Thursday Night Observations
For a Thursday night game, that was a lot of action. My 10 YO daughter stopped into the home office to watch a few minutes with me and saw the two pick sixes on consecutive series. I tried to explain you could go five games and not see one of those, but she wasn’t impressed.
I didn’t have a lot going on — I was happy to see Eno Benjamin and Taysom Hill score for me in different leagues, and I coin-flipped onto the Cardinals -1.5 in my picking pool — but even so it was a surprisingly watchable game.
Andy Dalton had three picks including the two taken to the house, but one of them was off Marquez Callaway’s hands. He threw some nice balls too, especially the 53-yard TD to Rashid Shaheed. He’s still got it (and by “got it” I mean can be a league-average backup.)
Alvin Kamara (11-49-0, 9-7-56-0) looked sharp, but gameflow limited his workload. He’s disappointed due to an injury so far, but the upside is largely intact, even if Hill might steal TDs from him.
Kevin White (1-1-64-0) is apparently still in the league, and still fast.
Kyle Murray didn’t have to do much due to the two pick sixes. It’s unfortunate he won’t have DeAndre Hopkins (14-10-103-0) and Marquise Brown on the field at the same time for another month or so. Hopkins looked more or less like himself too.
Eno Benjamin (12-92-1, 5-4-21-0) runs hard for a 207-pound back. James Conner should be back soon, but Benjamin is too good to bury even after Conner returns.
I didn’t see if anything happened to Rondale Moore (2-1-31-0) but he was non-existent. Zach Ertz (4-2-21-0) didn’t do much more than Moore, either. Maybe Hopkins takes up most of the short throws to Ertz, and they brought in Robbie Anderson, who saw only one target, as a short-term replacement for Brown.