Well Done Fellas

You beat the Cowboys. That's always nice. Now do us all a favor and lose the next two games. We need the highest possible draft pick. Don't do anything crazy like go and make the playoffs. No one needs that.

Anyway, there have got to be a lot of pissed off fantasy football players today, and not just because Westbrook took a knee at the 1 yard line instead of scoring a TD. At least he put up 140 total yards before that. Needed 5 points from Tom Brady or Tony Romo? Sorry. Needed 8 From Randy Moss? Tough shit. Needed 4 from T.O. Oops. Got stuck playing against Aaron Stecker? Damn. But hey, this happens every year. Once you get to the playoffs, it's a new game. Kinda like real football, though the similarities end there.

Anyway, I'm not crazy enough to think the Eagles' season isn't over, even if, mathematically, it isn't. But beating Dallas in Dallas in a meaningful game always makes me smile.

I Hate Fantasy Football

Really, I do. So why do I play it? And why do I have 11 teams? I don't fucking know. Only 3 of those teams matter (the other 8 are free ESPN teams), but this shit still pisses me off to no end. It's like gambling - I got hooked in 2005 when I had a team that featured Shaun Alexander (his MVP season), Larry Johnson (when he went apeshit all over the league after Priest went down), Carson Palmer (his breakout season) and Steve Smith (his comeback year). And the rest of the roster was well rounded too, not that it mattered. (You can see the final team here.) Those four usually outscored the other team I was playing by themselves.

(For the record, I did lose in the final after winning 8 straight because Smith and Palmer did nothing and my opponent had Frank Gore, who felt like breaking out in week 16 of the 2005 NFL season. You see? I told you I fucking hate fantasy football.)

Anyway, after feeling really smart about the way I drafted that team, I had become sucked in. It was really just beginners luck, kind of like how everyone wins the first time they go to Atlantic City. That isn't to say I'm bad at fantasy football, because I'm not. But ever since that first team, it seems nothing has gone right.

Let's use my two star runningbacks from 2005 as examples, shall we? In 2006, in the only league I was playing in that mattered, I was lucky enough to have the first pick. Who did I take? LaDanian Tomlinson - who, for the record, Zwill did say was the best player in football right before the drat started. He's so wise - the man who assraped the league and many an opposing fantasy team? No sir. I took Johnson. Yeah, he had a decent year, but the Chiefs had no other weapons, Herm tried to run him into the ground and there were numerous later picks that outperformed him.

Then there's Shaun Alexander. In 2006 I was fortunate enough to not own him on any teams. 2007 has not been so kind. I have him on no less than 5 teams - including 2 of the important ones - and he is making me quite homicidal. Five fucking teams. I have him on five more teams than Adrian Peterson, Tom Brady and Randy Moss combined. He hasn't scored double digit points since week two. And to think I could have had Joseph Addai on all but one of those teams. Ugh. I fucking hate fantasy football. I can't wait to play it for the next 40 years.