Week One Quarterback Rankings

Every week, we will give you weekly “Who to Start” rank­ings. These are solely for the fol­low­ing week of games, and not for the entire sea­son. As always, take this with a grain of salt. If your gut opin­ion strays from the rank­ings, I’d tell you to go with your intu­ition every time. Here’s the week one quar­ter­back rankings.

1) Pey­ton Man­ning vs. Giants — Last time Man­ning played the Giants, he threw for 365 yards and three TD’s. You can bet big brother will want to show off going against lit­tle brother on national TV. 315 and two TD’s.

2) Car­son Palmer vs. Chiefs — Palmer looks healthy and the Chiefs were 30th in the league last sea­son against the pass. 300 and two TD’s.

3) Kurt Warner vs. 49ers — Anquan, Fitz, and Edge against the worst defense in the league last sea­son? Lock it up. 335 and one or two TD’s.

4) Dono­van McN­abb vs. Tex­ans — A healthy West­brook is the key for D-Mac to put up big num­bers. Stall­worth is going to start also. 275 and two TD’s.

5) Marc Bul­ger vs. Bron­cos — The Rams will get behind and be forced to throw to stay in the game, espe­cially if the Bron­cos second-ranked run defense stuffs Jack­son. 275 and two TD’s.

6) Eli Man­ning vs. Colts — Watch out for lit­tle brother. If the Colts get ahead early, he’ll get to pass 50 times. 265 and two TD’s

7) Matt Has­sel­beck vs. Lions — It looks now as if Dar­rell Jack­son will play, though he might be ham­pered a bit. The Lions pass defense isn’t as bad as one might think. 250 and one or two TD’s.

Tom Brady vs. Bills — So Doug Gabriel and Troy Brown are the start­ing WR’s for the Patri­ots. Ben Wat­son is look­ing like a bet­ter and bet­ter option. Any­way, it’s golden-boy #2. He can’t be out­side the top 10. 250 and one or two TD’s.

9) Aaron Brooks vs. Charg­ers — This would fall under the sneaky start alert. Until last year, Randy Moss has had his way with the Charg­ers, a team that doesn’t pos­sess the great­est pass defense any­way. I think one of two things will hap­pen. The Charg­ers will get ahead and Brooks will pass a ton or Rivers is turnover-central and Brooks and the Raiders will have the ball a lot. 240 and one or two TD’s.

10) Trent Green vs. Ben­gals — If you lis­ten to our pod­cast, you know I’m not dig­ging Green this sea­son. But this could be the high­est scor­ing game of week one, and Green will play some sort of role. He had 344 and a touch in their meet­ing last sea­son. 260 and one TD.

11) Jake Plum­mer vs. Rams — The Rams defense has been one of the eas­ier groups to move the ball against for a num­ber of sea­sons now. This could be another high scor­ing game. 225 and two TD’s.

12) Jake Del­homme vs. Fal­cons — This is the clos­est thing to a “sur­pris­ing sit” at the QB spot this week. Last sea­son, Del­homme strug­gled against the Fal­cons, pass­ing for under 200 yards. He did get two TD’s, but I think the run­ning game will be the focal point in this game. Add in Steve Smith still a lit­tle slow because of the ham­string injury, and it could be a sub­par week for the Pan­thers quar­ter­back, espe­cially yardage-wise. 200 and two TD’s.

13) Mike Vick vs. Pan­thers — Until last sea­son, Vick was aver­ag­ing about 80 rush­ing yards per con­test against the Pan­thers. The pass­ing num­bers have never been great, but you can say that for Vick against any team. 150 and one TD plus 50 rush­ing yards with another TD on the ground.

14) Daunte Culpep­per vs. Steel­ers — All signs point towards C-Pep being %100 for the Thurs­day night game. The Steel­ers are by no means an easy oppo­nent, but it is pos­si­ble to move the ball against them through the air. Also, the Dol­phins should have plenty of shots with Char­lie Batch quar­ter­back­ing on the other side. 225 and one or two TD’s.

15) Philip Rivers vs. Raiders — Here’s my gut­shot pick of the week. Yes, Rivers is inex­pe­ri­enced and has been incon­sis­tent in the pre­sea­son, but it’s the Charg­ers and Raiders. Gates and LT are still there, and if Rivers gets them the ball, he can have a solid game. 220 and one or two TD’s.