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Game Cap Recap: Week 1, PIT at NE

I won't do this for every single game of the season, but when I get the chance I'm going to do a little debrief on my game capsules and examine my assumptions heading into them to see where I was right, where I was wrong, and where I was looney tunes. I fully expect all three to happen at some point, and the latter two categories more often than the first one, but that's just the nature of the exercise.

It's always instructive when your thinking collides with reality, as once in a while you can find something useful in the wreckage.

Overview: In general, I had the flow of the game roughly right. I had the Patriots winning big and covering the spread, which looked like the right call until that last-minute Steelers TD to make the game a push ATS. I was one field goal high on the final total: I had the game at 52 total points, it ended up at 49. On a macro level, that's pretty good.

Pats: I had them scoring the correct number of touchdowns, although I whiffed on them also having a couple of other scoring drives. I mentioned them possibly being out of sync due to the loss of starting center Bryan Stork, but then didn't really follow through on it and gave them six scoring drives when they only managed four.

I gave Tom Brady 300-plus yards and three TDs, when he actually had 288 yards and four TDs. Not a bullseye, but not bad.

I had Rob Gronkowski with a huge game, although not as huge as the numbers he actually posted.

I gave Julian Edelman 10 catches for 110 yards. He got 11 catches for 97 yards. Solid.

I had Danny Amendola scoring a random TD, when in fact Scott Chandler got the random TD. Shrug emoji.

I missed on the principals in the running game, as I had Brandon Bolden and James White being productive instead of Dion Lewis and Dion Lewis. Still, I wasn't far off on the total impact: I had Bolden plus White with 140 combined yards and a TD, while Lewis got 120 combined yards and was a yard away from scoring.

In fact, without Lewis' fumble (which gave Gronk his third TD), I'm overall amazingly close on the overall production from the Pats offense. Yay me!

Steelers: Here's where I was way off.

In looking at the matchup, I had DeAngelo Williams going nowhere, when in reality he rushed for an eye-popping 127 yards (more than double what I gave him). I can see two main reasons for this:

1) He's got a lot more left in the tank than I expected. That may be true, but I'm skeptical. Williams seemed to flag as the game wore on, and while he had five runs of 10 or more yards, four of them came on either the first drive of the first half or the first drive of the second half (after he's gotten a halftime rest). He can clearly still be effective in small doses, but it's probably a good thing for Pittsburgh that Le'Veon Bell is only suspended for one more game.

2) I completely failed to account for the impact of Vince Wilfork's loss on the Patriots run defense. Without the big man in the middle of the line, their front seven got man-handled by a unit missing its own starting center (Maurkice Pouncey). That's fairly inexcusable, really. The coaching staff will make adjustments, but at least in the short term I think I need to give a bump to any RB facing New England.

With a better ground game, the Pittsburgh offense overall moved the ball better than I expected them to, although it didn't result in much more offense. I had Ben Roethlisberger putting up weak yardage but two TDs. In reality, he threw for 345 yards and only one TD, with the score coming very late in garbage time. That works out to about the same number of fantasy points in standard scoring leagues, but I can't count it as a win in my column.

I did have Antonio Brown finding the end zone, but not racking up 133 yards along with it. Whoops.

I gave a TD to Heath Miller. Again, he had roughly equivalent production without it (eight catches, 84 yards) but that's just too different, especially if you're in a PPR league, to put it on the positive side of my ledger.

Final Grade: I'd give myself a B on this one. I just missed on the overall picture and predicted one team's offense pretty darn well, but had some bad misses on the other side and failed to account for one obvious factor on defense. I'm sure I will do worse, but hopefully I can have some better games too.