Fantasy Football

You know a surefire way of knowing that Sunday’s performance was full of surprise performers, other than that my team won and won convincingly? The Rams and Raiders both pulled out wins against competitive opponents, shattering the perspectives of the opposing teams fan bases. Seriously, if you are a Jets fan and you’re all optimistic about your chances to win the division and make a playoff run, what does a loss to the Raiders do to your psyche? Peter King constantly hypes your prospects and this? It’s like your mom telling you are handsome then not being able to find a date.

Anyhow, let’s look at who came through unexpectedly in the fantasy ranks for week 7. I could just redirect you to this list and it would be legitimate, but well try to be a little more humble and objective than that, lest we upset anyone again.

1) Dan Orlovsky
265 yards passing, with one touchdown and one two-point conversion in a losing effort against a winless team isn’t exactly setting the world on fire. But when you are coming off a week in which you ran out of the back of your own end zone for five seconds to your opponents advantage, well, expectations aren’t exactly staggeringly high. Anyhow, because of their rarity we tend to over-inflate the value of 2-point conversions, so this performance was good for a little over 23 points. Congrats Dan.

I think what we can learn from this, is that a professional athlete's card can immortalize anybody.

2) Derrick Mason
Derrick Mason, now well into his fourth season of turning around the Ravens anemic passing attack, finally put up some numbers yesterday against everyone’s favorite gritty underdogs, the Miami Dolphins. You know you’re instilling false hope in your fans when you make Derrick Mason and Joe Flacco look like Rice-Montana.

3) Antonio Bryant
Tampa Bay’s quarterback situation is so inexplicable and inordinate that anytime a receiver comes through with a decent game he will probably make this list, so long as it isn’t the same person every time. And I do not think we have to worry about this being an issue with Antonio Bryant, who most people still probably mistake for being on the Cowboys. Six catches for 115 yards and a touch is good for anyone, much less a receiver who couldn’t start for the Eagles.

4) Mewelde Moore
The Steelers played the Bengals, and we have expressed our dissatisfaction for putting individual performances against the Bengals on this list. Because they are, you know, fucking terrible. But this is Mewelde Moore we are talking about, he’s not exactly a household name. I think there is an outside chance that if Mewelde Moore committed a felony, he could actually be prosecuted for his crimes….Ha! Just kidding, we all know professional athletes are above the law.

5) Owen Daniels
Damn, it has been rare I’ve actually been able to put a tight end on this list. I mean, I haven’t expected any of them to do shit since week 3, and none of have. But Daniels came through with six catches for 66 yards and two touchdowns. That, my friends, is Shannon Sharpe-esque. You see what I did there? I made you pine for the days of Shannon Sharpe in a uniform, instead of resent his days as an “analyst”, which I think is now just synonymous with “random former player with a friend at the network”.

There you have it, others we considered for the top five were LenDale White (talked about him too much on this website recently), Dominick Rhodes (ditto), Matt Cassel (on linked list above), Sammy Morris (see Matt Cassel) & Chad Johnson (Just living up to expectations, but did so with Kirk Fitzpatrick throwing to him, so consider him 5B).

Back tomorrow morning with something.