DFL 2016 Week 3: "FF Sucks, I don't want to talk about it."

I want to first off thank Terri for the tag line this week.  It pretty much perfectly encapsulates my season so far.  However, before we get into the insanely bitter diatribe, I'm going to share some good news with everyone.

One of our very own has a new offspring running around.  He's one of the more quiet ones in the league, so that;s why you haven't heard about this yet.  So, congratulations to Patrick for becoming a father yet again.  Here's a picture of little Winston McGuyver Hutton IV, Esq:

He looks just like you, Patrick!

With that fluttery goodness out of the way, I feel that I have to go on one of my rants here.  Little Winston, you might want to cover your ears.  It's going to get hella-vulgar here starting.... now.

First off, this week.. I .. I just can't even find the words:

Just imagine him saying "ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME??"
I couldn't find the associated gif...

So, let's start from the beginning..  Going into the week 0-2.  Hungry for a win.  Going up against Mike, even hungrier not to lose.  Thursday night football.  Gronk's been questionable all week, trending towards no.  So, I pick up Ebron.  Should do decently.  But what happens about 6 pm on Thursday?  Shitfuck McDickBag (the owner of the Patriots) says "Gronk's definitely playing tonight."  So I swap out Ebron for Gronk who them proceeds to score 0 points.  Why is that?  CUZ FUCKING GRONK PLAYED 3 SNAPS AND WAS BENCHED!!!

Pictured above, Shitfuck enjoying the super funny joke he played
on Phil.  Sod off, McDickBag.

But it only gets worse.  Because guess what?  I lost to Mike this week.  By freaking .3 points! In the last FREAKING minute of the Monday night game. WHAT ...  THE ... EVERLOVING ... BALLSACK??

So, not only do I get screwed for a TE (again! running total for TE points for the kings this year is 0), but I also get screwed by partial points.  (Both of these are issues that I completely love.)  But on the plus side, I do get pretty high priority on the waiver wire.  So... yay, I guess?  And as a side note, I guess that Mike and I can finally bury hatchet over that little dust up that we had a few years back with the partial points.  Come on, Mike.  Let's hug it out:

OK, OK, OK... I'm calm now... let's talk for realsies.....

Elimination League.  A few more joined the ranks of the 1 strike club.  Skoot chose ARI (which was a pretty safe bet, all things considered) and McClennen picked Pittsburgh, because no way that Wentz could go 3-0, right?  RIGHT???   (As a reminder, Pittsburgh received the beat down of the week from the Eagles this week 34-3.)  And we have our Eponine award for Dave, who is the first to fall, with another Arizona pick.

Cuz the whole "She is the first to fall" line.

And yes, I'm naming awards after Les Miserables now.  That's not the worst one to get BTW.  The worst one is probably the Javert Hat award for bad fashion:

So, enjoy all of your extra time that you have now that you don't need to make picks any more.

Pick 'ems.  On the plus side, I'm not the only one to shit the bed on this particular game this week.  When we do as bad as we did collectively, you know that you're going to make the curmudgeons angry:

3-3.  That's the best that we got this week, guys.  .500  And only TWO people reached those fabled heights.  That would be RA Dave and Skoot.  So, Terri keeps her 1st place position by default (though she only made 5 picks last week - hate it when that happens!) at 12, RA Dave squeaks into 2nd place at 9, and there is a three way tie for 3rd place (Phil, Mike, and Skoot), with 8 picks.  Man, we've got to do better next week!!!

And now.... onto the real league.  I know that I said that I'd do this section first last week, but nuts to that.  Old habits die hard. (Which, BTW, would be the perfect name of the next movie in the Bruce Willis franchise.)

Phil vs. Mike.  Yeah, I think that we've already talked about that enough.

Crutch vs Kookie.  Well, it finally happened.  America finally made its disbelieve illusions save against Palmer's "I'm a competent QB" spell that he cast.  But it came at the hands of ... BUFFALO??  How crap!  they have a team still?  But don't get too cocky, Kookie.  You would have lost to pretty much any other team that didn't go into complete meltdown mode this week.  And speaking of which...

Terri vs McClennen.  Wow.  I haven't a clue as to what happened here.  Terri, deservedly so, received the beat down of the week from McClennen.  To be fair to McClennnen, he was the only one to get into the centurian club this week, but just barely so.  And Terri, whose team really seems better than this, scored a whopping 27.17 points.  The silver lining (maybe brown lining?) is that Terri was able to slide right under the previous lowest score of the league of 27.19 points (from the championship game last year).  So, if you're going to suck, do it with aplomb.  Well, done Terri!

(And that, ladies and gentlemen is our very first gifv post on this blog....)

RA Dave vs Patrick.  This was a painful game.  Shit ton of terrible scores (plus, a bunch of injuries on the bench, so sadly this was close to optimal.)  Newton shit the bed, Houston forgot to bring their DEF to Foxboro... just a cacophony of pain o the field today.  The one shining example was on RA Dave's team...  The Defense.  The 36 point defense.  But that's what you get with you limit your opponent to 3 points, and pick off 6 passes, returning two for TDs.  But seriously RA Dave... some respect?  I mean little Winston was born to this slaughter...

Melanie vs Missy.  Nah, I'm not even going to make a cat fight joke here.  Rodgers and the Philly D went buck wild on Missy's team.  Sadly, Melanie's insane DEF (32 points!!) couldn't keep up.  More and more injuries on the bench too.  This is not shaping up to be a good year.  (And here I thought that I was just me!)

Finally, Skoot vs Ben.  Another WTF fest here.  Two players goose egged here, two others went negative.  (To be fair one of them was Fitzpatrick and we all kinda expected that of him now and then, right?) With Ben's win here, Skoot is thrown easily into lats place.  

Ugh.. I guess that the best that can be said about this week is that it's over.  Next week is another week, right?  (Also, keep your eyes peeled on the waiver settings.  Ben noticed something funky last week and I want to see what it looks like this week.  There maybe be a tweak coming for the released waivers...)

DFL 2016 Week 2: Waivers kicking my ass, man.

So, I think that the reason that I'm not getting a lot of hate mail these days is that not a lot of people are running into waivers problems.  Well, except for Skoot and I.  And to the way that Yahoo! sets up the defaults for waivers, I can only say one thing:

So,yeah, full disclosure I had to tweak the settings on the waivers again.  So, it WAS set to Thursday-Tuesday waivers.  This means that ALL players were locked, regardless of whether they were playing or not from Thursday until Tuesday.  But Phil, what if you needed to pick up a player on Sunday morning because QUESTIONALBE became OUT?  Well, then you are shit out of luck.   So, NOW the waivers is set to go from gametime until Tuesday.  So, hopefully everything will be set as it needs to.  And then we can dip our arms into a large bowl of pudding, as is tradition:

Cuz this makes as much sense as the NFL this year.
But I am getting ahead of myself...

We'll start off, as we often do, with the Elimination league.  Most people picked Baltimore this week, though a few Carolina picks snuck in, as did an Arizona picks.  All solid picks, except for Kookie and Phil who both picked Detroit.  A hard lesson was learned that Charles Dance tried to teach all those years ago: Never trust a lion, when death is on the line:

Warning:  spoilers above. Man, I miss this show.

So, why don't we talk about we talk about Pick'ems league, why not?

Can't have too much Zoidberg, amirite?

Wide range of stuff going on here.  RA Dave took his bingo from last week and decided that was good enough, so he didn't make picks.  I know, he was blaming TNF for missing the deadline, but does anyone really buy that?  BTW - no TNF this week.  So, hold off on making your picks until like Saturday.  Do you think that he bought it?

Man, I miss this show too....

Anyway, Skoot and Ben joined in this week at (5-1 and 4-2 respectively - Forsett from the Read indeed!).  Terri extended her lead by going 4-2, Mike had a respectible 3-3 and Phil for some un-FUCKING-known reason only made 3-2 picks (and I'm pretty sure that I would have chosen the winner had I made the last pick... bitter...).  So, the top three are:
Terri (10)
Phil (7)
Mike and RA Dave (6)

Well done and the way that things are going, plenty of time to jump in if you haven't already!

And now on to the bullshit that is the stupid fucking primary game.  Now, I'm not bitter because I'm still winless.  I'm not bitter because I'm rotting away in 10th place.  I'm bitter because I keep getting screwed by the TIGHT GOD DAMN ENDS!!!!   Now before Skoot and Ben smugly comment on how we should take TEs out altogether, I've prepared a GIF just for you:

I mean seriously, I'm in no mood for it right now.

Who did I draft #1?  Best TE in the league.  How many points have I gotten off that position the entire year?  FREAKING 0.  ARRGGG!!!!

Get it together, Phil...  OK, so, what else is going on? Here's a bulleted list that you may have it:

• Nobody broke into triple digits this week, and only two get into the 90s.
• Beat down of the week goes to Crutch foe whooping on Ben by just shy of 50 points.
• The fall from grace this week goes to Ben for scoring over 60 points less this week than last week.
• Closest game of the week was Melanie slithering by Skoot by less than 2 points.
• The rich get richer and the poor get poorer: 4 teams are still undefeated, 4 are still winless.

Eesh.. this is a pretty short list.  I should really look into doing the primary game first.  Eh... we'll see what we see next week.  Of course, going up against the #2 team in the league so maybe next week's write up will be even shorter.... grumble grumble grumble....

Week 2 Predictions

What's up my non-hispanic bretheren!! Ever have a morning where nothing is going right at work and everything you need to get done relies on other people (who don't come in til 10am) so you have some time to kill ?

Well you're in luck (or should be scared), because i'm bored and have time to kill which means i'm doing a writeup today.

So lets take a look at week 2.

Coming into Week 2 this is where we stand.


Standings Going into Week 2

---

First off, congratulations to Ben for your team name. Namely because it's not a jumple of jibberish characters this year and also cuz i happen to agree with the statement. On a more important note, since I have such a stellar team this year (can you feel the sarcasm?!!) , i'd like to take a moment to revel in the fact that "hey, at least i'm beating Phil!!" whoohooo! But i digress....


Analysis

For the most part (and obviously it's early), the current standings seem pretty legit. Only one exception remains and that's Melanie. She had the 'fortunate' luck to play LUCK this week (a.k.a. Ben) so despite her decent outing of 87 points, she's in the loss column this week and leader of the losers.

Also, i'd like to point out that Kuchi ...you're losing .....to Phil at the quest for being the team with the most moves.  Seriously , what the fuck! are you feeling ok ? i mean...it's week 2 and you have given us the impression that you might actually LIKE you're team.  This is madness!!






Matchups

Well the good news is that at least one of us is a gonna win :). I traded in Fitzpatrick for Wentz this week at QB but there's really no guarantee that it's an upgrade yet with him only playing 1 game to date. I think Bortles is a hell of a quarterback and was sad to see you grabbed him right before I was about to in this years draft so kudos to you. By default i was leaning toward picking you this week but looking at the individual matchups on your side gives me pause (Brandon Marshal, against stout buffalo D, Elliot in divisional matchup and the fact that you are putting two WR's on the same team which only works if they score like gangbusters through the air). I'm not saying my team is great but given those factors I'm actually gonna predict a win for FITR this week

Prediction : ForsettInTheRear by a hispanic butt hair!

---

Kuchi. Never before have I wanted you to win so bad. Ok, I lie, the last time was probably at G3 and every other time youv'e played Phil in something so i salute you. Continue the streak of beating him down like the poor mishapen turd that he is.  I suppose i should actually look at the matchup though..so here goes....

Wow. Ok, i actually agree with Yahoo on this one. On paper it really looks like a good matchup. The Denver D might prove the difference as I have more faith in them right now than the Arizona D (who have problem in their secondary which was exploited fiercely last week). I'll give the nod here to the King.

Prediction : The Kings

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Crutch faces off against league leader Ben this week. And after a stellar outing from Andrew Luck last week, Ben smartly has to shelve him because they're playing the the Denver D and is going with the safer pick in Eli Manning. Not to be outdone, Crutch has Carson Palmer going against the Bucs which should fair slightly better.  Both teams have RB's (Ingram and Gurley) who i don't believe will score as much as projected this week (ingram cuz they've got 6 Rb's on that team which is insane; gurley cuz he faces Seattle D), so that's a wash i guess. I think for me the killer is the Cincinatti D in this case (on Bens team). They face the red hot Steelers and I thnk their numbers will fall.

Prediction : The Soul Guys by 5

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Mike vs. McClennen this week. On paper this one is all Mike. But I think McClennen's got a fair shot here. I believe highly in Allen Robinson (Jax-WR), J. Nelson and Phillip Rivers given their matcups this week and I really believe they will be the key players to lift up McClennen's chances here. Also, Dallas comes to Washington this week and with Mike being a pretty big Washington homer, (Jackson, Reed) and the fact that the Cowboys always seem to ruin things for the Skins...i'm going with my gut and calling for the upset Chris.

Prediction : NotTheWorst (but clearly not the best!!) by a Wells Fargo fake bank account point

---

Another close one.  Patrick is heavy on Oakland's success for his team (Carr, Cooper) while Terri is simply more spread out with talent around the league. I really like Mike Wallace as a pickup who might be becoming the #1 WR in Baltimore this year if things continue like they've gone. In the end I'm still gonna go with Terri here but not my much.

Prediction : The Most  TERRIbleTeam

---

And finally we have Dave vs. Missy this week. Sorry to dissapoint but at present, Missy seems to have decided not to play a Defence so i'm gonna go with Dave .  Missy, where you at girl!!?

Prediction : Homebrewin' a win this week 

Phil, as always thanks for doing the league again.  I still hate you and one day i will get your punk ass back with a solid rick roll for the ages after you bested me with that sorry ass excuse for a video last month. I am ashamed of myself for falling for it and will not give up until i am avenged and you are sitting in front of a screen watching Rick Astley bring you a steady stream of Southern tears to your bedeviled vile face.

Love,

Skoot.

DFL 2016 Week 1: When you walk through the garden...

... you gotta watch your back.

For the uninitiated, that's the opening line from the Tom Waits song "Way Down in the Hole".  More specifically, it's the theme song for The Wire:

So, why I am discussing perhaps the best TV show of all time when there's so much to get into this week?  Well, there was a bit of a hiccup on the Waiver Wire this week.  In that not all of the settings were made.  With Ben and Skoot's help (thanks, fellas), we got it fixed.  The good news is that only two moves were made before I fixed things.  (That would be a move by me and a move by Skoot.)  Since we were WAY down on the wire priority anyways, I am letting the transactions stand and I bumped Skoot and myself down appropriately for this week.  So, all is good.  (Unless you're McClennen and really had your heart set on Ware or Wentz, but I kinda doubt it.  I'm assuming that McClennen is just walking through empty offices these days wondering where 5,300 people happened to go...)

We'll start where we always start:  Elimination League! Only 1 strike this week, and RA Dave got that dubious distinction.  For most of the league, it ruins a perfect Melanie season.  But stay fast, Dave, I know that you can get another strike next week and get booted early.

Also, I'm kinda divided on this one.  I mean, it's RA Dave and you kinda have to root against the league champ.  

Right next to the clause about having to hate the Cowboys.

BUT, on the other hand, RA Dave picked the Panthers to win.  And I hate to see that.

I usually don't feel this much like Larry David, and I'm not sure that I like it.

As a side note, both Marie and Skoot signed up and picked correctly this week while they were at Disney...  What's everyone else's excuse?

Moving On.... to Pick 'ems!

So, only 4 people picked, 3 people bingo'ed (and neither were me) and fully half of the picks (correctly) picked me to lose.

So, congrats to RA Dave and Terri for the perfect picks and all, lesser so for my 4-2, and well done to Mike for going 3-3.  As for the rest of you, plenty of time to catch up.  Get the picky picks done early!  (Like, specifically BEFORE the final line ups are so that you don't actually threaten my position.)

And on to the most important of all.. the league itself.  I'm gonna be playing with the format of the write ups a bit.  This week, I'm going to just throw out a few highlights.  I'll see how that feels.

1. Big winner this week?  Well, there really wasn't one...  Nobody hit 100 points, though if I had to pick a big loser, it would probably go to the so incorrectly named team name that I don't  even know what to say - McClennen (NotTheWorst), who, coincidentally enough the DEAD worst right now after receiving the bad end of the beat down of the week.  So, congrats to Kookie (S-Bricks) for handing that down.
2. Ben did wind up with the most points, as luck went buck-ass crazy and pulled in almost as many points as McClennen's whole team.  (And you know what really hurts?  He had like 50 points between three of his players on the bench!)
3. Tight Ends faired pretty well.  A handful pushed into double digits, and a good number weren't that far behind.  But you know who didn't do well?  My FREAKING #1 Draft pick:  Gronk. Didn't play.  And they didn't make that call until Satuday.  So, I picked up another TE, WHO DIDN'T PLAY EITHER AND THEY DIDN'T MAKE THAT CALL UNTIL GAMETIME.  ARRRRRGG!!!!
4. Remember my super secret last pick from the draft that I was going to ride to the gold this year?  That's right... Sanu.  Well, he was the first person that was cut this season, and he pulled in 2 TDs.  My brilliance is one again on display!
5. But don't worry about me... My #2 draft pick (Wilson) tweaked his ankle and may or may not play for the next 3 weeks.
6. And congrats to Mike for starting Brees before he decides to pack it in in a few weeks.  Don't get too used to Brees - he's gonna break you heart.
7. Closest game of the week this week was between Terri and Missy - a scant 2 points separated the score.  So.. yay catfight!
   
8. The first trade of the season happened.  Well done, Patrick and Ben!
9. Oh yeah.. and Yahoo! is giving grades on individual games now...  I kinda thought that the grade would be more binary - like winning a losing.  So, you can check it out if you win, and tell it to frig right off if you lost.

And that's about all that I have to say about that....

DFL 2016 Pre-Week 1: 'Twas the night before kick off...

... and all through the league
People were -

You know what?  Nevermind.  Doing a post in couplets would be hella-hard.  So, I'm going to bail out before it gets too intense.

So is everyone ready for some FOOTBALL???

Kick off is less than 24 hours away and I am so stoked I literally can't even.

A classic for any age.

So, before we get into the nitty gritty, we've gotta do the pre-season rankings, of team names.

1) ForsettInTheRear (Skoot).  Holy fuck what a delightful surprise this was logging on to the draft!  It works on only a single level, but God DAMN does it work well on that level.
2) Bortle Kombat (Patrick).  Once again, Patrick comes up with not only a great team name, but also gets an accompanying icon for his team.  Football related, perfect pun...  Yeah, this was teh team name to, and Skoot did.
3) anotherTERRIbleteam (Terri).  Love the self-deprecation. Love that your name is in the team name (so that I don't have to say to myself "Now, who is this?" like a hundred times in the upcoming month).  Well done!
4) MuleDay97 (Melanie).  I'm sure that this means something very specific, but to me it's a random couple of words thrown together with a random couple of digits.  And it conjures up a beautiful image in my head.  The randomness alone is divine.
5) PhilBack King (Phil).  OK, I'll admit.  I was stretching for a football pun with my name in it, and the closest that I could get was "Full Back" and I wanted to be royal, so there we go.  I'll cop to it.  The team name isn't the strongest pun that I've come up with.
6) NotTheWorst (McClennnen).  This isn't the wittiest name that there is, but it came aroudn full circle for me when he was the second to lowest post draft rankings.  And if he finishes 11th, I'm going to give him bonus points for seeing into the future.
7) Paranormal Soul Buy (Crutch).  I like this one.  I don't know why, but I like it.
8) Homebrewin' (RA Dave).  Who doesn't like a home brew?  Not sure how it relates to football or the league, but I can (kinda) get behind the name.
9) 2016Champs (Mike).  I admire your bravado.  But I think that it might be a little misplaced.  Good luck though...
10) S-Bricks2WaiverWire (Kookie).  I'm assuming that S stands for Shit, as opposed to Sandy or Silly or Smiling.  If Kaepernick taught us anything, it's that protests against things you consider injustices can be integrated into football.  And you did it in an interesting and nuanced way, unlike:
11) TightEndsSuck (Ben).  Yeah, yeah, yeah.  I get it.  You lost the vote.  At least be funny with it!
12) ScoobyDoo (Missy).  For 12 years running.  Same team name.  Eventually, this is going to be considered ironic and shoot to the top of the list.  Sadly, this is not the year for that.

OK, now let's get down to some hard numbers.

Here's the Draft order this year:

1. Crutch
2. Kookie
3. Missy
4. Terri
5. Mike
6. Patrick
7. Ben
8. Melanie
9. Phil
10. McClennen
11. Skoot
12. RA Dave

And here's the draft ranks:

1. Crutch (A-)
2. Skoot (B+)
3. Ben (B+)
4. Phil (B)
5. RA Dave (B)
6. Kookie (B)
7. Terri (B)
8. Missy (B-)
9. Melanie (B-)
10. Mike (B-)
11. McClennen (C)  (Not the worst - so satisfying!)
12. Patrick (D)

And based on the schedules with the teams currently in place, here's the order that Yahoo! predicts that we will end:

1. Crutch
2. Kookie
3. RA Dave
4. Terri
5. Mike
6. Skoot
7. Ben
8. Phil
9. Melanie
10. Missy
11. McClennen (AGAIN - SO SATISFYING!!!)
12. Patrick

What does all of this mean?  Well, pretty much fuck-all if history of Yahoo! predictions is to be believed.  And we've already got 5 moves, so who knows how things are going to end up? And granted, two of those moves are because the players were cut, but still.  I bet that Patrick is glad that we don't have a move cap now, huh?  :)

And that's about all that I have to say for now.  So many conflicting emotions right now.  On one hand, the season opens tomorrow night.  But on the other, my Panthers are probably going to get beat pretty bad on a national stage.  On one hand, I'm glad that the league is starting back up, but on the other other, I hate (most of) you all so very, very much.  I'll let Liam sum it up for me:

Peace out, yo.