Thursday NFL Analysis – Week 2

How do you know just how fanatical of a football fan you truly are in life? What you do tonight will largely help in determining the answer. I know that it is impossible to flex a Thursday night game at any point in the season, but if ever there was a time to be able to do it, this would be the week. I cannot imagine a much less intriguing matchup than the one that is set to take place tonight. We have two teams in the Bengals and Texans that were each blown out at home in Week 1 by teams that nobody is looking at to be that great in the AFC. I think the Bengals were the more embarrassing team on Sunday in getting shutout, 20-0 simply due to the fact that they have an established quarterback in Andy Dalton with a top tier wide receiver in AJ Green. However, the mere fact that Houston would even trot out Tom Savage as a starting quarterback for a real life, NFL franchise is plenty worthy of ridicule on a whole other level. I would love to be more hyperbolic in saying how long it will be before we ever see a franchise make such a move, but the Colts stole the spotlight away just a few hours later when they allowed Scott Tolzien to take charge of its shabby squad which was then pulverized by the LA Rams to the tune of 46-9.

It was a ridiculous start to the NFL season for those purists who love the game for the beauty it can bring when it is played well. Unfortunately, ugly does not go nearly far enough when describing much of what we witnessed this past week. Teams just could not get out of their own way on Sunday as penalties, turnovers and offenses that looked out of sync were the order of the day. Amazingly, my Vikings may have put together the most complete effort on both sides of the ball all weekend. And while last week presented us with plenty of opportunities to jump in on a juicy early game with two well rested teams, this week, we get what we have normally come to expect on Thursday nights, a clunker with two teams that are struggling, neither of which have enough firepower to make for a real exciting night.

Obviously, it’s the NFL, so we are still going to watch it though, right? There is no other sport where something like this could possibly take place when a league could put forth two of the worst teams in the league and get the kind of ratings that tonight’s game is going to do regardless of the teams involved. This is how you know that fantasy sports are taking over the world and in the NFL in particular. If you ever hear a player complain about how fans discuss fantasy sports, tonight should be a lesson to them. There is no reason for anyone to attend this game in person or to go through the pain of watching it on TV tonight. It matches one garbage squad against another with the biggest prize being that the winner will no longer be considered the worst team in the league.

In terms of a positional breakdown, I don’t want you to overthink this one. The best play out of this game is probably the defense for either team, but I would lean a little more towards the Bengals tonight. Deshaun Watson gets the starting nod for the Texans and at $4,400, I am a little bit intrigued. He moves well and with DeAndre Hopkins, the big play is always out there. That said, Adam Jones is still a decent corner so if Watson is going to make value, it will probably need to happen with some extra rushing yards. There is not enough upside to fire with him in tournament play, but if you have the stomach for it, he’s not an awful cash play for the price as this really opens up your options when you save this much at QB. However, considering some of the plum matchups later on this weekend for some of the elite QB’s out there, I am less inclined to push my luck here and would rather take my chances on the Bengals keeping him mostly under wraps and getting a few takeaways.

At running back, I am not seeing attractive options for either team tonight. With Watson at QB, the Bengals are going to be able to press the line scrimmage tonight and keep as many guys in the box as possible which should be stifling for the Texans’s run game. Lamar Miller will still get his touches in the hopes of taking pressure off of Watson, but he lacks the sort of explosiveness to be a real threat and I anticipate him being bottled up most of the night. The only way he is going to pull off any sort of value is if he gets a short yardage TD. On the other side of the ball, we have ourselves a committee situation happening where the hope moving forward for the Bengals is that Joe ‘KO’ Mixon can take the lead at some point in becoming the #1 RB they’ve desired for years, but for now, look for the rotation to continue. Against the Houston front line, none of these look like attractive options. It would seem like Gio Bernard will continue to be the passing down RB grabbing the most targets out of the backfield this season, but I like a couple of other low priced players on the slate Sunday who should be featured much more than Gio so I’ll save my money here.

At wideout, I want nothing to do with the Texans. DeAndre may have gotten paid by Houston, but he may regret that decision if Watson is not the savior that some are hoping he will be in turning around the shaky play at QB that we’ve become accustomed to over the years. Another strike against him is that generally, the Bengals play the pass pretty well as shown in almost totally shutting down Antonio Brown in both games last season. For the Bengals, AJ Green is a potential tournament play this week as he’s not going to be highly owned at all and he has taken over games like this in the past, but it won’t be easy against the stingy secondary of the Texans. Although the Texans got beat up on the scoreboard last weekend, it wasn’t due to anything Blake Bortles was doing as he was held to just 125 passing yards. I’m going to fade Green this week as I will much of the rest of the slate. It’s dreadful even having to write as much as I have already about these two disastrous teams.

Tyler Eifert at TE for the Bengals is potentially a nice option tonight at $4,300. The Ravens neutralized him last week, but the Bengals never really made an honest effort to work him into the game after getting down early. He’s actually healthy right now and we’ve seen him put up some big numbers when he can stay on the field. If Dalton is getting harassed in the pocket by the tough pass rush of Houston, he should be looking to dump it off to Eifert to relieve the pressure. He’s probably not consistent enough to put into cash games, but should be a low owned GPP option who does have multi TD upside on the right night.