joyless experience for me. It might actually be worse than joyless. There’s talent on that Cleveland team but they need to Russ Wilson this guy as soon as possible and move on. It’s a lot of money but it’s just money.

Shark Move of the Week:

First honourable mention is to the managers making moves before the sun rises on Wednesday.

Second honourable mention goes to Archie for winning the Puka / Kupp sweepstakes so far. Injury aside, Kupp looks healthy and back to being a Waffle House (always open).

Scott gets a nod for winning the award for the most Lions in a single winning fantasy line-up. If you have any players you want to trade that aren’t on bye in Week 5, Scott might be listening.

The award goes to Neil however for top weekly score. He should probably give a little credit to Marvin Harrison Jr but a win is a win.

Guppy move of the Week:

Runner up this week goes to the Piper, who sort of McCaffed his Monday night moves. He picked up Kyle Alphabet yet decided to start Isaac “This is the endo, my friendo” Guerendo. Can you hear the drums Fernando? I’m not sure what Moogs heard but suffice to say there was not something in the air that night, unless it was the faint odour of soiled trousers. Say what you want about Juszczyk but at least he usually touches the football at some point during most games.

Many of you may read this and say “Me too” but I’m going to go ahead and give myself the award this week. Clearly I failed to grasp the magnitude of the impact of changes to the kick-off rules this year. I knew they were doing “something new” but I kinda dropped the ball. Raheem Blackshear scored 20 fantasy points on 204 return yards. Is he going to do that every week? No. Should you run out and pick up Jaelon Darden and start him next week? Also no but if you have someone on your team who is meaningfully involved on offense AND is also returning kicks, you probably have a very valuable fantasy asset on your hands – so valuable that this off season, we may have to look at tweaking our scoring for return yards.

Smack Talk Award of the Week:

Great participation and banter this week but I’m going to have to give it to Neilly again for “We don’t get points for blocks”. We may not get points for blocks but Jordan Mason certainly did (get blocks and points, I mean).

Welcome to Fantasy Hell Award of the Week:

The Week 1 express bus to hell seems to be nearly full (going forward, reserved seating is recommended). We have the prominent injuries of course. We had some bad Week 1 results from high picks that I think will be just fine but there are some offenses I would be fairly worried about if I had invested in them (see above). The Giants seem to be still doing Giants things and I wouldn’t hold my breath that’s going to improve (unless you include players who escaped like Barkley did). Carolina looks really bad and I’m pretty worried about Tennessee as well.

Back to Clan McDonald, Neil had a nice week but he suddenly has a QB situation to think about. Brian quickly got pretty thin in the WR depth chart with the Nacua injury and also having Tee “Soft Tissue” Higgins and Mike “game time decision” Williams on his roster. All that said, we won’t overthink the award this week though. Piper had the roughest start (mathematically speaking) with 81 points and now the word “Achilles” is being quietly used on his first overall pick. Hopefully his season doesn’t turn into a Greek tragedy.