Week 1 Burn Book: Champs Still Cooking, Crock Catches Fire (The Bad Kind)

Well, well, well. The reigning champ opened his title defense exactly how you'd expect — Marcus rolled Chengy 196.5 to 125.6 behind a two-headed monster in Kenneth Walker III (36.1) and Jahmyr Gibbs (35.6). That's not a lineup, that's a heist. Chengy, welcome to the "hope you enjoyed the offseason" club.

Speaking of monsters, Beav's Josh Allen went full video-game-cheat-code with a league-best 42.7 points, and it was more than enough to bury Devion 169.0 to 108.8. Devion's Omarion Hampton no-showed with 8.3 on an 18.1 projection, which is a nice way of saying the Devion side of that box score just wasn't fair.

Then there's Meek, who — and this is real, this happened — called GG on his OWN team after the draft, fully convinced Crock was going to run him out of the building. Instead Meek dropped 176.6 on Crock's 109.1, with Derrick Henry bulldozing his way to 37.3. To make matters worse for Crock, A.J. Brown and De'Zhaun Stribling both exited within about a quarter of kickoff and landed on IR — losing two starters before halftime is a rough way to open a season. Chalk one up for self-own energy from Meek, but the results speak for themselves.

Dez survived a scare, holding off Manny 158.3 to 143.6 in the closest final score of the week — the kind of nail-biter that ages either great or terribly depending on how the next 16 weeks go. And Crawf outlasted Frost 152.6 to 126.2, powered by Caleb Williams going nuclear for 41.3. Frost, meanwhile, watched Matthew Stafford (4.1 on a 22.5 projection) and Jaylen Waddle (1.2 on 12.6) both faceplant in the same lineup — an all-time bad parlay. Crawf's own Colston Loveland chipped in a flat zero, so nobody's totally innocent here.

One week in, and the busts column already reads like a horror anthology — Ja'Marr Chase going for a wince-inducing 3.2 in a game Meek still won by 67, Stafford and Waddle torching Frost together, Loveland ghosting Crawf on a night he didn't even need him. Grade yourselves accordingly, "Coulda Been Athletes" — Week 2 waits for no one.