Fantasy football 2025 -- week 1 recap

The Eagles big opening day win on Thursday put the franchise’s all-time record at 639-639-4 in the regular season, the first time they’ve been at .500 since 1933 (when the team was 3-3-1 after the first seven games of their inaugural campaign). For perspective, here’s a few things that have happened since that date in the NFL:

** The present-day Falcons, Ravens, Bills, Panthers, Bengals, Browns, Cowboys, Broncos, Texans, Colts, Jaguars, Chiefs, Raiders, Chargers, Rams, Dolphins, Vikings, Patriots, Saints, Jets, 49ers, Seahawks, Buccaneers and Titans all launched new franchises.

** The forward pass — legalized by the NFL rules committee at the start of the 1933 season — became popular with teams as a way to improve their offenses.

** The Super Bowl was invented, and played 59 times.

** Jalen Hurts’ great grandfather was born, grew up, got married, and gave birth to Jalen Hurts’ grandfather, who grew up, got married, and gave birth to Jalen Hurts’ father, who grew up, got married, and gave birth to Jalen Hurts.

** World War II began and ended. Also, the 75th anniversary of the end of the war was commemorated.

** Dak Prescott played in zero NFC championship games.

If the Eagles can beat the Chiefs next week, they’ll be over .500 for the first time in franchise history. Well worth the wait.

QB: Josh Allen, 42.76 pts — started by Ant
WR: Zay Flowers, 19.83 pts — started by Mike
RB: Derrick Henry, 28.27 pts — started by Dad
TE: Dalton Kincaid, 11.20 pts — on Bob’s bench
K: Spencer Shrader, 16.00 pts — on the wire
DEF: Denver, 15.00 pts — started by me
D: Julian Love, 10.00 pts — started by Mike

Four of the top seven players were in that epic Buffalo/Baltimore game on Sunday night. The contest also featured the #4 QB (Lamar Jackson) and a slew of other solid fantasy performances. It was also the first time a team trailed by 15 points with less than four minutes and won in regulation. Now both teams will head off to their respective divisions, where they will probably each win the next six games by boring 24-6 scores.

Don’t feel too bad that Bob didn’t start the #1 TE. Instead of playing Kincaid, he started Travis Kelce, the #2 TE, who got him 1.07 pts fewer. No real harm there.

Six QBs scored more than 30 fantasy points this week (including Colts signal caller Daniel Jones, which may be a sign of the apocalypse) but only one position player topped 20 pts (Derrick Henry). What does that mean for projections for the rest of the year? It means everyone’s team stinks. Or not. We’ll see.

“Rough start" edition

2nd place: (tie) Miami, -2.00 pts — on the wire
2nd place: (tie) Buffalo, -2.00 pts — on Jo’s bench
1st place: Baltimore, -5.00 pts — started by Jeff

Two of the three worst players were also from the Sunday night game. Were there other games this weekend? Baltimore is going to end up a top five defense on the year, which will to make this week’s stat line (41 pts allowed, 1 sack, no turnovers, 22 4th-quarter pts surrendered) look even weirder at the end of the year.

Titans QB Cam Ward, the number one pick in last spring’s draft, did not score negative points this week. But for someone who played a full game, he came close: 2.48 fantasy pts total, going 12 of 28 for 112 yds. Just ew. So when you look at Broncos QB Bo Nix’s numbers for the day (8.84 fantasy pts), you should take into account that he did almost score four times what the other guy on his same field produced.


** Commercial during the Eagles game Thursday on NBC: “Ravens-Bills on Sunday Night Football, which debuts Sunday!”

Like, of course NBC Sunday Night Football debuts on Sunday, right? Except for all the times that Sunday Night Football isn’t on Sunday, like when NBC has a special edition of Sunday Night Football on Thanksgiving, or a special Saturday game. But apparently not the first Thursday of the season? That’s not a special edition of Sunday Night Football, but it’s not Thursday Night Football, because that’s owned by Amazon even though the opening game was on NBC.

So what did we watch? What day was it? Does time even have meaning anymore? Welcome back, football!!!

** During the Friday night game (also not Sunday Night Football), after Chefs QB Patrick Mahomes completed a clutch 4th down pass, announcer Rich Eisen crowed about how incredible the former MVP was playing for the night. “I know we in the media always get accused of just praising everything he does, but he just is a remarkable player,” he said.

It’s worth noting that at the time, Mahomes had thrown for 250 yds and 1 TD, and rushed for 57 more and another TD. That’s a pretty impressive game. Not as impressive as the 318 passing yds, 36 yds rushing and 3 TDs that Justin Herbert had in the same game — described as “workmanlike” by the announcers just a moment earlier — but impressive nonetheless.

Maybe the problem isn’t that you praise Mahomes too much. Maybe it’s that you don’t notice anyone else on the field while he’s there.

** Late in the 4th quarter of the Bengals narrow win over the Browns, Cincinnati lined up for an attempt on 4th and one on their own side of the field in an attempt to get Cleveland players to jump offside. It didn’t work, despite Bengals radio color analyst Dave Lapham noting that QB Joe Burrow had “great voice inflection” on the fake-out attempt.

Is that where we’re at now? “Quickness” and “vision” weren’t vague enough stats to follow? Now we’ve got armchair experts rating players’ dramatic delivery. And apparently Burrow’s was so good, that his voice work … failed.

I could almost understand the praise if he had gotten someone to jump offside. But if you’re throwing laurels just for the sake of kissing up to a player, you might as well just say “Burrow was so great out there just now, for a moment I thought we were watching Patrick Mahomes.”

Three NFL games had delays this week because of late summer storms, including the hour-plus delay for the Eagles home opener on Thursday. It appears that the NFL can’t control the weather, despite its significant wealth and complete domination of everything else in America. But there are a few small but significant precautions the league could take in the future to mitigate thunderstorm disruptions:

** All-rubber stadiums: It probably won’t provide any actual protection from lightning, but everyone will feel better about continuing play through the worst electrical nature shows. Bonus benefit: Players will really bounce off the turf after tackles.

** Avoid the path of least resistance: Lighting always looks for the fastest, easiest route from the sky to the ground. In NFL stadiums, that’s usually the Carolina Panthers’ defense. If a storm is near, be sure to put them somewhere safe for everyone.

** Change the Chargers’ team name: It’s just bad luck. Lightning probably sees that on NFL merchandise and thinks it is invited into the games.

** Get rid of football in Florida: Multiple delays in recent years have involved early-season games in the Sunshine State, where the weather is as unpredictable as intentional grounding calls. An easy fix would be to just stop playing games there. Would anyone really notice if the Jaguars and Dolphins disappeared from the schedule?

** Stop angering the weather gods: They probably hate Thursday football too. Taunting them gets you what you deserve.

The Cowboys came into the season with mixed expectations, but most pundits agreed that for the team to succeed this year, QB Dak Prescott would need to return to his Pro Bowl form. And nearly all the football experts agreed that his Thursday performance was evidence that he is back … to the same mediocrity that he is known for. Prescott finished 21 of 34 passing, for 188 yds, no TDs and no INTs. He did manage to goad DT Jalen Hurts into an ejection and generate a few pass interference penalties, but he also collected another loss.

And that’s not much a surprise to those of us who study words carefully, to glean insight from the hidden messages from the letters. Just consider the clear message in the statement below:

Another win against Dak Prescott
** Sad cage intro: Spit on that, wanker

Prescott is 76-47 for his career in the regular season, which is an amazing record for someone who can never win when it actually counts (2-5 in the playoffs over nine years). Did you know that Jalen Hurt has three times as many playoff wins as that in just four seasons? 

I know you know, I just like writing it again. 

** Starting off the season right — I went 5-0 against Dad in our weekly picks, with three games (Pitt, Buffalo and Tampa) decided by a combined six points. At my current pace, I’ll win our showdown by 90 games, a new record. More likely, I’ll squander my lead by week 3.

** The Eagles hitting .500 made me wonder if the Phillies (the team with the most losses in all North American sports) can ever get there. Right now their all-time record is 10,291 wins and 11,386 losses, so if they can just go 90-72 every year for the foreseeable future, they’ll get to the .500 mark at the tail end of the 2086 season. By then, the Awesome Cup will have 84 names engraved on it …


Family Cup standings

We had some significant changes to the family league this year — Instead of mostly Garritys beating up on each other, the league has morphed into a four-family feud to determine which bloodline can prove their supremacy. Our combatants are:

House Shane: Pop Shane, Jonathan, Emma/me
House Garrity: Jim, Jimmy, Shelly
House Doyle: Mike, Ollie, Lexi/Heidi
House Quinn: Tommy, Shane, Mom Shane

Given that Mom Shane could qualify as either a Shane or a Garrity, she was logically assigned to team Quinn, so it’s a perfectly balanced showdown. The title will be determined by individual team finishes combined with total family performance. So, after week 1, here’s where the families stand:

House Shane: 2-1
House Doyle: 2-1
House Garrity: 1-2
House Quinn: 1-2

Emma's Unicorn Blobfish Empire got narrowly beaten by Lexi, which should cause some hard feelings between the cousins. Similarly, Jonathan beat Ollie by a hair. The Quinn boys got manhandled by Mike and Pop, but Grandmom Shane got a measure of revenge for Team Quinn by defeating Jimmy. Shelly defeated Jim in the only intra-family contest of the week, which means that Team Garrity couldn’t go 3-0 no matter how hard they tried, but it’ll all even out in the end. I think.

Awesome Cup standings

1 — Saquontum Leap (Capt. Awesome), 157.96 pts
2 — City Hands (Mike), 142.53 pts
3 — One Plus One is Three SBs (Pop), 132.51 pts
4 — Vert der Ferks (Ant), 123.59 pts
5 — The Fightin Pickles (Sam), 122.15 pts
6 — Still The Best (Jonathant), 98.97 pts
7 — DeVonta’s Inferno (Mom D), 90.67 pts
8 — The B Sharps (Paul), 88.13 pts
9 — All Rogers No Sauce (Joel), 79.87 pts
10 — Schwarbombs (Jo), 77.08 pts
11 — Goederts and Monsterts (Bob), 68.07 pts
12 — Blue Collar Killers (Jeff), 56.13 pts

Remind me again, Yahoo AI, how bad my team is going to be this year? My “revenge against the boy” tour began strong this week, thanks to big performances by Lamar Jackson, WR Emeka Egbuka and Bijan Robinson. Mike and Pop were just a few catches behind. Our returning champ just missed hitting the 100-pts mark, but it looks like he’s just laying in wait for the right time to strike.

And in the bottom half? Jo does not like Bo Nix at all. Bob has the best name but the worst wideout room of the first week (AJ Brown, Tee Higgins, Devante Adams combined for less than 10 pts). And Jeff started a kicker on injured reserve, so that’s not ideal.

One week down, 17 more to go. No bye weeks next week, but there is a Thursday game and two Monday games and maybe a secret midnight game, so check the schedule and get your teams sorted out.