Week 2 Preview: Key Matchups and Their Fantasy Relevance
Week 2 is upon us and it is pretty light on the exciting match-ups in my opinion. There is a lot of appeal on the surface of the Manning Bowl Sunday night, but more on that later.
Patriots at Jets
This is going to be one hell of a game. It would be one hell of a surprise to have a team of the caliber of the Jets start 0-2, but their offense will need to show some drastic improvement to keep up with the high-powered Patriots offense. Luckily for Sanchez and the Jets, the Patriots defense is terrible and they should be able to find the end zone with some decent regularity. The battle everyone will be watching could well be what decides the game, Moss vs Revis. History says that Randy will get shut down, but a guy of his talent cannot be benched because it takes only one play for him to have a good day. Welker will be used much like the Ravens used their wide outs vs the Jets, to attack the other corner backs in order to move the ball down the field. Look for Welker to have a huge day and Moss to… well… not.
Giants at Colts
The Manning Bowl certainly has a great storyline… brothers that only meet in the regular season once every 4 years. But they will never be on the field at the same time and really the Colts are a much better team than the Giants so I do not think it will be all that close of a game. I know they lost to the Texans, but there is something to the Super Bowl hangover effect and the Colts have never started the season playing their best football. Because of this I expect to see a much better Colts team this week. I do have a big sleeper coming out of this game in Ahmad Bradshaw. We all saw what Foster did the Colts with his speed and elusiveness last week, but what you may not realize is that Ahmad Bradshaw is shorter, faster and quicker than Foster. I am in no way predicting similar statistics, but I do foresee a big performance in prime-time. My best advice… don’t bet against Peyton Manning, it doesn’t work out too often.
Ravens at Bengals
This very well might end up the most entertaining game of the week to football purists, as two stout defenses with a lot of play makers on offense square off in a heated divisional game. Last year the Bengals won every divisional match-up they had, but as Carson Palmer gets older the passing game gets less and less dynamic. In the ’09 season it was common-place to see Cedric Benson have 30 carries a game which is how they will need to beat the Ravens… on the ground. This is not typically a winning strategy against this team, however typically the Ravens have not had so many offensive weapons that you were concerned with keeping them off the field. I expect Ray Rice and the Ravens to win this physical slug-fest and advance to 2-0 on the season. In this match up I think the stars of this game will be the Running Backs, Cedric Benson and Ray Rice. Also, Boldin was able to be productive against the Jets and I see no reason why that should not continue. I don’t anticipate a HUGE game, but 100 yards receiving sounds right.



































