WEEK 1

It began with a mistake. That’s how the baptism played out in the NFL career of former Rugby League star Jarryd Hayne. Five weeks of growing anticipation and media hype boiled down to a snap on the Vikings goal line as punter Jeff Locke, leaned back and with his left foot lofted the football high – way too high for the windy Bay Area conditions at San Francisco’s Levi Stadium. Hayne watched the football balloon, briefly swirl and then sharply descend a good 10 yards short of where he had been stationed at the 50.  Aggressive as ever, he lunged to take it inches from the grass, the Minnesota special teams cover thundering in. Welcome to the season proper.

“That ball ate him up,” said commentator Trent Dilfer who acknowledged the kick was affected by the conditions. The ball, however, also jarred free. Hayne’s first play of the 2015 season would be a fumble.

A collective groan filled the arena. Hayne might be a big media story in Australia but he’s a sensation in the United States. His jersey (38) has been outselling that of franchise superstar Colin Kaepernick who led the 49ers to the Superbowl just three years ago. This is the home of Joe Montana and Steve Young. Parramatta Eels aren’t supposed to outsell 49ers quarterbacks.

A lot had happened before Locke sent the football skyward. Perhaps further context is required. After all Karmichael Hunt’s shortlived conversion from NRL star to bona fide AFL inside midfielder at the Gold Coast Suns was the last impressive feat of an Australian athlete swapping codes. No professional sportsman had made the successful transition between Australia’s two biggest football codes before. Only in the greater scheme of things it still fell well short of this. Of course Sav Rocca and others, mostly punters, had made it as highly paid professionals in the NFL long before Hayne opted out of signing a lucrative long term contract to pursue what seemed a pipedream. Then again this was different. This was an elite athlete out on the field dazzling with speed, agility and power. The best players in North America were crashing into one of ours and he was crashing back. 75,000 people never roared before when Ben Graham launched the ball into the air for maximum hang time. Here was an athlete who on the surface of things had the unique skillset and the guts. It wasn’t long before 49ers fans reacted to him. The media soon followed. Once it was announced that Hayne had made the 53 man roster 7Mate had brokered an unprecedented last minute deal to secure exclusive rights to televise 14 San Francisco games live this season on free-to-air as part of their Monday morning showcase. Simply put Hayne was a trailblazer and the bandwagons were in hot pursuit.

Under the glare of lights and cameras of the nationwide American telecast of Monday Night Football, San Francisco soon had a short field goal attempt blocked. In the crowd groans soon turned to howls. Despite resulting in a 45 yard take away the Vikings failed to score. The 49ers had dodged a bullet and Hayne’s blunder soon was forgotten.

Then Reggie Bush succumbed to a calf injury. Second in line among the pecking order of backs, Bush, once a prospect of much prospect who failed to live up to expectations, left the game and would not return. Hayne now had his chance to make amends. He would pinch hit when they needed small gains on tough yards.

As their elite back Carlos Hyde, who would eventually rush for a game leading 168 yards, began to slice apart the tiring Minnesota defensive unit and Kaepernick, exploded out of the pocket when the situation demanded it, Hayne made some crucial yardage open as a receiver for a 7 yard gain that included a deft left step around a flailing cornerback whose hands grasped wildly where Hayne’s shadow had once been. He was away.

An assured punt returned soon followed. Then a couple of gruelling carries.  He wasn’t going to continue to average 7.8 yards on each rushing attempt like he had in the preseason. Those stats were outstanding but somewhat bolstered by playing against experimental package defensive schemes and undrafted fringe players, not unlike Hayne, out to win a job. But by the third quarter the faith the 49ers had shown in the Australian, despite his shaky start, was being justified. Although the performance was mostly workmanlike it helped consolidate the 7-0 lead the 49ers had built at the half.

Hayne no longer had Ray Warren to sing his praises but ESPN’s Chris Berman was doing a good job of it. “Look at the move,” he intoned in awe, “look at the toughness.”

With 8.32 on the clock in the 3rd quarter the 49ers were at the 29. Hayne bulldozed his way up the middle, bouncing off three defenders before he was tackled just short of a 1st down. Vikings cornerback Terence Newman cannoned into him late. Newman had been the defender Hayne stepped around like a potted plant near the sideline earlier. It was a scintillating nine yard gain. Just as the crowd erupted, ESPN switched vision to three inebriated males brought to their feet in the stands high fiving each other. One held an inflatable boxing kangaroo. They were all sporting red jerseys emblazoned with the number 38.

THE WEEKLY TOP 10

10. Hayne wasn’t the only budding star who got off to an inauspicious start. Jameis Winston, the controversial number 1 overall draft pick of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, threw a pick 6 (an intercept returned for a touchdown) on his very first play. That puts him in elite company with Brett Favre who also started out that way. Unlike Winston, however, Favre never blew kisses to the crowd prior to his first game.

9. Peyton Manning’s audibles at the line of scrimmage have reached a whole new level of indulgence this year as he delays the snap to try and catch the defensive line offside. Even more distracting is that each time he yells “Omaha” it sounds exactly like Tom Hanks. If that O Line continues to collapse around the veteran Broncos QB it won’t be his only out of body experience this season.

8. Brother of Peyton, Eli Manning apparently told his running back Rashad Jennings not to score in his bungled attempt at clock management in the Giants 27-26 loss to division rival Dallas. The plan was to forestall a touchdown to deprive the Cowboys of the necessary time it would take to traverse the field and score. Instead of scoring the Giants gave the ball back with 90 plus seconds remaining and Tony Romo and the Cowboys, you guessed it, traversed the field and, well, scored. Earlier in the game Manning had been cleaned up when he attempted an ill-advised block for his running back. It wasn’t the only time his grasp exceeded his reach.

7. Philly and Atlanta combined for 50 points in an old fashioned shootout between recently traded injury prone yet-to-fill-his-potential Sam Bradford and nearly-elite but waiting-for-help Matt Ryan. Chip Kelly’s radically remodelled high tempo offense spotted the Falcons a 20-0 lead but not before newly acquired line backer Kiko Alonso laid out to take a spectacular one handed catch to deny Ryan in the end zone. Atlanta went on to win the game while Bradford went on to have X-rays.

6. When Julio Jones wasn’t catching the ball Ryan managed to throw two intercepts. Somewhat strangely there was an abundance of poorly executed passes picked off in Week 1. Most of the usual culprits featured. Kirk Cousins? Check. Jay Culter? Ditto. Andy Dalton, more surprisingly, was not one of them. The Bengals who were 0-10 all time at Oakland don’t apparently care much for history (given their postseason record they wouldn’t want to). If they were out to figuratively curb stomp the much younger Raiders resident thug Pacman Jones took the message literally by bullying highly touted Oakland wideout Amari Cooper by knocking off his helmet before ramming his head onto it. Adam Sandler’s Pixels won’t feature anything nearly as terrifying.

5. Houston’s man mountain and defensive captain JJ. Watt also lost his helmet at the line of scrimmage in the Texans’ loss to Kansas City. That didn’t stop him going on to record a brutal sack of Chiefs QB Alex Smith. Here starts a new statistical category in 2015:

Sacks made without a helmet: JJ Watt 1.

4. Seemingly inspired by their new bright tangerine and chocolate brown uniforms (boy do they pop on TV) Browns quarterback Josh McCown went all kamikaze when he decided to take it himself from the Jets 14 to the goal line, get airborne and score like John Elway. It was a spectacular attempt which resulted in a helmet on a helmet collision, the football being turned over and a concussion for our Birdman on the sidelines. Cometh the moment, cometh second stringer Johnny Manziel, who proceeded to loft a 54 yard touchdown pass to Travis Benjamin hard against the left sideline and prompt the TV announcer to claim he was “astonished.” He wasn’t alone. Then Manziel threw two intercepts, fumbled the ball twice and blew the game. No one was astonished at that.

3. Unlike most of the high profile debutants over the NFL weekend Marcus Mariota acquitted himself without error or incident for the Tennessee Titans. In fact he announced himself as a budding star. Mariota had 4 TDs by halftime against Tampa in what would eventuate into a 42-14 rout. But can he drag his team out of the cellar? The last QB at the Titans Jake Locker retired at the age of 26 after being ragdolled within an inch of his life on one too many occasions. Poet WB Yeates must have been thinking of the Titans when he wrote "the center cannot hold". For Mariota’s sake let’s hope it does.

2. Defending champion New England put deflategate behind them winning a court order to allow the suspended Tom Brady to play. That’s right if you hadn’t have already guessed it the Patriots play by their own rules, and, now laws.

1. Rex Ryan has moved to long suffering Buffalo where they suicide at the tailgate parties and fall out of the grandstands than rather watch their stinking Bills. But is all that all about to change? Ryan with his attacking defensive juggernauts caused the upset of the week by dismantling the highly fancied Indianapolis Colts whose media darling of a QB Andrew Luck saw blitz after blitz, all of them different and unnervingly effective. Tyrod Taylor, who may as well have been drafted from a box of Corn Flakes, made his first career start as QB and opened up with a 51 yard pass on the dime to Percy Harvin for a rousing touchdown. The Colts were limited to just 44 yards rushing. Rex reportedly has a framed photo of his wife’s feet in his office. If he keeps winning he won’t be the only one.