We're sorry to hear about your fantasy team, which is to say we are glad not to hear about your fantasy team. But we're sorry that you're sad about it, and understand why. It was a rough week if you didn't have the wit to take either Jake Moody or Chris Boswell in the first round.
Yes, we know they're just kickers, but that's the attitude that put your ass in last place after Week 1. You went after quarterbacks and wide receivers and tight ends, only to find out that kickers are back and quarterbacks, well, kind of aren't. The people in charge of the game kept talking about the complicated new kickoff rule and what a shiny new toy it was, and how it will make the kickoff a dramatic and entertaining play again, and then they gave you nearly twice as many field goals (68) as touchdown passes (35), not including the 71-yard attempt that Mike McCarthy nearly gifted the world at halftime of Sunday’s Cowboys-Browns inertia-fest.
Put simply, this was the worst opening weekend for the passing game since 2006, which was back when Bill Belichick still didn't do interviews, and nearly two decades before he reshaped himself into a more overexposed and somehow even more desperately approval-seeking version of Jimmy Fallon. You thought it would be a normal start to another season and while you were getting all giddy because your drug had been returned to you, the game went all old school. Monday was a fitting capper for that. The San Francisco 49ers scored on eight consecutive possessions against the New York Jets, but six of them were field goals; their best player was the beefy back Jordan Mason, who in replacing Christian McCaffrey, both moved the point spread down a point and a half in the hour before the game and then stampeded the Jets. Oh, and Aaron Rodgers was deeply ordinary, as you suspected he would be.
Is this a trend? Depends on how you define "trend." Is it something that the animated coat hangers on the league's competition committee will start freaking out about? Depends on the ratings. Is there some throwaway line about this that Kendrick Lamar will toss off at the Super Bowl halftime show? God, let's hope so. I mean, he was the big news of the weekend for taking the most potentially lucrative, least cool, and most bizarre performing gig America can offer. But in doing so he took away something else Drake would have liked to claim for himself, so maybe it's all in how you view it.
But back to the matter at hand. Passing touchdowns, the principal highlight of the new NFL, are down a good 10 percent from their zenith five years ago, and give every indication of continuing that trend. Field goals are similarly up, and given that only six of the 74 attempted were missed over the weekend, this looks like a more comforting fallback position for coaches than in years past—enough so that a 71-yarder seems only moderately ridiculous rather than utterly so. Defenses have caught up to and perhaps passed offenses tactically, quarterbacks are now valued less by how much they command a game than by how much time they have left on their rookie contracts, and now that running backs are being contractually devalued they are getting more work than at any time since Don Shula roamed the earth.
Part of this owes to the short supply of readymade quarterbacks, because of the increased gap between college and pro skills and demands. Part of it is the reflexive lurch toward cleverer defensive schemes and players, which as great leaps forward goes is always easier to accomplish than minting an actually new offensive innovation. Part of it is the lack of alternate Mahomeses, which is unavoidable; part of it is the growing admiration league-wide of the Kyle Shanahan theorem that if you don't have an elite quarterback, you can use running backs to make the quarterback you have elite. And some of it is the fact that coaches are just becoming less trusting of their employees, and so are willing to settle for three points. If you pile them high enough, a team can win that way, too.
But the thrill of a crisply executed 48-yard field goal is not any part of the sizzle the sport sells to convince people that a day without football is a crime against humanity. Taylor Swift can only date a few people at a time, and has settled on a tight end rather than a quarterback. How she didn't see the magic in this staggers the imagination. Maybe she can write an album about that.
All we can do is point out that the new game may well feel less effervescent for you, the streaming fan, than it did five years ago, and add that it shows little sign of course-correcting; this may not apply if you think Brandon Aubrey lining up a kick at his own team's 39-yard-line is the zenith of joy, but people who prefer watching CeeDee Lamb zoom by people might have to adjust their expectations. It isn't our job to suggest solutions, only to provide the information you need to enjoy your weekends more, preferably while keeping such enjoyment entirely to yourselves.
Yes, it's only one week, but were we you (and there's a thought to make your flesh melt), we'd pick our kickers wisely and even agitate a rule change to allow you a second instead of that useless flex you drafted in round 11. It might be less visually arresting than going long on receivers (no pun intended, Miami), but you're not into football for the aesthetics, right? You're in it to pretend that you're a general manager, and you're trying to beat Charlie the tavern dog and the AI bot that handles accounting, inventory, and the Halloween party planning in head-to-head next week. When you don't get your invitation or that new drill bit, you'll know why.
