Week 6 Recaps: Lots Of Mediocrity

Thankfully this week there were no stupid ties in our league, in fact there weren't even any games that were really close (the closest game was decided by 17 points). However, this week did see Zach continue his ridiculous season and Jason found yet another way to lose even though he had multiple players scoring 17 or more points. As we approach the middle week of the fantasy season, it appears Zach is running away with the number 1 seed and his brother isn't far behind him. Outside of that, everyone else is either .500 or worse. That's some league parody right there folks. Anyways on to the re-caps:

Rolling Meadows Mustangs 100
Wisconsin ArcticCats 73

His team is only getting better as we hit the middle mark of the season. Zach is now 6-0 after winning the championship last season, but here is the crazy thing. This is the first week Zach has hit 100 points! In fact Zach and his brother, who have the two best records in the league so far, both broke 100 for the first time this season. Every team besides Multiple Scoregasms (worst team in the league) had already scored at least 100 points in a week. So apparently both Tegtmeier brothers are playing the right people at the right time. When it comes to this weeks game, the Rolling Meadows Mustangs got huge performances from Andrew Luck (23), Arian Foster (25), and Jordan Cameron (16). He did have one glaring problem this week, he was outscored 33-6 in the wide receiver and flex position. Unfortunately for Gunnar, those 33 points were scored by 3 of his 4 highest scorers this week. The ArcticCats received a total of 0 points from the combination of Stevan Jackson and the Panthers defense. Gunnar's best performance came from his kicker, Stephan Gostowski (16), but other than that he had a lot of average scores. Looking at the benches, Gunnar will lose Victor Cruz for the season after his knee injury. More importantly for the ArcticCats, Aaron Rodgers (25) and Trent Richardson (10) were sitting on the bench, which really hurt the team. I can understand Richardson being benched but why you wouldn't start Rodgers week in and week out I have no idea. On Zach's bench, there were a couple of nice wide receiver days from Eric Decker (11) and Micheal Crabtree (10). Both of those guys may be plugged in next week to help fill the void at receiver for RMHS. Either way Zach is almost halfway to a perfect regular season, which would be the first time in this league.

Even without Calvin, T still won

Team Mustangs 105
Multiple Scoregasms 83

The only other team with a winning record after 6 weeks is T and his Mustangs. He was able to put Jason into a big hole in the East division at 1-5 (Zach is in the same division), despite not having his best player this week. The crazy part about this is that Jason has had some great performances through the weeks, and he has been the closest to beating Zach (he lost by 1 in week 3). However, out of the 83 points scored by the Scoregasms, 80 of them came from the quarterback, wide receivers, flex, and tight end position. Unbelievably, that means Jason only got 3 points from his running backs (4), defense (-5), and kicker (4). Jason decided to start the unactive Reggie Bush...that hurt. Team Mustangs on the other hand got the crazy 28 point performance from T.Y. Hilton on Thursday night to go along with a ton of solid performances from the rest of the team. The only stinkers for T were Brian Quick (surprisingly only 1 point) and Blair Walsh (4). When it comes to players who sat out this matchup, Jason had 4 receivers who scored in double digits. However, that wouldn't have helped him much since he had great performances from his receivers. Even if he started his best players he would have lost by 4, although he would've cracked 100 for the first time. On T's bench, there were a couple of bye week players and an injured Calvin Johnson. T didn't need them anyways as he climbs to 2nd in the league and prepares to play the Baghdad Bombers in week 7.

Smokin Blounts N Drinkin FORTEs 133
Show Me Them TD's  93

I really didn't have that bad of a week, unfortunately Tom's team decided to take me behind the wood shed this week. I am saddened to admit this was the biggest blowout of the week. Tom got huge performances from Cam Newton (33), Matt Forte (27), Mohamed Sanu (17), and Julius Thomas (16). Those four alone would have beaten me 95-93, so add to that 4 additional decent performances and 1 point from Matt Asiata and you have a huge blowout. Thank God Tom played Asiata and Andre Ellington over Isaih Crowell and Justin Forsett or else he would've topped Gunnar's score from last week an therefore owned the best score of the year at 146. Anyway, he still ended up putting up the third best score of the year, behind Gunnar's score last week and Josh's from two weeks ago but one point higher then John's best score of the year from week one. When it came to my team, I got another great performance from Jordy Nelson (16), as well as a good performance from my kicker and D/ST (26 points combined) and Gio Bernard (21). The big problem for me, besides running into the Tom buzzsaw this week, was that I started two of my newly picked up Giants and both of them sucked a big one. Looking at my bench, I had nobody that would have made this game close in anyway. This was a humbling beat down and I believe this Giants experiment I tried from a couple of weeks ago has come to an end just as quick as it began. Also, since I always post embarrassing photos of Tom when he loses I feel like it's only fair that I do the same since I lost to him so bad. So here is the most embarrassing one I could find on the Facebook. I'm the one in the purple Holmen shirt (in case you can't tell) sticking out my tongue for some god awful reason. Also our defending champ and owner of the currently undefeated Rolling Meadows Mustangs, Zach, is on the left.

Kalamazoo Red Hawks 85
Baghdad Bombers 68

Despite the blunder a few weeks back of only starting 5 guys, the Red Hawks are now in that large pool of 5 teams that are 3-3. This week Dr. Panda got his first good performance from Larry Fitzgerald (15) to go with 21 points from Peyton Manning and 13 from Justin Tucker. He did however, get a zero from Percy Harvin in the "end of the world game" that the Cowboys won and has ESPN drooling over. Even with Harvin's lack of production, Dr. Panda was able to win the closest matchup of the week. On the losing end of this game, Josh had only two guys score in double digits, Phillip Rivers (25) and Mike Wallace (12).  Outside of those two there were a lot of ugly performances topped off by a negative 2 points from the Chargers defense, who were somehow lite up by Derrick Carr and the Raiders. *sidenote: When Carr got hurt two weeks ago I was really hoping he would be out for this game so that Matt Schaub would have to play. Unfortunately that didn't happen and it robbed myself and everyone else the opportunity to watch the pick six machine at his best.* The funny thing is that Josh has another defense on his bench that scored even worse, the Bengals (-5). This just confirms my point that you should never carry two defenses because it's just a waste of a bench spot and the most of the defenses are a crap shoot from week to week. The rest of the bench for the Bombers was just as bad as the starting lineup, so there was nothing he could've done to change the outcome. I don't even want to talk about the Red Hawks' awful bench. They still have Ray Rice, which should tell you everything you need to know.

Louie loves smokin Jay Cutler

MeAndJulioDown ByTheSchoolYard  107
I'm Ball Murray 79

Similar to that last recap, this was a matchup of a team that was 2-3 beating a team that was 3-2, adding to the amount of teams stuck at .500. MAJD BTSY surprisingly didn't get a great game from his namesake player but that didn't matter since 6 of the other 8 players on his team put up double digits scores. Both of the his running backs were outstanding and good Jay Cutler came out to play this weekend. Both the Bears and Louie's season will most likely hinder on Jay Cutler's performance each week. Louie actually left a ton of great performances on the bench as well, leaving 3 more double digit performances there. This week it wouldn't have mattered much since nearly half of John's team needed someone to teach them how to football. I've never seen such a big gap between the best players on a team in a given week and the worst. Five players scored in double digits for John, but the highest of any of the other four players was 2 by Alfred Blue. One of the problems for John is that he has stuck with Cordarelle Paterson this year, who has been a major fantasy disappoint since week 1. It doesn't help that his bench is filled with either injured players or medial performers. I traded him C.J. Spiller thinking that it would help his awful second running back spot but obviously that didn't happen this weekend (he had -1 point, and John sat him anyway). Obviously, nobody on the bench would've helped John make this game close. Lucky for John, he faces me next week so I'm sure my team will find a way to lose. On the other hand, after starting off slow, Louie has won 2 in a row and will be looking to climb over .500 against Gunnar next week.

Guess who's back, back again...

Howdy ho neighbors.  Sorry for the lengthy hiatus, but life has been running me ragged over the last couple of weeks, and after the rigidity of posting during the baseball season, I was mostly ok with it.  I am still trying to figure out where my niche is during football season and there are still a couple of outstanding baseball posts I would like to get to (hopefully this week) like the "Tater Tot Awards for Fantasy Baseball Playing Gentlemen and the Players Whom They Own But Not Like That" and I feel like there is another Goulet lurking around the corner (isnt there always?) Sometimes its Robert (see bottom of post)...sometimes its Michel. 
Anyways, since I have been thoroughly entertained by the playoff baseball this year (and I had predicted Orioles - Dodgers as the World Series...at least I might be half right?), I was digging around on the ESPN website.  I came across the "experts" picks and realized that, not only am I apparently a more qualified expert than almost all of the people that are working there, but that I am also a much better person (this is a completely baseless claim, by the way). 
As a group (there were roughly 70 people predicting), they missed on every series.  EVERY. SINGLE. SERIES.  They handily picked the A's (61.4%) to not leave Jon Lester in the game too long and then get stolen based to death by the Royals and 55.7% picked the Pirates because they forgot that Madison Bumgarner was pitching for the Giants and that he is indestructable in months that start with the letter "O".  75% picked the Angels to beat the Wild Card winner (and to be the enemy of fun).  57% picked the Tigers bullpen to not completely self destruct and singlehandedly keep its team from advancing against the Orioles.  94.3%(!!!!!!) picked the Nationals to beat the Giant/Pirates (who would be a spectacular team with a glorious mascot that I would cheer for at every possible occurance).  81.4% picked the greatest pitcher on Earth to not blow 2 straight outings and become the only pitcher EVER for the Dodgers to lose his first 4 playoff starts. 
Obviously picking every thing wrong in the LDSes, they didnt get anything right in the LCSes.  Only 3 of the 70 experts picked the Royals to continue buying drinks for their fans into the World Series (14 picked the Orioles, but that is looking more and more unlikely with each Eric Hosmer or Mike Moustakas extra inning HR (WE STILL HAVE MOOSETACOS!!!!).  Over in the NL, the Cards (6) and Giants (1) combined to get 10% of the votes.  Seriously?  1 f'ing person thought it was a good idea to play the "its an even year and the Giants are playing" card?  Whoops.  In all 9 of the 70 people have their winner still left, but only 3 have Royals or Giants.  Hooray experts.  With that kind of accuracy, I am about to declare myself an expert in the fine art of fish hatchery...or perhaps animal husbandry (which is sadly not remotely close to what is sounds like).

I'll leave you, for now, with a throwback to the Colts and Bears Super Bowl.  Watch out for Goulets!

Weekend Review

Another Football Tie

So last week in our fantasy league we had the third tie in the history of the league. This week, the Bengals and Panthers decided to copy us, making it two years in a row that there has been a tie (remember that awful Packers/ Vikings tie last year). First of all, the Bengals should have easily won that game if Mike (Not Ted) Nugent would've made a chip shot field goal at the end of overtime. That being said, I think it is dumb that NFL games can end in ties. The easy fix to this is simply just go into a second sudden death overtime. With the way the offenses can move the football now, it wouldn't take that much longer for a team to get into field goal range again. I think ties are probably the worst part of football since nobody wins and everyone is left unhappy. If you get a chance you should listen to Andy Dalton and Cam Newton's post game press conference, neither one of them knew what to say. Both head coaches even siad that they had no clue what to tell the players after the game. It's dumb and should be fixed for next year (I know it won't because its been a rule forever).

G.O.A.T.

There were plenty of other big storylines this week including Peyton Manning's march to 508. I was actually suprised that Peyton only threw 3 touchdowns agaisnt a horrible Jets secondary that lost Dee Millner in the first quarter. Peyton is only 3 touchdowns away from breaking Brett Favre's record, and he may very well break it this Sunday night on national television against the 49ers. This brings me back to the day Favre broke Marino's record agaisnt the Vikings in the Humpty Dumpty Dome. I remember when it happened hoping that Manning wouldn't catch up because of how much I loved Favre. Now, I find myself cheering for Manning to break the record and take it away from Favre after all that he has put Packer's fans through. Now when it comes to the best quarterbacks of all-time, I think Peyton Manning has entered into my top 3, surpassing Marino and Unitas. The only thing that Peyton could do to increase his all time status at this point is to win in February, otherwise he's pretty much stuck at the 3rd spot. If I were to list the best QB's of all time as of now they would be: 

5.Dan Marino (1 MVP, held a ton of records when he retired)

4.Johnny Unitas (3 NFL Championships, 3 MVP's)

3.Peyton Manning (1 Super Bowl Championship, 5 MVP's)

2.Joe Montana (4 Super Bowl Championships, 2 MVP's) 

1.Otto Graham (7 Leauge championships, 3 MVP's, highest career winning percentage for a quarterback in NFL history)

Taking my weekly look at the NFC North shows that once again the divsion looks to be a three team race (sorry Minnesota). The Packers came away with an incredable last second victoy thanks to some terrible play calling and game management skills by the Dolphins. The Bears went into Atlanta, which is always a tough place to play, and put together 4 full quarters of football on the way to beating up the Falcons and Matt Ryan, which lead to the demise of my fantasy team. The Lions got an always important road win within the division, and simultaneously putting in end to all the talk about how great Teddy Bridgewater and the Vikings will be this year. All in all, after 6 weeks of the season this division looks about how everyone imagined it to. Detroit starts out of the gate strong, the Packers start slow at 1-2  for the third year in a row but rebound to win 3 straight, and the Bears are one of the biggest roller coaster rides of any team in the league.

There are a couple other things I would like to mention. Last week I said the Browns have an easy schedule going forward after this week, well they won this week too and now look destined to be 6-2 halfway through the season. If they can find a way to sneak out a couple of victories in the second half of the year, this would have to be one of the most suprising seasons by any team. Another thing, I talked about it going into this weekend but I didn't actually think it would happen but the Cowboys outmuscled the Seahawks in Seattle. That Dallas O-line is tough and as long as they continue to stay true to the running game the Cowboys could be a tough team to beat this season. For some reason however, I feel like they, along with the Lions, will falter down the stretch as they always do because both of their quarterbacks are prone to terrible mistakes.

The final thing I took from this week was how close the Jaguars and Raiders were to winning their first game only to come up short. Derek Carr made a rookie mistake to cost the Raiders and everyone watching the chance to see Sebastian Janakowski attempt a game tying field goal from the other side of the state. But to me the Jaguars loss was even more heart breaking. After pulling to within 16-14 and miraculously recovering an awful onside kick, they decided to kick a 55 yard field goal on 3rd down with 12 second left. It's these kinds of situations that frustrate me as a fan. How do you not take atleast one more shot towards the sideline to try and chip away some of the distance? Instead you decide to just kick the 55 yarder with Josh Scooby Snacks, which means he's got to keep it low and it ends up being blocked. A final side note, how do the Titans' fans fell? Year after year they are supposed to be better and year after year Jake Locker goes down and they suck. This year started out with a promising win at Kansas City and was then followed up by 4 straight loses, the last of which after leading by 25 points at home, until this "exciting" 16-14 toilet bowl win over the Jaguars. Must be nice to be the Colts and get to play these two twice a year!

Week 6 Waiver Pick-ups

Not a whole lot of action on the waiver wire this week as only 4 players were picked up. I attribute most of this to the fact that there are only two teams on bye this week so there isn't a ton of roster switching going on. Here are the four moves that went through today:

Team Mustangs: add Ravens D/ST, drop Donald Brown

The move to drop Donald Brown is not surprising. Though he was a must add player when the rest of the Chargers backfield went down, he now has a concussion and looks like he won't play this week against the Raiders. On top of that, there is a good chance he won't be the starter when he comes back after the performance Branden Oliver put up (which I will get to in a bit). However, what is suprising is that he picked up the Ravens defense. The Ravens go up against an improved Tamp Bay team that has been able to move the ball and put up a lot of points in their last couple games. This wouldn't be as surprising if it weren't for the fact that T has Denver's defense already and they are playing the New York Our Quarterback Turns The Ball Over Every Other Play Jets. That has to be one of the best defensive match-ups for the week, and yet T is choosing to sit the Broncos for the Ravens. Also, by making this move T drops down to only 3 running backs on his entire team and 2 defenses (not exactly the ratio most people would want). Of those 3 running backs, only one came into the season as the starter (Toby Gerhart, who hasn't been good at all). T could definitely use some work in the backfield if he wants to make it back to the championship game for the third year in a row.

Team Mustangs: add Jared Cook, drop Browns D/ST

So after talking about how rolling with two defenses is probably not the best scenario, I noticed that T had another defense on his team before this, the Browns D/ST. In fact looking at the entire season so far, T's Mustangs have had two defenses on their roster every week and it's always been the Broncos and somebody else (Saints, Browns, Ravens). The funny thing is the Broncos haven't been very good on defense all year and therefore they rank 21st among fantasy defenses. So, T hasn't started them the last 3 weeks yet he still feels the need to use a bench spot on them. Anyways back to the Browns, they were a one week filler that didn't work out. They only put up 3 fantasy points because they were destroyed to the tune of 28 points in the first half last week. The add of Jared Cook is one of the few things that does make sense out of this whole conundrum. T's starting tight end, Travis Kelce, is on bye so he decided to go with the best option he could find on the waiver wire. Cook is a big tight end with the physical ability to be dominant in this league, the problem is he has trouble catching and holding on to the ball, which I guess is something your supposed to do according to Austin Davis. He is, however, a good pickup for T this week in order to fill his starting lineup.

Smokin Blounts N Drinkin FORTEs: add Phil Dawson, drop Mike Nugent

Kicker swap! Surprisingly this kicker swap actually has a plausible premise, which is the 49ers have decided that their offense should only move the ball to about the 15 yard line and then kick a field goal. In the last two weeks, Phil Dawson has made 9 of 9 field goals raking up a total of 37 points. This is the same Phil Dawson that Multiple Scoregasms dropped after his one point performance in week 3. Had Jason kept him, he would've won this week and wouldn't be sitting in last place in the league at 1-4. However, none of that really matters for Tom's sake since he gets to upgrade at the kicking position, at least for now because nobody really knows how good a kicker is going to do from week to week. Oh and Tom dropped Mike Nugent because he wasn't Ted Nugent. That is the only logical reason.

MeAndJulioDown ByTheSchoolYard: add Branden Oliver, drop Julian Edelman

Enter the new Darren Sproles. At least that's what it looked like Sunday afternoon when Donald Brown went down with a concussion and Oliver stepped in. Not only does the man look like Sproles out on the field, but he put up Sproles-like numbers on Sunday rushing for 117 yards to go along with 68 yards receiving and a pair of touchdowns. With the Chargers backfield losing guys left and right, Oliver may be the starter for the long term, especially if he can recapture some of the magic from last week. It will help that this week he plays the Raiders, who may the the single worst football team I've seen since the 0-16 Lions from 2008, they just suck at everything. Julian Edelman is an interesting drop though because he is one of the few targets that Tom Brady has. However, after starting off the year with multiple double digit games, Edelman has cooled way off, possibly because of the resurgence of Rob Gronkowski. Also, looking at Louie's roster, this move makes a little more sense because he has a lot of options at receiver and Edelman was at the bottom of that list.

Week 5 Recaps: It's a Tie!

It has almost happened a couple of times this year, but finally we had a tie this week. This is the first time there was a tie in the league since week 3 of 2012 when Jason and Josh tied at 95. It also happened one other time in the first year of the league (2010) and again had Jason involved as he tied former owner Dennis at 93 in week 5 of the season. There were other games this week that came right down to the end, but nothing like John and T being added to the imortal list of men who don't want to win or lose. One interesting point that I would like to point out before the recaps begin is that there are 3 teams, I'm Ball Murray, Wisconsin ArcticCats, and Smokin Blunts N drinkin FORTEs, that are undeafeted when designated the home team and winless when designated the away team (although John has a tie at "home" as well). This is just a funny stat that I wanted to point out and see if it continues, but now on to the great tie of 2014:

Yup, thats a football tie

Team Mustangs 69
I'm Ball Murray 69

First of all, the fact that they tied at 69 is just plain awesome but I'll leave that topic be. Outside of my terrible score this week, these two teams had the worst scores of the week but luckily they were playing each other. T's Mustangs got to his 69 points by having a couple of great performances mixed in with a bunch of shitty ones. John had more players closer to the median line to mix in with a couple of poor performances. Each team had a reciever put up a big zero, Cordarelle Patterson was John's but unfortunetly for T it was his best player, Calvin Johnson. Both teams had quarterbacks that played less than stellar considering the teams they were playing. T did end up gaining a lot of points on John in the skilled positions but lost it when his defense and kicker both under-performed. Both teams backup qaurterbacks scored more points than their starter and each team had some good performances on the bench that would have swung the game in thier favor. In the end, ties are just flat out annoying and im sure this will have a huge factor in who makes in into the playoffs later in the season because ties usually have that kind of stupid effect.

MeAndJulioDown ByTheSchoolYard  115
Smokin Blunts N Drinkin FORTEs 93

 I said I would keep putting this picture up when you lose.

This game was all about the resurgence of Demaryuis Thomas. After a lack luster first few weeks, Thomas put up 34 fantasy points to go along with Jay Cutler's 21 to help Louie beat Tom. Both of those players scored more than the highest scoring guy on Tom's team, Matt Forte (20).  Tom did have 5 players score in double digits and actually had a good week, but he unfortunetly was opposed with Louie's best score of the season so far. MAJD BTSY had plenty of good performances on his
team as 8 of the 9 starters scored atleast 6 points, the only one that didn't was Micheal Floyd who put up a nice goose egg on the afternoon. Just looking at the over all breakdown of positions, Tom had way better production from his running backs and his tight end Julius Thomas (18) than Louie did, but every other position was won by a large margain by Louie. Looking at the benches, Tom had a huge performance by Andre Ellington (26) not in his starting lineup. Even with him in he would be down a point, but if he would have also started Cam Newton over Ben Roethlisberger he woulvd've gained a couple of points and won barely. Of coarse Louie had a couple of recievers that put up a couple points, so they out scored Floyd, but nothing that was drastically better than any of his starters.

Gronk must break you

Baghdad Bombers 97
Multiple Scoregasms 95 

This game could've very easily been a second tie this week but Josh was able to get just enough points from Gronk Sunday night to pass Jason and improve his winning streak to 3 games, putting himself above .500 for the first time this year. Obviously, this game was close as both teams had 5 players score in double digits, but the difference was Steve Smith or Reggie Bush's bad performance, you pick. Smith's 1 point and Bush's 4 points for the Scoregasms brought down the average score that was set so high by Eddie Lacy (24) and Greg Olsen (19), and it ended up giving the Bombers the chance to come back late Sunday night. Breaking down the position battles, this is how the matchup played out, Quarterback: Bombers 21-13, Running back: Scoregasms 28-24, Wide Reciever: Scoregasms 19-12, Tight end: Scoregasms 19-16, D/ST: Bombers 16-11, Kicker: Bombers 8-5. So Josh's formula for success was to oustcore Jason with his specialists and his quarterback, and hang close in every other category. Looking at Jason's bench, there are a bunch of guys that could've been put in for Steve Smith that would've won him the game. The most glareing of them was DeSean Jackson whose 21 point game last night would have easily given Jason the win. On Josh's bench there were a few guys that could've made Josh breath a little easier but he sat Stevan Ridley (17) and Fred Jackson (11). However, it doesn't matter as Josh picked up the close win and takes his winning streak into next week's matchup against the Kalamazoo Red Hawks.

Rolling Meadows Mustangs 80
Show Me Them TD's 66

Neither one of us had a good week, but luckily for Zach more of my players decided to suck than his. Zach only had two players score in double digits, but they were big performances, Arian Foster (28) and Andrew Luck (19). Both of those two performances were much better than my best performance of 14 by both Matt Ryan and the Colts defense. What really hurt me (literally) was that Jimmy Graham went down with a shoulder injury and my running backs were stuck pass blocking because their teams were playing from behind the entire game. To make matters worse, Kelvin Benjamin put up only 1 point despite being targeted 11 times in his game against Chicago. Zach got some decent points from the Texans defense (7) and Sammy Watkins (8) but also had some awful performances from Micheal Crabtree (1) and Jordan Cameron (3). Looking at my bench, there was a combination of Andre Williams, Eli Manning ,and Marques Colston that would have given me the win but that doesn't matter now. Zach had Dwayne Allen (11) and Vincent Jackson (14) sitting on the bench but it didn't hurt him since my team forgot how to play football. After five weeks of the season, the defending champion Rolling Meadows Mustangs are 5-0 and on a blistering pace to defend thier league crown.

Wisconsin ArcticCats 141

Gunnar's reaction to this week

Kalamazoo Red Hawks 83

Lets start with the fact that Chirs had a full 9 man roster this week, thats nice to see after last weeks debacle. The problem for Chris is he could've started 12 or 13 players and it still wouldn't have mattered. Gunnar's ArcticCats put up the first 140+ point week of the year and only the third ever (Zach put up 145 in week 5 of 2012 also against the Red Hawks and Josh put up the biggest total score of 148 in week 13 of 2011 against Zach's Mustangs). Only one player for Gunnar scored less than 8 points, Ahmad Bradshaw (5). To give you a perspective of how good his team was Gunnar could have sat Bradshaw, Antonio Brown, and Randall Cobb and still would've beat everyone else in the league with the 6 remaining starters. Suprisingly, this game actually looked like it may finsh close until last night when Russell Wilson and Marshan Lynch combined to score the ArcticCats 51 points. Chris did get another great performance from Peyton Manning (31), but the rest of his team brought him down. Where the Red Hawks really struggled was in the skilled position categories where he totaled 25 points between 5 guys, thats not going to keep you in many games. When it comes to the players Chris sat, nobody would have been able to draw the Red Hawks within sight of the ArcticCats. Just for good measure, on Gunnar's bench he had a 19 point performance from Golden Tate that was unneeded. Imagine if he would've started him in the slot, Gunnar would've put up an absurd 155 line. As it is, Gunnar owns the single week and season total scoring title so far this season, and it will be tough to knock him off that podium after this performance.

Record Breaking Weekend

So this weekend's football games, both college and NFL, were outstanding. I want to start with the unbelievable amount of upsets on Saturday. It was the first time in college football history that 5 of the top 8 teams in the AP poll lost (#2 Oregon, #3 Alabama, #4 Oklahoma, #6 Texas A&M, and #8 UCLA). Now three of those teams were on the road against another team in the top 25, however Oregon and UCLA were at home against unranked teams they were supposed to beat easily. I wasn't able to watch much of either teams lose, but what I've seen from the highlights is that Oregon has a terrible offensive line and UCLA has no rush defense. In addition to all this chaos at the top of the rankings, every team ranked 14th -19th lost, which lead to a huge shake up in the rankings this week. Unfortunetly one of those teams was the 17th ranked Wisconsin Badgers. I watched the first half of the game with Louie and even turned to him when it first started and said that I was concerned becasuse the Badgers never play well at Northwestern. Obviously my fears came to reality, even though Melvin Gordon ran for over 250 yards and a td, they still found a way to give the game away through the amazingly terrible quarterbacking of Joel Stave and Tanner McEvoy (who played safety last year). I was hoping the Badgers would contend for a birth in the new college football playoff, now I have no clue what to expect.

This describes the entire second half of the game

Or maybe this does

Enough with my rant about the Badgers, the NFL was crazy on Sunday. There were a ton of milestones reached, the biggest of which was Peyton Manning throwing for touchdowns number 500, 501, and 502 which leaves him 6 behind Brett Favre for most all time. Manning may juist break the record this week because he is playing the Jets and their grade school secondary, if not it will happen sometime this month I'm sure. Some of the other milestones were Jason Witten becoming only the third tight end to go over 10,000 career recieving yards. He is behind only Shannon Sharpe (by about 40 yards) and Tony Gonzalez (by a lot of yards that he will never reach). Another milestone was the Browns comeing back from down 25 points to beat the Titans thanks to Jake Locker getting hurt and Hoyer the Destroyer being ,well, a destroyer. When I got home Sunday, this game was 28-10 Tennesse and the first thing I thought of was how they made a big comeback week one and it would be funny if they did it again...and then it happened. I hate to be that guy that overreacts to the first four games of the season, but these Browns aren't that bad. The interesting thing is that in the stretch of the next 4 games, 3 are against bad teams (including back to back games against winless Oakland and Jacksonville). So even if they don't beat the Steelers at home next week (even though they very well could because the Steelers have looked awful the last two weeks) they could still win 3 out of the next 4 and go to 5-3 halfway through the season! The second half of the season isn't quite as easy but if they can steal a few wins, there is no reason they can't make the playoffs. The final milestone that was reached was Drew Brees becoming the fastest to pass for 40,000 yards with one team. After all he went through when he came out of college when everyone said he was too small and with the whole Phillip Rivers situation causing his exit of San Diego, it's nice to see he has proved everyone wrong. Brees seems to be one of the real good guys in the NFL so it's always good to see him do well, but the part of this that really shocks me is that he reached this milestone so much faster than anyone else. He did it in 21 less games than the previous record holder Dan Marino and even though the game has changed a lot since Marino's days, it is still shocking that someone would shatter one of his records by that much.

Kyle Orton likes to party

When it comes to the action on the field, I was only shocked about a few games. The first of which had to be the fighting Kyle Orton's coming back from down 14-0 in detroit to win 17-14. Normally the Lions fade late in the season and these kind of loses occur, but for whatever reason they blew a game that they should've definetly won. Now it is possible that the Bills are better than everyone thinks since they are 3-2 including wins over the Bears and Lions, but I have a hard time believing they are actually better than those teams. It's also noteworthy that the Lions kicker Alex Henry, who was just signed after thier original kicker was cut for missing so many field goals, missed all 3 of his field goal attempts. No suprise the Lions cut him today, which means they will have their 3rd kicker swap in 3 weeks. The only other game that shocked me was the shalacking that the Patriots put on the Bengals. I knew that the Pats would come out with some fire after everybody was saying they're dominant AFC years are over, but I never expected them to pick apart a good Bengals defense the way they did. Not only did this game show me that the Pats are still one of the best teams in the AFC, but it also showed me that the Bengals still can't win on the big stage. These are the kind of games the Bengals have to win if they want to be considered as contenders this year because their recent playoff history hasn't given anyone any reason to believe in them.

Welcome to Rocktober and the return of Christian Mingle

Wait...what? The Rockies arent in the playoffs?  How come no one told me this?  Who is going to give us warm tacos as the weather gets colder?  Disappointment.   I guess we will have to settle for MooseTacos and his extra inning HR-ness and some good old fashioned great playoff baseball to tide us over.  Luckily, after the first 3 days of the baseball postseason, there is plenty to appreciate and even more to look forward to.
I know I am a little late to this party, but free time has been at a premium over the past week.  I know, I know, nothing should come between me and "The Blog."  I'll do better...I promise.  I am going to play with some bulleted type things today (not the type that Aaron Hernandez played with that are now being ruled inadmissable in court, I dont have those, and really...playing with them seems like a bit of a bad idea), so we'll see how that feels when we get done.  Maybe I'll use a little bold too, I dont know, we'll find out together.

We will never be Royals (Roy-als).
Two games, two extra inning wins.  The Wild Card game against Oakland was a comedy of errors (which turned tragic...tragicomedy of errors?) for the A's that the Royals were lucky (and good) enough to take advantage of. Game 1 of the ALDS fit more with the blueprint that the Royals have lived by all season long...great defense, lock down pitching, timely hitting (the fact that it was a HR was decidedly not what KC has been doing all season as they hit the fewest HRs in MLB this year).
First, the WC game...When there is a game that I am interested in that I dont get to watch live, I usually like to read through the PBP from start to finish before I see the final score.  Basically, I try to relive the game through my imagination (this is likely a direct byproduct of playing too many text based baseball sims).  I watched a good part of this game, but when the Royals rally fell short in the 8th inning when they stranded a runner 90 feet from a tie as Salvador Perez pretended he was playing "Pinata" and swung wildly at 3 consecutive pitches that didnt come anywhere near the zone and Omar Infante followed suit, I figured that the comeback was over and that, since I was tired, I could go to bed and not miss much (oops).  Just to be safe though, when I woke up the next morning, I checked the PBP.  You can imagine my surprise when I saw that a sac fly tied it in the 9th and that Perez again had a shot to win the game in the 10th (and failed) before he finally got his shit together in the 12th and hit that roller into left field that plated the winning run and sent every resident of Kansas City into a barbeque induced euphoria and left the Oaktown management asking, "How the F did we blow 4 run lead in the 8th inning with our Ace on the mound?"
The answer to that is relatively simple.  First, with a 7-3 lead in the 8th inning, why would you send your starter back out to the mound.  This wasnt a Madison Bumgarner situation where Jon Lester had thrown a relatively small number of pitches, was completely dominating and was holding an 8 run lead.  When he came out for the 8th, Lester had thrown nearly 90 pitches, given up only 3 runs on 6 hits.  Thats not a terrible work load, but the Oakland A's professional baseball playing team employs men whose sole job it to keep hitting men for the opposing team from reaching base, especially in the later innings of games.  Did Bob Melvin forget that these guys existed?

 Did he forget that, if they A's hung on to win, that they would need Lester to be ready to go again in game 2 or 3 of the ALDS and that limiting his work would be a way that might help that goal?  He could have brought in a lefty (Eric O'Flaherty or Fernando Abad, both with WHIPS under 0.95), he could have brought in a righty (Ryan Cook, Dan Otero, Luke Gregerson, who ended up coming in for Lester anyways, who all have WHIPs 1.09), or, hell, he could have brought in noted chair pummeler Drew Pomeranz to start the 8th inning and then still had closer Sean Doolittle to close the game out.  Really, if there was one thing that the Oakland A's did in 2014, top to bottom, better than any team (other than Seattle) in the AL, it was having their bullpen shutdown opponents...and their manager decided that he didnt want to use them.  The second part of the answer is that, while the A's addressed their perceived starting pitching holes (and they really were there thanks to the damn Platonic UCL striking AJ Griffin and Jarrod Parker earlier this year) by mortgaging their future for Jeff Samardzija, Jason Hammel and Lester (and yes I did just call Addison Russell, "The Future."  Things are going to get confusing when Russell "The Future" gets to Chicago and finds Kris "The Future" Bryant, Javier "The Future" Baez, Jorge "The Future" Soler...at least Cubs coaches will just have to say "Hey...Future, lets go" and they will have talked to the whole team), the only thing they did to address their defensive issues behind the plate was to buy former Cub and former favorite player of the commish's wife, Geo Soto from the Rangers. 

This is a problem because I am pretty sure that Soto was the inspiration for Samuel L Jackson's character in the Bruce Willis (terrible) movie "Unbreakable."  Soto had filled the role, throwing out 9 of 17 base stealers after he joined the team.  But, shockingly, he hurt his thumb early in the game and was unable to continue.  Neither of the two regular catching options available to the A's was particularly good at quelling opponents running game; Derek Norris threw out 12 of 72 (17%) and John Jaso threw out 4 of 36 (11%).  On came Norris, and 7 stolen bases (without a CS) later, including 4 in the 8th inning rally, one in the 9th inning rally that tied the game, and another on the pitch before Perez knocked in the winning run (this SB was on a pitch out, no less, and the runner wouldnt have been there to score on Perez's single without that SB).  I know that you cant plan injuries, but your plan to fix a major hole in your team shouldnt be "lets get the guy who has barely played over the past 2 seasons because he has had 36 different injuries.  That will definitely end well for us."  This was a team construction fail in addition to the field management fail in regards to the bullpen usage.  Basically, the only way this could have been worse for the entire organization would have been if, in the post game conference, Billy Beane had said "We will never be Royals" and then Melvin ran into the room yelling "Royals" and quickly departing.

Anyways, back to the Royals.  Between that win and the thrilling extra inning 3-2 win on the Mike Moustakas HR, this Royals team has a bit of 2006 St. Louis Cardinals to them.  They definitely arent the most talented team (I mean seriously, they started Jason Vargas and his 86 MPH fastball in Game 1 of a series), but any game they are leading in after 6 innings is basically over and they seem to consistently pull out games they have no business winning.  I dont believe in teams of destiny, but I do believe in teams believing in themselves...and this team believes in itself.

 

Orioles hurt the small village of woodland creatures living in Joba Chamberlain's beard.
Because I watch baseball, I knew that the Orioles have been on of the better hitting teams in baseball and that the Detroit bullpen has been so bad that Ernesto Frieri has started looking like an attractive upgrade and that this combination would likely affect at least one of the games in the teams' first round series.  I did not expect it to happen so soon or so spectacularly as the Orioles put up an 8 spot in the 8th inning of game one, essentially scoring 7 runs in just 20 pitches (before tacking on the 8th run 2 batters and 13 pitches later).  Heading into the top of the 8th, the O's held a 4-2 lead, which looked in danger as leadoff man Ian Kinsler singled.  On the 2-2 pitch to Torri Hunter, Kinsler was running and Hunter ripped a low liner...right at JJ Hardy, who caught it and threw to first for the back breaking twin killing. 
On the next pitch, Miguel Cabrera got miggy wit it on a 390 foot HR to right center field which, instead of tying the game, brought the Tigers within one.  When Alejandro De Aza doubled with one out in the 8th, on came Joba the Pizza Hut who gave up a weak groundball that was booted by Andrew Romine, the replacement for the replacement SS, and a weak looper to center before being removed from the game so that the Joakim Soria could take a turn pouring gasoline on the fire.  Soria, who was supposed to be the safe option in the pen, threw 12 pitches to 5 batters, 4 of those batters scored scored and Soria recorded only 1 out.  When he entered, there was an outside chance that the Tigers could pull a Royals and get back in the game.  By the time he was doing the walk of shame, the game was out of reach.  Closer Joe Nathan, who one would think would have been an important part of trying to keep his team in the game, was nowhere to be seen.  Not only was the late rally a completely demoralizing run through the Detroit pen, but it saved the Orioles from having to extend their own closer, Zach Britton, who had come on in the 8th after Cabrera's bomb to try for a 4 out save.  With the game out of reach, Tommy Hunter came on to close it.  Detroit is up right now in game 2, and that bullpen will have to come on again, this time to try to hold a lead.  If they can, Detroit will be in the driver's seat in the series, if they cant, the series is pretty much over. 
Like Oakland, Detroit addressed a hole in their rotation at the deadline, picking up David Price from Tampa in a 3 teamer (their need was not a big as Oakland's though as Anabel Sanchez was working through an injury and the team already had Max Scherzer and a struggling Justin Verlander).  Like Oakland, they tried to address another weakness (the bullpen) by picking up a player from the Rangers (Soria), and, like in Oakland, that bandaid wasnt nearly enough.  Soria is a good pitcher who had a rough day on Thursday night.  But he cannot take up the slack for an entire bullpen that was struggling.  With pen arms being one of the most acquireable commodies at the deadline, I find it hard to believe that the Tigers couldnt have gotten someone like Jonathon Papelboner on Jared Burton/Casey Fien from a team who was out of contention and willing to trade older talent for prospects.  That inaction may not cause the Tigers to lose in the DS round, but it will almost certainly keep them from bringing the World Series trophy back to the Motor City (dont we need a better name for the trophy than "The Commissioner's Trophy?"  I nominate Tater Tot Crown).

edit---So literally, as I am finishing this, the Tigers bullpen is imploding again and looks like the not so dynamic duo of Joba the Pizza Hut and Joakim Soria-I-Lost-You-The-Game are gonna snatch a loss from the jaws of victory.  Un-frickin-believable.  Go O's...and the Clayton Kershaw-Adam Wainwright matchup of my baseball wet dreams goes tonight...this is the best reason to love October.

Christian Mingle's bad blind date with Packers
Eventually, I will get around to writing about football stuff on this here blog, so I might as well start with something on everyone's favorite QB to hate on.  As news broke throughout Thursday that TD Teddy would be sidelined and CPon would be taking the reigns, I should have been running to the waiver wire to pick up the Packers and start them on every single fantasy team that I have.  I didn't, and as I watched pass after pass fall to the grass so far away from the intended receiver that, had the ball been a gernade it wouldnt have even touched the target, I felt worse about my inaction.  This is my single largest regret for the month of October so far.
Obviously Ponder is terrible, and that performance last night probably cost him the chance at catching on as a backup somewhere for the next few seasons (if he has stayed benched all year, someone would have given him a chance to catch on...he was a 1st round draft pick after all) with his indecisiveness, inaccuracy and general ineptitude.  But really, the entire Vikings team mailed it in before the game even started.  The turnstile offensive line had trouble letting Ponder get to the top of his drop without a hand in his face or a body on his hip or opening up any holes for Matt Asiata and Jerrick McKinnon to get back to the line of scrimmage without having to make a man miss.  Cordarelle Patterson took a short pass, gained 5 yards and then slid feet first to avoid contact.  The defensive line got pushed around by a Packer offense that hadnt gained more than 80 yards on the ground in any game so far this year for 156 rushing yards.  The entire team was the problem.  As I watched, I couldnt help but think of Tim Tebow (I know, its random, but stay with me).  By almost all accounts, Tebow didnt have the requisite skill to be a starting QB in the NFL, yet despite his personal struggles nearly every game, his team performed at level higher than their talent and won a number of games they probably shouldnt have won.  In the NFL, there is obviously a difference in skill level between the top QBs and the worst ones, but the fact is that, simply by reaching the NFL, every player has at least a baseline competency that they have the physical skills required to do the job (even Ponder has the physical skills to be a decent QB). 

What that means, is the biggest difference between QBs in the NFL is their ability to process the mental side of the game and, more importantly, their ability to get their teammates to buy into what they are doing and to play hard to reach their goal.  Obviously guys like Aaron Rodgers make plays on a weekly basis that make you question what are commonly called "The Laws of Physics," but those are the outliers.  Think about a guy like Peyton Manning.  Dont you think that the players on the Broncos are playing harder because they know that they have Peyton Frickin Manning on their side and if they can do their part, he will lead them to victory?  The same with Rodgers.  Look at the Bears and Jay Cutler.  When Cutler is going well and not turning the ball over, the entire Bears team is a different one than it was in the second half against the Packers when Jay turned the ball over multiple times.  Which brings me back to Ponder and the Vikings.  The Vikings had given up on the game the instant they heard Teddy wasnt starting because not a single one of them had confidence that Ponder could get them to a victory (not even Ponder though he could do it).  And it showed.