Monday Update: The New Normal

Gentlemen,

Many of you (myself included) got housed this weekend. I'm not talking drunk, although I'm sure a couple of you did that too - especially after that Gopher game - but I'm referring to our FF games.

Prior to this week, the highest score for the entire season was 159.66 (Crapswell, Week 4) but the top scorer each week was oddly consistent: 150.48, 155.12, 158.4, 159.66, 156.5, 155.48, 153.16.

That all changed this week. Kenni scored 167 against me, and that was only good enough for the 3rd highest score, and might even end up 4th. Dallus put 195, and Gow (currently at 167.32) has a legit shot to beat that tonight.

Coming into this week, the average points per game for our entire league was 121 (and this number will be going up this week). What that essentially means is scoring 121 only gives you a 50-50 shot to win.

This is the league now, gentlemen. It's not just the added SuperFlex and scoring changes - it's the new normal in the NFL. Offense is winning football games, and thus it's changing the standard of winning in Fantasy Football.

Remember when you used to think "I just need each guy to get me double digits"? Not anymore. That's nowhere near good enough today. Quarterbacks? Basically a bust week if they don't get you at least 20pts.

Points are no longer at a premium - they're everywhere.

It's time to do something about it.

I'm happy to see that all this "giving up" talk truly does appear to be just talk so far. While Coconuts and Fredricks seem to be trumpeting those mantras, both made aggressive trades this week to try and dig their teams out of their funk.

And they should, because things are very tight. We'll get to the standings in a bit, but aside from the runaways at the top (Gow and Dallus), there is not much separation amongst the rest of us*. There is almost always at least one sub-.500 team that makes it into the playoffs, and I would wager heavily on that this year. In fact, I think we could possibly see two.

*Yes, despite Kenni being 6-2, I'm still lumping him in with the rest of us because he can't continue to have his schedule be this goddamn easy.

The point is that you have 5 weeks left! If you have FAAB left, what are you waiting for?? There are 9 guys available on the Waiver Wire that scored > 15pts this week.

If you have guys collecting dust on your roster, why are you holding them? Whatever you drafted them for no longer matters. Stock prices in August aren't relevant in October.

If you don't like trading, that's on you, but what do you have to lose? Especially if you're currently below .500. At least start perusing some other teams' rosters and seeing who is on their benches.

I'm telling you this with 100% sincerity: every single one of us can make the playoffs.

IT'S TRUE! If Gow and Dallus keep collecting wins at the top, it's going to be a dogfight for the rest of us. You don't need to go 5-0... Just going 3-2 over these next 5 games can be the difference.

Every year, I have to type one of these pep-rally type posts. In part, to boost my own confidence, and also to encourage others to stay active and don't give up.

There are points available everywhere. Make some moves. Start guys on a hunch. Don't be afraid to go with your gut, against all the rankings/advice out there. Ignore the noise.

All the fun... All the angst... All the love... All the stress... It all goes away in 5 weeks, for at least four teams. You may or may not be one of those unlucky four, but at least make sure you play these next 5 weeks YOUR WAY. And leave no regrets.

I bid you all good luck. Godspeed, gents.

Team Names

Well last week was kinda dumb... I thought people would have more interesting food stories rather than just "Eggplant", which isn't even that bad.

Let's get back to our groove this week, especially since I'm trying to light a fire under everyone... It's everyone's favorite: BOTT Possessive Nouns.

We all know what these are, but just for fun let's review some from the past:

• Weidman's Nurples
• Dewitt's Creepiness
• Wacie's Spoiler
• Hals's Pyramid Scheme
• Knutson's Leadership
• Lunas's Finances

...and the all-time best team name ever (yes, I'm declaring it even though it was my team): Bolger's Pink Thing.

Do your worst, boys. We'll be voting on these next week.

The Games

There's really no drama left for tonight, so I'm just going to go with the headlines this week, then we'll take a peek at tomorrow's standings.

Kenni (167.08) is going to beat Jerks (89.94). I have two guys playing tonight to try and get a respectable score. This game is basically every game I've ever played against Kenni. 

Fredricks (134.28) beats Titwarmer (119.26). Ned was up by like 50-60 points at one point...

Dallus (195.44) eviscerates Whitebread (90.46). Take a look at Kenni/Jerks match and replace the winners and losers names with these. Good luck with Garcon, Cracker.

Gow (166.82) destroys Coconuts (120.58). It was Coconuts highest score since Week 1 and it didn't matter. Gow needs Murray to get him 30pts for Points Bonus. 

Crapswell (132.24) should beat Crabs (107.10). This is the match most in doubt, and Andy is a 96% favorite. Barring some Roethlisbeger-esque game from Romo, this is over.

So here's tomorrow's standings (points scored tonight could alter some ties)...

Place	Team	Record
1st	Gow	7-1
2nd	Dallus	6-2
3rd	Kenni	6-2
4th	Jerks	5-3
5th	Crapswell	4-4
6th	Fredricks	3-5
7th	Crabs	3-5
8th	Titwarmer	2-6
9th	Coconuts	2-6
10th	Whitebread	2-6

Tonight

I'm slightly less excited about Senser's today, as my window gut busted into last week. Don't leave any valuables in your car, and certainly don't leave any computer/work bags in plain sight.

Still, Ike Crabs has declared himself "Active" for tonight's game, so I guess that's as good a reason as any to show up. 

Barring another Prenatal Yoga cancellation, I'll be there about 8:45. Expect a lot of bitching about Kenni.

See you tonight, boys.

Monday Update: Sad Dose of Reality

Gentlemen,

Let's do some math here...

3/13 = 23.08%

3/16 = 18.75%

Monday Update: A Whole New Ballgame

Gentlemen,

Week 8 is basically in the books. There's a game tonight, but every game is basically over.

How do you feel about your team at this point? 

Before you answer that, let's look at this in another way... At the beginning of this season, before anything ever happened including the draft, we all wagered $100. Essentially, you were betting on yourself.

Monday Update: Like A Boss

Gentlemen,

I know everyone's favorite part of the Update each week is when I break the news as to whether or not I will be in attendance at Sally's... Let me just skip ahead and and confirm that I will not be there this evening.

Instead, I will be in downtown Saint Paul, attending what I believe is my 15th or 16th time seeing The Boss. No, not George Steinbrenner. Nor my wife.

THE BOSS.

I missed him last night, and heard be absolutely killed it. Can. Not. Wait.

The Usual Pep Talk
What is there to say? We have 3 weeks left.

The trade deadlines came and went last week with nary a peep. Ok... I guess that means you're all completely satisfied with your rosters at this point. Even though some of you are starting 2 Rams RB's...

Gents, we'll get to the projected standings further on down, but things are tightening up quite a bit. There are ZERO teams that have been eliminated up to this point, which means there is going to be that much more disappointment and/or elation come Week 13.

You can not afford to get complacent. You can not afford to be lazy. The next 3 weeks will define your season. Three wins means you make the playoffs. Three losses means you're dicking around in the consolation bracket. And something in between leaves you in a very precarious position of hoping the right teams around you win and lose.

Do not leave your fate to scoreboard watching. You control your destiny. You can write the remainder of this season's script. But it will not come easy. These will be the most competitive and hard-fought games you'll have this season. Because everyone is fighting for the same thing.

Who wants it more?

The "Sorry, My Bad" PSA
So, I sat down to watch last night's game, flipped open the laptop, and immediately realized I never put up a Gameday Thread for yesterday. Oops.

Truth be told, I don't have a great story about it. We were at my folks for brunch in the morning and watched most of the early games there. Went back to our house in the afternoon, played with the kiddo, got him down for a nap, dozed a little myself... nothing really interesting.

Yahoo! was having major server issues yesterday which contributed to my lack of logging on and realizing this sooner.

Anyway, for those of you that were sitting around wanting to talk smack and felt you were unable to do so... Sorry, my bad.

The Vikings
Well, that was predictable. Let's look horrible for a couple of weeks to get everyone off the bandwagon and then we'll roll over the Lions without Harvin just to mess with people.

This team is 6-4. That should be good enough for fans to get their hopes up of a possible playoff spot. But that upcoming schedule is BRUTAL, boys.

You're probably going to need a 10-6 record to make the playoffs, especially since we lost the tiebreaker with SEA. Can you find 4 wins in there? Can you even find 3?

If it set the over under at 2.5 Wins for those 6 games, which side are you taking?

The Gophers
We're going bowling!

I did 30 seconds of research and discovered that we're projected to make something called the Meineke Car Care of Texas Bowl. And our projected opponent would be West Virginia. While it seems cool that we'd be good enough to make the same bowl game as WV, holy hell we'd get housed in that game.

Still, the team won 6 games and considering how we looked last season, I'll take it. Well done, Jerry.

Not a good looking man

Cracker's College Football Corner
1. Bowl Bound! Tell us about the potential bowl games we could make, considering we still have 2 games left. What are the best & worse case scenarios for bowls?

With OSU, PSU, Illinois, Indiana, Purdue, and Iowa not going to bowl games and MSU still in need of one more win to become eligible (remaining games Northwestern & @ Minnesota) the B1G has a lot more bowl tie-ins than they have bowl eligible teams.  That means we are likely looking at the Meineke Car Care Bowl (Houston) or the Buffalo Wild Wings Bowl (Tempe--formerly Insight.com bowl).  The BWW bowl is the higher of the two and it will probably require us to beat MSU to go there.  The absolute best case scenario would be to win the last two, jump Northwestern, and play in the Gator Bowl in Orlando but my money right now would be on Houston.

2. What are the strengths of this Gopher team? I watched on Saturday, and I've seen plenty of games this season, but I can't seem to figure out what we consistently do well.

The defense is stronger than the offense and the strongest part of the team is the pass defense.  Nationally, our defense ranks #25 in the country allowing 336 yards per game (last year we gave up 403 yards per game).  The pass defense ranks 7th nationally in yards allowed (168.8 yds/game) and 16th in pass efficiency.  We aren't necessarily a great defense but we can be great when we play from ahead and our defensive line can rush the passer.  Our rush defense ranks 74th in the country so if the other team can get their running game going and get a lead it neutralizes our strength.  The other thing our coaches have tried to do is shorten most of the games by running the ball a lot on offense to keep our defense off the field.  When we can't get a push on the OL it puts the defense out there and puts pressure on them.  That is what Iowa and Wisconsin did to us and why we got gashed in those two games.

3. Bucky is playing in the Big Ten championship game (because OSU and PSU can't stay out of trouble). Looks like their opponent will either be Michigan or Nebraska. Who should we be rooting for? In other words, who is more likely to beat Wisconsin and prevent them from going to a 3rd consecutive Rose Bowl?

I personally think Nebraska is better than Michigan and has already beat Wisconsin so I guess I'll go with the Huskers.  That being said, we play Nebraska this week and you won't see me cheering for them.  If Michigan ends up in the game I think they're good enough to beat Bucky too.  Michigan actually has the better run defense between the two of them so they would match up pretty well against Wisconsin.

4. We'll get into this more after all the games are played, but as a Gopher rube, what about this team gets you excited for next season and beyond?

I think the encouraging thing is that we're so young on offense and still seeing success.  The offensive line that we've used most of the season consists entirely of freshman and sophomores because the only two upperclassmen on the OL (both juniors) have been injured for most of the season.  Kirkwood (soph) seems likely to hit 1000 yards (819 currently with 3 games remaining) and that will be our first 1000 yard rusher since 2006 when Mason was coach.  We actually started 9 underclassmen, 1 junior and 1 senior on offense when we hung 40+ on Purdue and that includes a true freshman QB.  I think that this team is going to get a lot better as the offense gets more experience.

Team Names
Well, two of you failed at life this week. I know one of you protects very important people, and this was an Election Week, not to mention your entire city was underwater a couple days ago... so we give you a pass, Crapswell.

Crabs on the other hand... He texted me at Noon yesterday to try and switch McFadden out of his lineup. So, it appears he really was busy or just completely mailed it in this week. Or both.

You two degenerates don't make the board this week. Remember, the topic was A Sign You're Getting Old.

Who had the Best Team Name in Week 10?

***VOTE IN SIDEBAR***

I'm going with Gowser. Coupons&BuyingInBulk. It's just nice to finally have confirmation that Gow is indeed, a Jew.

I will say that I did like NPR & PBS, but Dallus, this is really a sign that you're becoming a liberal hipster stoner.

Also, I enjoyed hearing about JoJo's hair loss nightmares.

Who had the Worst Team Name in Week 10?

***VOTE IN SIDEBAR***

Gotta go with Ruptured Achilles. First of all, that happened like 2-3 years ago, which means you're like middle-aged now. Second, the topic wasn't "A Sign That You're Terrible At Football" or "A Sign That You Suck At Running Out The Clock When We're Up With Like 10 Seconds Left And They Don't Have Any Timeouts".

Team Name Topic
Hey Dickheads... Does anyone read these? If you want to continue with the Team Name shenanigans, and 2 of you seemed to not really care this week, I need some new material. PLEASE GIVE IT SOME THOUGHT AND SEND ME IDEAS.

I think we may have done this before, but it came up as a discussion at MNF last week, so we'll roll with it again: Biggest Pet Peeve.

I'm going to put a caveat in here that none of these can be driving/traffic/car related. I'm pretty sure those dominated the list last time around, and they're an easy answer. Dig a little deeper...

And by the way, if it's simply a pet peeve, and not your BIGGEST pet peeve, that's fine. The goal is to be original, funny, and try to win the Best Team Name vote. You will earn it by people reading your team name as saying "Yeah that really IS annoying. I hate that too!"

Tell us what pisses you off.

The Games
Going to run through these quickly...

Gow vs. Kenny

• Welcome back, Jimmy Graham. We all now hate you even more, except for Gow.
• Just want to again point it out... TWO Rams RB's in the same starting lineup.
• Decker, Reg Bush, Lloyd, Rashad Jennings: combined 9.6 points.
• Gow leads 118-42. Kenny still has Wallace and Heath Miller and who cares? Gow wins.

Coconuts vs. Crabs

• Eli started: 2.7 points. Dalton benched: 24 points. #ClassicCoconuts
• Turner started: 1.5 points. FJax benched: 22 points. #ClassicCoconuts
• Coconuts' optimal lineup would have net him 153. He ended up with 89. #ClassicCoconuts
• Big days from Gonzo and AP for Crabs.
• Despite not checking his team this week, Crabs gets the win. #ClassicCoconuts

Jerks vs. Crapswell

• Honestly, nothing really fun about my team to discuss. Matt Ryan had a great day. Everyone else was somewhere between ok and good. I'll take it.
• The Ravens scored 55, yet Boldin scored all of 3.8 pts for Andy.
• In fact, other than Doug Martin (who was mortal yesterday) and Russell Wilson continuing with his golden horseshoe routine, Crapswell's team REALLY sucked yesterday. 
• Thus our score is 104-60. Andy still has everyone's favorite Hebrew Ike Redman going this evening.

Whitebread vs. Dallus

• Weird game for Peyton Manning. Very efficient and well played, but the DEN defense and special teams both scored keeping him off the field and not scoring. 
• No one played horrible for Whitebread, but no one jumped off the page either. Sort of a non-descript week for his team.
• Dallus, on the other hand, is headed towards his 2nd consecutive Points Bonus. Read that again.
• Basically, everyone played well or scored or both for Dallus. Lucky bastard.
• Whitebread trails 122-84 and has a stupid kicker going tonight. Both teams to 4-6.

Ned vs. JoJo

• What a plug & play for Ned: Broncos defense. You can look up their stat line, but they net him 28 points!
• Throw in Blair Walsh with 15 and Ned got 43 points from his Kicker and Defense alone. That score is beating Kenny right now.
• JoJo finally got a big game from Calvin yesterday. I'm sure he forgave him for the rest of the season...
• This is really the only close game going tonight. JoJo trails by 9 with Jamaal Charles, while Ned counters with Bowe. Ned still fighting to stay alive...feel like I've been on repeat with that line.

Projected Standings

I'm going to assume all the current teams leading (including Ned) maintain their lead after tonight. That would mean the standings would like as such tomorrow, not including tonight's points:

	Team	Record	Points
1st	Jerks	8-2	1066
2nd	Coconuts	6-4	1006
3rd	Crabs	6-4	941
4th	Crapswell	5-5	946
5th	K. Hana	5-5	939
6th	Gow	5-5	912
7th	Dallus	4-6	964
8th	JoJo	4-6	962
9th	Whitebread	4-6	874
10th	Titwarmer	3-7	888

There could be some movement based on points. For example, Kenny could overtake Andy for 4th. And JoJo could certainly pass Dallus for 7th. But overall, this is probably close to what you'll see in the morning.

Not to repeat the earlier peptalk, but those final playoffs spots are there for the taking for anyone who steps up.

Next Week's Matchups

• Jerks vs. Coconuts (1st vs. 2nd place)
• Andy vs. Kenny (4th vs. 5th place)
• Crabs vs. JoJo 
• Whitebread vs. Titwarmer (HUGE game for survival)
• Gow vs. Dallus (HUGE playoff implications here)

I'm already looking forward to these games. Going to be a lot of fun next week.

Tonight
Sorry...no exciting diarrhea stories this week.

As I mentioned, I'm out tonight to rock like a boss, with The Boss. Looks like I'm missing a real exciting game... 

The real drama will be the Ned vs. JoJo Battle of Which Chief Can Suck Least. Hopefully, you all find some excitement there.

And maybe the 1st Quarter will be amazing. Since I'm not there, it's likely.

Enjoy the game, boys.

Three more weeks...