3 Overreactions to Week 1 of the 2022 NFL Season

In a crazy opening weekend of football, a lot happened from missed field goals to a tie to the return of stars. We’ll go through the top 3 things to not jump the gun on. 

Aaron Rodgers is nothing without Davante Adams

The Packers offense was non-existent in their week 1 matchup against the Minnesota Vikings. Rodgers had zero touchdowns, one interception, and didn’t even manage to hit 200 yards. This was one of the worst performances of his career. Meanwhile, Davante Adams in Black & Silver put up 141 yards in his first game, only 54 yards less than what Rodgers threw. Allen Lazard was out for Green Bay which certainly didn’t help the situation. A lot of the incompletions were to no fault of Rodgers but rather inexperience of the receivers including a touchdown pass that was dropped early on by rookie Christian Watson. After a couple games, we expect Rodgers to get back into his groove because Rodgers has turned overlooked players like Adams into the stars they are, but the process doesn’t happen overnight. 

The 2021 Super Bowl Teams were a fluke. 

Both the Cincinnati Bengals & Los Angeles Rams had tough beats to start the 2022 season. The Rams got blown out by the Bills at home and the Bengals lost in an overtime thriller to division rival Pittsburgh. These losses could come back to haunt them, but there was a lot for both teams to take away from these games and work on correcting. For the Rams, it was the questionable play calling and simple mistakes on offense that cost them. Cam Akers was nowhere to be found despite the Rams going heavy run on the early downs. This caused them to rely on Stafford to make something on later downs and everyone but Kupp did not help the situation with dropped passes and poor routes runned. With the Bills being a potential Super Bowl Contender, we hope the Rams can look past this and move on to the next one. For the Bengals, it will be more challenging to overlook losing to your arch-rival at home in the season opener. The two largest problems the Bengals faced was the offensive line issues still persisting and the loss of a long snapper. For the offensive line front, the Bengals had to face defensive player of the year TJ Watt who put a lot of pressure on Joe Burrow and not every matchup for the Bengals will they need to face an all-pro linebacker in TJ Watt. On the long snapper front, this was a last minute occurrence which doesn’t seem like it would be an issue until you’re without one. This led to a missed extra point and field goal that caused them to lose this game. For the Bengals if their primary long snapper cannot suit up for week 2, we’re sure they will have a new one signed before next week comes around and will be prepared to fix their main issue. 

Fantasy Football Relevance of Top Scoring Free Agents

For this, we are specifically referencing Taysom Hill, OJ Howard, & Dontrell Hilliard who are all rostered in less than 50% of leagues, but had huge performances in week 1 that would make them seem appealing to add to your roster. When we look at the situations that caused them to have such high scoring performances, there is more to it that just isn’t going to happen every week. For Hill, he had 68 rushing yards and a touchdown between two plays at the beginning of the game which is where the bulk of his points came from. For the rest of the game, Hill saw very little touches come his way. We’ve known the Saints have used Hill as a wild card player, but we don’t expect big plays like the 57 yard run to happen every week. For Hilliard, the game script was primarily on the passing side which saw a higher than normal snap count for Hilliard as Derrick Henry is seldomly used in the pass game. With both Robert Woods & Treylon Burks new to the offense, we expect this to take time to adjust which will then see less opportunities for Hilliard. The game script will also not be the same each time and Henry will have better games giving Hilliard a lower snap count. For Howard, he had 2 touchdowns, but that was only on 2 receptions. Both receptions combined for a whopping total of 38 yards. Howard could be a fringe TE2 with touchdown reliability, but the Texans don’t have a good offense and won’t be able to get in the red zone very often to give Howard those opportunities. We’re avoiding these 3 players on waivers and we’ll be seeking out other options.