THE 4 WORST GAMES ON THE 2023 WEEK 1 NFL SCHEDULE

BY ADAM GREENE

Our annual release of the NFL Schedule came with much pomp, celebration and circumstance as it should. It’s an exciting time, when you can look at the 17 games your favorite team has set before them and sell yourself on a 13-4 finish, regardless of who they’re facing off against.

My personal favorite thing to do is look at the Los Angeles Rams schedule, my favorite franchise, and pick the game that will be the most frustrating to watch because the Rams should obliterate that team, and just won’t. They’ll keep it too close and down to the wire or just lose at the end and ruin my day completely. I’m looking at you, Pittsburgh Steelers, on Oct. 22.

With the schedule release, we have early odds, lines and totals with which to already lock in some solid work before anyone really figures anything out for 2023. And there are some real bangers on the Week 1 schedule to choose from, but with 16 games played over three days, not all of them can be solid entertainment.

So while everyone else celebrates the best contests on opening weekend, I, because I’m a hater, offer you the four worst games on the Week 1 schedule.

JACKSONVILLE JAGUARS AT INDIANAPOLIS COLTS (+3.5, O/U: 44)

First off, all my apologies to the Jacksonville Jaguars, as they are an innocent party to this monstrosity. Also, hey, I know it’s early, but that +3.5 looks really good right now and I got a feeling after the preseason, it’s going to be in the +8.5 range, so, you know, maybe think on that.

Yes, the Jags are coming off a playoff season and, not only that, a playoff victory. I have a lot of rules I’ve made up, completely arbitrarily, about the NFL and one of those rules is, “A team can make the playoffs by accident, but winning in the playoffs, even a single game, shows you deserved to be there.” Jacksonville hosted the heavily favored (and media beloved) Los Angeles Chargers and not only beat them in a come from behind victory complete with a last second game winning field goal, but kept it within a score at Arrowhead the next week against the eventual Super Bowl Champion Kansas City Chiefs. This is a legit good team, easily the AFC South favorites and, while I don’t think they’re a Super Bowl contender (considering the Chiefs, Cincinnati Bengals and Buffalo Bills are in the way), I do think another division title and trip to the Divisional Round is certainly on the table for 2023.

No, this game sucks because of the Indianapolis Colts and there’s just no way to escape it. Selecting Anthony Richardson at No. 4 overall in the NFL Draft was like buying a lottery ticket. If it pays off, you’re rich, but those are some long odds. But even realizing the kid played like garbage most of the time in the SEC for Florida against (he didn’t even complete 54 percent of his passes) pretty much the same guys he’ll be facing in the NFL on Sep. 10, he’ll be suiting up against arguably the fourth best team in the conference. Jacksonville will field a real NFL defense. The Jaguars offense was pretty good at the end of last season, too. With the addition of Calvin Ridley, back from his suspension, it’ll only get better. This game will get uglier than the “secret admirer” I just opened on my Tinder app.

But you know what would be even worse than that? To see Gardner Minshew III trot out as the starter for the Colts after Richardson flubs around in training camp. There’s no question Richardson isn’t ready for the NFL. No one on the planet thinks so. As an NFL fan (and certainly if you root for the Colts), you want to see him play as soon as possible. It’s exciting, even if the Jags win 55-10.  But no one, except maybe Minshew’s mom, wants to see the be-mullet-ed one take the field with the Indy starters in Week 1. And, being realistic, that’s probably what’s going to happen.

TAMPA BAY BUCCANEERS AT MINNESOTA VIKINGS (-6, O/U: 46)

Here it is, the Baker Mayfield vs Kirk Cousins quarterback duel we’ll all be telling our grandkids about someday. The Bucs are in such bad shape as a franchise with the departure of Tom Brady (and every coach on the staff that liked him), they are now the cheapest ticket in the NFL. I’m not a guy that thinks Baker Mayfield sucks, by any means. I don’t think he’s great and is, at best, a low-end NFL starter. What he definitely isn’t, is Tom Brady, who barely got this team to 8-9 a season ago.

This is a Buccaneers squad in the midst of a rebuild, so this roster could see even more turnover at the trade deadline. It would be easy to see Mike Evans and Chris Godwin get a tad antsy at the direction of the franchise, especially with the years Evans has left. Todd Bowles didn’t show much as a head coach last season and, again, he had Tom Brady.

Meanwhile, this game is at 1 p.m., is easily ignorable and will likely enjoy the lowest ratings and fewest viewers of all the NFL Week 1 contests. And, you know what that means — Kirk Cousins is going to light it up. You’ll see him on every single Daily Fantasy team and regular fantasy managers will look to draft Cousins for just this scenario. While Dalvin Cook might not make it to the gameday roster, according to recent trade reports, this will be a better wide receiver room than the one Cousins enjoyed last year in Kevin O’Connell’s offense where threw for 4,547 yards and 29 touchdowns a season ago. Justin Jefferson and Jordan Addison will eat the Tampa corners alive and Baker Mayfield, feeling pressed to make the game a shootout in this historic match up with (he better hope at least) his future self, will make plenty of mistakes because, and I don’t know if you realize this, we’ve all seen Baker Mayfield play NFL football before.

ARIZONA CARDINALS AT WASHINGTON COMMANDERS (-6.5, O/U: 40)

You want to talk QB match ups? How about Sam Howell versus Colt McCoy? Because, if everything works out as perfectly as could be expected for both the Cardinals and Commanders, that’s the best we’re going to get. Arizona’s starting quarterback and Call of Duty Killtacular King, Kyler Murray, won’t be cleared to play until midseason or so thanks to a torn ACL suffered back in December. And that’s not the only bad QB news for the Cardinals. McCoy is also still hurt and is expected to be limited all through the offseason as the team breaks in a new offense.

That means that we might be looking at an all-time classic quarterback duel between Howell and rookie Clayton Tune out of Houston. Or David Blough, who at least now, after last year’s Detroit Lions’ Hard Knocks season, I believe is a real person and not some autogenerated name from the old NES RBI Baseball.

And, hey, you might say, “Adam (because we should be on a first name basis by now), how about DeAndre Hopkins? He’s a real playmaker and all the QB, whether it’s McCoy, Tune or Blough, has to do is get it in his hands. Here’s my answer to that. You’ll have to get the Microsoft Surface tablet out of those hands first. The Cards have tried all offseason to trade Hopkins and unload his contract. That phone line is still open and the only thing that will shut it down for the year is for Hopkins to get hurt. D-Hop has a $30.75 million cap hit this season and, even if they cut hm, will come with a $22.6 million dead cap hit. And they might still take it. Arizona has no reason at all not to just put a line through this year and sim to the offseason, head coach Jonathan Gannon’s first. If they hold on to Hopkins at all, it’ll just be in hopes that some team looking to go “All In,” like say the New York Jets who are looking at a 2-3 year Super Bowl window with Aaron Rodgers at best, will want to take on some of that dead cap with a renegotiated Hopkins contract. Either way, I don’t think Hopkins is suiting up for Arizona again. So you can scratch that reason to watch.

As for the Commanders, they say tanking doesn’t really happen in the NFL and I believe it. There are too many factors at play and even if an owner, like, say, the Miami Dolphins’ Stephen Ross might prefer his team blow up a season for draft positioning, the head coach and coaching staff rarely agree on that. Which is why Brian Flores got fired in Miami and sued Ross in the first place. Also, it’s why Lovie Smith didn’t ensure the Houston Texans got the top overall pick by losing to the aforementioned Colts in the final game of the season. While everything still worked out pretty well for the Texans in the 2023 NFL Draft, it just goes to show you how hard it is to tank. There are too many coaches, whose jobs and livelihoods are on the line, as well as players, whose legacies, career milestones and contract incentives are also at play.

So, how do you “tank” without actually trying to tank? Well, first you have a coach that’s a proven winner and should be impossible to fire by the new Commanders’ ownership after Daniel Snyder’s sale becomes final in Ron Rivera. Rivera has, since he decided to jump into the Washington cesspool, made chicken salad out of the other stuff. He willed the team to an NFC East title and playoff appearance in 2020, losing in the Wild Card round by eight points to the eventual Super Bowl Champion Buccaneers, then followed that up with 7-10 and 8-8-1 seasons in spite of starting quarterbacks like Taylor Heinicke, Carson Wentz, Kyle Allen and the aforementioned Howell. Rivera is safe (or should be, unless the new owner Josh Harris could be a nut too), so he’s got the freedom to enter the 2023 season with the worst quarterback room in the league. We’re talking Howell, in his second season out of North Carolina with all of one NFL start under his belt (hey, it was at least a win over the Dallas Cowboys). After Howell, you have lifetime back up Jacoby Brissett, along with future XFL MVP Jake Fromm and Tim DeMorat, which, again, I’m going to say is a fake person and part of some ChatGPT AI attempt at infiltrating professional football. I need to see a birth certificate and at least one parent whose ears don’t spark if they get caught in the rain to believe he’s a real dude.

With this collection of the greatest Fudrucker’s Grillmasters that will never be, there’s little hope for anything close to a .500 season in Washington, and every chance they could not only land a Top 5 pick, but the No. 1 overall selection in the 2024 NFL Draft. I’m pretty sure that guy is going to be a quarterback. One, I’m guessing, the Commanders will covet greatly, so the fans can’t even get mad as the losses pile up.

Anyway, this could be the first game where every touchdown is scored by the defense and each QB turns it over four or more times. NFL Red Zone’s Scott Hanson is already preparing his apology remarks every time he kicks to it when the rest of the league is in a commercial break.

GREEN BAY PACKERS AT CHICAGO BEARS (-2.5, O/U: 44.5)

First off, let me just say I’m not down on Jordan Love as a quarterback now that he’s officially been handed the keys of the Green Bay Packers’ offense. I was down on Jordan Love from the very beginning. Jordan Love was the Trey Lance of Malik Willises and Will Levises. The idea that he was a first-round talent coming out of Utah State in 2019 was absolutely ridiculous. The further notion that a team like the Packers, who had a future Hall of Fame quarterback that was obviously still in his prime, would trade up to get Love was even crazier. But they did.

Love is just the latest QB to get selected because he might sometimes, to some scouts and general managers, look like a superstar currently playing in the NFL at the time. For a guys like Lance and Willis, it was Lamar Jackson. For a guy like Levis, it’s Matthew Stafford and for reasons that made no sense to me at all, Josh Allen. For Love, it was Patrick Mahomes. Yes, a guy that didn’t even complete 62 percent of his passes and threw only 20 touchdowns to go with 17 (!) interceptions in his final year at Utah State got compared, favorably, to a man who plays football like Neo in The Matrix. It’s been a while since I watched the first Matrix movie, but I’m pretty sure they referred to Neo as “The One,” as opposed to, “One of Maybe Two to Five, Give or Take.”

At least in the case of Willis and Levis (taken by the Tennessee Titans in consecutive drafts), there was no first round pick wasted, though the Titans did blow a third rounder by trading up for Levis. It was something I touched on a “little,” in my AFC South Grades, but, still, no first was spent.

Lance cost the San Francisco 49ers three first round picks and might not take a snap for the team again after the emergence of Brock Purdy a season ago. He won’t be healthy to open this season and Sam Darnold is slated to take the field on Week 1 for the San Francisco 49ers.

Love just cost the Pack a pick switch from 30 to 26 and a fourth rounder to the Miami Dolphins, a pick that eventually landed with the Los Angeles Rams. The Rams took Brycen Hopkins, the tight end that started for them in Super Bowl LVI, caught four passes for 47 yards in that game (including a key first down on the game winning drive) and remains the No. 2 tight end on their depth chart heading into this season.

Love started one game against the Kansas City Chiefs in 2021 (when the Chiefs were also playing their back up) and looked like a pile of dog excrement, throwing three interceptions. He mopped up in four games last season, but only threw 21 total passes, completing 14 (though he did toss a TD with no picks in those four).

On the flip side, I love Justin Fields. I was big proponent of him coming out of Ohio State and thought then (and still do), he was the second best QB prospect out of the 2021 crop right after Trevor Lawrence. Chicago, rightly, traded the first overall pick in this past draft so they can build the team around Fields and eventually become a contender with a franchise quarterback able to put up video game passing and rushing numbers. And that’s great, you know, two years from now. This Bears team is still terrible. There is much roster work to be done and it didn’t all happen this offseason. Take out Fields, DJ Moore and first round pick Darnell Wright, and I defy anyone who isn’t a Bears fan to name three other starters on that team. They are in rough shape. They needed the extra picks they got from dealing No. 1 overall to the Carolina Panthers and it’ll take a while to be competitive.

Which means this game, with Love making only his second start and Fields playing with a future USFL All-Star squad, will be hard to watch.

Follow Adam Greene on Twitter @TheFirstMan.

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