These are Walter’s Sunday Nuggets featuring:

Absolutely nothing in fantasy football touches the dopamine hit you get when your drafted player scores a touchdown on the first drive of Opening Night.

Its the ultimate overreaction. All of the research, all of the drafting, all of the time you put in instantly vindicated because there is not enough sample size to feel rational about it. You’ve been so starved for a football, for fantasy, for scoring, and you get it all at once.

Its like eating a bowl of ice cream as the first course of a 12-course meal. Its probably not great for you in the long run, but literally nothing will taste better.

This is worth chasing.

(First of all, who asked for this matchup???)

JSN will be a first rounder and basically impossible to overdraft so these are the best guys to target if you want to chase this feeling:

Think about the major events you know you’ll have in your life. I ,for example, have a bachelor party the weekend of Week 3 and a wedding I’ll be attending in Week 7.

I’m a Patriots fan. They have a 1PM ET game in Jacksonville in Week 3. This is something I need to plan my travel around. In Week 7 they play the TNF game against the Bears - so that will be no problem.

You’ll want to mark the primetime games as well. Monday/Thursday games for your favorite team will be the most important because those will change the entire structure of your week. Rather than those games being a potentially ancillary watch, you will have to plan your day around it.

Plan on staying up late or getting out of work early (depending on where you live) and understand you’ll probably have to work a bit harder on the other weekdays…but your Sunday won’t be nearly as intense.

My friend Adam and I always make a habit of watching the TNF games together early in the season. The first few weeks we are so starved for football that any matchup is must see, and worth the effort to get together. But that veracious interest does inevitably decline as the season goes on, and by late October getting together becomes more sporadic.

The drop-off of TNF doesn’t stop with us not wanting to watch together though. There hits a point in every season where the matchups become infuriatingly uninteresting. Whether its caused by QB injuries, teams gone off the rails, or lopsided affairs that the schedule makers should’ve seen coming, this always happens. I can pinpoint where it happened last season…

Week 1: Cowboys vs. Eagles

Week 2: Commanders vs. Packers

Week 3: Dolphins vs. Bills

Week 4: Seahawks vs. Cardinals

Week 5: 49ers vs. Rams

Week 6: Eagles vs. Giants

Week 7: Steelers vs. Bengals

Week 8: Vikings vs. Chargers

Ding ding ding! No, I did not want to watch Carson Wentz try to keep the Vikings afloat with half a shoulder. (Nor did I enjoy watching Kimani Vidal rush for 117 yards after I had picked up Hassan Haskins in every league).

Best guess for when we will hit this point on Thursdays this season:

Week 1: Patriots vs. Seahawks (or 49ers vs. Rams if you want to be technical)

Week 2: Lions vs. Bills

Week 3: Falcons vs. Packers

Week 4: Steelers vs. Browns

Week 5: Buccaneers vs. Cowboys

Week 6: Seahawks vs. Broncos

Week 7: Patriots vs. Bears

Week 8: Panthers vs. Packers

I predict Adam and I will not be getting together in Week 8.

Thanksgiving Day Slate:

1:00PM ET: Bears vs. Lions

4:35PM ET: Eagles vs. Cowboys

8:20PM ET: Chiefs vs. Bills

Christmas Day Slate:

1:00PM ET: Packers vs. Bears

4:30PM ET: Bills vs. Broncos

8:20PM ET: Rams vs. Seahawks

Answer: Not very much.