Normally, they will be more lucid, but honestly I hardly remember anything that went on in the games for a few reasons:
(1) I got up early Friday to do the Sirius XM show, immediately drove to Vegas, and stayed up until 2 am playing poker Friday night. Woke up at 7:30 to pack up, check out and go to draft our WCOFF team in Vegas Saturday morning, drove back home from Vegas Saturday night, woke up at 6 am Sunday morning for the Fantasy Football Live show, got breakfast and a beer at a sports bar on the way home and was generally in an exhausted haze all day.
(2) I had the Bears in survivor, a game which both riveted and traumatized me to the point where I lost track of many of the other games. (More on that below)
(3) When you try to watch nine games at once and simultaneously track all the stats online, you sometimes lose the thread of all the games - you see a play here, switch before commercials, a timeout there, a punt, an incomplete pass, and it all bleeds together, especially when you're tired - and I'll admit I drank two more brews at home.
Anyway, here are my limited observations given the circumstances. I plan to catch up on Short Cuts during the week.
I liken the Bears game to being on death row, being walked down the hall to the electric chair, being blindfolded and strapped in, waiting for the guy to flip the switch and at the last second, getting a pardon on some crazy technicality that defies everyone's sense of fair play or justice. And that was the least traumatic part. At that point, I had nearly made peace with death. It was the Bears, down one, in the fourth quarter getting stuffed four times from the one yard-line. It was the Bears scoring the TD and missing the two-point conversion, then inexplicably playing prevent defense against Shaun Hill after not allowing Hill to get even a first down for the five previous series. It was the turnovers, the penalties, seeing Cutler run for his life on every play behind that abysmal offensive line. It's a terrible thing for the average survivor player to lose his entry in Week 1, but quite another for me to lose five of seven, and more importantly, take down all those who trusted in my advice on the site. At least for the regular player, you curse fate and be done with it, but I still have to muster the enthusiasm for the column for 16 more weeks.
The Lions don't try hard enough to get the ball to Calvin Johnson. Devin Aromashodu, not Johnny Knox, looks like Jay Cutler's first read. Pierre Thomas looks like a legitimate closer this year - he got some tough yards to seal the deal against the Vikings. If he's used like that on a regular basis, he could be in for a huge year. Brandon Jacobs and Ahmad Bradshaw both looked very quick and healthy. Wes Welker appears to be healthy (I was a doubter heading into the season). The Cowboys intend to make Dez Bryant a big part of the offense immediately, though Miles Austin is as good a bet as anyone to be the league's top receiver. Clinton Portis is a great blocker, meaning he'll be on the field a ton so long as he's healthy. Michael Vick is good enough to be a starter in the NFL and is absolutely worth a look against the Lions next week. The Steelers are not easy to run against. (Last year, Chris Johnson went into Pittsburgh Week 1 and finished with just 57 yards on 15 carries (3.8 YPC), one catch for 11 yards and no scores). So don't worry about Michael Turner. Steve Smith (CAR) is healthy and as quick and physical as ever. (He'll need Matt Moore to stay healthy, though). Joe Buck and Troy Aikman don't grasp the concept that using timeouts on defense saves more time than waiting until you get the ball back and using them after the two-minute warning. Buck also doesn't grasp that 2nd-and-1 is better for the offense than 1st-and-10.
