Week 1

Good evening from the Rudy Bowl desk, where Week 1 is complete and the season motto — "Where Winners Win!" — has been immediately violated by 22 of 23 entrants. We had a three-way tie at the top on 12 points, and it came down to the Monday night total, which is where things got interesting, and by interesting I mean humiliating. Your Week 1 champion and the newly crowned Duke of the Decimal Point is Jake, "The Probably gonna losers," who guessed 42 on a game that landed on 41. Off by one. BTN and Julie Nugent both also went 12-4, both guessed 44, both missed by three, and both get to watch Jake fold a twenty into his wallet over a single point. Balls of a burglar on that number, Jake. Congratulations to the one man in this league whose team name turned out to be a lie. Now the Monday night total, which was a bloodbath. The number was 41. John Brady "Brady Bunch" guessed 55 — a full fourteen points into fantasyland. Stacey and Margie both put up 52, LoFo "Beauty on Duty" wrote down 51, and Braden Cecil went 54 despite going 9-7 and needing every edge he could find. These people watched the same football season the rest of us did and concluded Monday night would be a track meet. It was not. It was 41. To the games that cooked the pool. ARI at LAC — one hundred percent of this league took the Chargers, every single soul, and Arizona won 26-14. A unanimous belief, unanimously wrong, a rare feat of collective bad judgment. NYJ over TEN got 87% of you, DAL over NYG got 83% of you who took Dallas and got 20-28 for the trouble, and SF ran LAR off the field 27-7 while 77% leaned Rams — including one brave soul who called that a tie for the Hail Mary and walked away with nothing but lint. Speaking of the Hail Mary, Brady Nugent "Brads Discord" called a tie, no game ended level, and so his big swing paid exactly zero. That's the nerve part working and the execution part not, Brady. Meanwhile CHI hung 59 on Carolina, so if you took the Bears you were rewarded with a video game score and a warm feeling. Down at the bottom we salute Dan Schinsky, "Third Down For What," dead last at 7-9 and off the Monday total by six. The team name asks the question and Week 1 answered it: for nothing, Dan, apparently for nothing. Josh sits one rung up at 8-8. In the season race — the one that actually matters, total games won — Jake, BTN and Julie lead the pack at 12, but it's Week 1 and everyone's a genius until the schedule remembers your name. See you next week.