The preseason is the arduous climb to the roller coaster’s apex. Clankety, clankety, clankety. Anxiety building. Time moves painstakingly slowly. At the top, a peek to the ground below to ignore the warning before one last inhale. Hands up. The Week 1 kickoff is when the calipers give way, sending the season into a freefall of spinning clocks and caterpillars smoking hookah.

Dizzy and disoriented, we never complain that the season took too long. Instead, we reach the winter cold and stagnant time with hair askew, itching for another go-around.

Week 2 is already here, and fantasy managers have plenty to gripe about. Arthur Smith is wanted for his high crimes against sensible player usage in this era of player incentives and performance bonuses. A win is a win, is it not? His antithesis, Mike McDaniel, earned his first victory with adulation, not ire. The two games can coexist in harmony. They are not warring as much as they are codependent upon one another. The two poles among NFL coaching staffs are truly more outliers than status quo.

It will be interesting to see how the story unfolds and whether McDaniel and Smith remain like Mario and Wario for the fantasy football community. Scratch that. Smith is definitely Bowzer, and he’s dropping banana peels all over our Rainbow Road.

For those of us who like to take weekly events in the NFL at face value, there are plenty of interesting storylines to sift through. These are the ones I felt most pressing to fantasy football managers at large.

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Fantasy Football Storylines Week 2 (2023)

Zach Wilson Steps Up…Into a Buzzsaw

In the cruelest knife twist imaginable, the Jets’ messiah at QB was another casualty of Broadway Joe’s curse. Since Joe Willie Namath sold his soul for a guarantee-come-true, something bad always happens to the J-E-T-S. They will be hard-pressed to R-E-L-A-X with Zach Wilson under center from here on out, especially when the first opponent sports a ferocious defense that pitched a shutout and piled up seven sacks in Week 1.

New York’s defense is no slouch, either. I’m licking my chops at the tantalizing prospects of playing the Cowboys’ defense in daily fantasy sports (DFS). Running game and defense can only get you so far.

Arthur Smith Needs a (Figurative) Smack Upside The Head

Speaking of running game, the Atlanta Falcons used theirs to bully the young Panthers last week in a two-score win. While many analysts and fantasy managers alike cry foul at the lack of passing to Kyle Pitts and Drake London, I worry most about Arthur Smith’s befuddling Bijan Robinson usage. Never mind the fact he was out-touched by incumbent Tyler Allgeier, but only a spectacular run after a motioned route in the flat gave the generational rookie fantasy relevance.

Atlanta barely needed to throw any passes beyond the line of scrimmage, and that will simply not work against Green Bay. Look for the Packers to destroy Atlanta on Sunday and force Smith to use his weaponry or face severe backlash from somewhere other than the “fantasy guys.”

Fins Up in Foxborough

I don’t think any defense in the NFL can slow down a healthy Dolphins offense. Tua Tagovailoa, Tyreek Hill and Jaylen Waddle even started a bit off-kilter in Los Angeles last week. You would never tell by the final score. Bill Belichick is long known for taking away an offense’s best weapon, but Hill is on the short list of most daunting matchup nightmares.

In Week 1 last season, he was targeted by Tua 12 times and pulled in eight receptions for 94 yards. New England hasn’t been involved in many shootouts recently, but this divisional clash is shaping up to be a high-scoring affair.

Champs Be Chumpin’

The Chiefs without Travis Kelce were bad. All the ancillary pieces at WR who might thrive in Kelce’s shadow were thrust into unfamiliar territory and were absolutely exposed by the Lions last Thursday. Skyy Moore got open, but Mahomes couldn’t find him. The MVP found Kadarius Toney, but everyone is discovering the awful truth about David Gettleman’s first-round pick in 2021.

Rashee Rice looked okay, especially when he stood all alone in the back of the end zone and waited for Mahomes to scramble around and find him. Kelce was sorely missed. The Super Bowl champs now face a road game against a very game Jaguars team. They do not want to begin their title defense 0-2, but it remains to be seen what kind of form Kelce will be in with his bone bruise.

This game was going to be a tough test, even if the future Hall-of-Fame TE was 100% healthy. One thing that is certain is Mahomes needs to play better than he did in the opener.