LAST WEEK: 5-1
SEASON: 50-22
I've spent the past week centering myself about fantasy football's place in the world. I've come to realize that it's not worth getting upset about something that's just make believe.
THE WHITECHAPEL RIPPERS v. TIMMY DOESN'T HAVE ANY FRIENDS
Congrats to Scott for winning a middling division on the strength of the 2nd-fewest points against. Not sure what his great defensive secret is, but it must be something. Larry, who only had the 5th-fewest points against this year will certainly need to tighten up his defense in order to advance in the playoffs.
Both men will be able to keep their opponents' quarterbacks down, as Mahomes faces a good Baltimore defense and Ben goes into the Black Hole, where the Steelers find ways to put up 450 yards and lose 12-6. That also means that Larry will find a way to make Antonio Brown have a below-average game, though Scott will fight back by keeping Jaylen Samuels under 10 points. But then Larry will counter-counter-punch by holding James White down in Miami, where the Pats traditionally struggle.
Scott probably has no way of preventing David Johnson from having a decent game against the cratering Lions. He should've tried to face Larry in a week when Johnson was going up against the Bears or something. Big mistake there. Not sure how you overlook that at playoff time.
Larry is going to need Cook and Janikowski to put up some points on Monday and it says right here that they will. Wait no, it says they will not. I guess I can make it say whatever I want it to. Scott will do a terrific job of limiting Cook's carries on Monday night and having Seattle go for 2 at least one to seal his win.
THE PICK: TDHAF 72 - TWR 67
THE NIGHT BOYS - ANIMAL HOUSE
Let me tell how I'm going to feel when all 4 Wild Cards have terrible games while I score 97 points.
Bad. Bad is how I'm going to feel.
A true master stroke by Barker this week having James Conner get hurt late last week right before he played Animal House. Those are the types of crafty moves that deliver titles to fantasy owners. Terrific, terrific stuff. And getting Tom Brady to play in Miami the same week? This guy is the real deal when it comes to smarts! But look, when you're only the 8th-best offense in the league, you need to pull out the crafty moves. It's like if a slow 40-something played some pickup hoops. (Say, Mike Barker). You're going to get a lot of back door bounce passes, some 17-foot bank shots, rebounds that somehow bounce right to him...that kind of thing. You look up and think, how did we just lose? Well, you lost because JuJu scored 6 points in Oakland. That's why.
Meyers fell asleep at the switch this week when it came to managing his opponent's matchups, though. It's something he worked on all season, as you can tell by his 3rd-fewest points against total, but I don't know why he skipped it this week. Cohen, Thielen, and Hopkins all have great matchups, and if Barker goes with Cooks instead of hoping Tyler Boyd catches passes from Jeff Driskell (Jess Drifkell?), it'll be another mistake on Meyers' part.
Meyers scored 100+ points this season 7 times. Remarkably, he was only 6-2 in those games. (He did it in the double week, don't complain about my math.) He was under 100 points only 5 times and went 1-4 there. He only scored under 80 once, when he put up an anemic 58 points in a Week 4 loss. Barker, a true Moneyball type, realized his best shot of beating a team that outscored him by 200 points during the regular season is to set up the schedule so he faces Meyers in what will be Meyers' 2nd-worst week of the season. You can only tip your hat to guys like Barker who crunch the numbers like that and find an edge. Great stuff. Great timing.
THE PICK: TNB 84 - AH 71
It is kinda neat that both matchups this week feature 2018 division rivals since the divisions are so important to this league. Double week in the division, 6 total games within the division, a lot of division tiebreakers...doing well in your division is very important.
I mean, sure, I went 5-1 in my division this year, the highest-scoring division in the league. That was the best division record of any team in the league, by the way. But yeah, divisions are important.
Thus ends my football rant. As for the political rant, we're only a month away from pickle heads like Chuck Todd and Wolf Blitzer insisting that the newly-elected Democratic House reach across the aisle to compromise with Republicans, despite the fact that a record number of people turned out to vote for Democrats in the largest midterms voting margin ever since in the face of an authoritarian oligarchy. This is because Todd and Blitzer especially are complete morons who still fantasize about powerful men compromising on the best way to pay for the interstate highway system over scotch in a wood-paneled room.
But nowadays we have a party that doesn't even believe we should have a highway system. I mean, literally. A bumblefuck Utah Senator said highways should be abolished before Civil War 2 starts. I am not a crackpot. Senator Mike Lee is.
And as dirty tricks in Michigan and Wisconsin and literal ballot stealing in North Carolina show, Republicans don't even believe in representative democracy. Republicans cannot be engaged with or brought to the table. They can only be defeated and shamed.
Keep this in mind next year when it's revealed that Russia used the NRA as a filter to make massive donations to the Trump campaign and that's only one of the dirty tricks and 30% of the country tries to talk themselves into why that's a good thing.
Thursday, December 6, 2018
Friday, November 30, 2018
AFFL Week 13 Preview
WEEK 11: 5-1
SEASON: 45-21
I didn't even make pretend Week 12 picks in my mind last week, so the final tally is just going to come up 12 games short of a full season. Seriously, though, 24 games over .500? Not one single losing week? I don't think we talk enough about how incredible my picks are each season. There are a lot of great things about me that we don't discuss nearly enough, and this is one of them. We should set up a league-wide picks pool next season so I can somehow lose that too.
But enough about that. Let's talk about the league format some more! You might be tired of hearing about it, but I'm sure not! Besides, as any good journalist like myself will tell you, bias doesn't appear in what you write, it shows up in what you choose to write about. If you want to talk about something else, start your own remarkably stupid blog. I can share my business plan with you if it helps, but I'll tell you here that my annual operating expenses are $0.00. That's both CapEx and OpEx.
Yesterday Larry and I had a low-octane Sloan Sports Conference via text about various league set ups and how they would or wouldn't affect this year's standings. A real meeting of the minds. He analyzed the standings if we gave 2 points for a win, 0 for a loss, and 1 bonus point for breaking 100 points. He also looked at the 1 v. 11 breakdown format.
The short version is that I would do better this season (good formats!) but things would be mostly unchanged except for some shifting seeds. For all the info the League History section gives you, it doesn't show Breakdown by year, but I recall doing this same exercise a few years ago and finding out the same thing more or less. I'm willing to extrapolate if you looked back through the years and really crunched some numbers, each year we'd have one or two teams jump into the playoffs with a new format, one or two drop out, and then some basic slot jockeying among the other teams. A minimal effect, really. Additionally, even though I'm #1 in scoring and #1 in the power rankings but still might miss the playoffs, this rarely happens. I think we discussed automatically giving the #6 seed to the #1 scoring team if they didn't make the playoffs by record 3-4 years ago and this is the first time it's actually come up since.
So it seems that we can finally put the head-to-head format issue to bed, which is good because I've heard from sources that Gary thinks I'm ruining the league this year. (Source: Gary)
EXCEPT!
There is one other key stat I saw this week. According to CBS' very own Fantasy Journalist, if I played McCamey's schedule this season, I'd be 11-2. Not a huge difference, just one game better. If McCamey played my schedule, he'd be 5-8. Not a huge difference, just one game worse.
But the huge difference is that that schedule is the difference between a team being the #1 seed or the #8 seed. Since we're in the same division, it's entirely plausible McCamey could've pulled my schedule and have been eliminated from the playoffs before Thanksgiving.
To be clear, this isn't based on cherry-picking roster moves or lineup divisions. This isn't based on McCamey falling to 1-3 after Week 4 and pulling the trigger on the Melvin Gordon trade he and I worked out if he lost. This doesn't suppose I never left points on the bench and lost because of that.
If NOTHING changed except who we played each week, if both McCamey and I made literally the same draft picks, same trades, same waiver moves, and same starting lineup decisions each week, our fates would be totally reversed. I'd say this is some Sliding Doors shit, but in that movie Gwyneth makes a choice to either stay on the subway or get off. In this situation, nothing changes except schedule.
Coincidentally, McCamey has the lowest Points Against this season.
Of our common non-division opponents, only Animal House scored more points against McCamey than they did me. In fact, our common opponents scored an average of 20 points more against me than they did against McCamey. 20!
This is not meant to impugn McCamey's team, which is pretty decent. He's top half of the league in scoring and I said he'd get a playoff spot in the season preview. That's the point. The schedule is the point.
If Semi didn't change a thing this season, if he still traded away Tyreek and Rodgers and Julio for picks, but played McCamey's schedule, he'd be 7-6 right now. And he's the 11th scoring offense in the league!
Of course, the rebuttal to this is, well, the breakdown format only changes a couple of playoff teams each season, so what's the big deal? And I admit, there is not one perfect solution that settles everything.
In my - perhaps singular - opinion, schedule luck plays an outsized factor in results. I'm not good enough at math or statistics to figure out the effect, but if you can make the exact same moves in a season and be either #1 or #9 based entirely on who you play each week, I'm gonna say it's approximately a 100% factor.
Enough of that for now. Let's get to the games. I am still technically alive for the playoffs, but fittingly, my fate depends more on what other teams do than what I do. Unfortunately for me, all 4 teams fighting for the last 2 playoff spots, including myself, are huge favorites this week.
I call upon the Biblical Gideon to smite my enemies despite the odds against me. O Lord, tell me who you want me to smite and they will be smoten! Smite them with pounding rhythms!
If I do win this week and get the 2 key losses that I need, I know it's going to one big holiday.
For what it's worth, I highly, highly recommend putting that second video on today after you punch the clock, surf down that dinosaur's back, and fly into your car.
WTTK? (10-3) v. THE DUDE HAS GOT NO MERCY (6-7)
I am borderline paranoid about losing this week because of lineup decisions. Josh Adams vs. Washington and DJ Moore vs. Tampa could go the wrong way. Those are two B-/C+ options to be sure, but in great matchups with great volume potential. Brees vs. Rodgers was another concern. I thought Brees would be fine indoors and back in Texas, but apparently not. Carson vs. San Francisco is another one I'm hung up on.
The mega brain genius play would be to bench Odell against the Bears as the potential of Eli getting sacked 13 times is definitely in play. But I'm not sure I have the guts to be the guy who missed the playoffs because he started DJ Moore over Odell Beckham.
That said, none of it will matter for two reasons. McCamey is going to post a blank in one spot because DeSean, Kerryon, Melvin Gordon, and Funchess are all injured. And I'm not going to get the 2 key losses I need to eke into the playoffs.
So I'll win, but not finish with the most points scored or a playoff spot. A totally useless season.
THE PICK: TDHGM 84 - WTTK 67
FLYNN (5-8) v. SIGMUND AND THE SEAMONSTER (7-6)
A Tim loss would help me, but only getting 7.2 points from Kamara won't. The only even minor concern that Tim has is that Diggs is going to be out and he'll need to replace him. Other than that, Tim is sailing into the playoffs.
THE PICK: SS 105 - F 56
LITTLE BABY JESUS (4-9) v. THE WHITECHAPEL RIPPERS (6-7)
And if Larry is going to take a playoff spot away from me as well, I guess I'm happy that it will tamp down his "I'm quitting next season" pledge that I've been hearing for the past three seasons.
There is just something so perverse and cruel about the fact that I had a bad season because my opponents kept lighting it up against me and now when I need certain teams to lose they are going to light it up as well.
THE PICK: TWR 93 - LBJ 57
ANIMAL HOUSE (8-5) v. THAT KANGAROO STOLE MY BALL (9-3-1)
Like there being a new, colossal Trump scandal everything day so we don't have enough time to digest the last one, we were so busy complaining about other things last week that we didn't spend any time at all on the fact that there was a tie game for the first time ever. I mean, not one single yard could be spared in either direction? Amazing.
Whoever wins this game will secure a bye and you can't argue they don't deserve it since these are likely to be the top 2 scoring teams. Meyers' problem is that Brady is turning into mush and Conner is hitting a late season wall. Ingram and Thomas already flamed out, and JuJu and McCaffrey won't be able to make up enough ground.
THE PICK: TKSMB 91 - AH 79
THE NIGHT BOYS (6-6-1) v. RUSSELLMANIA (3-10)
M. Barker hasn't made the playoffs since 2011. A couple of times he lost seasons because he had the most points against and when that Kraken rises up from the murky depths and seizes your ship, no vessel is powerful enough to escape its terrifying grasp. So it was probably halfway decent to edge toward the playoffs this season with the 8th-most points because he had only the 6th-most points against. A make up season if you will.
Even nicer is that in a must-win matchup he draws the worst team in the league by a mile, a team that lost its one QB to injury last week. A team that has scored under 70 points NINE teams this season. Looking pretty good, champ!
Except he's going to miss the playoffs again because Larry beat him H2H and has the tiebreaker for the 6 seed. Oh well.
THE PICK: TNB 88 - RM 44
TIMMY DOESN'T HAVE ANY FRIENDS (8-5) v. ASSTANNER (5-8)
Let the record show that I did not get at all agitated by Chris' move last night and in fact pointed out that it was symbolic and meaningless. If more people in this league had my level-headed, calm, long view approach, we'd all be a lot happier around here. Everybody else is so on edge!
This game doesn't matter at all. Congrats to Scott for winning the worst division in the league with the 9th-fewest points against.
THE PICK: TDHAF 83 - AT 40
SEASON: 45-21
I didn't even make pretend Week 12 picks in my mind last week, so the final tally is just going to come up 12 games short of a full season. Seriously, though, 24 games over .500? Not one single losing week? I don't think we talk enough about how incredible my picks are each season. There are a lot of great things about me that we don't discuss nearly enough, and this is one of them. We should set up a league-wide picks pool next season so I can somehow lose that too.
But enough about that. Let's talk about the league format some more! You might be tired of hearing about it, but I'm sure not! Besides, as any good journalist like myself will tell you, bias doesn't appear in what you write, it shows up in what you choose to write about. If you want to talk about something else, start your own remarkably stupid blog. I can share my business plan with you if it helps, but I'll tell you here that my annual operating expenses are $0.00. That's both CapEx and OpEx.
Yesterday Larry and I had a low-octane Sloan Sports Conference via text about various league set ups and how they would or wouldn't affect this year's standings. A real meeting of the minds. He analyzed the standings if we gave 2 points for a win, 0 for a loss, and 1 bonus point for breaking 100 points. He also looked at the 1 v. 11 breakdown format.
The short version is that I would do better this season (good formats!) but things would be mostly unchanged except for some shifting seeds. For all the info the League History section gives you, it doesn't show Breakdown by year, but I recall doing this same exercise a few years ago and finding out the same thing more or less. I'm willing to extrapolate if you looked back through the years and really crunched some numbers, each year we'd have one or two teams jump into the playoffs with a new format, one or two drop out, and then some basic slot jockeying among the other teams. A minimal effect, really. Additionally, even though I'm #1 in scoring and #1 in the power rankings but still might miss the playoffs, this rarely happens. I think we discussed automatically giving the #6 seed to the #1 scoring team if they didn't make the playoffs by record 3-4 years ago and this is the first time it's actually come up since.
So it seems that we can finally put the head-to-head format issue to bed, which is good because I've heard from sources that Gary thinks I'm ruining the league this year. (Source: Gary)
EXCEPT!
There is one other key stat I saw this week. According to CBS' very own Fantasy Journalist, if I played McCamey's schedule this season, I'd be 11-2. Not a huge difference, just one game better. If McCamey played my schedule, he'd be 5-8. Not a huge difference, just one game worse.
But the huge difference is that that schedule is the difference between a team being the #1 seed or the #8 seed. Since we're in the same division, it's entirely plausible McCamey could've pulled my schedule and have been eliminated from the playoffs before Thanksgiving.
To be clear, this isn't based on cherry-picking roster moves or lineup divisions. This isn't based on McCamey falling to 1-3 after Week 4 and pulling the trigger on the Melvin Gordon trade he and I worked out if he lost. This doesn't suppose I never left points on the bench and lost because of that.
If NOTHING changed except who we played each week, if both McCamey and I made literally the same draft picks, same trades, same waiver moves, and same starting lineup decisions each week, our fates would be totally reversed. I'd say this is some Sliding Doors shit, but in that movie Gwyneth makes a choice to either stay on the subway or get off. In this situation, nothing changes except schedule.
Coincidentally, McCamey has the lowest Points Against this season.
Of our common non-division opponents, only Animal House scored more points against McCamey than they did me. In fact, our common opponents scored an average of 20 points more against me than they did against McCamey. 20!
This is not meant to impugn McCamey's team, which is pretty decent. He's top half of the league in scoring and I said he'd get a playoff spot in the season preview. That's the point. The schedule is the point.
If Semi didn't change a thing this season, if he still traded away Tyreek and Rodgers and Julio for picks, but played McCamey's schedule, he'd be 7-6 right now. And he's the 11th scoring offense in the league!
Of course, the rebuttal to this is, well, the breakdown format only changes a couple of playoff teams each season, so what's the big deal? And I admit, there is not one perfect solution that settles everything.
In my - perhaps singular - opinion, schedule luck plays an outsized factor in results. I'm not good enough at math or statistics to figure out the effect, but if you can make the exact same moves in a season and be either #1 or #9 based entirely on who you play each week, I'm gonna say it's approximately a 100% factor.
Enough of that for now. Let's get to the games. I am still technically alive for the playoffs, but fittingly, my fate depends more on what other teams do than what I do. Unfortunately for me, all 4 teams fighting for the last 2 playoff spots, including myself, are huge favorites this week.
I call upon the Biblical Gideon to smite my enemies despite the odds against me. O Lord, tell me who you want me to smite and they will be smoten! Smite them with pounding rhythms!
If I do win this week and get the 2 key losses that I need, I know it's going to one big holiday.
For what it's worth, I highly, highly recommend putting that second video on today after you punch the clock, surf down that dinosaur's back, and fly into your car.
WTTK? (10-3) v. THE DUDE HAS GOT NO MERCY (6-7)
I am borderline paranoid about losing this week because of lineup decisions. Josh Adams vs. Washington and DJ Moore vs. Tampa could go the wrong way. Those are two B-/C+ options to be sure, but in great matchups with great volume potential. Brees vs. Rodgers was another concern. I thought Brees would be fine indoors and back in Texas, but apparently not. Carson vs. San Francisco is another one I'm hung up on.
The mega brain genius play would be to bench Odell against the Bears as the potential of Eli getting sacked 13 times is definitely in play. But I'm not sure I have the guts to be the guy who missed the playoffs because he started DJ Moore over Odell Beckham.
That said, none of it will matter for two reasons. McCamey is going to post a blank in one spot because DeSean, Kerryon, Melvin Gordon, and Funchess are all injured. And I'm not going to get the 2 key losses I need to eke into the playoffs.
So I'll win, but not finish with the most points scored or a playoff spot. A totally useless season.
THE PICK: TDHGM 84 - WTTK 67
FLYNN (5-8) v. SIGMUND AND THE SEAMONSTER (7-6)
A Tim loss would help me, but only getting 7.2 points from Kamara won't. The only even minor concern that Tim has is that Diggs is going to be out and he'll need to replace him. Other than that, Tim is sailing into the playoffs.
THE PICK: SS 105 - F 56
LITTLE BABY JESUS (4-9) v. THE WHITECHAPEL RIPPERS (6-7)
And if Larry is going to take a playoff spot away from me as well, I guess I'm happy that it will tamp down his "I'm quitting next season" pledge that I've been hearing for the past three seasons.
There is just something so perverse and cruel about the fact that I had a bad season because my opponents kept lighting it up against me and now when I need certain teams to lose they are going to light it up as well.
THE PICK: TWR 93 - LBJ 57
ANIMAL HOUSE (8-5) v. THAT KANGAROO STOLE MY BALL (9-3-1)
Like there being a new, colossal Trump scandal everything day so we don't have enough time to digest the last one, we were so busy complaining about other things last week that we didn't spend any time at all on the fact that there was a tie game for the first time ever. I mean, not one single yard could be spared in either direction? Amazing.
Whoever wins this game will secure a bye and you can't argue they don't deserve it since these are likely to be the top 2 scoring teams. Meyers' problem is that Brady is turning into mush and Conner is hitting a late season wall. Ingram and Thomas already flamed out, and JuJu and McCaffrey won't be able to make up enough ground.
THE PICK: TKSMB 91 - AH 79
THE NIGHT BOYS (6-6-1) v. RUSSELLMANIA (3-10)
M. Barker hasn't made the playoffs since 2011. A couple of times he lost seasons because he had the most points against and when that Kraken rises up from the murky depths and seizes your ship, no vessel is powerful enough to escape its terrifying grasp. So it was probably halfway decent to edge toward the playoffs this season with the 8th-most points because he had only the 6th-most points against. A make up season if you will.
Even nicer is that in a must-win matchup he draws the worst team in the league by a mile, a team that lost its one QB to injury last week. A team that has scored under 70 points NINE teams this season. Looking pretty good, champ!
Except he's going to miss the playoffs again because Larry beat him H2H and has the tiebreaker for the 6 seed. Oh well.
THE PICK: TNB 88 - RM 44
TIMMY DOESN'T HAVE ANY FRIENDS (8-5) v. ASSTANNER (5-8)
Let the record show that I did not get at all agitated by Chris' move last night and in fact pointed out that it was symbolic and meaningless. If more people in this league had my level-headed, calm, long view approach, we'd all be a lot happier around here. Everybody else is so on edge!
This game doesn't matter at all. Congrats to Scott for winning the worst division in the league with the 9th-fewest points against.
THE PICK: TDHAF 83 - AT 40
Friday, November 16, 2018
AFFL Week 11 Preview
LAST WEEK: 3-3
SEASON: 40-20
During our matchup last week, Larry and I were texting and having a secondary contest to see who could feel sorriest for themselves. At least I won one of our battles.
Monday morning, Larry was certain he would lose but at least he'd be playing hockey and wouldn't have to watch Barkley and Beckham complete the comeback. I was equally certain that those guys would get me just close enough so that I could blame my loss on starting Rodgers over Brees. Or the Jets over the Jags.
When you lose by 0.8 points, there are any number of individual plays or decisions you could point to as the reason you lost. I'm sure there were at least a dozen I didn't see. But I PERSONALLY WITNESSED...
I won't lie. I was going to go radio silent and just blow off the entire rest of the season. But then I finally had my spirit broken and realized even that was pointless. The final blow came from the CBS bot recap, the portion that included the preview for this week. It noted that if I had played the same schedule as Meyers this season, I'd be...
...
...
8-2.
Can someone tell me the reason I'm in the chaos dimension? Trapped in a brutal invention?
I will try to not mail in the rest of the previews and to not promote any bad vibes during the holiday season. No promises. This season has broken my will. It has killed my love of the game. I am not in love in anymore.
ANIMAL HOUSE (6-4) v. THE DUDE HAS GOT NO MERCY (3-7)
One last indignity awaits me. Is anything more certain than the 1st round pick I traded for Tyreek winning the 2019 lottery?
The only thing I have left to play for is ruining the playoffs hopes of my remaining opponents and trying to ring up so many points that my final record becomes more absurd. And is there any doubt that I'm going to score like 125 points in a win this week now that my playoff are extremely slim. Like, oh say...0.7% chance?
Oh! I almost forgot the big news. I emailed Meyers yesterday ahead of the deadline offering him Rodgers since Brady was on a bye. I also asked about Bell. And I actually got a response! Don't ask me my secret, even I don't know what it is. But his plan is to keep Bell for next year, so say hello to Michael Thomas, #1 pick. I'm not sure that's the choice I would've made.
Meyers has a lot of good matchups this week, except for Andy Dalton against Baltimore, JuJu if AJ Bouye returns, and the Rams DST against the Chiefs.
I don't love the Jags against the Steelers (all defenses have a 50% shot of scoring negative points, which we should probably address), and I'm iffy on Collins even though every fantasy expert is hyping him up this week. But Golladay is the only remaining healthy Lions receiver, Brees is back indoors, and the Giants face the Bucs.
Very excited to pull off this meaningless win.
By the way, I'm not going to go back and check, but I'd bet I have the most bench points this season. Last night Rodgers and Carson just put more on the pile.
THE PICK: TDHGNM 117 - AH 88
HEISBENBERG (4-6) v. ASSTANNER (3-7)
To clarify a point that was poorly written, I didn't mean to imply I was the one who figured out Chris' ignore-the-draft strategy. It was obvious to the point that I'm sure many people caught on. I just meant that I shouted about it and mentioned that we could freeze him out so he doesn't win any more. Kind of like we did this year. That's all.
Chris did not bother getting a replacement kicker for Jason Sanders' bye this week, even though he had the cap space. I guess added Jordan Matthews was much more important for some reason. Any time you can add yet another WR that's all potential and no production, you gotta do it! Chris has 3 players going in the Atlanta/Dallas game, though Zeke is the only one I'd really count on doing anything. Jalen Richard has some potential against Arizona if Doug Martin doesn't hog all of the carries.
On the other hand, Gary jumped on Allen Robinson after one good game last week, is starting Corey Davis after one good game next week, assuming Julio will score a TD 3 games in a row, and is hoping Sammy Watkins is healthy enough to return this week. He's adding two of his own players to the Atlantas (Dallanta?) game. He and Chris should post up at B-Dubs to watch that game, get some wings, get a cider and a beer that are exactly the same color, forget whose glass is whose at least once, and then fart themselves to death on Sunday night.
The variance on this game is off the charts. At least it would be if I had any actual charts. I could see a low-scoring tight one, a high-scoring tight one, or a complete blowout.
THE PICK: HB 81 - AT 73
TIMMY DOESN'T HAVE ANY FRIENDS (6-4) v. RUSSELLMANIA (3-7)
Seattle neatly encapsulates the problem with properly planning for or predicting pretend football. They have an offensive coordinator, Brian Schottenheimer, who's been below average at best in each of his previous jobs, a guy dedicated to running the football like it's 1977 as the NFL moves to jet sweeps and slip screens. They have the #1 rushing offense in the league (good) but the #22 offense overall (bad) and a 5-5 record (neither). You would think that dedication to the run would be good for fantasy football, but between injuries, performance, and just plain old capriciousness, it's impossible to know if Carson, Davis, or Penny will do anything from game to game. From play to play, really.
This is a very roundabout way of noting that Rashaad Penny scored 4.6 points for Semi last night after scoring 17 last week. Next year we might finally see somebody intentionally draft both backs from one team and roll them out together each week instead of trying to parse the tea leaves for two teams. Speaking of, Corey Clement in the starting lineup? Jesus.
Scott's matchups aren't all that great this week, either. He's perfectly set up to be gifted a low-scoring win right in the heat of the playoff race.
THE PICK: TDHAF 67 - RM 45
WTTK? (7-3) v. LITTLE BABY JESUS (3-7)
Ryan Fitzpatrick is the only QB on Semi's roster now, so there is an extremely good chance he finishes out the season without a starting QB. Congrats to his division mates who will need a clutch win when they play him to make the playoffs.
He might also need a new WR this week as Marvin Jones might be out with an injury. If he's down, Semi will have to pull in Hyde, Freeman, or Maurice Harris (I had to look up what the M. stood for).
CBS thinks this one is going to be a blowout, but it's possible it could be close. Kerryon could get scripted right out of the game if a rested Carolina team lights up Detroit early, which is highly possible. Mixon is a little dinged up, Cincy is falling apart, and even though they are also falling apart, Baltimore still has a decent run D. The problem for Semi's upset hopes here is that his ceiling is McCamey's floor. Semi needs all of his guys to overperform while all of McCamey's underperform, and Rivers, Gordon, and DeSean will ensure that doesn't happen. I said it's possible it would be close, not that it actually would be.
THE PICK: WTTK 94 - LBJ 66
SIGMUND AND THE SEAMONSTER (6-4) v. THE NIGHT BOYS (6-4)
I am still rooting for Tim to make the playoffs and to win the whole thing to cap off a random and ridiculous season, but...he makes it hard sometimes.
I emailed Tim asking if he wanted Rodgers for a playoff run and he responded saying he didn't have the cap room. It took me all of two seconds to figure out that if Tim traded just Nick Mullens in a potential Rodgers deal, he'd have the room.
(Side note: Everybody is aware that Gary's team sheets have living formulas in them so you can play with rosters and moves and such and find out if you'll be cap-compliant, yeah? This is common knowledge, right? Yes? Please?)
So I asked for a 1st for Rodgers. It sounds steep, but this is the year in which the herd has decided to stop being fussy about draft picks, and also Tim will be picking around 8 or 9 or so and a previous mock draft showed that the draft at that point will look like the plastic garbage islands in the Pacific. He countered with a 5th.
Now, in fairness, Goff is outscoring Rodgers right now so Tim doesn't necessarily need Rodgers.
About an hour later, Tim came back with an offer to rent Saquon. I send Saquon for a third, and then get him back next for a fourth. First, I am pretty sure we passed a rule against rental players after Gary creased the rules for DJ a couple of years ago. Second, you're going to ask me to light the league on fire one day after I already put the kindling in place verbally the day before and you're only going to offer me a THIRD for the pleasure? My god.
You all should be happy that my integrity is impeccable and unimpeachable.
All that aside, this match got off to a fun start last night. Credit to Tim for grabbing Aaron Jones weeks ago and not trading him to me when he wasn't getting the carries yet. We haven't seen the final team sheets yet, but hopefully Tim had the sense to put Jones on a contract with McCarthy on his way out and a creative offensive mind potentially coming to GB next season.
Here's an interesting quirk - only 5 total players in this one play an afternoon game. Not much will happen during the daylight hours, and then Cohen, Thielen, and CHI DST go for Barker Sunday night against Howard and Diggs for Tim. Then Monday night finishes it off with Goff, Woods, and Hunt for Tim, and Cooks for Barker. That's a lot of time in the spotlight.
Tim is just going to bring too much heat this week. No cheap wins for Barker this time around.
THE PICK: SS 119 - TNB 88
THAT KANGAROO STOLE MY BALL (7-3) v. THE WHITECHAPEL RIPPERS (6-4)
I know this is a somewhat odd claim to make about the #1 team in the league, and it's not a complaint about my season or a shot or anything. It's a cold, clinical observation. Bri's team is not that good. It's basically the QB slot and Gurley carrying 90% of the load, and then a rando having a nice week at the same time. If fact, if you look back through the scores and replace Gurley with a B+ running back who scores 15 points, TKSMB would be 4-6 right now.
If there's ever been a team set up to score 105 points in Week 14 when he's relaxing on his bye and then post a 68 in the semi-finals because Gurley twists his ankle or something, this is it. And I think Bri knows it. I mean, would you want to count on Lamar Miller, Tevin Coleman, and Manny Sanders in a must-win game? I don't think you would.
The old wisdom of never playing guys on Thursday night has been completed exposed this season as we've seen some prime time pinball. So you can't blame Larry for burning 3 rosters spots last night. But 10.8 points combined is not a great return on investment. Those are the kinds of numbers that cost a man his house.
But you know what? Mahomes, Evans, DJ, and Lewis will all be great this week, and when Lamar Miller and Coleman struggle, it will balance out Larry's start. Folks, we got a LEVEL 1 UPSET ALERT HERE!!!!!!11!!1
THE PICK: TWR 97 - TKSMB 91
SEASON: 40-20
During our matchup last week, Larry and I were texting and having a secondary contest to see who could feel sorriest for themselves. At least I won one of our battles.
Monday morning, Larry was certain he would lose but at least he'd be playing hockey and wouldn't have to watch Barkley and Beckham complete the comeback. I was equally certain that those guys would get me just close enough so that I could blame my loss on starting Rodgers over Brees. Or the Jets over the Jags.
When you lose by 0.8 points, there are any number of individual plays or decisions you could point to as the reason you lost. I'm sure there were at least a dozen I didn't see. But I PERSONALLY WITNESSED...
- The Jets cause a fumble on their own 1-yard line that the Bills recovered in the end zone for a touchdown. This was a 3-point swing against me.
- Eli underthrowing a wiiiiiiiiide open Odell on what should have been a 70-yard TD.
- Eli underthrowing Saquon on a wheel route that could've been a 50-yard TD.
- Saquon hurdling a guy and going out of bounds late instead of cutting upfield for an extra yard.
Who knows what screw jobs I'm still unaware of. And yeah, I was pretty pissed after Monday night. I was in and out of patience. I almost had to start a fight.
I won't lie. I was going to go radio silent and just blow off the entire rest of the season. But then I finally had my spirit broken and realized even that was pointless. The final blow came from the CBS bot recap, the portion that included the preview for this week. It noted that if I had played the same schedule as Meyers this season, I'd be...
...
...
8-2.
Can someone tell me the reason I'm in the chaos dimension? Trapped in a brutal invention?
I will try to not mail in the rest of the previews and to not promote any bad vibes during the holiday season. No promises. This season has broken my will. It has killed my love of the game. I am not in love in anymore.
ANIMAL HOUSE (6-4) v. THE DUDE HAS GOT NO MERCY (3-7)
One last indignity awaits me. Is anything more certain than the 1st round pick I traded for Tyreek winning the 2019 lottery?
The only thing I have left to play for is ruining the playoffs hopes of my remaining opponents and trying to ring up so many points that my final record becomes more absurd. And is there any doubt that I'm going to score like 125 points in a win this week now that my playoff are extremely slim. Like, oh say...0.7% chance?
Oh! I almost forgot the big news. I emailed Meyers yesterday ahead of the deadline offering him Rodgers since Brady was on a bye. I also asked about Bell. And I actually got a response! Don't ask me my secret, even I don't know what it is. But his plan is to keep Bell for next year, so say hello to Michael Thomas, #1 pick. I'm not sure that's the choice I would've made.
Meyers has a lot of good matchups this week, except for Andy Dalton against Baltimore, JuJu if AJ Bouye returns, and the Rams DST against the Chiefs.
I don't love the Jags against the Steelers (all defenses have a 50% shot of scoring negative points, which we should probably address), and I'm iffy on Collins even though every fantasy expert is hyping him up this week. But Golladay is the only remaining healthy Lions receiver, Brees is back indoors, and the Giants face the Bucs.
Very excited to pull off this meaningless win.
By the way, I'm not going to go back and check, but I'd bet I have the most bench points this season. Last night Rodgers and Carson just put more on the pile.
THE PICK: TDHGNM 117 - AH 88
HEISBENBERG (4-6) v. ASSTANNER (3-7)
To clarify a point that was poorly written, I didn't mean to imply I was the one who figured out Chris' ignore-the-draft strategy. It was obvious to the point that I'm sure many people caught on. I just meant that I shouted about it and mentioned that we could freeze him out so he doesn't win any more. Kind of like we did this year. That's all.
Chris did not bother getting a replacement kicker for Jason Sanders' bye this week, even though he had the cap space. I guess added Jordan Matthews was much more important for some reason. Any time you can add yet another WR that's all potential and no production, you gotta do it! Chris has 3 players going in the Atlanta/Dallas game, though Zeke is the only one I'd really count on doing anything. Jalen Richard has some potential against Arizona if Doug Martin doesn't hog all of the carries.
On the other hand, Gary jumped on Allen Robinson after one good game last week, is starting Corey Davis after one good game next week, assuming Julio will score a TD 3 games in a row, and is hoping Sammy Watkins is healthy enough to return this week. He's adding two of his own players to the Atlantas (Dallanta?) game. He and Chris should post up at B-Dubs to watch that game, get some wings, get a cider and a beer that are exactly the same color, forget whose glass is whose at least once, and then fart themselves to death on Sunday night.
The variance on this game is off the charts. At least it would be if I had any actual charts. I could see a low-scoring tight one, a high-scoring tight one, or a complete blowout.
THE PICK: HB 81 - AT 73
TIMMY DOESN'T HAVE ANY FRIENDS (6-4) v. RUSSELLMANIA (3-7)
Seattle neatly encapsulates the problem with properly planning for or predicting pretend football. They have an offensive coordinator, Brian Schottenheimer, who's been below average at best in each of his previous jobs, a guy dedicated to running the football like it's 1977 as the NFL moves to jet sweeps and slip screens. They have the #1 rushing offense in the league (good) but the #22 offense overall (bad) and a 5-5 record (neither). You would think that dedication to the run would be good for fantasy football, but between injuries, performance, and just plain old capriciousness, it's impossible to know if Carson, Davis, or Penny will do anything from game to game. From play to play, really.
This is a very roundabout way of noting that Rashaad Penny scored 4.6 points for Semi last night after scoring 17 last week. Next year we might finally see somebody intentionally draft both backs from one team and roll them out together each week instead of trying to parse the tea leaves for two teams. Speaking of, Corey Clement in the starting lineup? Jesus.
Scott's matchups aren't all that great this week, either. He's perfectly set up to be gifted a low-scoring win right in the heat of the playoff race.
THE PICK: TDHAF 67 - RM 45
WTTK? (7-3) v. LITTLE BABY JESUS (3-7)
Ryan Fitzpatrick is the only QB on Semi's roster now, so there is an extremely good chance he finishes out the season without a starting QB. Congrats to his division mates who will need a clutch win when they play him to make the playoffs.
He might also need a new WR this week as Marvin Jones might be out with an injury. If he's down, Semi will have to pull in Hyde, Freeman, or Maurice Harris (I had to look up what the M. stood for).
CBS thinks this one is going to be a blowout, but it's possible it could be close. Kerryon could get scripted right out of the game if a rested Carolina team lights up Detroit early, which is highly possible. Mixon is a little dinged up, Cincy is falling apart, and even though they are also falling apart, Baltimore still has a decent run D. The problem for Semi's upset hopes here is that his ceiling is McCamey's floor. Semi needs all of his guys to overperform while all of McCamey's underperform, and Rivers, Gordon, and DeSean will ensure that doesn't happen. I said it's possible it would be close, not that it actually would be.
THE PICK: WTTK 94 - LBJ 66
SIGMUND AND THE SEAMONSTER (6-4) v. THE NIGHT BOYS (6-4)
I am still rooting for Tim to make the playoffs and to win the whole thing to cap off a random and ridiculous season, but...he makes it hard sometimes.
I emailed Tim asking if he wanted Rodgers for a playoff run and he responded saying he didn't have the cap room. It took me all of two seconds to figure out that if Tim traded just Nick Mullens in a potential Rodgers deal, he'd have the room.
(Side note: Everybody is aware that Gary's team sheets have living formulas in them so you can play with rosters and moves and such and find out if you'll be cap-compliant, yeah? This is common knowledge, right? Yes? Please?)
So I asked for a 1st for Rodgers. It sounds steep, but this is the year in which the herd has decided to stop being fussy about draft picks, and also Tim will be picking around 8 or 9 or so and a previous mock draft showed that the draft at that point will look like the plastic garbage islands in the Pacific. He countered with a 5th.
Now, in fairness, Goff is outscoring Rodgers right now so Tim doesn't necessarily need Rodgers.
About an hour later, Tim came back with an offer to rent Saquon. I send Saquon for a third, and then get him back next for a fourth. First, I am pretty sure we passed a rule against rental players after Gary creased the rules for DJ a couple of years ago. Second, you're going to ask me to light the league on fire one day after I already put the kindling in place verbally the day before and you're only going to offer me a THIRD for the pleasure? My god.
You all should be happy that my integrity is impeccable and unimpeachable.
All that aside, this match got off to a fun start last night. Credit to Tim for grabbing Aaron Jones weeks ago and not trading him to me when he wasn't getting the carries yet. We haven't seen the final team sheets yet, but hopefully Tim had the sense to put Jones on a contract with McCarthy on his way out and a creative offensive mind potentially coming to GB next season.
Here's an interesting quirk - only 5 total players in this one play an afternoon game. Not much will happen during the daylight hours, and then Cohen, Thielen, and CHI DST go for Barker Sunday night against Howard and Diggs for Tim. Then Monday night finishes it off with Goff, Woods, and Hunt for Tim, and Cooks for Barker. That's a lot of time in the spotlight.
Tim is just going to bring too much heat this week. No cheap wins for Barker this time around.
THE PICK: SS 119 - TNB 88
THAT KANGAROO STOLE MY BALL (7-3) v. THE WHITECHAPEL RIPPERS (6-4)
I know this is a somewhat odd claim to make about the #1 team in the league, and it's not a complaint about my season or a shot or anything. It's a cold, clinical observation. Bri's team is not that good. It's basically the QB slot and Gurley carrying 90% of the load, and then a rando having a nice week at the same time. If fact, if you look back through the scores and replace Gurley with a B+ running back who scores 15 points, TKSMB would be 4-6 right now.
If there's ever been a team set up to score 105 points in Week 14 when he's relaxing on his bye and then post a 68 in the semi-finals because Gurley twists his ankle or something, this is it. And I think Bri knows it. I mean, would you want to count on Lamar Miller, Tevin Coleman, and Manny Sanders in a must-win game? I don't think you would.
The old wisdom of never playing guys on Thursday night has been completed exposed this season as we've seen some prime time pinball. So you can't blame Larry for burning 3 rosters spots last night. But 10.8 points combined is not a great return on investment. Those are the kinds of numbers that cost a man his house.
But you know what? Mahomes, Evans, DJ, and Lewis will all be great this week, and when Lamar Miller and Coleman struggle, it will balance out Larry's start. Folks, we got a LEVEL 1 UPSET ALERT HERE!!!!!!11!!1
THE PICK: TWR 97 - TKSMB 91
Friday, November 9, 2018
AFFL Week 10 Preview
LAST WEEK: 3-3
SEASON: 37-17
Here's how crazy this season is. The picks only went 3-3 last weeks even though I predicted McCamey would score 105 (He had 105 exactly), Brian Barker would have 68 (69), Tim would have 108 (105), and Chris would have 67 (66.5). I somehow got 4 scores dead on but only 3 games right. I feel like that is hard to do.
But that's in the past. I've decided I'm moving on from this sad sack slump and getting back to my rip roarin' routine. This week is the first win in my Drive 4 5 in which I promise to win 5 straight games for charity. The charity being me as 5 wins will get me into the playoffs and get me some money. Here comes the comeback kid!
CURRENT STANDINGS
1) That Kangaroo Stole My Ball
2) Sigmund and the Seamonster
3) The Night Boys
4) WTTK?
5) The Whitechapel Rippers
6) Animal House
---
7) Timmy Doesn't Have Any Friends
8) Heisenberg
9) Little Baby Jesus
10) The Dude Has Got No Mercy
11) Asstanner
12) Russellmania
CURRENT STANDINGS IF WE PLAYED 1 v. 11
1) That Kangaroo Stole My Ball (/)
2) Animal House (+4)
3) WTTK? (+1)
4) The Dude Has Got No Mercy (+6)
5) Timmy Doesn't Have Any Friends (+2)
6) Sigmund and the Seamonster (-4)
---
7) The Whitechapel Rippers (-2)
8) Heisenberg (/)
9) Little Baby Jesus (/)
10) The Night Boys (-7)
11) Asstanner (/)
12) Russellmania (/)
Now, at 2-7 Chris is not yet mathematically eliminated from the playoffs, but he's out of the playoffs. He can't win enough with all of the teams ahead of him losing enough for things to work out. But he's 37-62 in the 1 v. 11 breakdown. Tim is 52-47. That's only 15 games. What if he could make a flurry of trades and post the 3rd-highest score the next three weeks? Going 27-6 in a 3-week run sure would make up a lot of ground.
Then imagine Gary posted the 1st-, 6th-, and 10-best score in that same span and ping ponging all over the place. You like how SNF and MNF is more fun because we all see who's scoring together and which teams are winning or losing? Imagine a late Josh Gordon TD like last week's lets Chris jump four different teams at the same time. Or how fun last night would've have been with teams racing out to big leads on the rest of the league.
Shoot, Brian Barker is 14-85 in the breakdown right now. What if he went absolutely insane with trades this week and put together a stacked team that had the highest or 2nd-highest score in the next 4 weeks? A 42-2 run to close the season? Okay, that might still not be enough because Brian is historically bad this season, but at least he could try.
THE DUDE HAS GOT NO MERCY (3-6) vs. THE WHITECHAPEL RIPPERS (5-4)
I'm favored by 29 in this one, although a big part of that is Caleb Sturgis is forecast to post a 0 because the Chargers cut him this week. Facing a K and DST bye last week, Larry actually finessed his salary cap to bring in replacements. He had to bring in Stevan Ridley and Anthony Miller to do so.
Unfortunately, the Seahawks and Sturgis combined for 2 points and Larry still lost. Even more unfortunate, Larry now has $0.09 of cap space left and no kicker for the rest of the season. I feel like Jarvis Landry and his $1.58 might be on his way out. Or maybe he'll trade Mike Evans' big contract.
You know who's looking for a WR? Chris offered me Carson Wentz and a 5th for Tyreek Hill. Thats's one of the worst trade offers I've ever seen, and I try to rip off people all the time. I'm keeping Tyreek for next year and I like him this week, although Larry having Mahomes (puts on glasses) dilutes his efficacy. I'm not as big on Golladay because Detroit has stopped passing for some reasons (coincidentally they've also stopped winning), but it's all about Rodgers, Saquon, and Odell for me this week anyway. Oh, and the Jets defense against the Bills.
Mahomes and DJ will have great weeks and Drake could have a nice game against the Packers, but Miller won't do anything and the Seahawks will be torched by the Rams. And I'm pretty sure it's either a kicker or Landry for Larry this week, so I'm not concerned there.
I'm really going to work out a lot of frustration this week. Make Michael Douglas in Falling Down look like a Buddhist.
THE PICK: TDHGNM 111 - TWR 83
RUSSELLMANIA (2-7) v. HEISENBERG (4-5)
I exaggerated for comedic effect earlier when I said Brian was historically bad. He's currently on pace to finish the year with 872 points. Larry only had 868 last year and Scott has 823 in 2015. But since Brian had a league low 979 in 2014, he'd be the first repeat offender since Tim's 2012/2016 double dip.
One good week is all it takes to go back to Heisenberg? That undoes the previous terrible three weeks? Really?
After Larry's HR department put in some overtime last week, it's Gary's turn this week. He also has $0.09 of cap room to work with, but he needs both a kicker AND a defense. I happen to know a guy who has TWO defenses rostered and both are under $1 and this guy loves trades, Gary! Hit me up and I'll give you his contact info!
Actually, Gary has already told me that he's going to play shorthanded this week because he didn't want to risk picking up a defense that posts a negative score. Or, as I like to call it, Coward's Poker. I even offered him the Jags which he can afford because they're relatively cheap and he could slot them into that Devonta Freeman FP slot. But alas.
Of course, Brian did just post a negative DST score so Gary has already won the position for the week. Not sure how much more of a favor Gary could've gotten there. Just that score alone took Barker from the favorite to the underdog in this matchup.
I'd really like to see Barker pull this one out for my own playoff needs, and so I am begging him to pull Shady in favor of...I mean, literally anybody. Godwin? Sure. Anybody. Alex Smith will be nice against Tampa, and Chubb can get some against Atlanta unless Duke steals all of it, and...oh god. Doug Martin? Cordarelle Patterson with Michel coming back? Jesus. What a gift.
So Gary, desperately needing a win to stay alive in the playoff race, not having a K and a DST due to byes, gets to face a team that might not score 60. No, schedule luck isn't an outsized factor in the standings at all.
THE PICK: HB 77 - RM 55
TIMMY DOESN'T HAVE ANY FRIENDS (5-4) v. SIGMUND AND THE SEAMONSTER (6-3)
I was driving down McKnight yesterday and this Audi R8 came in behind me. When I moved over to let it by, it took off with some zip. About a mile down the road, I saw a 911 pulled over and had three thoughts, in this order:
"Pretty nice Porsche"
"That Audi is lucky the Porsche got nabbed first"
"Three cop cars seem like a lot for a traffic stop"
Not to be a drag about precision German engineering, but on that section of McKnight there is a merge lane from Babcock where cars have to get onto McKnight from a standing stop, a crosswalk, and a bus stop. It's not that far-fetched that last night's box score could've had Brown - DNP (Manslaughter)
Anyway, the Steelers are rounding into classic November form, slaughtering good teams in prime time to set up a devastating playoff loss. It's becoming quite the routine. That has helped Scott in his playoff push in the past and it certainly helped last night as he jumped out to a 49.2-15 lead. But although it looks like a blowout, this one isn't over yet. Heck, the Steelers DST matched AB so all Tim needs is 2 players to match Ben's 33.6 + Player X score. The Tampa D is terrible but Washington lost 3 lineman last week, so AP could struggle, and Fournette could easily be limited in his return this week.
Meanwhile, Aaron Jones looks great against Miami and Hunt looks really great against Arizona. I'm just hung up on Christian Kirk, who won't contribute a ton. Plus, Seattle's defense is coming on and they run the ball to shorten games, so Goff and Woods will be down a little bit too.
I really want to pick Tim here. I'm not sure if it's because of the perverse thrill or a degree of difficulty thing, but I'd love to do it. I just can't.
THE PICK: TDHAF 91 - SS 88
ASSTANNER (2-7) v. THE NIGHT BOYS (6-3)
Barker needs this win to keep the inside edge on the playoffs, but his two best receivers - Thielen and Hopkins - are both on a bye. Seems unfortunate. But with AJ Green out, Tyler Boyd is now Cincy's #1 receiver against the Saints. Seems fortunate. That's not schedule luck or points luck or anything, it's just regular roster stuff, but it's still a nice break.
That said, having to count on David Moore and Tyrell Williams to score TDs to be useful is tough. Duke Johnson will be nice, but having a Chargers kicker on your team seems like a pretty bad idea.
On the other hand, it's exceedingly tough to get behind the idea of an Asstanner win here. He's got Zeke and Amari on a team where the owner just clarified he won't fire the head coach during the season, Trubisky is hit or miss, Crowell has done nothing since that one good game a month ago, and if Calvin Ridley doesn't have a TD he has nothing. Josh Gordon is his only real hope here.
This one is going to be ugly.
THE PICK: TNB 76 - AT 67
WTTK? (6-3) v. THAT KANGAROO STOLE MY BALL (7-2)
Technically, starting Cam was the correct choice, but that's mainly because DeShaun Watson was on a bye. Scoring 13.4 points is not going to get it done against McCamey this week. McCamey's matchups are so good this week that he might be pushing 130 by the end of the week. The last time Rivers and Gordon faced Oakland they combined for 37 points, Mixon should get overfed against the Saints with Green out, and Davante will score against the Dolphins for sure.
Gurley only had 13 points last week, which was the first time all year he was held under twenty points. Let me restate that. Every week until last week, Gurley was worth two players. It's almost impossible to believe he'll have another average game, but we mentioned that Seattle slows the game down and they are a division rival. Cleveland's decent defense and chilly, wet weather could slow down Coleman, and Hilton will get Jalen Ramsey. Kelce will be fine against the Cardinals, but he'll just have too much ground to make up.
McCamey will have a nice lead going into Monday night and George Kittle is just going to stretch that lead out over Matt Breida.
Don't look now, but Bri is going to drop two straight games and Barker is going to tie him for the division lead even though he'll have 190 fewer points.
THE PICK: WTTK 125 - TKSMB 76
ANIMAL HOUSE (5-4) v. LITTLE BABY JESUS (3-6)
The only good news for Semi in watching JuJu, McCaffrey, and Conner light him up is that now he doesn't need to bother picking up a replacement defense.
THE PICK: AH 122 - LBJ 58
SEASON: 37-17
Here's how crazy this season is. The picks only went 3-3 last weeks even though I predicted McCamey would score 105 (He had 105 exactly), Brian Barker would have 68 (69), Tim would have 108 (105), and Chris would have 67 (66.5). I somehow got 4 scores dead on but only 3 games right. I feel like that is hard to do.
But that's in the past. I've decided I'm moving on from this sad sack slump and getting back to my rip roarin' routine. This week is the first win in my Drive 4 5 in which I promise to win 5 straight games for charity. The charity being me as 5 wins will get me into the playoffs and get me some money. Here comes the comeback kid!
CURRENT STANDINGS
1) That Kangaroo Stole My Ball
2) Sigmund and the Seamonster
3) The Night Boys
4) WTTK?
5) The Whitechapel Rippers
6) Animal House
---
7) Timmy Doesn't Have Any Friends
8) Heisenberg
9) Little Baby Jesus
10) The Dude Has Got No Mercy
11) Asstanner
12) Russellmania
CURRENT STANDINGS IF WE PLAYED 1 v. 11
1) That Kangaroo Stole My Ball (/)
2) Animal House (+4)
3) WTTK? (+1)
4) The Dude Has Got No Mercy (+6)
5) Timmy Doesn't Have Any Friends (+2)
6) Sigmund and the Seamonster (-4)
---
7) The Whitechapel Rippers (-2)
8) Heisenberg (/)
9) Little Baby Jesus (/)
10) The Night Boys (-7)
11) Asstanner (/)
12) Russellmania (/)
Now, at 2-7 Chris is not yet mathematically eliminated from the playoffs, but he's out of the playoffs. He can't win enough with all of the teams ahead of him losing enough for things to work out. But he's 37-62 in the 1 v. 11 breakdown. Tim is 52-47. That's only 15 games. What if he could make a flurry of trades and post the 3rd-highest score the next three weeks? Going 27-6 in a 3-week run sure would make up a lot of ground.
Then imagine Gary posted the 1st-, 6th-, and 10-best score in that same span and ping ponging all over the place. You like how SNF and MNF is more fun because we all see who's scoring together and which teams are winning or losing? Imagine a late Josh Gordon TD like last week's lets Chris jump four different teams at the same time. Or how fun last night would've have been with teams racing out to big leads on the rest of the league.
Shoot, Brian Barker is 14-85 in the breakdown right now. What if he went absolutely insane with trades this week and put together a stacked team that had the highest or 2nd-highest score in the next 4 weeks? A 42-2 run to close the season? Okay, that might still not be enough because Brian is historically bad this season, but at least he could try.
THE DUDE HAS GOT NO MERCY (3-6) vs. THE WHITECHAPEL RIPPERS (5-4)
I'm favored by 29 in this one, although a big part of that is Caleb Sturgis is forecast to post a 0 because the Chargers cut him this week. Facing a K and DST bye last week, Larry actually finessed his salary cap to bring in replacements. He had to bring in Stevan Ridley and Anthony Miller to do so.
Unfortunately, the Seahawks and Sturgis combined for 2 points and Larry still lost. Even more unfortunate, Larry now has $0.09 of cap space left and no kicker for the rest of the season. I feel like Jarvis Landry and his $1.58 might be on his way out. Or maybe he'll trade Mike Evans' big contract.
You know who's looking for a WR? Chris offered me Carson Wentz and a 5th for Tyreek Hill. Thats's one of the worst trade offers I've ever seen, and I try to rip off people all the time. I'm keeping Tyreek for next year and I like him this week, although Larry having Mahomes (puts on glasses) dilutes his efficacy. I'm not as big on Golladay because Detroit has stopped passing for some reasons (coincidentally they've also stopped winning), but it's all about Rodgers, Saquon, and Odell for me this week anyway. Oh, and the Jets defense against the Bills.
Mahomes and DJ will have great weeks and Drake could have a nice game against the Packers, but Miller won't do anything and the Seahawks will be torched by the Rams. And I'm pretty sure it's either a kicker or Landry for Larry this week, so I'm not concerned there.
I'm really going to work out a lot of frustration this week. Make Michael Douglas in Falling Down look like a Buddhist.
THE PICK: TDHGNM 111 - TWR 83
RUSSELLMANIA (2-7) v. HEISENBERG (4-5)
I exaggerated for comedic effect earlier when I said Brian was historically bad. He's currently on pace to finish the year with 872 points. Larry only had 868 last year and Scott has 823 in 2015. But since Brian had a league low 979 in 2014, he'd be the first repeat offender since Tim's 2012/2016 double dip.
One good week is all it takes to go back to Heisenberg? That undoes the previous terrible three weeks? Really?
After Larry's HR department put in some overtime last week, it's Gary's turn this week. He also has $0.09 of cap room to work with, but he needs both a kicker AND a defense. I happen to know a guy who has TWO defenses rostered and both are under $1 and this guy loves trades, Gary! Hit me up and I'll give you his contact info!
Actually, Gary has already told me that he's going to play shorthanded this week because he didn't want to risk picking up a defense that posts a negative score. Or, as I like to call it, Coward's Poker. I even offered him the Jags which he can afford because they're relatively cheap and he could slot them into that Devonta Freeman FP slot. But alas.
Of course, Brian did just post a negative DST score so Gary has already won the position for the week. Not sure how much more of a favor Gary could've gotten there. Just that score alone took Barker from the favorite to the underdog in this matchup.
I'd really like to see Barker pull this one out for my own playoff needs, and so I am begging him to pull Shady in favor of...I mean, literally anybody. Godwin? Sure. Anybody. Alex Smith will be nice against Tampa, and Chubb can get some against Atlanta unless Duke steals all of it, and...oh god. Doug Martin? Cordarelle Patterson with Michel coming back? Jesus. What a gift.
So Gary, desperately needing a win to stay alive in the playoff race, not having a K and a DST due to byes, gets to face a team that might not score 60. No, schedule luck isn't an outsized factor in the standings at all.
THE PICK: HB 77 - RM 55
TIMMY DOESN'T HAVE ANY FRIENDS (5-4) v. SIGMUND AND THE SEAMONSTER (6-3)
I was driving down McKnight yesterday and this Audi R8 came in behind me. When I moved over to let it by, it took off with some zip. About a mile down the road, I saw a 911 pulled over and had three thoughts, in this order:
"Pretty nice Porsche"
"That Audi is lucky the Porsche got nabbed first"
"Three cop cars seem like a lot for a traffic stop"
Not to be a drag about precision German engineering, but on that section of McKnight there is a merge lane from Babcock where cars have to get onto McKnight from a standing stop, a crosswalk, and a bus stop. It's not that far-fetched that last night's box score could've had Brown - DNP (Manslaughter)
Anyway, the Steelers are rounding into classic November form, slaughtering good teams in prime time to set up a devastating playoff loss. It's becoming quite the routine. That has helped Scott in his playoff push in the past and it certainly helped last night as he jumped out to a 49.2-15 lead. But although it looks like a blowout, this one isn't over yet. Heck, the Steelers DST matched AB so all Tim needs is 2 players to match Ben's 33.6 + Player X score. The Tampa D is terrible but Washington lost 3 lineman last week, so AP could struggle, and Fournette could easily be limited in his return this week.
Meanwhile, Aaron Jones looks great against Miami and Hunt looks really great against Arizona. I'm just hung up on Christian Kirk, who won't contribute a ton. Plus, Seattle's defense is coming on and they run the ball to shorten games, so Goff and Woods will be down a little bit too.
I really want to pick Tim here. I'm not sure if it's because of the perverse thrill or a degree of difficulty thing, but I'd love to do it. I just can't.
THE PICK: TDHAF 91 - SS 88
ASSTANNER (2-7) v. THE NIGHT BOYS (6-3)
Barker needs this win to keep the inside edge on the playoffs, but his two best receivers - Thielen and Hopkins - are both on a bye. Seems unfortunate. But with AJ Green out, Tyler Boyd is now Cincy's #1 receiver against the Saints. Seems fortunate. That's not schedule luck or points luck or anything, it's just regular roster stuff, but it's still a nice break.
That said, having to count on David Moore and Tyrell Williams to score TDs to be useful is tough. Duke Johnson will be nice, but having a Chargers kicker on your team seems like a pretty bad idea.
On the other hand, it's exceedingly tough to get behind the idea of an Asstanner win here. He's got Zeke and Amari on a team where the owner just clarified he won't fire the head coach during the season, Trubisky is hit or miss, Crowell has done nothing since that one good game a month ago, and if Calvin Ridley doesn't have a TD he has nothing. Josh Gordon is his only real hope here.
This one is going to be ugly.
THE PICK: TNB 76 - AT 67
WTTK? (6-3) v. THAT KANGAROO STOLE MY BALL (7-2)
Technically, starting Cam was the correct choice, but that's mainly because DeShaun Watson was on a bye. Scoring 13.4 points is not going to get it done against McCamey this week. McCamey's matchups are so good this week that he might be pushing 130 by the end of the week. The last time Rivers and Gordon faced Oakland they combined for 37 points, Mixon should get overfed against the Saints with Green out, and Davante will score against the Dolphins for sure.
Gurley only had 13 points last week, which was the first time all year he was held under twenty points. Let me restate that. Every week until last week, Gurley was worth two players. It's almost impossible to believe he'll have another average game, but we mentioned that Seattle slows the game down and they are a division rival. Cleveland's decent defense and chilly, wet weather could slow down Coleman, and Hilton will get Jalen Ramsey. Kelce will be fine against the Cardinals, but he'll just have too much ground to make up.
McCamey will have a nice lead going into Monday night and George Kittle is just going to stretch that lead out over Matt Breida.
Don't look now, but Bri is going to drop two straight games and Barker is going to tie him for the division lead even though he'll have 190 fewer points.
THE PICK: WTTK 125 - TKSMB 76
ANIMAL HOUSE (5-4) v. LITTLE BABY JESUS (3-6)
The only good news for Semi in watching JuJu, McCaffrey, and Conner light him up is that now he doesn't need to bother picking up a replacement defense.
THE PICK: AH 122 - LBJ 58
Tuesday, November 6, 2018
AFFL Week 9 Review
NFL coaches this week wore their Army Man outfits this week to SUPPORT THE TROOPS, but let me ask an indelicate question. If we're in the middle of sending thousands of troops to an American border so that 4,000 Venezuelans can't sneak into our country and eventually be charged $12,000 a year for insulin, what are we supporting?
If in December we're going to have more troops in Arizona than Afghanistan because we're afraid of people applying for asylum in January, what are we supporting?
What's that? We're supporting World War II vets? Oh cool! They must be pretty excited Nazis are gunning down Jews again!
What's that? We're supporting the Vietnam vets we didn't leave to shrivel up on the streets? Oh cool! They must be pretty excited that still Communist Vietnam is currently a US trading partner!
We're gonna freak out about 4,000 poor people when 7,000 people still show up for Trump rallies? People who are still going to Trump rallies at this point are the dumbest fucking people in the world. I'd rather send them to Jupiter and take in a few Venezuelans.
Anyway, just go vote. It does make a difference. Don't assume you'll always be on the right side of the gun.
Yes, this review is still technically about fantasy football.
THE NIGHT BOYS 103.6 - THE DUDE HAS GOT NO MERCY 59.1
Again, just to be very clear about my original point, I don't think I deserved to win this week or last. Although it would've been nice to get a cheap win with 60 points, I needed to win the other games to have a cushion. I still have the 3rd-most points this year and I'm going to miss the playoffs because of those two weeks.
Credit to Barker for a big week, though. It could've been enormous if he'd started Duke Johnson over Tarik Cohen. We knew the Bears would get a DTD against Peterman but getting 2 is probably pretty fun.
HEISENBERG 116.4 - LITTLE BABY JESUS 86.9
Gary almost scored as many points as he did in Weeks 6 and 7 combined. When Kamara is good, he is good. It's pretty much that simple. Julio FINALLY scored a TD and I was wrong about Matt Ryan outdoors. Who knows if Washington is actually good or not?
Semi both owns and started Marquez Valdes-Scantling, which came as a surprise.
TIMMY DOESN'T HAVE ANY FRIENDS 86.9 - THAT KANGAROO STOLE MY BALL 76
Oh man, Scott and Semi would've tied if they played. When was the last time we had a tie?
Bri lost this game because he started an injured Matt Breida on Thursday night over a healthy Tevin Coleman. Coleman scored 27.6 points on the bench. Worse, since Coleman tore up Washington's defense, that unit posted a -2.5 for Bri. Bad times in the capital all around.
WTTK? 105 - ASSTANNER 66.5
Chris is exactly like Dallas right now. A good history, crazy trades for first round picks, a terrible offense, and a team we can ignore the rest of the season. It will be weird without Chris going wild at the deadline, though. Really takes the edge off. But congrats to the league for coming together, freezing him out of trades, and ruining his season. I cannot wait to see what he does with draft picks next August.
SIGMUND AND THE SEAMONSTER 104.9 - ANIMAL HOUSE 104.3
I was right about Tim winning, although I was wrong about it not being close.
Meyers would've beaten 8 other teams this week but because he couldn't properly manage his schedule, he's now in 5th place instead of 2nd place. Teams scoring 100+ points are now 27-4 on the season.
Credit to Larry for this observation, but Tim has won his last two games by 1.5 points COMBINED.
RUSSELLMANIA 69 - THE WHITECHAPEL RIPPERS 52.9
Kenyan Drake did indeed burn Larry, just as he predicted. Dalvin Cook had 10.9 points on the bench, but even that wouldn't have mattered.
I play Larry in Week 10. Really too bad for me that I wasn't smart enough to play him this week instead. Then my terrible game would've been a win instead of a loss!
Barker won this game despite getting a 0 from Tajae Sharpe, who actually played and did not get hurt. Shady had 2.9 points, one of his better games this season.
If in December we're going to have more troops in Arizona than Afghanistan because we're afraid of people applying for asylum in January, what are we supporting?
What's that? We're supporting World War II vets? Oh cool! They must be pretty excited Nazis are gunning down Jews again!
What's that? We're supporting the Vietnam vets we didn't leave to shrivel up on the streets? Oh cool! They must be pretty excited that still Communist Vietnam is currently a US trading partner!
We're gonna freak out about 4,000 poor people when 7,000 people still show up for Trump rallies? People who are still going to Trump rallies at this point are the dumbest fucking people in the world. I'd rather send them to Jupiter and take in a few Venezuelans.
Anyway, just go vote. It does make a difference. Don't assume you'll always be on the right side of the gun.
Yes, this review is still technically about fantasy football.
THE NIGHT BOYS 103.6 - THE DUDE HAS GOT NO MERCY 59.1
Again, just to be very clear about my original point, I don't think I deserved to win this week or last. Although it would've been nice to get a cheap win with 60 points, I needed to win the other games to have a cushion. I still have the 3rd-most points this year and I'm going to miss the playoffs because of those two weeks.
Credit to Barker for a big week, though. It could've been enormous if he'd started Duke Johnson over Tarik Cohen. We knew the Bears would get a DTD against Peterman but getting 2 is probably pretty fun.
HEISENBERG 116.4 - LITTLE BABY JESUS 86.9
Gary almost scored as many points as he did in Weeks 6 and 7 combined. When Kamara is good, he is good. It's pretty much that simple. Julio FINALLY scored a TD and I was wrong about Matt Ryan outdoors. Who knows if Washington is actually good or not?
Semi both owns and started Marquez Valdes-Scantling, which came as a surprise.
TIMMY DOESN'T HAVE ANY FRIENDS 86.9 - THAT KANGAROO STOLE MY BALL 76
Oh man, Scott and Semi would've tied if they played. When was the last time we had a tie?
Bri lost this game because he started an injured Matt Breida on Thursday night over a healthy Tevin Coleman. Coleman scored 27.6 points on the bench. Worse, since Coleman tore up Washington's defense, that unit posted a -2.5 for Bri. Bad times in the capital all around.
WTTK? 105 - ASSTANNER 66.5
Chris is exactly like Dallas right now. A good history, crazy trades for first round picks, a terrible offense, and a team we can ignore the rest of the season. It will be weird without Chris going wild at the deadline, though. Really takes the edge off. But congrats to the league for coming together, freezing him out of trades, and ruining his season. I cannot wait to see what he does with draft picks next August.
SIGMUND AND THE SEAMONSTER 104.9 - ANIMAL HOUSE 104.3
I was right about Tim winning, although I was wrong about it not being close.
Meyers would've beaten 8 other teams this week but because he couldn't properly manage his schedule, he's now in 5th place instead of 2nd place. Teams scoring 100+ points are now 27-4 on the season.
Credit to Larry for this observation, but Tim has won his last two games by 1.5 points COMBINED.
RUSSELLMANIA 69 - THE WHITECHAPEL RIPPERS 52.9
Kenyan Drake did indeed burn Larry, just as he predicted. Dalvin Cook had 10.9 points on the bench, but even that wouldn't have mattered.
I play Larry in Week 10. Really too bad for me that I wasn't smart enough to play him this week instead. Then my terrible game would've been a win instead of a loss!
Barker won this game despite getting a 0 from Tajae Sharpe, who actually played and did not get hurt. Shady had 2.9 points, one of his better games this season.
Friday, November 2, 2018
AFFL Week 9 Preview
LAST WEEK: 5-1
SEASON: 34-14
Big credit to Mike Barker this week for actually contributing something positive and useful to the dodekalogue (That's like a monologue or a dialogue, but with 12 people) this week. It's a quite a strain for me to carry the burden of having all of the good ideas all of the time, so kudos to him for chipping in.
To complete his ideas fully, I will now give my opinion on them.
1) The top 5 seeds are determined exactly the same as this season. The 6th seed is the remaining team with the most points. My other league does a variation on this which states if the highest-scoring team in the league is somehow not in the top 6 by record, that team is given the 6 seed. I'd be fine with either version, but Barker's more open version gives more teams more reason to keep going through the finish line.
2) All tiebreakers are settled by total points. Disregard head to head for tiebreakers. I like this but with a twist. Since division teams play each other twice, I'd keep head-to-head for division tiebreakers. Otherwise, with other teams just playing once there is no other tiebreaker than head-to-head.
3) Let Higher Seeds in each playoff round select their playoff opponent. Reward the higher seeds, it's like our version of having home field advantage. Plus it's fun. The only thing I don't like about this suggestion is that it's proof that Barker doesn't read the preview since I had the same idea two weeks ago.
4) Super Radical one that everyone will hate- Forget divisions. 12 game regular season. Play every team once and one team twice which would be based on last season- #1 vs. #12 and so on. Have an 8 team playoff- let the higher seeds select their opponent. Top 8 teams play week 13, SemiFinals week 14 and Championship Week 15. Avoid weeks 16 and 17 when NFL stars sometimes rest. I don't hate it, but I don't love it either. It's a no from me, dawg.
5) Instead of having a lottery, the winner of the Loser's Bracket, (the teams that don't make the playoffs), the winner of that bracket earns the #1 pick and so on. This is good too.
There will be two net effects of these rule changes if they're enacted. First, total points will become much more important regardless of record, so more teams will have more incentives to score and will be willing to make more moves all the way through the season. Second, tank trades for picks will plummet because even bad teams will have a reason to fight! fight! fight! until the final whistle. I am fine with both outcomes.
On to the picks, and we'll start with yet another matchup for me that won't exactly be smooth sailin'.
THE DUDE HAS GOT NO MERCY (3-5) v
. THE NIGHT BOYS (5-3)
I traded away most of my team last season with the aim of maximizing my first round picks and lottery odds expressly to land Saquon Barkley. When that didn't work, I traded three first round picks for the #1 to get Barkley. Landing an injured Odell Beckham thanks to contract timing was just a bonus.
Now I face a must-win game without either player thanks to a bye. Instead, I'm relying on guys like Chris Carson, Kenny Golladay, John Brown, and the newly-acquired D.J. Moore. I like all of these players and they are good, but they could all score 2 or 20 points this week. I could post 70 again or 110 again. Of course, as usual, what I do will matter less than what my opponent does.
I have to admit, I've been Kubler-Rossing it pretty hard over here lately. When I lost to Bri, I went through denial about my record. This week, I've powered through anger and moved on to bargaining. "If I win this week, I'm back in it! If I lose, I just need to win 5 straight to have a chance!"
Problem is, I'm not sure I can win this week. Carson and Cohen are pretty even, and the WR matchup is close, but I like the odds of Hopkins and/or Thielen going off more than Hill or Brown. And if Hill comes up lame, I'm really in trouble. Plus, Barker has the Bears defense teeing off on the Peter Man, which is a sure DTD at some point.
I'm going to go into yet another Sunday night game with one of my players still to play, keeping me technically alive for a loss (47 points for Rodgers???) but probably giving me another loss.
On another note, it's a shame about Raheem Mostert. I thought he looked pretty lively the two times I saw him play this year. And that now makes consecutive Thursdays on which one of my bench players scored a long TD before suffering a season-ending injury. Good times.
Sigh. I guess I'm going to have to try to win 5 straight to close the season. Barker's highest score of the season to date is 114 points, and I look forward to him setting a new personal best.
THE PICK: TNB 115 - TDHGNM 81
LITTLE BABY JESUS (3-5) v. FLYNN (3-5)
Semi is still technically alive in the playoff race, so I assume he'll be picking up a replacement kicker for Elliott's bye this week. Sure, Goodwin posting only 1.3 points last night isn't that encouraging, but he is playing Gary here. He doesn't have to score a ton to beat Gary. Although if anybody in his starting lineup is going to miss Sunday's action, he'll need to pick up somebody else because his entire bench is either on a bye, hurt, or benched in real life. That last one is you, Jameis.
I suppose it would be fitting for Julio to finally score a TD against the fake team that traded him away, but the real team he's playing, Washington, is pretty good on defense and just made a trade to shore up their secondary. Plus it's in Washington and Ryan usually struggles outside in cooler temps. Gary's most reliable player this week is probably Justin Tucker.
I wish I could get a lot more worked up about the fact that somebody is going to technically win this game and weakly limp to a better record than me, but...ah, fuck it. Maybe acceptance is already here.
THE PICK: F 68 - LBJ 50
THAT KANGAROO STOLE MY BALL (7-1) v. TIMMY DOESN'T HAVE ANY FRIENDS (4-4)
Breida's poor showing last night won't really matter since Cam and Gurley might combine for 60 this week. On the other hand, both AP and White go against terrible defenses. Back to the first hand, Scott is starting Kelvin Benjamin even though he seemingly hates playing football and has Nathan Peterman as his QB. That is not a good combination. Plus, he has Ben and AB on the road in Baltimore, which is always tough times.
The only problem Bri has at this point is fighting off boredom. His roster is at a point where he doesn't really have to make any moves, and there aren't any superstar receivers still available anyway. He has a 2.5 game lead on the #1 seed race with 6 games left and could have a bye clinched before the doubleheader in Week 12. He also has a 2.5 game division lead and beat both Meyers and Barker the first time around, so they'd really have to make up ground to pass him.
Although...maybe he'll feel pressured to make a move after a rare sub-100 point effort this week.
Hopefully he doesn't kill time by filling his mind with all the ways he could lose in the playoffs and turn this into a wasted season.
THE PICK: TKSMB 91 - TDHAF 72
WTTK? (5-3) v. ASSTANNER (2-6)
My most likely road to the playoffs at this point would be winning my division, which is going to get a lot harder if McCamey can start a tight end with a quarterback nobody has ever heard of and still get 17 points out of the deal. Speaking of, my god is the Jon Gruden second epoch off to a marvelous start. I really think he's trying to make Oakland fans hate the team so they won't miss them when they move to Las Vegas.
And while we're on the subject of dogshit prime time game, what are we supposed to do on Monday with Dallas/Tennessee? Read a book? Talk to our kids? I'm going to be on the road again this weekend, so the two Week 9 games I'll actually get to see are last night's and Monday's? Maybe I catch the second half of Sunday night. Woof.
Anyway, after Kittle's start, it remains to be seen whether or not Chris will pick up a defense to replace the Colts this week and honestly, why bother? I'd like to pick Chris for the wild upset with Funchess getting some against the Bucs and Gordon getting deep on the back, but then I look at Trubisky, Crowell, and Cooper and can't see it.
Not to mention McCamey's guys.
THE PICK: WTTK 105 - AT 67
ANIMAL HOUSE (5-3) v. SIGMUND AND THE SEAMONSTER (5-3)
Tim is going to win this game. Tim is going to be 6-3.
And I'll tell you another thing for free. It's not going to be particularly close.
THE PICK: SS 108 - AH 83
RUSSELMANIA (1-7) v. THE WHITECHAPEL RIPPERS (5-3)
Larry has been waiting for the other shoe to drop on his season for weeks now, and losing to a 1-7 team would certainly clunk on the floor pretty loudly. He did manage to squeeze a replacement DST and K onto his team this week with 9 cents to spare.
Kenyan Drake is back in the starting lineup after putting up 20 on the bench last week, so expect a 3 from him this week. But Evans, Landry, and Murray should be good, and why not try Anthony Miller with Robinson out this week?
I don't like a single option on Barker's team this week, and I don't think he does either.
THE PICK: TWR 94 - RM 68
SEASON: 34-14
Big credit to Mike Barker this week for actually contributing something positive and useful to the dodekalogue (That's like a monologue or a dialogue, but with 12 people) this week. It's a quite a strain for me to carry the burden of having all of the good ideas all of the time, so kudos to him for chipping in.
To complete his ideas fully, I will now give my opinion on them.
1) The top 5 seeds are determined exactly the same as this season. The 6th seed is the remaining team with the most points. My other league does a variation on this which states if the highest-scoring team in the league is somehow not in the top 6 by record, that team is given the 6 seed. I'd be fine with either version, but Barker's more open version gives more teams more reason to keep going through the finish line.
2) All tiebreakers are settled by total points. Disregard head to head for tiebreakers. I like this but with a twist. Since division teams play each other twice, I'd keep head-to-head for division tiebreakers. Otherwise, with other teams just playing once there is no other tiebreaker than head-to-head.
3) Let Higher Seeds in each playoff round select their playoff opponent. Reward the higher seeds, it's like our version of having home field advantage. Plus it's fun. The only thing I don't like about this suggestion is that it's proof that Barker doesn't read the preview since I had the same idea two weeks ago.
4) Super Radical one that everyone will hate- Forget divisions. 12 game regular season. Play every team once and one team twice which would be based on last season- #1 vs. #12 and so on. Have an 8 team playoff- let the higher seeds select their opponent. Top 8 teams play week 13, SemiFinals week 14 and Championship Week 15. Avoid weeks 16 and 17 when NFL stars sometimes rest. I don't hate it, but I don't love it either. It's a no from me, dawg.
5) Instead of having a lottery, the winner of the Loser's Bracket, (the teams that don't make the playoffs), the winner of that bracket earns the #1 pick and so on. This is good too.
There will be two net effects of these rule changes if they're enacted. First, total points will become much more important regardless of record, so more teams will have more incentives to score and will be willing to make more moves all the way through the season. Second, tank trades for picks will plummet because even bad teams will have a reason to fight! fight! fight! until the final whistle. I am fine with both outcomes.
On to the picks, and we'll start with yet another matchup for me that won't exactly be smooth sailin'.
THE DUDE HAS GOT NO MERCY (3-5) v
. THE NIGHT BOYS (5-3)
I traded away most of my team last season with the aim of maximizing my first round picks and lottery odds expressly to land Saquon Barkley. When that didn't work, I traded three first round picks for the #1 to get Barkley. Landing an injured Odell Beckham thanks to contract timing was just a bonus.
Now I face a must-win game without either player thanks to a bye. Instead, I'm relying on guys like Chris Carson, Kenny Golladay, John Brown, and the newly-acquired D.J. Moore. I like all of these players and they are good, but they could all score 2 or 20 points this week. I could post 70 again or 110 again. Of course, as usual, what I do will matter less than what my opponent does.
I have to admit, I've been Kubler-Rossing it pretty hard over here lately. When I lost to Bri, I went through denial about my record. This week, I've powered through anger and moved on to bargaining. "If I win this week, I'm back in it! If I lose, I just need to win 5 straight to have a chance!"
Problem is, I'm not sure I can win this week. Carson and Cohen are pretty even, and the WR matchup is close, but I like the odds of Hopkins and/or Thielen going off more than Hill or Brown. And if Hill comes up lame, I'm really in trouble. Plus, Barker has the Bears defense teeing off on the Peter Man, which is a sure DTD at some point.
I'm going to go into yet another Sunday night game with one of my players still to play, keeping me technically alive for a loss (47 points for Rodgers???) but probably giving me another loss.
On another note, it's a shame about Raheem Mostert. I thought he looked pretty lively the two times I saw him play this year. And that now makes consecutive Thursdays on which one of my bench players scored a long TD before suffering a season-ending injury. Good times.
Sigh. I guess I'm going to have to try to win 5 straight to close the season. Barker's highest score of the season to date is 114 points, and I look forward to him setting a new personal best.
THE PICK: TNB 115 - TDHGNM 81
LITTLE BABY JESUS (3-5) v. FLYNN (3-5)
Semi is still technically alive in the playoff race, so I assume he'll be picking up a replacement kicker for Elliott's bye this week. Sure, Goodwin posting only 1.3 points last night isn't that encouraging, but he is playing Gary here. He doesn't have to score a ton to beat Gary. Although if anybody in his starting lineup is going to miss Sunday's action, he'll need to pick up somebody else because his entire bench is either on a bye, hurt, or benched in real life. That last one is you, Jameis.
I suppose it would be fitting for Julio to finally score a TD against the fake team that traded him away, but the real team he's playing, Washington, is pretty good on defense and just made a trade to shore up their secondary. Plus it's in Washington and Ryan usually struggles outside in cooler temps. Gary's most reliable player this week is probably Justin Tucker.
I wish I could get a lot more worked up about the fact that somebody is going to technically win this game and weakly limp to a better record than me, but...ah, fuck it. Maybe acceptance is already here.
THE PICK: F 68 - LBJ 50
THAT KANGAROO STOLE MY BALL (7-1) v. TIMMY DOESN'T HAVE ANY FRIENDS (4-4)
Breida's poor showing last night won't really matter since Cam and Gurley might combine for 60 this week. On the other hand, both AP and White go against terrible defenses. Back to the first hand, Scott is starting Kelvin Benjamin even though he seemingly hates playing football and has Nathan Peterman as his QB. That is not a good combination. Plus, he has Ben and AB on the road in Baltimore, which is always tough times.
The only problem Bri has at this point is fighting off boredom. His roster is at a point where he doesn't really have to make any moves, and there aren't any superstar receivers still available anyway. He has a 2.5 game lead on the #1 seed race with 6 games left and could have a bye clinched before the doubleheader in Week 12. He also has a 2.5 game division lead and beat both Meyers and Barker the first time around, so they'd really have to make up ground to pass him.
Although...maybe he'll feel pressured to make a move after a rare sub-100 point effort this week.
Hopefully he doesn't kill time by filling his mind with all the ways he could lose in the playoffs and turn this into a wasted season.
THE PICK: TKSMB 91 - TDHAF 72
WTTK? (5-3) v. ASSTANNER (2-6)
My most likely road to the playoffs at this point would be winning my division, which is going to get a lot harder if McCamey can start a tight end with a quarterback nobody has ever heard of and still get 17 points out of the deal. Speaking of, my god is the Jon Gruden second epoch off to a marvelous start. I really think he's trying to make Oakland fans hate the team so they won't miss them when they move to Las Vegas.
And while we're on the subject of dogshit prime time game, what are we supposed to do on Monday with Dallas/Tennessee? Read a book? Talk to our kids? I'm going to be on the road again this weekend, so the two Week 9 games I'll actually get to see are last night's and Monday's? Maybe I catch the second half of Sunday night. Woof.
Anyway, after Kittle's start, it remains to be seen whether or not Chris will pick up a defense to replace the Colts this week and honestly, why bother? I'd like to pick Chris for the wild upset with Funchess getting some against the Bucs and Gordon getting deep on the back, but then I look at Trubisky, Crowell, and Cooper and can't see it.
Not to mention McCamey's guys.
THE PICK: WTTK 105 - AT 67
ANIMAL HOUSE (5-3) v. SIGMUND AND THE SEAMONSTER (5-3)
Tim is going to win this game. Tim is going to be 6-3.
And I'll tell you another thing for free. It's not going to be particularly close.
THE PICK: SS 108 - AH 83
RUSSELMANIA (1-7) v. THE WHITECHAPEL RIPPERS (5-3)
Larry has been waiting for the other shoe to drop on his season for weeks now, and losing to a 1-7 team would certainly clunk on the floor pretty loudly. He did manage to squeeze a replacement DST and K onto his team this week with 9 cents to spare.
Kenyan Drake is back in the starting lineup after putting up 20 on the bench last week, so expect a 3 from him this week. But Evans, Landry, and Murray should be good, and why not try Anthony Miller with Robinson out this week?
I don't like a single option on Barker's team this week, and I don't think he does either.
THE PICK: TWR 94 - RM 68
Tuesday, October 30, 2018
AFFL Week 8 Review
Sigh.
TIMMY DOESN'T HAVE ANY FRIENDS 124.1 - THE DUDE HAS GOT NO MERCY 70.4
The irony of putting up one of the worst scores of the week after spending October railing against my ill fortune is not lost of me. But that's precisely why I was so agitated the last few weeks. I knew that eventually I, like all teams, would put up a C/D score and I needed to have a good enough record to eat the loss.
But since I've lost 3 times when I've scored 100+, I'm now 3-5 instead of 6-2 and next week I have a must-win, season-saving matchup with The Night Boys, and Barkley and Beckham have a bye and Hill might have groin problems.
Scott was giving me some stick about benching Fuller and starting Brees over Rodgers, but really, that just helps prove my point about randomness and luck. Brees and Brown have outscored Rodgers and Fuller on the season. They all had decent matchups. But even if I got this week's lineup right, so what? So I score 86 points and still lose because another opponent posted his best score of the season? What I do carries about half the weight of what an opponent does in a given week.
You know, even with 70 points, I would've beaten Chris this week if we played instead of in Week 4. I would've beaten Scott last week. I would've beaten Bri last week. But I guess I'm just not good at timing my schedule properly, the most important thing a fantasy football GM can do.
So what are we really trying to do here? Are we trying to identify the best team(s)? It seems more like we're trying to find out who can be on the right side of coincidence the most times, and then we give extra emphasis to those coincidences in Weeks 14-16.
Scott has a better record than me, but I'm averaging 10 more points a week. Who has the better team? Barker is TWO games up on me, but I outscore him by 20 a week. Who's better? I have one more win than Chris and 100 more points, but he beat me head-to-head. Who's better?
In the same week that I fell out of the top spot for points for, I gained the top spot in points against. Despite that, I'm still +15 in point differential. The 5-3 Night Boys are -10 in differential.
In my last 4 losses, my opponents have put up 492.2 points. That's 1 point more than Russellmania has scored all season.
THAT KANGAROO STOLE MY BALL 120.6 - FLYNN 78.8
The best name gag Gary has come up, by far, is renaming his Flynn from Heisenberg because his grand plans fell apart and it turns out he's totally inept. Highlight of the season and maybe of the decade for Gary. At least one positive came from a season that is slipping out of his fingers.
Bri has a really good team without question, and when he loses in the playoffs it won't matter one goddamn bit.
THE NIGHT BOYS 111.4 - LITTLE BABY JESUS 73.8
Now this is interesting. The Night Boys went up over 100 points for only the second time this season (2-0 record in such games). Dalton and Boyd combined for 36 points as Boyd continues his breakout season, Cohen had a long TD catch, the Vikes made sure Thielen kept his 100-yard streak alive. All in all, a pretty great week. The last time the Boys put up 100+, they scored 61 the following week, and I really hope that's a trend we see more of next week.
I said last week that Marlon Mack wasn't going to score 30 points in a game for a while and I was right. He merely had 27 this week. Speaking of Mack, I give myself credit for a nice late signing on him last season, but since I traded him away in camp this year when he was hurt, I guess I take the credit away. Semi technically could've won this game if he started Fitz and Marvin Jones and going on a 3-game winning streak after trading your stars away to tank would be hilarious and wild, but I'm guess he's happy to lose and boost up those lottery odds.
WTTK? 91 - RUSSELLMANIA 46.2
Brian had two players going in the London game at 930am and he finished the morning session with a grand total of 1.4 points. So before the majority of games kicked off at 1pm, the score of this game was 1.4 to -7. It only got more ridiculous from there.
ANIMAL HOUSE 93.4 - ASSTANNER 58.9
James Conner is currently outperforming Le'Veon Bell in every running back measurement, advanced or otherwise. I really am not sure what to make of that.
Chris didn't have Zeke this week due to the bye, in case you're wondering why he didn't crack 60 points.
SIGMUND AND THE SEAMONSTER 93.2 - THE WHITECHAPEL RIPPERS 92.3
I have to admit, I wasn't really paying attention to the fantasy scoreboard Sunday night, so I totally overlooked how back and forth this game was between Murray and Allison and Jones and Diggs.
Larry was back and forth on starting Kenyan Drake Thursday night and ended up pulling him and that turned out to be the difference in this one. The Cards finally started using David Johnson semi-properly, but he suffered a concussion and missed enough carries that maybe that cost Larry the game. I mean, you could really look at one thing every player did plus a thing Larry did and blame the loss on that.
Conversely, Tim got every lineup decision correct, which allowed him to withstand -4.5 points from the Ravens defense and squeak out this win.
TIMMY DOESN'T HAVE ANY FRIENDS 124.1 - THE DUDE HAS GOT NO MERCY 70.4
The irony of putting up one of the worst scores of the week after spending October railing against my ill fortune is not lost of me. But that's precisely why I was so agitated the last few weeks. I knew that eventually I, like all teams, would put up a C/D score and I needed to have a good enough record to eat the loss.
But since I've lost 3 times when I've scored 100+, I'm now 3-5 instead of 6-2 and next week I have a must-win, season-saving matchup with The Night Boys, and Barkley and Beckham have a bye and Hill might have groin problems.
Scott was giving me some stick about benching Fuller and starting Brees over Rodgers, but really, that just helps prove my point about randomness and luck. Brees and Brown have outscored Rodgers and Fuller on the season. They all had decent matchups. But even if I got this week's lineup right, so what? So I score 86 points and still lose because another opponent posted his best score of the season? What I do carries about half the weight of what an opponent does in a given week.
You know, even with 70 points, I would've beaten Chris this week if we played instead of in Week 4. I would've beaten Scott last week. I would've beaten Bri last week. But I guess I'm just not good at timing my schedule properly, the most important thing a fantasy football GM can do.
So what are we really trying to do here? Are we trying to identify the best team(s)? It seems more like we're trying to find out who can be on the right side of coincidence the most times, and then we give extra emphasis to those coincidences in Weeks 14-16.
Scott has a better record than me, but I'm averaging 10 more points a week. Who has the better team? Barker is TWO games up on me, but I outscore him by 20 a week. Who's better? I have one more win than Chris and 100 more points, but he beat me head-to-head. Who's better?
In the same week that I fell out of the top spot for points for, I gained the top spot in points against. Despite that, I'm still +15 in point differential. The 5-3 Night Boys are -10 in differential.
In my last 4 losses, my opponents have put up 492.2 points. That's 1 point more than Russellmania has scored all season.
THAT KANGAROO STOLE MY BALL 120.6 - FLYNN 78.8
The best name gag Gary has come up, by far, is renaming his Flynn from Heisenberg because his grand plans fell apart and it turns out he's totally inept. Highlight of the season and maybe of the decade for Gary. At least one positive came from a season that is slipping out of his fingers.
Bri has a really good team without question, and when he loses in the playoffs it won't matter one goddamn bit.
THE NIGHT BOYS 111.4 - LITTLE BABY JESUS 73.8
Now this is interesting. The Night Boys went up over 100 points for only the second time this season (2-0 record in such games). Dalton and Boyd combined for 36 points as Boyd continues his breakout season, Cohen had a long TD catch, the Vikes made sure Thielen kept his 100-yard streak alive. All in all, a pretty great week. The last time the Boys put up 100+, they scored 61 the following week, and I really hope that's a trend we see more of next week.
I said last week that Marlon Mack wasn't going to score 30 points in a game for a while and I was right. He merely had 27 this week. Speaking of Mack, I give myself credit for a nice late signing on him last season, but since I traded him away in camp this year when he was hurt, I guess I take the credit away. Semi technically could've won this game if he started Fitz and Marvin Jones and going on a 3-game winning streak after trading your stars away to tank would be hilarious and wild, but I'm guess he's happy to lose and boost up those lottery odds.
WTTK? 91 - RUSSELLMANIA 46.2
Brian had two players going in the London game at 930am and he finished the morning session with a grand total of 1.4 points. So before the majority of games kicked off at 1pm, the score of this game was 1.4 to -7. It only got more ridiculous from there.
ANIMAL HOUSE 93.4 - ASSTANNER 58.9
James Conner is currently outperforming Le'Veon Bell in every running back measurement, advanced or otherwise. I really am not sure what to make of that.
Chris didn't have Zeke this week due to the bye, in case you're wondering why he didn't crack 60 points.
SIGMUND AND THE SEAMONSTER 93.2 - THE WHITECHAPEL RIPPERS 92.3
I have to admit, I wasn't really paying attention to the fantasy scoreboard Sunday night, so I totally overlooked how back and forth this game was between Murray and Allison and Jones and Diggs.
Larry was back and forth on starting Kenyan Drake Thursday night and ended up pulling him and that turned out to be the difference in this one. The Cards finally started using David Johnson semi-properly, but he suffered a concussion and missed enough carries that maybe that cost Larry the game. I mean, you could really look at one thing every player did plus a thing Larry did and blame the loss on that.
Conversely, Tim got every lineup decision correct, which allowed him to withstand -4.5 points from the Ravens defense and squeak out this win.
Thursday, October 25, 2018
AFFL Week 8 Preview
LAST WEEK: 3-3
SEASON: 29-13
As if losing the last two games wasn't bad enough, the picks are only 6-6 in that time. Plus I got a cold this week so I'm all foggy and this preview is going to be really boring.
(They're all really boring! BRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAPPPPPPP!)
Hush.
The very spicy Week 7 Review didn't generate any hot replies or long comment threads, so I can only assume that's because you all agree with the premise and feel terrible about what is happening to me. I accept your apologies.
By the way, at the moment, 3 teams are projected to score over 100 points this week. Those teams are currently favored to win by 5, 14, and 38 points. Guess which one I am.
Anyway, I'm sure everybody is hoping this isn't another week where I post a great score but somebody comes in to steal my sunshine.
THE DUDE HAS GOT NO MERCY (3-4) vs. TIMMY DOESN'T HAVE ANY FRIENDS (3-4)
The other problem with losing these games, besides the obvious, is that it seems like there is going to be a big mush of teams fighting for the Wild Card spots and I keep giving away head-to-head tiebreakers.
This week definitely has the potential for me to post a third straight 100-point loss, give away another tiebreaker, and fall 3-5, which would be good for 10th or 11th place. It might come down to a single roster spot, which is why I'm so tied up in knots about Fuller v. Brown v. Mostert. I mean, it's not that I'm dying to start Raheem Mostert, but he's a great matchup against the Cards if Breida is out, but Fuller plays tonight and all of the experts really like him because Coutee is out. Not to mention picking between Brees and Rodgers.
While I like all of my matchups this week, and Chris Carson owes me one, I'm concerned about all of Scott's guys going off. I would say I'm extremely worried about watching James White and Gostkowski chip away at my 23-point lead on Monday night and losing by 2 points because the Pats kick a field goal to go up 38-3 with 3 minutes left.
Or, worse, the NE DST that Scott just picked makes a late house call on a terrible Derek Anderson pass to seal the win for him.
I dunno. I guess I'm going to have to count on the odds eventually turning in my favor.
THE PICK: TDHGNM 103 - TDHAF 94
THAT KANGAROO STOLE MY BALL (6-1) vs. HEISENBERG (3-4)
Gary has scored 47.5, 58.3, and 66.1 points in the last 3 weeks. CBS projects him for 72.9 this week, which, hey, that's technical making progress. Kamara is in the lineup, of course, but the rest of this sheet is pretty rough thanks to byes and injuries. Baker Mayfield on the road? Peyton Barber anywhere? Sammy Watkins? Oof. I think we have confirmation that Gary's 100+ point games in Weeks 3 and 4 were the outliers. This team is not good.
Bri is rolling with DeShaun and Lamar Miller tonight, and if Bri thinks the Texans are going to roll, I guess I feel a little bit better about playing Will Fuller.
It will be technically possible that Kamara could score 70 points on Sunday night to lead Gary's heroic comeback, but it seems a little unlikely.
THE PICK: TKSMB 108 - HB 55
THE NIGHT BOYS (4-3) vs. LITTLE BABY JESUS (3-4)
All Semi had to do was cut off the dead weight of Tyreek Hill and Julio Jones and now is team is flying! Like, should Gary and I reverse our trades him and send those guys back? Does Semi want those guys back to try and make a run now? I'd at least be open to hearing him out on a reversal, plus a little interest for my troubles.
As for Barker, I'm actually not that perturbed by him having a good record with an iffy team after a few years of getting crushed by the most points against. It all comes out in the wash eventually.
(Yes, I am aware that logic would apply to my own whinging, but I'm concerned with my record now, not in 2022.)
Anyway, CBS says he's going to break 100 this week, which is interesting because he's only done it once all season and is averaging like 73 points in the last 3 weeks. But there are a lot of pretty golden matchups in this one. Dalton and Boyd against Tampa, Thielen against the Saints, Cooks against the Packers. Hopkins draws a tough corner again this week, but he's overcome that in the past so why ot tonight as well?
I feel like Marlon Mack probably won't score 30 points for the second week in a row, and I don't like Jameis outside, on the road, in the cold.
THE PICK: TNB 91 - LBJ 70
RUSSELLMANIA (1-6) vs. WTTK? (4-3)
The entire Mania lineup, outside of Alex Smith and Gronk, is second options. Sometimes second options score 17 points, sometimes they score 1.7 points.
Mixon, Kerryon, Luck, Kittle, Davante...all good. The Miami defense will probably post negative points and that won't matter one bit.
Why spend any more time on this matchup than we absolutely need to? The only intriguing angle is if Barker can finally break his worst loss record after taking two good cracks at it earlier this season.
THE PICK: WTTK? 104 - RUSSELLMANIA 49
ANIMAL HOUSE (4-3) vs. ASSTANNER (2-5)
I need to write this today because I'm heading out of town tomorrow, so I'm going to go ahead and assume that Meyers is going to put James Conner into the lineup over Demaryius.
Animal House could potentially struggle a bit this week. It's not impossible to picture Brady struggling on Monday night. It's a prime time home game for Buffalo, which has a pretty aggressive defense and fans that will probably start tailgating Sunday morning even if the game isn't until Monday. We've seen big underdogs play inspired home prime time games many times. I'm definitely not saying Buffalo will pull off an upset; I'm just saying we could see some weirdness.
Ingram should be bottled up against the Vikes' front 7, and the Rams won't post a big score against the Packers, but AJ, Conner, and Mike Thomas will easily be able to balance out the trouble spots.
As for Chris, I get that Jalen Richard is the de facto 1.5 back in Oakland now with Lynch hurt and Doug Martin old, but do you really need a former backup on a team that's giving up on their coach halfway through the season? Mainly because he gave up on them back in August.
My god. Do you see all these teams that aren't me that are going to coast to easy wins this week?
THE PICK: AH 87 - AT 42
THE WHITECHAPEL RIPPERS (5-2) vs. SIGMUND AND THE SEAMONSTER (4-3)
If David Johnson doesn't get moving this week with a new OC and a bad SF defense, he never will. That new OC, by the way, is Byron Leftwich, so we are now of the age where the Giants uniforms we remember Mark Bavaro and Phil McConkey in are considered throwbacks, and guys we watched play in college are now coaches. Incidentally, Leftwich says he learned everything from Bruce Arians, so I'd have high hopes for Johnson.
Blug. I'm so tired and foggy and stuffy. Here's what I think about this game. Mahomes will go off, Johnson should, and Landry might. On the other side, Goff, Hunt, and Woods will all go off, Diggs and Jones should, and Howard might. I need a nap.
THE PICK: SS 109 - TWR 89
SEASON: 29-13
As if losing the last two games wasn't bad enough, the picks are only 6-6 in that time. Plus I got a cold this week so I'm all foggy and this preview is going to be really boring.
(They're all really boring! BRRRRRRRAAAAAAAAAAAAAPPPPPPP!)
Hush.
The very spicy Week 7 Review didn't generate any hot replies or long comment threads, so I can only assume that's because you all agree with the premise and feel terrible about what is happening to me. I accept your apologies.
By the way, at the moment, 3 teams are projected to score over 100 points this week. Those teams are currently favored to win by 5, 14, and 38 points. Guess which one I am.
Anyway, I'm sure everybody is hoping this isn't another week where I post a great score but somebody comes in to steal my sunshine.
THE DUDE HAS GOT NO MERCY (3-4) vs. TIMMY DOESN'T HAVE ANY FRIENDS (3-4)
The other problem with losing these games, besides the obvious, is that it seems like there is going to be a big mush of teams fighting for the Wild Card spots and I keep giving away head-to-head tiebreakers.
This week definitely has the potential for me to post a third straight 100-point loss, give away another tiebreaker, and fall 3-5, which would be good for 10th or 11th place. It might come down to a single roster spot, which is why I'm so tied up in knots about Fuller v. Brown v. Mostert. I mean, it's not that I'm dying to start Raheem Mostert, but he's a great matchup against the Cards if Breida is out, but Fuller plays tonight and all of the experts really like him because Coutee is out. Not to mention picking between Brees and Rodgers.
While I like all of my matchups this week, and Chris Carson owes me one, I'm concerned about all of Scott's guys going off. I would say I'm extremely worried about watching James White and Gostkowski chip away at my 23-point lead on Monday night and losing by 2 points because the Pats kick a field goal to go up 38-3 with 3 minutes left.
Or, worse, the NE DST that Scott just picked makes a late house call on a terrible Derek Anderson pass to seal the win for him.
I dunno. I guess I'm going to have to count on the odds eventually turning in my favor.
THE PICK: TDHGNM 103 - TDHAF 94
THAT KANGAROO STOLE MY BALL (6-1) vs. HEISENBERG (3-4)
Gary has scored 47.5, 58.3, and 66.1 points in the last 3 weeks. CBS projects him for 72.9 this week, which, hey, that's technical making progress. Kamara is in the lineup, of course, but the rest of this sheet is pretty rough thanks to byes and injuries. Baker Mayfield on the road? Peyton Barber anywhere? Sammy Watkins? Oof. I think we have confirmation that Gary's 100+ point games in Weeks 3 and 4 were the outliers. This team is not good.
Bri is rolling with DeShaun and Lamar Miller tonight, and if Bri thinks the Texans are going to roll, I guess I feel a little bit better about playing Will Fuller.
It will be technically possible that Kamara could score 70 points on Sunday night to lead Gary's heroic comeback, but it seems a little unlikely.
THE PICK: TKSMB 108 - HB 55
THE NIGHT BOYS (4-3) vs. LITTLE BABY JESUS (3-4)
All Semi had to do was cut off the dead weight of Tyreek Hill and Julio Jones and now is team is flying! Like, should Gary and I reverse our trades him and send those guys back? Does Semi want those guys back to try and make a run now? I'd at least be open to hearing him out on a reversal, plus a little interest for my troubles.
As for Barker, I'm actually not that perturbed by him having a good record with an iffy team after a few years of getting crushed by the most points against. It all comes out in the wash eventually.
(Yes, I am aware that logic would apply to my own whinging, but I'm concerned with my record now, not in 2022.)
Anyway, CBS says he's going to break 100 this week, which is interesting because he's only done it once all season and is averaging like 73 points in the last 3 weeks. But there are a lot of pretty golden matchups in this one. Dalton and Boyd against Tampa, Thielen against the Saints, Cooks against the Packers. Hopkins draws a tough corner again this week, but he's overcome that in the past so why ot tonight as well?
I feel like Marlon Mack probably won't score 30 points for the second week in a row, and I don't like Jameis outside, on the road, in the cold.
THE PICK: TNB 91 - LBJ 70
RUSSELLMANIA (1-6) vs. WTTK? (4-3)
The entire Mania lineup, outside of Alex Smith and Gronk, is second options. Sometimes second options score 17 points, sometimes they score 1.7 points.
Mixon, Kerryon, Luck, Kittle, Davante...all good. The Miami defense will probably post negative points and that won't matter one bit.
Why spend any more time on this matchup than we absolutely need to? The only intriguing angle is if Barker can finally break his worst loss record after taking two good cracks at it earlier this season.
THE PICK: WTTK? 104 - RUSSELLMANIA 49
ANIMAL HOUSE (4-3) vs. ASSTANNER (2-5)
I need to write this today because I'm heading out of town tomorrow, so I'm going to go ahead and assume that Meyers is going to put James Conner into the lineup over Demaryius.
Animal House could potentially struggle a bit this week. It's not impossible to picture Brady struggling on Monday night. It's a prime time home game for Buffalo, which has a pretty aggressive defense and fans that will probably start tailgating Sunday morning even if the game isn't until Monday. We've seen big underdogs play inspired home prime time games many times. I'm definitely not saying Buffalo will pull off an upset; I'm just saying we could see some weirdness.
Ingram should be bottled up against the Vikes' front 7, and the Rams won't post a big score against the Packers, but AJ, Conner, and Mike Thomas will easily be able to balance out the trouble spots.
As for Chris, I get that Jalen Richard is the de facto 1.5 back in Oakland now with Lynch hurt and Doug Martin old, but do you really need a former backup on a team that's giving up on their coach halfway through the season? Mainly because he gave up on them back in August.
My god. Do you see all these teams that aren't me that are going to coast to easy wins this week?
THE PICK: AH 87 - AT 42
THE WHITECHAPEL RIPPERS (5-2) vs. SIGMUND AND THE SEAMONSTER (4-3)
If David Johnson doesn't get moving this week with a new OC and a bad SF defense, he never will. That new OC, by the way, is Byron Leftwich, so we are now of the age where the Giants uniforms we remember Mark Bavaro and Phil McConkey in are considered throwbacks, and guys we watched play in college are now coaches. Incidentally, Leftwich says he learned everything from Bruce Arians, so I'd have high hopes for Johnson.
Blug. I'm so tired and foggy and stuffy. Here's what I think about this game. Mahomes will go off, Johnson should, and Landry might. On the other side, Goff, Hunt, and Woods will all go off, Diggs and Jones should, and Howard might. I need a nap.
THE PICK: SS 109 - TWR 89
Monday, October 22, 2018
AFFL Week 7 Review
The highest-scoring team in the league has 3-4 record, which is 4-way tie for 7th.
I'm the highest-scoring team in both of my leagues and I'm a combined 7-7.
I've had the 2nd highest-score for 2 weeks in a row and I'm 0-2 in those weeks.
I have the most points in the last two weeks and I'm 0-2.
Only two teams in the league are over 700 points through 7 weeks. One is 6-1. The other is 3-4.
This season, I've faced the week's highest score 3 different times.
I lost last week because an Aaron Rodgers pass went backwards 6 inches.
I lost this week because a Golladay TD was called back on a penalty, Butker missed a FG after being perfect all season, John Brown was tackled on the 2-yard line, Justin Tucker missed his first PAT ever so Saints/Ravens didn't go to OT, and Marlon Mack ran for a 20-yard TD with 2 minutes left and the Bills showing less effort than a Saturday walkthrough.
You know what the head-to-head schedule does? It randomizes records, adds in a massive dosage of luck, and helps hold the interest of teams of the 3-4 owners that would out of the running every September.
Some people think that is a good thing.
LITTLE BABY JESUS 108.4 - THE DUDE HAS GOT NO MERCY 101.2
Fuck this. This is bullshit. I'm not doing this.
Forget total points. Forget points against. Forget the full schedule breakdown. If I could change my schedule with any other team in the league, the very worst I would be is 4-3.
TIMMY DOESN'T HAVE ANY FRIENDS 91.5 - HEISENBERG 66.1
If I played Scott's schedule, I'd be 5-2.
ASSTANNER 82.3 - RUSSELLMANIA 52.9
Who cares?
THAT KANGAROO STOLE MY BALL 96.1 - SIGMUND AND THE SEAMONSTER 89
If I played Bri this week, I would've won. But I played him last week and lost. Since he's 6-1 and I'm 3-4, I guess that means he's better than me, even though I have more points.
If I played Bri's schedule this season, I'd be 5-2. If he played my schedule, the great Kangaroo would also be 3-4.
THE NIGHT BOYS 69.5 - WTTK? 54.6
Are you fucking kidding me? This should count as half a win.
I'd be 5-2 with The Night Boys' schedule. He'd be 1-6 with my schedule. I have 190 more points on the season, an average of 27 points more PER GAME. But he has 1 more win so I guess he has a better team.
I'd be 6-1 with WTTK's schedule, which isn't an unreasonable possibility since we're actually in the same division. I'd have a 4 game lead in the division with 7 games left. He'd be 2-5 with mine.
THE WHITECHAPEL RIPPERS 98.7 - ANIMAL HOUSE 93.8
If I played Meyers' schedule, I'd be 5-2.
I'm the highest-scoring team in both of my leagues and I'm a combined 7-7.
I've had the 2nd highest-score for 2 weeks in a row and I'm 0-2 in those weeks.
I have the most points in the last two weeks and I'm 0-2.
Only two teams in the league are over 700 points through 7 weeks. One is 6-1. The other is 3-4.
This season, I've faced the week's highest score 3 different times.
I lost last week because an Aaron Rodgers pass went backwards 6 inches.
I lost this week because a Golladay TD was called back on a penalty, Butker missed a FG after being perfect all season, John Brown was tackled on the 2-yard line, Justin Tucker missed his first PAT ever so Saints/Ravens didn't go to OT, and Marlon Mack ran for a 20-yard TD with 2 minutes left and the Bills showing less effort than a Saturday walkthrough.
You know what the head-to-head schedule does? It randomizes records, adds in a massive dosage of luck, and helps hold the interest of teams of the 3-4 owners that would out of the running every September.
Some people think that is a good thing.
LITTLE BABY JESUS 108.4 - THE DUDE HAS GOT NO MERCY 101.2
Fuck this. This is bullshit. I'm not doing this.
Forget total points. Forget points against. Forget the full schedule breakdown. If I could change my schedule with any other team in the league, the very worst I would be is 4-3.
TIMMY DOESN'T HAVE ANY FRIENDS 91.5 - HEISENBERG 66.1
If I played Scott's schedule, I'd be 5-2.
ASSTANNER 82.3 - RUSSELLMANIA 52.9
Who cares?
THAT KANGAROO STOLE MY BALL 96.1 - SIGMUND AND THE SEAMONSTER 89
If I played Bri this week, I would've won. But I played him last week and lost. Since he's 6-1 and I'm 3-4, I guess that means he's better than me, even though I have more points.
If I played Bri's schedule this season, I'd be 5-2. If he played my schedule, the great Kangaroo would also be 3-4.
THE NIGHT BOYS 69.5 - WTTK? 54.6
Are you fucking kidding me? This should count as half a win.
I'd be 5-2 with The Night Boys' schedule. He'd be 1-6 with my schedule. I have 190 more points on the season, an average of 27 points more PER GAME. But he has 1 more win so I guess he has a better team.
I'd be 6-1 with WTTK's schedule, which isn't an unreasonable possibility since we're actually in the same division. I'd have a 4 game lead in the division with 7 games left. He'd be 2-5 with mine.
THE WHITECHAPEL RIPPERS 98.7 - ANIMAL HOUSE 93.8
If I played Meyers' schedule, I'd be 5-2.
Friday, October 19, 2018
AFFL Week 7 Preview
LAST WEEK: 3-3
SEASON: 26-10
The roster arms race we're going through is fascinating. I don't want to overreact too much because it's possible that this is just a one-off and the 2018 season has the perfect confluence of catalytic factors up to and including:
But we might also on the bleeding edge here, much like in the NFL itself where coaches like McVay, Pederson, and Reid are becoming more aggressive, creating mismatches, and outracing old fashioned coaches. It'll be interesting to see what happens in 2019.
That said, there is a downside to all of these moves.
Scott might still be alive at 2-5 depending on how other teams do, and he's already ordered one gross of Back2Back AFFL Champions snapbacks that he doesn't want to donate to Sudanese children, so we have 8-9 teams that need to get to 8 wins by Week 13. Every matchup is crucial right now and with so many kicker and defenses byes coming up, things are going to get interesting, mainly on the CapSum tab.
Some teams have the roster cushion and cap space to easily fill in the bye. Why do you think I grabbed the Jets after that trade last week? Only $0.56 for the 3rd-highest scoring defense this season? Yes, please! I saw this crunch coming and got out ahead of it. I'm always looking forward, never backwards. That's not just fantasy football advice for you, that's life advice.
But some teams out there have a panicked accounting department right now. Buncha numbers nerds all making pivot tables and yelling at each other.
"ARE YOU SURE THESE NUMBERS ARE RIGHT?!"
"I CHECKED THREE TIMES, RANDY! I DIDN'T INVENT MATH, OKAY? I CAN'T CHANGE NUMERICAL FACTS!"
"YOU GOTTA TELL THE BOSS THAT WE MIGHT BE SHORT IN WEEK 10!"
"I'M NOT TELLING HIM. YOU TELL HIM!"
Of the Nifty Nine, I'd say that only McCamey, Bri, M. Barker, and I will easily cover the K/DST byes, mainly because BM and BW already have two kickers and MB and MK already have two defenses.
Meyers' kicker has a bye this week, so if he just drops Boswell for one of the four kickers who've already had their bye, he should be okay. Scott is a little iffier because all of his players are either very expensive or very cheap, and he might have to drop name player for cap space. Or he'll be out of it by then and it won't matter.
That leaves us with Tim, Larry, and Gary, all of whom, believe it or not, have the SAME BYE WEEK for their current kickers and defense. All of these come before the roster freeze, so that's one problem eliminated. Yes, Tim already has a second kicker, but their byes are back to back in Weeks 10 and 11, so he can't even drop one kicker for a fill in defense because the freeze is after Week 10. He's already just barely inside the cap, so I have absolutely no idea how Tim is going to finesse this without trades.
Neither Gary nor Larry have a second kicker or defenses, and with the thin cap space they have, it's going to take some pretty good maneuvering to find another kicker and defense that A) Have already had their byes, B) Are affordable, and C) Aren't terrible.
But we're not done yet! As it happens, Larry plays Russellmania in Week 9 and Gary plays the same team in Week 10. Do they both think Brian is bad enough to be beaten with 75% of a roster?
Well, at the moment, the top 12 defenses are averaging 6.3 PPG and the top 12 kickers average 7.6 PPG for a total of 13.9 PPG. Do Gary and Larry think they'll be favored by 14 points over Brian? Will they have a game to possibly throw away by then? And if Brian racks up some cheap wins, what happens to his lottery odds?
Some real butterfly effect shit going on, folks!
Expect some squirrelly-looking trades in the next few weeks that are like K <--> DST + 9th round pick. Hey, that reminds me. Did we ever pass that No Borrowing Players rule after Gary cheated to rent David Johnson?
WHEW. I think that's it for now. Let's (finally) get to this week's action.
Bri took the inside track on the #1 seed with his big win last week and I'm not sure who's going to slow him down and edge him out. It's possible that he has enough of a lead going into Week 12 that he can withstand a double loss with Gurley and Kelce out and still get one of the byes. This season, Bri is simply...
On the music front, I don't expect that any of you actually listen to any of the songs because your coolness factor is (x-1) where x=0, but that's not going to stop me from trying to turn up your lives a little bit. But I am embarrassed to be a tech-savvy person who kept embedding Spotify sniplets instead of just switching over to YouTube embeds to have an inline experience. Poor user experience on my part.
I definitely don't expect you to listen to Metallica, but for my money, this is the best song ever about Moses telling the Pharaoh to let his people go before the Egyptians all lost their first born sons. But there ain't no amount of lamb's blood you can smear on your playbook to stop Bri from raining down fiery hail on your team, leaving you in darkness for three days until Thursday Night Football kicks off.
Man, picturing an image of Bri with his perfectly parted hair, dress shirt, and glowing red eyes chanting "Die! By my hand! I creep across the land." as he smashes little plastic football helmets with his fists is really, really amusing. I wish I was good at Photoshop.
THE DUDE HAS GOT NO MERCY (3-3) vs. LITTLE BABY JESUS (2-4)
Speaking of rule changes, did we ever pass that rule where if the highest-scoring team in the league is out of the playoffs by record, they automatically get the 6 seed? Because if the playoffs started today, I'd currently be on the outside.
(While we're stuck on rule changes, next year I'm proposing a Choose Your Own Adventure playoff system in which the higher seeds get to choose their opponent in the playoffs. So in Wild Card week the #3 seed picks his opponent, and in the Semi-Finals, the #1 seed picks his opponent. Be ready to vote YEA on this rule change next year.)
I'm a little surprised Semi didn't start Royce Freeman to try and beat me with all of my all old players. He missed out on a TD with Freeman benched, but Phil Lindsay made up for it with a garbage time TD on which the Cardinals seemingly had no interest in getting grass stains on their pants.
I wouldn't say that I'm concerned about it, but I am at least aware that it's possible I lose this game and fall to 3-4, thereby having the same record as Semi, who started selling off his team last week. Especially with Brees playing outside on the road against a good Ravens defense. That's usually a 10-point game for him. But Golladay, Hill, and Brown should all be fine. I really hope Brown is fine because Barker sent me some real smoke about Smokey this week after he had two down games. Seemed like he had that draft saved for weeks and just itching to hit send on it.
But if Tyreek and Butker don't finish this game off for me Sunday night, Odell and Saquon definitely will on Monday night. The Falcons defense has been crushed by backs this year, both on the ground and passes. They're giving up 11 catches a GAME to backs and Eli targets Saquon with dump off passes 111 times a game. James Conner put up 30 on the Falcons. Hell, Peyton Barber had his first good game against them last week. Beckham and Barkley might combine for 50 in this one.
THE PICK: TDHGNM 110 - LBJ 83
HEISENBERG (3-3) vs. TIMMY DOESN'T HAVE ANY FRIENDS (2-4)
Gary clipped me on the Ito Smith pickup this week and has tossed him right into the starting lineup. Scott didn't have to beat out anybody to grab Josh Rosen this week and unfortunately he also went into the starting lineup. I was really hoping Rosen would finish the whole game in negative numbers, not just the first half, but he scraped and clawed his way to 3.8 points well after everybody gave up watching that game.
Speaking of Scott's roster moves, he publicly made AB available last night and the price will be high, as it should be based on the current trade market and AB's status. Now, I'm willing to be wrong here, but looking around the league, I think I might be the only contender who has both the franchise player spot flexibility and the cap space to actually pull this deal off. The only other possibility I see, barring some team totally blowing up their current roster, is Semi. But is he already willing to punt on his cache of draft picks for just one player?
Anyway, we should assume that Matt Ryan will score more than 3.8 points this week, even though he's playing outside at night. The Giants secondary is easier to get through than a cool breeze. I'm done predicting when or if Julio will score a TD, but at this point don't be surprised if he posts something like 38 yards, 1 TD and actually scores fewer points than when he has a huge day with no scores. Ito will be dependent on what Coleman does first and Peyton will have trouble with a good Browns defense. That leaves Alvin to do something against both the Ravens and Mark Ingram.
On the other side, if TJ Yeldon is going to stay iffy, it might not be a bad idea for Scott to start Albert Wilson against the Lions. (Chris Berman voice: UNCLE Albert Wilson. Someone's knocking on the door, let him in. TO THE END ZONE!)
Gary has Ryan, Ito, and Julio all going on Monday night while Scott just has Sterling Shepherd, but I think Gary is going to be sweating this one out a little longer than he might want to. Every red zone target that goes to Coleman or Ridley or Sanu or Hooper is going to be met with the gnashing of teeth and the rending of garments.
THE PICK: HB 76 - TDHAF 63
RUSSELLMANIA (1-5) vs. ASSTANNER (1-5)
In another fun scheduling quirk, Russellmania has gone from a 1-4 v. 1-4 battle to a 1-5 v. 1-5 battle in consecutive weeks. A lot of $3 upper bowl tickets available on StubHub for this one.
Another quirk is that Chris currently has the 6th-highest scoring offense, which isn't bad, but the most points against, which is bad. That said, he's averaging 80 points in his 5 losses and 145 points in his 1 win. A little unbalanced. If you take away that one fluke week, he only has the 10th-best offense and would be 0-6. More importantly, I'd be 4-2.
If you have a couple of minutes to spare today (after the 35 minutes you've spent reading this), you should really take a quick peek at these two rosters. They're really something.
THE PICK: AT 59 - RM 55
THAT KANGAROO STOLE MY BALL (5-1) vs. SIGMUND AND THE SEAMONSTER (4-2)
Bri's team is so good that they got bored and started having wide receivers throw touchdown passes last night. I'd like Coleman over Breida a little more this week, but does it really even matter? All Donte Moncrief did last week was steal $0.19 from Bri's cap space and that didn't matter a bit.
It's a shame too, because Tim has good matchups with Goff and Woods, plus Diggs. It's just that Sanders already put up 20 points, Gurley will get close to 30 against the Niners and there's 50 points right there.
Not sure what else you want me to say about it. Creeping death, I already told you.
THE PICK: TKSMB 108 - SS 95
THE NIGHT BOYS (3-3) vs. WTTK? (4-2)
For all the years he was screwed by having tons and tons of points scored on him, Barker is currently 3-3 and in the hunt despite the 2nd-worst offense in the league because he has the 2nd-fewest points against.
This is a huge game for these two. Going to 4-3 would give Barker a little more control in his quest to end his playoff drought, while going to 5-2 would give McCamey a nice edge on winning the best division in the league.
Not that I respect the CBS projections all that much, but I'm surprised they're that low on these teams this week. I think these rosters are pretty stacked with good matchups and this should be a shootout. I like Dalton more than Rivers this week since Kansas City can't slow down anybody (or maybe they just don't care to) whereas the Titans have been mucking up low-scoring games. Plus, being a red-blooded super patriot, Rivers is probably going to be uncomfortable in England since they probably don't even have a dang ol' Bill of Rights over there!
A good day for Dalton will be a good day for Boyd, and Cooks and Thielen will be good as well. There's a little concern for Hopkins with Jalen Ramsey on him, especially because DeShaun might not have enough time to throw. Cohen is another concern since he's game flow and touchdown dependent. It's either 5 or 15 for him.
The same could be said for Taylor Gabriel on the other side, so I guess it washes out. Even if the Titans make the game ugly for Rivers, Gordon will still grind out yards and a TD, and Mixon will go off against the Chiefs.
Speaking of Gabriel real quick, we're deep into my least favorite part of the fantasy season, which is every single Week X Adds and Week Y Sleepers article just being a list of Guys Who Scored A TD Last Week. Christ, I read "Drop Robby Anderson" for 4 straight weeks, then he scores 2 long TDs in one game and next week it's "Add Robby Anderson". There is entirely too much #content.
Anyway, this game is going to be decided by which gadget Bear has a better day and which deep threat connects on one. And it won't be decided until the Bengals are done on Sunday night. I say a Joe Mixon rushing TD is the difference.
THE PICK: WTTK 93 - TNB 90
THE WHITECHAPEL RIPPERS (4-2) vs. ANIMAL HOUSE (4-2)
Cardinals OC Mike McCoy is a fucking idiot. You have a back who can post a 2,000-yard rushing/receiving season in a league having an offensive explosion. You've seen six weeks' worth of other teams splitting backs out wide, running RPO, getting to the edge with misdirection, and you just bang him into middle of your terrible offensive line over and over and over and over. It's an absolute crime against the sport. It's a complete fucking disgrace. It's like making Steph Curry post up in the paint.
I'd say it's hard to the believe the Cardinals hired him after he did nothing with the Chargers, but failson Cards President Michael Bidwell doesn't think his old prep school chum Brett Kavanaugh raped anybody either, so maybe he just isn't concerned with people's pasts.
There's a site I look at that charts Opportunity Points, which is how many points a player should have based on targets, games, etc. You can decide whether to believe that stuff or not, but Jarvis Landry has been flashing bright green for a month straight. At some point he is going to have a breakout game, so why not this week against the terrible Bucs defense?
He and Evans should both surpass Michael Thomas, who will be closer to ARob's point total. AJ will be nice against the Chiefs, but I don't love Brady, McCaffrey, or Ingram this week.
Larry feels that once again he's middled his team. Not good enough to really compete, not bad enough to blow it up and start over. He couldn't even close the books on a deal for David Johnson, who was once so valuable entire scams were crafted just to get him on a team for six weeks. Let his win this week just add to his confusion.
THE PICK: TWR 88 - AH 81
SEASON: 26-10
The roster arms race we're going through is fascinating. I don't want to overreact too much because it's possible that this is just a one-off and the 2018 season has the perfect confluence of catalytic factors up to and including:
- Chris and Scott winning the last 3 titles while mostly eschewing the draft (Credit very begrudgingly given where due)
- The league falling into clear tiers following the 2018 draft with 2-3 dominant teams, 2-3 junk teams, and a big, muddy middle
- So 2-3 teams had incentive to sell off players almost immediately
- And the remaining teams knew they needed to add players if they wanted to join the elite tier
- A 2019 draft that is shaping up to be historically bereft of talent, diluting the normal power of picks
- With the NFL setting new records for passer rating, total TDs, passing yards, and passing TDs, more receivers than ever have value and 2nd- or 3rd-tier receivers are worth trading for
- A quick flurry of trades last week that became like a positional run during a draft, with teams jockeying to capture players who were still available and useful while also trying to box out other owners from bolstering their teams
But we might also on the bleeding edge here, much like in the NFL itself where coaches like McVay, Pederson, and Reid are becoming more aggressive, creating mismatches, and outracing old fashioned coaches. It'll be interesting to see what happens in 2019.
That said, there is a downside to all of these moves.
Scott might still be alive at 2-5 depending on how other teams do, and he's already ordered one gross of Back2Back AFFL Champions snapbacks that he doesn't want to donate to Sudanese children, so we have 8-9 teams that need to get to 8 wins by Week 13. Every matchup is crucial right now and with so many kicker and defenses byes coming up, things are going to get interesting, mainly on the CapSum tab.
Some teams have the roster cushion and cap space to easily fill in the bye. Why do you think I grabbed the Jets after that trade last week? Only $0.56 for the 3rd-highest scoring defense this season? Yes, please! I saw this crunch coming and got out ahead of it. I'm always looking forward, never backwards. That's not just fantasy football advice for you, that's life advice.
But some teams out there have a panicked accounting department right now. Buncha numbers nerds all making pivot tables and yelling at each other.
"ARE YOU SURE THESE NUMBERS ARE RIGHT?!"
"I CHECKED THREE TIMES, RANDY! I DIDN'T INVENT MATH, OKAY? I CAN'T CHANGE NUMERICAL FACTS!"
"YOU GOTTA TELL THE BOSS THAT WE MIGHT BE SHORT IN WEEK 10!"
"I'M NOT TELLING HIM. YOU TELL HIM!"
Of the Nifty Nine, I'd say that only McCamey, Bri, M. Barker, and I will easily cover the K/DST byes, mainly because BM and BW already have two kickers and MB and MK already have two defenses.
Meyers' kicker has a bye this week, so if he just drops Boswell for one of the four kickers who've already had their bye, he should be okay. Scott is a little iffier because all of his players are either very expensive or very cheap, and he might have to drop name player for cap space. Or he'll be out of it by then and it won't matter.
That leaves us with Tim, Larry, and Gary, all of whom, believe it or not, have the SAME BYE WEEK for their current kickers and defense. All of these come before the roster freeze, so that's one problem eliminated. Yes, Tim already has a second kicker, but their byes are back to back in Weeks 10 and 11, so he can't even drop one kicker for a fill in defense because the freeze is after Week 10. He's already just barely inside the cap, so I have absolutely no idea how Tim is going to finesse this without trades.
Neither Gary nor Larry have a second kicker or defenses, and with the thin cap space they have, it's going to take some pretty good maneuvering to find another kicker and defense that A) Have already had their byes, B) Are affordable, and C) Aren't terrible.
But we're not done yet! As it happens, Larry plays Russellmania in Week 9 and Gary plays the same team in Week 10. Do they both think Brian is bad enough to be beaten with 75% of a roster?
Well, at the moment, the top 12 defenses are averaging 6.3 PPG and the top 12 kickers average 7.6 PPG for a total of 13.9 PPG. Do Gary and Larry think they'll be favored by 14 points over Brian? Will they have a game to possibly throw away by then? And if Brian racks up some cheap wins, what happens to his lottery odds?
Some real butterfly effect shit going on, folks!
Expect some squirrelly-looking trades in the next few weeks that are like K <--> DST + 9th round pick. Hey, that reminds me. Did we ever pass that No Borrowing Players rule after Gary cheated to rent David Johnson?
WHEW. I think that's it for now. Let's (finally) get to this week's action.
Bri took the inside track on the #1 seed with his big win last week and I'm not sure who's going to slow him down and edge him out. It's possible that he has enough of a lead going into Week 12 that he can withstand a double loss with Gurley and Kelce out and still get one of the byes. This season, Bri is simply...
On the music front, I don't expect that any of you actually listen to any of the songs because your coolness factor is (x-1) where x=0, but that's not going to stop me from trying to turn up your lives a little bit. But I am embarrassed to be a tech-savvy person who kept embedding Spotify sniplets instead of just switching over to YouTube embeds to have an inline experience. Poor user experience on my part.
I definitely don't expect you to listen to Metallica, but for my money, this is the best song ever about Moses telling the Pharaoh to let his people go before the Egyptians all lost their first born sons. But there ain't no amount of lamb's blood you can smear on your playbook to stop Bri from raining down fiery hail on your team, leaving you in darkness for three days until Thursday Night Football kicks off.
Man, picturing an image of Bri with his perfectly parted hair, dress shirt, and glowing red eyes chanting "Die! By my hand! I creep across the land." as he smashes little plastic football helmets with his fists is really, really amusing. I wish I was good at Photoshop.
THE DUDE HAS GOT NO MERCY (3-3) vs. LITTLE BABY JESUS (2-4)
Speaking of rule changes, did we ever pass that rule where if the highest-scoring team in the league is out of the playoffs by record, they automatically get the 6 seed? Because if the playoffs started today, I'd currently be on the outside.
(While we're stuck on rule changes, next year I'm proposing a Choose Your Own Adventure playoff system in which the higher seeds get to choose their opponent in the playoffs. So in Wild Card week the #3 seed picks his opponent, and in the Semi-Finals, the #1 seed picks his opponent. Be ready to vote YEA on this rule change next year.)
I'm a little surprised Semi didn't start Royce Freeman to try and beat me with all of my all old players. He missed out on a TD with Freeman benched, but Phil Lindsay made up for it with a garbage time TD on which the Cardinals seemingly had no interest in getting grass stains on their pants.
I wouldn't say that I'm concerned about it, but I am at least aware that it's possible I lose this game and fall to 3-4, thereby having the same record as Semi, who started selling off his team last week. Especially with Brees playing outside on the road against a good Ravens defense. That's usually a 10-point game for him. But Golladay, Hill, and Brown should all be fine. I really hope Brown is fine because Barker sent me some real smoke about Smokey this week after he had two down games. Seemed like he had that draft saved for weeks and just itching to hit send on it.
But if Tyreek and Butker don't finish this game off for me Sunday night, Odell and Saquon definitely will on Monday night. The Falcons defense has been crushed by backs this year, both on the ground and passes. They're giving up 11 catches a GAME to backs and Eli targets Saquon with dump off passes 111 times a game. James Conner put up 30 on the Falcons. Hell, Peyton Barber had his first good game against them last week. Beckham and Barkley might combine for 50 in this one.
THE PICK: TDHGNM 110 - LBJ 83
HEISENBERG (3-3) vs. TIMMY DOESN'T HAVE ANY FRIENDS (2-4)
Gary clipped me on the Ito Smith pickup this week and has tossed him right into the starting lineup. Scott didn't have to beat out anybody to grab Josh Rosen this week and unfortunately he also went into the starting lineup. I was really hoping Rosen would finish the whole game in negative numbers, not just the first half, but he scraped and clawed his way to 3.8 points well after everybody gave up watching that game.
Speaking of Scott's roster moves, he publicly made AB available last night and the price will be high, as it should be based on the current trade market and AB's status. Now, I'm willing to be wrong here, but looking around the league, I think I might be the only contender who has both the franchise player spot flexibility and the cap space to actually pull this deal off. The only other possibility I see, barring some team totally blowing up their current roster, is Semi. But is he already willing to punt on his cache of draft picks for just one player?
Anyway, we should assume that Matt Ryan will score more than 3.8 points this week, even though he's playing outside at night. The Giants secondary is easier to get through than a cool breeze. I'm done predicting when or if Julio will score a TD, but at this point don't be surprised if he posts something like 38 yards, 1 TD and actually scores fewer points than when he has a huge day with no scores. Ito will be dependent on what Coleman does first and Peyton will have trouble with a good Browns defense. That leaves Alvin to do something against both the Ravens and Mark Ingram.
On the other side, if TJ Yeldon is going to stay iffy, it might not be a bad idea for Scott to start Albert Wilson against the Lions. (Chris Berman voice: UNCLE Albert Wilson. Someone's knocking on the door, let him in. TO THE END ZONE!)
Gary has Ryan, Ito, and Julio all going on Monday night while Scott just has Sterling Shepherd, but I think Gary is going to be sweating this one out a little longer than he might want to. Every red zone target that goes to Coleman or Ridley or Sanu or Hooper is going to be met with the gnashing of teeth and the rending of garments.
THE PICK: HB 76 - TDHAF 63
RUSSELLMANIA (1-5) vs. ASSTANNER (1-5)
In another fun scheduling quirk, Russellmania has gone from a 1-4 v. 1-4 battle to a 1-5 v. 1-5 battle in consecutive weeks. A lot of $3 upper bowl tickets available on StubHub for this one.
Another quirk is that Chris currently has the 6th-highest scoring offense, which isn't bad, but the most points against, which is bad. That said, he's averaging 80 points in his 5 losses and 145 points in his 1 win. A little unbalanced. If you take away that one fluke week, he only has the 10th-best offense and would be 0-6. More importantly, I'd be 4-2.
If you have a couple of minutes to spare today (after the 35 minutes you've spent reading this), you should really take a quick peek at these two rosters. They're really something.
THE PICK: AT 59 - RM 55
THAT KANGAROO STOLE MY BALL (5-1) vs. SIGMUND AND THE SEAMONSTER (4-2)
Bri's team is so good that they got bored and started having wide receivers throw touchdown passes last night. I'd like Coleman over Breida a little more this week, but does it really even matter? All Donte Moncrief did last week was steal $0.19 from Bri's cap space and that didn't matter a bit.
It's a shame too, because Tim has good matchups with Goff and Woods, plus Diggs. It's just that Sanders already put up 20 points, Gurley will get close to 30 against the Niners and there's 50 points right there.
Not sure what else you want me to say about it. Creeping death, I already told you.
THE PICK: TKSMB 108 - SS 95
THE NIGHT BOYS (3-3) vs. WTTK? (4-2)
For all the years he was screwed by having tons and tons of points scored on him, Barker is currently 3-3 and in the hunt despite the 2nd-worst offense in the league because he has the 2nd-fewest points against.
This is a huge game for these two. Going to 4-3 would give Barker a little more control in his quest to end his playoff drought, while going to 5-2 would give McCamey a nice edge on winning the best division in the league.
Not that I respect the CBS projections all that much, but I'm surprised they're that low on these teams this week. I think these rosters are pretty stacked with good matchups and this should be a shootout. I like Dalton more than Rivers this week since Kansas City can't slow down anybody (or maybe they just don't care to) whereas the Titans have been mucking up low-scoring games. Plus, being a red-blooded super patriot, Rivers is probably going to be uncomfortable in England since they probably don't even have a dang ol' Bill of Rights over there!
A good day for Dalton will be a good day for Boyd, and Cooks and Thielen will be good as well. There's a little concern for Hopkins with Jalen Ramsey on him, especially because DeShaun might not have enough time to throw. Cohen is another concern since he's game flow and touchdown dependent. It's either 5 or 15 for him.
The same could be said for Taylor Gabriel on the other side, so I guess it washes out. Even if the Titans make the game ugly for Rivers, Gordon will still grind out yards and a TD, and Mixon will go off against the Chiefs.
Speaking of Gabriel real quick, we're deep into my least favorite part of the fantasy season, which is every single Week X Adds and Week Y Sleepers article just being a list of Guys Who Scored A TD Last Week. Christ, I read "Drop Robby Anderson" for 4 straight weeks, then he scores 2 long TDs in one game and next week it's "Add Robby Anderson". There is entirely too much #content.
Anyway, this game is going to be decided by which gadget Bear has a better day and which deep threat connects on one. And it won't be decided until the Bengals are done on Sunday night. I say a Joe Mixon rushing TD is the difference.
THE PICK: WTTK 93 - TNB 90
THE WHITECHAPEL RIPPERS (4-2) vs. ANIMAL HOUSE (4-2)
Cardinals OC Mike McCoy is a fucking idiot. You have a back who can post a 2,000-yard rushing/receiving season in a league having an offensive explosion. You've seen six weeks' worth of other teams splitting backs out wide, running RPO, getting to the edge with misdirection, and you just bang him into middle of your terrible offensive line over and over and over and over. It's an absolute crime against the sport. It's a complete fucking disgrace. It's like making Steph Curry post up in the paint.
I'd say it's hard to the believe the Cardinals hired him after he did nothing with the Chargers, but failson Cards President Michael Bidwell doesn't think his old prep school chum Brett Kavanaugh raped anybody either, so maybe he just isn't concerned with people's pasts.
There's a site I look at that charts Opportunity Points, which is how many points a player should have based on targets, games, etc. You can decide whether to believe that stuff or not, but Jarvis Landry has been flashing bright green for a month straight. At some point he is going to have a breakout game, so why not this week against the terrible Bucs defense?
He and Evans should both surpass Michael Thomas, who will be closer to ARob's point total. AJ will be nice against the Chiefs, but I don't love Brady, McCaffrey, or Ingram this week.
Larry feels that once again he's middled his team. Not good enough to really compete, not bad enough to blow it up and start over. He couldn't even close the books on a deal for David Johnson, who was once so valuable entire scams were crafted just to get him on a team for six weeks. Let his win this week just add to his confusion.
THE PICK: TWR 88 - AH 81
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