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Take It To The Bank - Week 2By Jeremy Miller/Brandon Anderson With week one in the books, Jeremy Miller and Brandon Anderson are back with their wild and crazy predictions they feel are as good as gold. Of course, they don’t always agree on these and there is sure to be some disagreements along the way. This week is appears the two have the Tom Brady injury and the New England Patriots on their minds, but of course, they are on different ends of the spectrum here! Read on to see the issues that these two feel you can take to the bank for week two and beyond. From Jeremy Miller: · Matt Cassel will throw at least 20 TD’s this season. So Tom Brady is out for the year and the sky has fallen in New England right? Sounds like what they were saying in 2001 when Drew Bledsoe went down. I know Cassel has not started a game since high school. However, Cassel has had plenty of time to learn. First from Carson Palmer and Matt Leinart at USC and now from Tom Brady and Bill Belichick. Cassel is not Tom Brady and won’t put up the numbers he was capable of. Cassel will be a QB who learns to manage the game the way Belichick will instruct him to and will utilize the tremendous weapons around him to keep the ship afloat and have a surprising season that will end with him eclipsing the 20 TD mark. o Bounced Check: Sorry Miller, but the Patriots are done. They can say all the clichés they want and believe all they hope to believe in Cassel, but that doesn’t make him an NFL quarterback. Learn all you want, but I could sit behind all those guys for a decade and I wouldn’t turn into a starting QB either. Brady was due for a huge letdown year back to his career averages just over 25 TDs, which is still a great NFL season. Do you realize how many QBs threw 20 TDs last year? There were just 13, and that was up from 10 the week before. Cassel will join this group only if Randy Moss steps it up, becomes a real team leader, makes those tough catches over the middle, and personally drags Cassel through 15-20 TDs himself. Do you see that happening? If you do, maybe you’ve been watching a different Moss during his career. This will not end well for Cassel, if he even finishes the season as the starter. You want a few stats? Cassel has thrown 90 passes total in real games during the last 8 years of his life, and Belichick as a head coach with Brady is a paltry 41-56. Good luck. – Brandon Anderson · Beware of the one catch wonders; they are just that, and nothing more. Before you go rushing to put in your waiver wire claims for Hank Baskett (90 yd TD), Devery Henderson (84 yd TD), and Michael Jenkins (62 YD TD) please be warned: they are one catch wonders this season. OK, well they may catch a few more, but the bottom line is they will not provide you with enough constant production to warrant a roster spot. Let other’s waste a spot on them while you concentrate on players that can bring value to you this season. · San Diego stumbles…..but they didn’t fall. The Chargers lost a heartbreaker at home this past week to the underdog Panthers and now are staring an 0-2 start in the face as they travel to Denver team who looked very good on Monday night. Could be a long road right? Forget about it, Denver is for real, but the Chargers will dig deep this week and pull out a victory in a very important early season match-up. I expect this division race to be much closer than I did a week ago, but the Chargers are still the favorite to win here. · The Bills start 2-0; Jaguars 0-2. Brandon does a good job of bringing up the concerns surrounding the Jaguars below, and unfortunate for them, they are running into a very under-rated Buffalo Bills team. This Bills team will be able to capitalize on the Jaguars injury issues upfront and will out smash the smash-mouth Jags. The Bills are a team who could make some noise this year behind a nice running game and a very impressive defense. · Vince Young will not finish the season as the Titians starting QB. Where there is smoke, there is fire, and there is a whole lot of smoke being seen in the air in Tennessee. Whether it be injury, benching, or mental instability I just don’t see this ending well for Vince Young. There seems to be a lot of excuses floating around every story that breaks. Yet more stories continue to break. Something just does not smell right. I just don’t think his heart is in it and due to that, these problems will only snow ball. Now the question becomes, is this good news or bad news for the Titans? From Brandon Anderson: · No, the Rams are not that bad… but the Eagles absolutely are that good. The Philadelphia Eagles were my preseason pick to finish with the top seed in the NFC, and perhaps now you know why – and I’m not talking about the resurgence of McNabb, which I was not alone in predicting. It’s the resurgence of the defense bolstered by the addition of Asante Samuel to complete a star-studded defensive backfield along with a healthy front group of pass rushers what will dominate at times this year. When is the last time you saw an Al Saunders offense look that bad against anyone? The Eagles will be tested in the upcoming weeks but should respond well. As for the Rams, this was basically a preseason showing for them, and the offensive line had not yet gelled, while Steven Jackson had plenty of rust to shake off. They are not going to turn back into the Rams of old, but they won’t be this bad either. · The Indianapolis Colts and all of their fantasy players will be just fine… by midway through the season. If you watched this game at all, it screamed one word: PRESEASON… and game one of the preseason too. Yes, the Bears defense is quite good, but don’t underestimate how bad this was for the Colts. This was the home opener of a new stadium, and the Colts are normally invincible both at home and in September, and they never really even had a shot in this one. The schedule doesn’t do them any favors either: @Min, Jax, bye, @Hou, Bal, @GB, @Ten. And they still have games at Pitt and San Diego after that. Oh this team will come around once Peyton gets his rhythm and Jeff Saturday returns to the line, but it will be tough going for your fantasy players for awhile. Be patient and you will be rewarded – during the fantasy playoffs, your Colts start out against the Bengals and Lions! · The Patriots are D-O-N-E, done. Go ahead, pick up Matt Cassel. Randy Moss has turned plenty of QBs into fantasy gold in the past, and you might enjoy it for a few games while the Pats have an easy-ish schedule. But this is not a system QB team, and it’s a downright bad one without Brady. Brady made the run game work, turned Welker into a real receiver, and put the defense in a position to succeed. What do you have left? You have QB who hasn’t started a game since high school and who had almost as many passes on Sunday as his entire college career. You have a jumbled backfield with no real starter, a banged up line, a few possession receivers, and a star WR who is going to pout his way right to the bench just like he did in Oakland. Add to that a defense that hasn’t been good for several years now. This is not a Super Bowl contender, not a playoff contender, and it won’t be close. Let’s just say the Pats aren’t going to have to trade for that top 10 draft pick this year. o Bounced Check: It’s easy to write the Patriots off after the Brady injury, almost everyone has. I guess that is what you get when one of the most successful organizations in sports this decade finally gets some rough luck. However, as much as I would love to bury the team, they simply are not finished, not even close! Your right that this is not a system QB team, but it is still a very deep and talented team. Cassel won’t be Brady, but he won’t be a disaster either. Belichick will circle the wagons and use the us against the world mentality with this team once again. They will change their offense (yes, they can easily do this) to fit the strengths the players left. This means more of an emphasis on the running game with the 1-2 punch of Laurence Maroney and Sammy Morris. Randy Moss will force teams to still respect the passing game no matter who is under center, and the defense is still solid (not great, but good enough to win with). In the end, your right, they are not a Super Bowl contender, but they will still win their division and make the playoffs. Not bad for a team who lost the league MVP in week one. – Jeremy Miller · The Panthers and Broncos are for real, and they may build early division leads quickly. Ok, so the Broncos aren’t 41-points-good against most teams, but this is a team that had a terrible year last season after an offseason tragedy and looks refocused and ready to rebound. This week they are home against the Chargers in a suddenly huge game. If the Broncos can protect their house, and they should, they will be up 2 games and with the tiebreaker against their only divisional competition, plus 2-0 in the division to boot. The Panthers can carry that big time last second road win momentum for awhile with a very winnable next three games going into the bye, and they have a solid chance at 4-0 with two weeks off getting ready to head to Tampa. Both these teams are my divisional champ picks right now. · The Jaguars are in more trouble than you might think. No, losing by one score on the road in a divisional game is no real warning flag – that’s exactly what I expected in this game, a smashmouth, ugly, close one. But losing your starting guards – both of them for a long time – is a big problem for a team built so much around the run. If you own Taylor and MJD, you don’t mind them splitting the carries because they get such great yards per carry. If they start getting a yard less per shot, that means less first downs and even less opportunities to carry. Worse line protection also means Garrard will struggle and, surprise, surprise, he starts the season out with three turnovers. Don’t stick a fork in this preseason top 5 team just yet, but don’t overlook the warning signs either. If the Jags can’t put away Buffalo at home this weekend, its Indy, Houston, Pitt, and Denver afterward, and the team could legitimately head to its bye week at 0-6 or close to it. If you own Garrard, Taylor, or MJD, it may be time to start worrying.
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