Sports Time Radio

The NFL season kicked off Thursday night with the Kansas City Chiefs beating the Houston Texans 34-20. The game wasn’t as close as the final score indicated it might have been as the Chiefs got out to a 34-7 lead and the game was pretty much over after that. I’m sure the NFL was hoping for a more competitive game and I bet they where even more displeased when they found out that ratings where down 13% from last years opening game.

Now historically and I’m not sure why this is, but NFL ratings are always down in an election year, but 13% is a big number and I don’t think the election can account for that.

Now there was a lot of competition on Thursday night, but the NFL is the #1 sport in America and normally that doesn’t matter, but you have to wonder if there was just too many sporting events on.

Besides the NFL on Thursday night there was the NHL and NBA playoffs going on. They’re in the stretch run in Major League Baseball and there are quite a few teams with a chance to make their expended playoffs. The WNBA was in action and there was also a NASCAR series truck race on Thursday night. Did you watch one of these sports over the opening night of the NFL?

I watched the start of the NFL game, but I became bored very quickly and switched over the the U.S. Open to watch Serena Williams play Victoria Azarenka. I’m not sure why the NFL game didn’t hold my interest and to be honest I’m not a huge tennis fan, but I like watching Williams play.

Now unfortunately I brought Williams bad luck as she ended up losing 6-1, 3-6, 3-6 and may have gotten injured.

After a point in the third set Williams was bent over after a point and stayed like that for a while holding the lower part of her left leg. The trainer came out and took a look at her leg as the match was stopped for a medical timeout. Williams leg was taped up and she was able to finish the match, but Azarenka easily won after the stoppage.

After the match Williams said that she believes that it was her Achilles that was giving her trouble. She went on to mention that she thinks she hurt her Achilles during one of the long baseline rallies during the match, but didn’t use that as an excuse for losing.

After the match Williams said “I don’t think that had anything to do with it” she also added “Ultimately, it didn’t affect my play at all.”

Williams was seeking her 24th Grand Slam singles title and since her 39th birthday is a couple of weeks away the question started about if she’ll win another Grand Slam title.

Now I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t know much or anything about tennis, but I’d find it difficult to bet against Williams in any tournament she’s entered in.

Now since I didn’t see much of the Thursday night NFL game I had to look at the stats to see how things went fantasy football wise. Now there where a couple of things that stuck out, but I’m not sure if it’s an indicator on how the season will go.

Going into ever fantasy draft Clyde Edwards-Helaire was the hot running back name. Now remember there was no pre-season; so it was all guess work about how he’d fit into the Chiefs offense and for one week he did well, but I’m not sold that it will be this way every week.

Now Edwards-Helaire is Kansas City’s #1 running back; so he’s going to get the bulk of the carries in the running game and that means he’ll score fantasy points for his owners, but don’t expect him to get 25 carries like he did Thursday night.

What I noticed was that Patrick Mahomes only threw for 211 yards. That may be his lowest total for the season. What also stuck out was the fact that Edwars-Helaire didn’t have a reception and as a whole Chiefs running backs only caught 2 passes in the game.

So while Edwards-Helaire showed that he could run the football one of the reasons fantasy players where so high on him was because of the contributions he was going to make in the Chiefs passing game.

Now I think that Edwards-Helaire will be a good fantasy player. I just don’t expect him to continue to run the football as much as he did on Thursday night. Now hopefully he’ll be more involved in the Chiefs passing game as the season goes on and that will help make up for the lower number of carries he’ll probably get down the line.

Now obviously I’m not saying that if you own Edwards-Helaire that you should cut him or anything like that. All I’m saying is it’s just Week 1; so don’t try and tell the other players in your fantasy league that you’re the smartest guy in the room just yet. just remember there’s a lot of football left to be played and I’m sure there will be some other oddities coming out of Week 1 of the NFL.

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