Back to reality
Happy Monday and welcome to a brand-new week in sports. And our condolences for whatever you thought about the NFL coming out of last week, since the league spent all weekend dismantling most of those notions. We’ll have more on the narratives that took big hits, including our own speculation about a leaguewide scoring explosion, below. Plus, we look at the WNBA records that have fallen, and might still fall in the final week of the regular season, as we also monitor MLB’s own final week while the Rams and Giants get one more chance tonight to make us rethink everything all over again on Monday Night Football. Here’s what we’re watching today:
The Main Events
All listed times are Eastern.
Football:
🏈 NFL: Giants (27%) at Rams (73%) - 8:15 p.m. (ABC/ESPN)
🏈🏆 Super Bowl check-in: Bills 13% to win NFL title
🏈🏆 College Football Playoff check-in: Notre Dame/Texas 15% to win national title
MLB:
⚾ Blue Jays (50%) at Orioles (50%) - 6:35 p.m. (MASN/SNET)
⚾ Nationals (42%) at Tigers (58%) - 6:40 p.m. (MLB.tv)
⚾ Twins (52%) at Giants (48%) - 9:45 p.m. (NBCS-BA/Twins.TV)
⚾🏆 World Series title check-in: Dodgers 31% to win
WNBA:
🏀 Dream (57%) at Liberty (43%) - 8 p.m. (Peacock)
🏀 Wings (68%) at Mercury (32%) - 10 p.m. (USA Network)
🏀🏆 WNBA title check-in: Lynx 47% to win
Soccer:
⚽ NCAA Men's Soccer: Washington) at #3 Ohio State - 7 p.m. (B1G+)
⚽🏆 Champions League title check-in: FC Barcelona 27% to win
⚽🏆 Premier League title check-in: Arsenal FC 48% to win
⚽🏆 MLS title check-in: Vancouver Whitecaps FC 24% to win MLS Cup
⚽🏆 NWSL title check-in: Gotham FC 30% to win
Where did our narratives go??
It’s always fun to see the overreactions from Week 1 of an NFL season immediately be challenged in Week 2 — and it felt like this week (Monday Night Football pending, see below) offered more of that than usual.
For one thing, we noted the historic scoring binge that teams went on in Week 1, with their 24.7 points per-team, per-game ending up tied with the opening week of the 2012 campaign (also 24.7 PPG) for the highest-scoring Week 1 since the 1970 AFL-NFL merger. Along the way, there was a lot of breathless commentary about the Chicago Bears potentially breaking the all-time scoring record, the Baltimore Ravens possibly joining them in that pursuit, and generally that this might be a boom year for leaguewide points.
(I even contributed to this myself, noting that scoring tends to go up as the season progresses.)
But fast-forward to Week 2, and the points had dried up more than a little bit. (Even as the weather wasn’t dry — perhaps not a coincidence.) At 20.4 PPG, this week goes into MNF ranked just 29th-highest out of 57 Week 2s in the NFL since the merger — almost exactly in the middle of the historical distribution:
The Bears themselves were the biggest examples of this trend, going from an incredible 59 points against the Carolina Panthers in a 59-37 win to just 3 points against the Minnesota Vikings in a 9-3 loss. That’s the second-biggest drop-off between Weeks 1 and 2 of a season since the merger, ahead of only the 1973 Falcons — who went from winning 62-7 in Week 1 to losing 31-0 in Week 2. For Chicago, QB Caleb Williams getting injured midway through the 4th quarter didn’t help matters; Williams injured his hamstring and will miss some time, though it sounds like he avoided a season-ending injury.
(The Ravens weren’t far from that drop-off, either, following up an impressive 41-23 win at Indy with an uninspiring 24-17 home loss to the Saints.)
Meanwhile, the recipients of the Bears’ opening-week barrage — the Panthers — turned around and beat the crap out of the Falcons, 34-3, on the road. No other team was close to Carolina’s 53-point swing, in terms of reversing their point differential from Week 1 to Week 2:
At the other end of that spectrum were the Cardinals (who went from beating the Chargers on the road to getting thumped by the Seahawks at home) and Jaguars (who went from crushing Cleveland to falling at Denver), to go with the Bears and Ravens.
Admittedly, a lot of these swings have to do with quality of competition — obviously beating the Browns is easier than the Broncos, even though the Buccaneers might disagree this week. But these wild swings are also indicative of a week in which a number of favorites fell and home teams went just 6-9 going into MNF. And that makes Monday Night’s matchup between the buy-low Rams and (maybe?) sell-high Giants a fitting final test of which Week 1 impressions deserve to survive for another 7 days.
Whatever happens, though, just remember this eternal rule of the NFL, and you’ll be OK: Nobody knows anything.
Record season
If you like watching records fall, you’ve been in for a treat this WNBA season. Just this past weekend, we saw Angel Reese become the league’s first player to amass 500 rebounds in a single season, while Olivia Miles broke Caitlin Clark’s WNBA rookie scoring record with her 770th point of the season on Sunday. Those were just the latest WNBA records to exchange holders this season, on a list that also includes new No. 1s in single-season points (Kelsey Mitchell), double-doubles (Reese) and made 3-pointers (Rhyne Howard). Some of this simply owes to the WNBA season being longer than ever, giving players more and more chances to pile up big numbers, but the league’s talent base is also better than ever. It’s the perfect combination of factors, and we could see even more — such as Howard’s pursuit of the steals record — fall in the coming days as well.
What else we’re reading
Smart, short reads we liked while building today’s odds.
🏈 “How Brian Flores Uses Pressure to Kill the Run” by Cody Alexander
⚾ “A powerful nor’easter will likely create a scheduling nightmare for the Red Sox and Cubs this weekend” by Matthew Gross
⚾ “The Dodgers Hate Skubal’s Sinker. The Rays Fixed Freddy Peralta” by Lance Brozdowsk
🏀 “The Raptors Are Going To Eat You” by Hardwood Paroxysm
🏒 “Previewing every NHL team with 1 chart: Utah Mammoth” by Brendan Farrell
⛳ “Tour’s new points place premium on consistency” by Bob Harig
Next on deck…
Tuesday (9/22)
⚾ MLB: Rays at Yankees
⚾ MLB: Padres at Dodgers
🏀 WNBA: Lynx at Fever
⚽ Women's Champions League: FC Bayern Munich vs. Manchester City
⛳ Golf: Presidents Cup (Medinah Country Club) - Official practice rounds
Wednesday (9/23)
⚾ MLB: Padres at Dodgers
⚾ MLB: Astros at Mariners
🏀 WNBA: Wings at Storm
⚽ MLS: Real Salt Lake at Seattle Sounders FC
⚽ Women's Champions League: FC Barcelona vs. Paris FC
Thursday (9/24)
🏈 NFL: Falcons at Packers
⚾ MLB: Padres at Dodgers
🏀 WNBA: Fever at Lynx
⚽ UEFA Nations League: Netherlands vs. Germany
🏈 CFB: Liberty at Coastal Carolina
