Fantasy Football

So we thought we would actually follow through on a second post that we had promised in our first. Crazy, I know. But I can’t imagine alienating more people than I already have without doing anything to anyone on a personal level.

But it was a pivotal week, as the penultimate week of any sports season tends to be, especially with how the NFL scheduled their season this year. We had about four different games with win and your in implications for both teams. Between Minnesota-Atlanta, Tennessee-Pitt, San Diego-Tampa, NY Giants-Carolina (didn’t even include Baltimore-Dallas), in addition to a plethora of upsets including the Jets losing to Seattle, Denver losing to Buffalo and Philly losing to Washington, it was probably one of the more eventful weekends of the season.

We mentioned last week that if Brett Favre can’t get it done against Seattle to make the playoffs that it would implore him to retire, never did we think that the performance would be so terrible that he might not even have the option. Sure, if the Jets decide to cut him he will inevitably be able to find a job somewhere else, but who would’ve thought it would have come to this? Not to say we shouldn’t have, set aside one good year (2007), Favre had a run of about five poor to mediocre seasons strung together. That’s basically what we are seeing with Favre in the second half of the season.

(Note: I’m fully prepared for them to beat Miami next Sunday, just to debunk mine and everyone else’s knee-jerk reactions to…well, about six bad weeks in a row. It seems like any games they won during that stretch were in spite of Favre, not because of him).

But enough about Favre. Everyone talks about Favre and everyone over-reports on him. We’ve dedicated a solid paragraph to him and already it feels redundant. Can’t we all just agree that he is no longer a viable fantasy option and move on? And not just because he is leading the league in interceptions, though that is certainly part of it.

Let’s talk about the Seahawks, whom we referred to earlier as being among the elite of the bad teams in the NFL (defined as anyone with double digit wins by week 16. There are eight of them, and we could have nine by seasons end). It is extremely probable that had the Seahawks not been plagued by injury this season (worse than anyone other than the Patriots), they probably would have won this division.

You're going to tell me that the Cardinals can hang with this sorcery? I think not.

When I say “extremely probable” I actually mean: Is that even disputable? The Cardinals look how the Cardinals are legally obligated to look. I hear they had to pay a small fine for deceiving us all for the first twelve weeks of the season. St. Louis and San Fran were predictably terrible. That leaves Seattle, who are giving Mike Holmgren a semblance of validation before he “retires”.

Staying in the NFC West, San Fran is getting their fans hopes up. It’s almost painful to watch. Them and the Texans are the two teams heading into next season that everyone will bandwagon as the “sleepers” for 2009, even though they’re not really sleepers because if everyone is proclaiming you a sleeper, then you cease being one. But I imagine both will inevitably fail to meet expectations for their respective fan bases because their late season surges this year were more the result of timing than anything else.

There is an outside shot that the performances from both teams this week will help quell that, but I highly doubt it. When people do retrospective analysis, they never get into specifics. Ron Jaworski claims that the Niners are going to win the NFC West he’ll probably say “The Niners won five of their last six in 2008″ but won’t provide the caveat “suffered a close win against one of the five worst teams in the league because they were the only one of the six teams the Niners played that were actually bad enough to take them seriously”.

For the Texans, he might delve into a little more detail adding, “The Texans won five of their last six, including a win against the 14-2 Tennessee Titans”. But that thrashing at the hands of the *cough*Oakland Raiders*cough* will conveniently fly under the radar. In other words, these two games say something about the future of the two teams. Do not be surprised if either of them are right back at the bottom of the division.

Still, we will say it’s possible for both of them as long as Alex Smith isn’t involved.

Of all the losses of the weekend, I have to say that Philly’s was probably the most disappointing. At least in terms of expectations. They were playing a team that hasn’t competed for a win in about a month, and have lost to everyone on the talent spectrum from the Ravens to the Bengals. Yet only managed to muster up a paltry three points. I think the Bad News Bears had more tenacity at the beginning of their season than the Eagles currently have at the end of theirs. Not to mention that they could have been playing for a playoff spot in week 17 had they managed to put up a single touchdown in addition to their field goal.

Also, the fact Reggie Brown wasn’t another foot inside downfield to be inside the end zone was a testament to how shitty the receiving corps. has been in Philly during McNabb’s tenure there. In fact, outside of the Superbowl season with Terrell Owens, this current batch of receivers that consists of Kevin Curtis (who had never been better than a third option with the Rams), DeSean Jackson (a talented but extremely flawed rookie) and the aforementioned Reggie Brown (he is barely noticeable most games); is the best they’ve had in a decade. And DeSean Jackson still managed to cost them the game with three critical dropped passes (two of which were for touchdowns).

But that didn’t stop Andy Reid from throwing the ball 46 times and only running it 16 (12 were for Westbrook). This is why Philly fans pine for his replacement, and why it seems so irrational to the rest of us not in the city. Let me be the first to say that as an Eagles fan, I want Andy Reid to stay. But I can understand the frustration they feel after games like this. Or with the state of the team in general.

My stance on the issue comes strictly from the standpoint that I don’t think they can do any better playing the market and their still looking down the barrel at a potential 9-6-1 season. Just look at it from their perspective: If your team was potentially going to be barred from the playoffs because they lost two divisional games against a .500 team and they couldn’t do better than a tie against an NFL team in Ohio, you’d probably consider it systemic and want a replacement at top too.

Anyhow, if there were any games we haven’t covered or any fantasy performances that we didn’t mention, it’s probably because they were innocuous and we don’t need to dwell on them. I know everyone is looking for some analysis detailing the ins and outs of Ricky Williams and the Chiefs game. But I’m sure someone, somewhere else is providing such riveting prose on the subject.

Back tomorrow with more.