Remember, remember, remember…this is just one game, and we’re all football starved right now. Last year, after the Thursday Night opener, many fell in love with Visanthe Shaincoe. Pierre Thomas outscored Adrian Peterson. Percy Harvin had 12 yards, and Brett Favre looked somewhat OK.
– It was Jordy Nelson-mania (6 rec for 77 yards and 1 TD on 8 targets, 13.7 FF pts & 19.7 PPR) on my email and text tonight. No one else had Nelson rated as highly as we did this preseason, a top-20 Fantasy Football WR for 2011. Congrats to all of you that now have a WR-1, that you took in the 8th-13th Round of the 2011 Fantasy Football Draft…now some of you needed to have the faith to start him! Good news is — you have him, and this is a keeper all year.
Nelson fell 1-yard short of a 2nd TD, and an Aaron Rodgers overthrow away from another TD. This is going to be big for 2011…
– It’s good to make a positive call like Nelson, but it’s equally as important to avoid “traps”. We’ve been saying all along that Mark Ingram (13 carries for 40 yards, 3.0 ypc) was in trouble due to the Saints RB usage, and his lack of ability to be in on 3rd-Down. The best (visually) looking Saints RB tonight was Darren Sproles (2 carries for 7 yards, 7 rec for 75 yards on 9 targets, and a kick-return TD ), followed by Pierre Thomas (5 carries for 31 yards, 4 rec for 37 yards), then Ingram. Our computer analysis was not as high on Ingram, but I thought he looked OK tonight. It’s a crowded situation for Saints RBs, but I was a little surprised that Ingram drew 13 carries to Thomas’s 5. You can never figure out what the Saints/Sean Payton will do next week, Thomas may have 20 carries next week. If I see Ingram way ahead of Thomas again on carres next week…we are going to start changing projections upward.
– I started writing this recap from my notes with about 3-4 minutes left in the game. At the point that I started, all of us here had been talking about what a great night of calls this was (again it’s just Week-1)…except for a quiet Jimmy Graham ( 4 rec for 56 yards and 1 TD, 7 targets). We were all lamenting that Graham had a couple of end-zone targets, but didn’t hook up with Brees. You can imagine the roar here, when Graham punched one in late. Graham is going to be a superstar TE, potentially the #1 TE for Fantasy Football this year (we had him rated #2-3 this preseason, depending upon your scoring system).
— Another positive call (don’t worry…when we are wrong, we’ll say it…just had a good one tonight…) was that James Starks (12 carries for 57 yards and 1 TD) would be the Packers RB to have, and would outscore Ryan Grant (9 carries for 40 yards, 1 rec for 5 yards) in this game…and outscore him all year. Grant looked sluggish, and with a seemingly lost agility….your window to get Starks cheap is closing fast. Starks is going to take that thing over, and rookie Alex Green is going to start popping up at some point.
– Please, please, please do not get suckered into Devery Henderson (6 rec for 100 yards and 1 TD, on 9 targets). The moment Lance Moore (DNP injury) is back, Henderson goes back to normal. Even if Moore misses another game, I’ve seen this a hundred-times…you cannot set your clock by any Saints WR from week-to-week.
– Randall Cobb (2 rec for 35 yards and 1 TD, on 2 targets) is the ultimate “fools-gold” pick up for Week-2. Cobb had a great highlight reel kick-return, that was as much fortunate/lucky as good. Cobb will not get more than 1-2 catches per game with that depth chart. Suckers are going to make the Cobb pickup based on the box score, the ESPN highlight, and their likely poor WR draft that they had…forcing them to be on the prowl.
– No time left, 1 yard away, needing a TD to stay alive…not Drew Brees, but Mark Ingram…really?
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