NFL week 1 observations (Sunday only)

So I figure if I am going to contribute to a blog, the least I can do is discuss one of my favorite subjects: the NFL. The beauty of Sundays is that you can wake up late, eat, and then watch six straight hours of football (barring OT) before it stops. You then have approximately one hour before the final three hours that come with the night game. To me, since I have to eat dinner during the second game as per dining hall time restrictions (dinner over at 7), I appear to have this one hour window from roughly 7:30 to 8:30 which appears to be very good for blogging my reflections on the early day games (and Thursday night game - Wednesday this week). This will likely be one of those things I do only until I reach a Sunday where I have to actually work, but since I am not there yet, I can say with no certainty that I would like this to be a weekly thing, for the next 21 weeks or so. Sorry I'm not covering the Sunday night and Monday night games, but alas, that is how my schedule apparently works out.
Today I watched (on my laptop- thefirstrow.eu- don't download any of their stuff, ignore all the popups, and the videos should come on on their own) Redskins- Saints and Packers- 49ers. Nothing that likely wasn't on your local FOX doubleheader. At any rate, some observations and thoughts:
- Are the Skins actually good, or do the Saints just suck, what with all the suspensions and bounties and no head coach and all? My take is that to some degree both are true. These Skins would NOT have beaten last year's Saints, though this year's Saints would still destroy last year's Skins. Seems kind of obvious there.
- Is Goodell planning on paying every team to intentionally injure the Saint's record i.e. beat them? I feel like it would be his distorted form of justice. Beat the Saints, get $5 million more in cap space!
- Brandon Weeden pretty clearly sucks, at least insofar as I can judge a rookie who has only ever played one game. However unfair that assessment may be, particularly in light of the fact that he was up against Philly's well designed coordinated assembled thought out overhyped defense, I still think he performed below average, and I wonder how long it will take before Shurmer brings in his backup, likely some 5 year old from Saskatchewan who is supposed to look good in college in 15 years. Never to early...
- On that note, can the entire league please come to terms with the fact that Vick is simply not a QB on an NFL level? 4 picks, one for a TD against Cleveland? Really? They may not be as bad as everyone thinks (might be worse actually), but 4 picks against any team is inexcusable, unless you are Eli Manning, in which case they are likely your receiver's fault (come on, that one is true often enough. And I am totally biased)
- For some reason, likely that it was pirated European TV, all the in-break commentary and commercials for the Packers- 49ers game was in British (I still got the Buck/Aikman play by play and commentary). I have no objection to that whatsoever, just an interesting side note. The part that threw me off though was when they aired their Super Bowl predictions: Ravens vs. Eagles, with the Bills as a dark horse. First of all, what is the deal with putting a dark horse in there? Will the Ravens make it or the Bills? You can't choose 2 teams to make it and 1 to maybe make it. Predictions don't work like that. I don't even need to get in to the fact that the Ravens are by far too trendy a pick to ever make it, the Eagles are an overrated bunch of wanna-be's who always think they are great but never are, and the Bills? The Bills? The Buffalo Bills? These same Bills that got blown out earlier today by the NY Jest? I will grant that they are adorable in their suckiness, but really?
- Packer's defense finally reached the point where the offense can no longer keep the pack in the game, at least not aginst a legit D, which the Niners clearly have. Kudos to them for winning the matchup of the last two NFC teams to lose to the Giants in the playoffs.
- Either the Bucs are better than everyone thought, or the Panthers are way worse. I am inclined to think they both suck. At least they are next on the Giants schedule. God, Carolina looked awful, based mainly on the box score, as I was not watching the game.
- John Skelton got injured. Does anyone care? Oh, wait, we have this guy Kolb who we gave up a second round draft pick, our top CB, and a $60 million contract for. Maybe he can play. Hmm...
- Finally, as every announcing booth has mentioned ad nauseum today, these replacements throw way too many flags. And  Mario Williams is right. They kind of suck. Let's end this lockout please.
Nothing more to really add here, except that I really hope both Peyton Manning and Willis McGahee can manage to score fewer than 24 points more than the Ravens defense on Monday. One can always hope. Nothing like Fantasy to screw up all your rooting priorities.
Enjoy tonight's game, since I highly doubt anyone will really care at all about tomorrow's (especially with who ESPN has announcing them. Ick)