Fantasy Football

The NFL is currently experiencing one of its more bizarre off-seasons in recent memory, and I for one couldn’t be more thrilled. Sure, we’re in the middle of the NCAA tournament, NBA playoffs are a couple weeks from starting up and (God help me) baseball is a week or two from opening day. But who wants to hear about that nonsense when there’s constant updates of Jay Cutler’s cell phone activity, or if Plaxico Burress can circumvent doing any jail time, or if Dante Stallworth will be charged for drunkenly steamrolling some poor sap in Miami, or who’s being murdered in the condos of Saints players? Jesus, this off-season makes The Sopranos first season feel uneventful.

This is essentially why we do not like the NFL, everyone who supports it is under the impression that everyone is interested in the most loosely related story-lines to the league. And we’re not. If you tell a diehard NFL fan you’re somewhat impartial towards the draft, they look at you like you were riding a Triceratops. Really, guys, it’s not that interesting. I mean, I generally watch it and it can be interesting at times, so at the very least I keep it on in the background. It doesn’t hurt that Goodell shortened the amount of time between first round picks, which is the best decision he’s made since succeeding Taglibue and as fas as we’re concerned, it will end up being his legacy. But I can understand why someone would find it incessantly dull, and why they assume those of us who enjoy it to be borderline sycophantic.

But most sane people enjoy it only on draft day. I can’t really regard anyone as mentally healthy if they enjoy watching and listening to workout analysis in February and March. You’re basically the fan equivalent of a functioning alcoholic if you do. The only way it could be more monotonous and creepy is if they were “evaluating” players coming out of high school instead of college. No, we’ll have something substantive to say when Cutler is eventually traded or what the pending sentences mean for teams in the draft and their current roster. But right now we’re more than happy to wait a couple more weeks before having anything to say about it.

If you want a prediction from us, an unfounded, random and completely speculative prediction about Jay Cutler, we tend to think he is going to end up playing in Detroit, whose going to offer up their first round pick for him. Denver wants a quarterback, reports are the Detroit isn’t exactly elated with the idea of taking Matthew Stafford first overall and no one is going to swap positions with them, so Detroit might as well roll the dice and get a still young quarterback to be their centerpiece.

But again, this isn’t founded on anything more than our understanding of how everything should work, not on how everything necessarily does. I feel like if that trade was ever going to happen it would have happened by now, and we’re never right about these things anyways. So if you don’t mind, we’re going to go back to watching basketball for the next few weeks. Thanks.