It started with darkness. Then there was an unbearable, unreachable, unfathomable feeling of a fleeting memory that I once was something. Then there was the damning realization that now, in this dark, empty moment, I no longer was anything. I had ceased to exist; I’d been erased from time and space and all there was of me was an empty black space and a tight, cold panic. I was nothing.
Then there was struggle. I threw what there was of me (if there was anything at all) into some impossible weight and did my absolute best to move it. I felt sweaty and exhausted, and as I pushed and pushed against whatever it was I was pushing and pushing against, the blackness gave way to a pale white flash which in turn gave way to four blurry silhouettes of women in white coats. I could feel their shouts, but I couldn’t yet understand what they were shouting. Apparently, it was only a matter of a few seconds until my eyes were fully open and some semblance of color returned to my face. Slowly, my memory started meandering back to me. I remembered a short woman wearing blue gloves and the words “Here comes a little pinch.” At one point, apparent consciousness returned to my face, and three of the women in white coats flitted away to tend to their own patients, but the fourth remained standing in front of me, using a large clipboard to fan air at my face. “I bet you don’t have women fan you like this all the time,” she said with what I think was a smile.
After a few minutes, I stumbled (with a lot of assistance) to a back room where I laid back and let the blood come back to my brain. A Beach Boys song played from the Windows XP style Media Player on the computer across the room, and after a few minutes of rest, I started to feel like myself again.
I signed the forms and said goodbye to the various women in white coats who’d helped me, and then slowly made my way back into the waiting room.
It had started with darkness. I had become a tiny, inconsequential wave floating through the void. I had ceased to exist. I had become absolutely nothing, but as she held my hand, gently guiding me through the parking lot and into the safety of her car, I realized that everything I felt for that, apparently, very short time in the darkness was wrong. I am something, and no amount of nothing can change that.
This year seems like a race to the middle. Six of us are 2-2, with only one unbeaten and one winless team left. Maybe by the end of the regular season we can all be 7-7! Wouldn’t that be a glorious clusterfuck.
THAT THING THE NCAA DID LAST WEEK THAT WILL MAKE YOU HATE THE NCAA
Is it just me or were there no new huge scandals rocking the NFL last week? Not even anything new to get outraged about in the current scandals. Maybe I just missed them. What I didn’t miss was Michigan coach Brady Hoke letting his QB play on when he could barely stand after a concussion. Then Hoke went on to claim it wasn’t his job to decide who plays and essentially buried his head in the sand. The initial injury is tragic enough but someone’s going to die out on the field with that kind of lax coaching. Michigan can’t fire him fast enough. I will say I do applaud the student protests calling for Hoke’s job, the institution might be inept but at least some of the students aren’t.
Also the NCAA is so comically easy to hate that this item could be run daily, but that’s a whole other can of worms. I could just say they still don’t pay their players every day and be done with it.
Thursday Night Football. One team, if not both, is too beaten up from the previous week that they play like shit. The games are rarely competitive and almost never a good representation of professional football. But hey, ratings! ALSO MAYBE I LOST THIS WEEK ON THURSDAY NIGHT AND HAVEN’T QUITE GOTTEN OVER IT YET.
***MATCHUP OF THE WEEK***
Silly NICK wins are for me (3-1) over Sad Cowboy (0-4)
Visual Approximation:
So many points the scoreboard was lighting up like fireworks!
Of the 18 positions started between Connie and Nick, only Brandin Cooks failed to reach 10 points. Connie lead all scores this week and Nick came in 3rd. This matchup broke 300 total points when Stu vs. Ryan King didn’t even break 200. That is some bonkers shit. 32.8 from Jordy Nelson is great and all but he’s the kind of player you can expect an amazing score from. What was really nuts was getting 31 from Matt Asiata, 23.3 from Travis Kelce and 20.3 from Ryan Tannehill. I’ll admit I’d never even heard of Asiata or Kelce at the start of the season. It was a complicated mess of byes, injuries, and suspensions that led to Connie starting those three guys, but the results were spectacular. Vereen and Gronk even managed to score 11 each with some garbage time heroics thanks to some guy named Jimmy Garoppolo coming off the bench to spell Tom Brady in a blowout. Tell me I’m not the only one that thinks this everytime I hear “Jimmy Garoppolo”. That’s not weird right? I imagine if either of them got a sex change they’d transition to the other’s name, just seems natural.
Nick lost by 22.3, but things were actually very close at times Monday night. Jamaal Charles finally played like the #1 overall pick. He doubled his season total for carries and more than tripled his season total for fantasy points, breaking 100 total yards and scoring 3 TD’s. While all that was happening Connie’s three players were doing next to nothing. A very unlikely win appeared to be taking shape. I’m not sure if this is as close as it got but I remember checking and seeing Nick was down less than three points early in the third quarter. Then Charles was shut down to avoid any injury risk while Kelce and Gronk both scored TD’s, putting Nick away for good. Moral victories aren’t anywhere near actual ones, but they’re all Nick can get at the moment. This was his highest score of the season by 46.2 points and he would’ve beaten 10 of us this week. 0-4 is a nightmare but it’s not a death sentence, especially with only one 4-0 team left. Other than Charles no one managed to break 20, but Nick had enough balance with the rest of his roster that he should win nine times out of ten. This was just the tenth. At least he can look at that obnoxious J.J. Watt interception return and smile.
Depressing sidenote: Like many of us (though not me for once) Nick is in another fantasy league. He is 0-4 there as well. A few more weeks like this and we’ll need to invent a fantasy “It Gets Better” campaign for Nick.
Clayton’s Team (2-2) over Started From The Bottom (2-2)
Visual Approximation:
Megatron was definitely broken on Sunday.
Clayton’s MVP (in this case that stands for Most Valuable Position) has to be the Philly D/ST. In one of the stranger games in recent memory, the Eagles were comically inept when they started a play with the ball but unbelievably dangerous when San Francisco started the play with the ball. They had a TAINT, a blocked kick returned for a TD, and a punt return TD. At one point the Eagles had 21 points and 50 total yards of offense. They even had four sacks and another interception. They actually gave up enough points to go negative by our scoring system (not to mention to lose the game), but ended up with 25.5 fantasy points thanks to all the big plays. Brady and Graham took way too long to wake up to help their team (more on this in a sec), but did just fine for Clayton. Golden Tate stepped up while Calvin Johnson was hurt and playing decoy. The Saints basically dared Terrence Williams to beat them, and he more than delivered with two early TD’s. Those led to less double coverage on Dez, which eventually led to his own TD. And all of those passes were set up by a dominant run game powered by an impressive looking offensive line. I’m not used to that kind of sound game planning from the Cowboys. So that begs the question: is Dallas actually a good football team this year? Surely it must be an illusion, some key injury is lurking. I refuse to believe this team can do anything better or worse than 8-8, and will remain adamant about that until their 9th win or 9th loss.
Sunday night’s game was just brutal for Mahoney. He had a decent lead and the threat of Julian Edelman points on his side going into Cowboys vs. Saints. Two TD’s from Terrence Williams early on definitely hurt, but Brees and Graham were so ineffective that Mahoney had to like his chances. But the New Orleans offense finally woke up, if only briefly, in the second half. Suddenly Brees/Graham went from a combined 10 points to a combined 40 points. Then to top it all off Edelman under-performed, making the final score not all that close. Much like Nick, Mahoney scored enough points to expect a win, but ran into the wrong opponent at the wrong time. Not even Steve Smith’s revenge game could power him to victory. Neither could big games from Matt Stafford and Martellus Bennett. I’m not sure if Mahoney should be encouraged that he can get to 135 with his two stud receivers both hobbled with ankle injuries or just concerned that his two stud receivers are both hobbled with ankle injuries. Megatron and Brandon Marshall combined for four catches and 31 yards, with a TD obscuring Marshall’s sad performance a bit.
Depressing sidenote: Our top four scores this week were all involved in just two games, which means our 3rd and 4th highest scorers both lost. Mahoney and Nick both beat the still-undefeated Matt F’s score by more than 20 but came away with losses. Fantasy just isn’t fair sometimes. And by sometimes I mean all times.
Dallas Cowboys (1-3) over Julius Thomas the Tank Engine (3-1)
Visual Approximation:
The defense here was so bad I had to switch sports to accurately capture its ineptitude. The Panthers and the Washington Racist Team Names more or less threw 11 James Harden’s out there last week. ps I love James Harden and his magnificent beard, but there are roughly 1,000 similar gifs out there. Dude just does not care about defense.
It was ugly, much like that team pic of Jerry Jones in last week’s South Park, but Ryan finally won a game. If I had told you his QB, RB1, and defense combined for -.9, how much would you expect him to lose by? 50? 80? Instead, some truly spectacular showings by Antonio Brown and Eddie Royal combined with a down week from Stu actually gave Ryan the win by 21.9. Is this kind of success sustainable? Probably not, but I’m sure Ryan’s just happy to win. Brown now has 5 TD’s in 4 games and gets to run effortlessly past Jacksonville defenders next week. Royal has 4 TD’s in his past two games, 4 TD’s that I really needed on my guys so I could be 4-0, NOT THAT I’M BITTER ABOUT THAT OR ANYTHING. T.Y. Hilton had another game of catching everything BUT touchdowns, which is both nice and a bit frustrating all at once. Sammy Watkins is staying productive despite his quarterback’s questionable accuracy. It’s sad that I have to say this but it might be true, Kyle Orton’s return could be a good thing for Watkins. Baltimore’s backfield has become a huge mess with the loss of Ray Rice, but Taliaferro managed to find the end zone and make his score respectable.
In the end Stu couldn’t survive his byes, and the dream of an undefeated season comes to a close. Julius Thomas the Tank Engine without Julius Thomas (or Marshawn Lynch) is a sad affair, and Stu has this week’s lowest score to prove it. Some inconsistent play got Aaron Rodgers benched, so of course he went off for 4 QT’s. However, Philip Rivers was almost as good this week, so that wasn’t the problem. Even Trent Richardson had a good game, which I didn’t think was even possible. The problem is no one else could make it to 15 points, lowlighted by Carolina’s -6.5. A DeAngelo Williams injury sure didn’t help, and neither did that shitshow Thursday night. My glorious QB only completed four passes to WR’s all night, and only one of those went to DeSean. Garrett Graham certainly didn’t help either, his 5.8 points didn’t even approach half of what Stu has come to expect from the TE position.
Depressing sidenote: Defenses here combined for -13.5. Are our new rules too stringent or were their defenses really just that bad?
HALFTIME!
Adventures in Early 20th Century Horror Fiction
33%… Starting to lose steam a bit. I CAN ONLY TAKE SO MUCH FLOWERY WRITING ABOUT CULTS AND “DAEMONS”.
First novel finished, it kept getting goofier and goofier, culminating in the reveal that the leader of the Other Gods (which may or may not be Cthulhu’s dudes, the squid-man was not directly referenced) isn’t really all that evil, just more of a jerk. He helps the protagonist because it will ruin the fun the nicer gods of Earth were having. Because he’s a jerk.
Speaking of gods, here’s a nice little infographic of their activities in the Lovecraftverse:
For all the bad press they get, these gods seem pretty chill most of the time.
The second novel is set in reality, so no flying cats or boat rides to the moon just yet. Started off looking like plagiarized Frankenstein, but we finally got into the occult stuff and immortality and all that fancy Lovecraft stuff.
I saw this on a t-shirt and almost bought it:
The Bortle Squad (2-2) over Drew loves TBradys balls (1-3)
Visual Approximation:
Those are some bad motherfuckin Squirtles
Much like Ryan King, Chang got an awful combined score from his QB, RB2 (technically Ryan’s was an RB1 but meh), and defense but still won handily. In Chang’s case they combined for 4.9, a little better than Ryan’s case but still truly awful. But, thanks to great scores everywhere else (minus maybe Mike Wallace) Chang still broke 120. Randall Cobb didn’t quite match Jordy’s output, but he still made it past 30 points. Matt Forte managed 170 yards in that same game. Kelvin Benjamin scored another TD, his third already. Delanie Walker did the same, and is apparently the best receiver on the Titans. Even James Jones did alright Sunday, in a game that was so bad it got his coach fired. Much like Ryan I don’t know how many weeks Chang can win when Foles can’t make it to 4 and his defense scores a brutal -8, but I’m sure he’ll gladly take this and move on.
There are no ugly negatives scores among Boone’s starting lineup, but only two of his players broke the 15 point threshold. Right now Boone needs Julio Jones to play at a superhuman level every week. Simply being decent like this week won’t cut it. Victor Cruz had another good game, but all the TDs went to SOME TIGHT END WHO I AM GETTING READY TO BITCH ABOUT AT LENGTH. Andre Johnson has fallen from “superstar” to “dependable”, he won’t be the reason Boone wins most weeks but he also won’t be the reason he loses. Things could’ve been much worse though, Dwayne Allen, Darren Sproles, and Eddie Lacy were all pretty terrible, but scored touchdowns to make their numbers look at least semi-passable. MJD though… you’ve gotta feel for the guy. Years of being the only thing fun about Jacksonville football followed by an undignified likely end to his career with the Raiders? Rough way to go.
Depressing sidenote: What the hell happened to Danny Amendola? Did he shit in Belichick’s Mueslix or something? He’s out there playing but no one will throw him the ball.
Three Prom Queens (4-0) over Mr. Welker’s Wild Ride (2-2)
Visual Approximation:
That was pretty much me Thursday night as everything possible could go wrong. I ended the night down 60-something points and never really made it interesting. Losing on Thursday night sucks, puts a damper on the whole weekend.
First of all, fuck Larry Donnell. THREE TD’S IN THE FIRST HALF!? MY TEAM COMBINED FOR 3 TD’S! His 30.4 points were bad enough, but Alfred Morris and Reuben Randle piled on for another 34.9 combined to crush my hopes prematurely. The rest of Matt’s team managed to not shit the bed, so he held on for a comfortable win. Matt Ryan broke 20 yet again, while Le’Veon Bell caught enough passes to make up for a poor rushing performance. Cordarelle Patterson’s first game with a rookie QB failed to impress. Bridgewater was given a very safe gameplan of short throws, and Patterson’s talents in the vertical passing game were largely ignored. Perhaps the success they saw in the rookie QB will earn a few more risky play calls in the coming weeks. Meanwhile Allen Robinson definitely looked like a player on the Jacksonville Jaguars. Matt’s two Patriots were so awful I actually ended Monday night closer to victory despite having no players available, but it hardly mattered. If only the Patriots gave up 22 more points!
Second of all, fuck Kirk Cousins. YOU COULDN’T WAIT ONE MORE WEEK BEFORE TURNING BACK INTO COMPLETE SHIT!? I WANTED 15-20 POINTS OUT OF YOU AND THEN A I COULD MAKE A FAVORABLE TRADE! THANKS ASSHOLE! I died a little inside during each of his five turnovers, so I’m actually writing this from beyond the grave. Because Kirk Cousins literally killed me. The rest of my team was all over the place. Everyone either broke 20 or couldn’t break 10. Unfortunately the single digits outnumbered the twenties 6-3. DeMarco Murray is currently leading the league in rushing, AND he didn’t even fumble! Keenan Allen is in fact alive! And Miami proved that you always want to be playing vs. Oakland. The problem is, everyone else combined for 30.3 points. As in, fucking Larry Donnell outscored six of my players combined. SIX! Have I made clear yet how stupid that is!? The biggest issue with all of those guys outside of Kirk Cousins (Cousins was just plain bad) was a lack of touches. Thomas only got two carries all night (and it’s not like anyone else on that offense was being productive), while none of my remaining receivers got more than five targets. It’s like coaching staffs across the league were actively ensuring that I would lose this week. CONSPIRACY! CONSPIRACY I SAY!
Depressing sidenote: Of course Torrey Smith, who will probably be here every week one way or another, scores a TD once I bench him. I figured this week would be all about Steve Smith (even more than the rest of the season already…) and it was, but Torrey still managed to sneak in a TD and make me sad.
Kickers Are People Too (2-2) over The Fighting Mongooses (2-2)
Visual Approximation:
Had to break my images only rule because I somehow couldn’t find that gif’d anywhere. That’s Kevin Spacey desperately trying to salvage that boring Superman movie. It works here because Victoria was WRONG!!! about most everything.
Despite 4 byes and only two players over fifteen points, Derek wins convincingly. Reggie Wayne had his best day of the year by a fair margin, leading all of Derek’s scores. He, Dez Bryant, DeAndre Hopkins, and (oddly enough) Ahmad Bradshaw all caught TD’s this week, making up the bulk of the difference between Derek’s score and Victoria’s. Victoria only had one TD for comparison. Owen Daniels didn’t exactly set the world on fire, but he didn’t really need to either. Another disappointing week for Cam Newton can’t feel great though, and neither can Rashad Jennings falling back to earth in a game that New York dominated so thoroughly.
So Victoria lost by 25.3 points. She also benched the #1 player in fantasy for Colin Kaepernick. Kaepernick did fine, but Andrew Luck proved he’s a must-start every week with 29.6 points, aka 9.1 more than Kaepernick. She also started Shonn Greene over Frank Gore. Gore had 24.4 points, or if you’d prefer, 23.4 points more than Greene. So with two very simple and logical changes to her lineup Victoria would be 3-1 and threatening Matt in The Chodes. That’s what I mean when Keven Spacey says she was WRONG!!! That Vernon Davis injury didn’t help much either. I do find it a bit funny that with with four different 49ers on her team she managed to bench the absolute WRONG!!! one.
(Sorry Victoria… I just really love that clip)
Depressing sidenote: Adrian Peterson and Ray Rice are still on Victoria and Derek’s benches respectively (TAKE THE HINT)
Waiver Wire Stupidity
Well I spent $12 more than I need to on Darrin Reaves, Boone spent $17 more than he needed to on Brandon LaFell, but Ryan King takes the cake for spending $38 more than he needed to on Eli Manning. More than 1/3 of his waiver money gone for a guy he could’ve had for free.
A Look Ahead
Me vs. Chang
My byes: Knowshon Moreno
Chang’s byes: Mike Wallace, James Jones
2-2 vs. 2-2, byes hurt Chang a little more considering Moreno’s still hurt and wouldn’t play anyways. Knowing how my games go this will be something like 110-108. Close and low scoring is how I do it apparently.
Mahoney vs. Matt F
Mahoney’s byes: none
Matt F’s byes: none
Mahoney gets the next shot at killing Goliath. Which is funny in my head because Mahoney is like 6’2″ and Matt F is 5’3″ if we’re being generous. (I did the quotes right didn’t I? Single quote for feet, double for inches? I’m too lazy to look it up, this looks right)
Clayton vs. Derek
Clayton’s bye: Lamar Miller
Derek’s byes: Bryan Hartline
Returning to old team names is a dangerous game. Don’t want to tempt the power of The Lame Club after all.
Nick vs. Ryan King
Nick’s byes: Darren McFadden, Derek Carr
Ryan’s byes: none
Ryan had to go and win last week so I can’t make 0-4 vs. 0-4 jokes. What a bastard. Nick scored 140 and still help up his end of the bargain! Also, Sad Cowboy vs. Dallas Cowboys, adorable.
Connie vs. Stu
Connie’s byes: Ryan Tannehill
Stu’s byes: none
They’re both in first place but a loss by either could drop then to 2nd, they’ve gotta win if they want to keep control of their respective divisions.
Victoria vs. Boone
Victoria’s byes: none
Boone’s byes: Maurice Jones-Drew
I say boo to Boone for screwing up his own team name pattern. Could you really only find 3 Drews of note out there?
Rogue Group Writing 