It's Playoff Time!! But I wanna talk about week 14

I have absolutely no motivation to write a playoff preview or anything like that. It's Thursday night after the Chargers' destruction of the 49ers (who still, by some act of God, are very much in the playoff race).

It looks like we may be heading for 2 upsets in the Divisional Round. The 4th-seeded Polar Bears got off to a tough start even though Rivers put up 22 tonight. Anthony Dixon (3 points) and Vernon Davis (0 points) really put Fred in a tough spot. That's what you get for being a 9ers loyalist. I'm already excited to see 4 RBs on Fred's bench outscore Dixon this week. The 5th-seeded Four 3 Year Olds got 10 points out of Mike Tolbert, a solid start considering he didn't whiff on other players like his opponent.

And in the much-anticipated 3 vs 6 matchup, we may be heading for a colossal upset. Market & Crack, the 6 seed, is currently projected to put up 135 on the 3-seeded Team 1818A. Werner didn't help his cause by starting Malcolm Floyd, who didn't play tonight. Maybe Werner was just sick of winning so easily in the playoffs & wanted to add a degree of difficulty. Also, if I was running Team 1818A, I'd seriously consider starting BenJarvus Green-Ellis over AP this weekend. I know it sounds ridiculous...but I also know that Chicago's game plan is to make "Ramsey or Webb beat us," so I highly doubt AP's going to have much room to work with. Either way, it was a fun season for you, Werner, better luck next year.

Moving on...

Last week I decided it would be fun to write out fake newspaper headlines for the outcome of each week 14 matchup. Basically, I wrote out headlines as if I were writing for the local paper of each team. And I also put a funnier headline/quote in parentheses. I took a look at where all the games stood as of 6pm last Sunday night, and wrote it out at that time. I just happen to be lazy enough to not update these headlines even though there were some minor changes to the way things shook out this past weekend.
Without further ado, here they are:

Bink vs 4 3year Olds

“Rodgers injury no harm to Four 3 year olds, as they lock up the 6 seed…” (Championship hopes now rest on Carson Palmer’s shrugging shoulders)

Or…

“The Bink shows heart with gutsy season-ending win…” (Are you fucking kidding me? They couldn’t even tank the end of the season the right way? Lost the #1 2011 pick on a final-day tiebreaker?)

(Notes: Four 3 Year Olds actually pulled off the win, got the 5 seed, and I did somehow lock up the 1st pick next year.)

Polar Bears vs Team1818A

“Late season meltdown continues as the underachieving Polar Bears underachieve again…” (Maybe if Rex, er…Fred kept his damn mouth shut and focused on coaching instead.)

Or…

“Impressive surge continues as Team 1818A takes 6^th win in last 7 tries to lock up home game in week 1 of playoffs…” (See, Chris Johnson, you show up and good things actually happen…)

(Notes: What a riveting game this was...Fred basically had his whole team playing on Monday night, and Werner had only AP. Peterson put up only 2 points; Fred's players put up 61 points on Monday, and he lost by 1...wow.)

Dorchestah Snafu’s vs Team Preiss

“With key early season injuries and more-than-questionable in-season trade, Dorchestah Snafu’s go quietly as expected…” (Excitement over keeper potential for next year at a minimum due to knowledge of the eventual bad trade involving those keepers.)

Or…

“Team Preiss teases us the whole way as week 14 win can’t bring them to the promised land…” (For the Love of God, Matt, bring on a co-owner to save you from yourself.)

(Notes: McCoy's 14 points for Ben on Sunday night made MattyP's end of season even more pathetic. They tied 85-85, and Ben won the "most bench points" tiebreaker. Matty lands in 9th place, and Ben lost more important tiebreakers for a playoff spot. Everyone was a loser in this game.)

Market & Crack vs JohnThomasMoynahan

“Market&Crack stops 4-game skid with crucial win, ensures playoff spot…” (Despite Kyle Orton’s best efforts to dick them over, Market gets the win…Neil should probably play Peyton for the short time that he’ll be alive in the playoffs.)

Or...

“This is more like it…JTM comes back down to earth to blow regular season championship…” (Anyone who looks at this streak-busting loss & says better to have it now than the playoffs is ignoring one crucial fact: this team is disgustingly mediocre.)

(Notes: Yup, this one worked out exactly as my headlines predicted. I guess my "for the short time he'll be alive in the playoffs" comment might be wrong. I'm so excited for Blanchette to lose his 1st playoff game.)

Pueto vs My last year

“Finally put out of their misery, Motherflipping Pueto can get to work on next year’s #1 overall pick strategy…” (Is Pueto a terrible owner who just lost 6 straight to end the season, or a brilliant owner who knew he didn’t have a championship team and decided to chase that #1 pick?)

Or…

“MyLastYear(Maybe), 2010 Champs! Get a week off before beginning their playoff run…” (MyLastYear’s 2010 season incredibly similar to the movie Major League…heartless owner threatening to quit/move the team, the team bands together with a magical season, throwing a giant “go fuck yourself” back at the owner.)

(Notes: Aaron really did try to get that #1 pick for next year. Unfortunately he underestimated my ability to be really really bad at fantasy sports. And as an FYI for anyone in the playoffs, Mike is celebrating his Regular Season Championship with a 2-week Brazilian vacation. Like the fantastic owner he is, he timed it to be gone during these playoffs. There's a 90% chance he'll forget to check his lineup for next week.)

Credit where credit is due

Before I say a word about this fantasy league, and trust me there's a lot to say, a few soapboxy words about the NFL:
-Of all the hilarious comments I've heard this season while watching a football game (and I've made a ton of them), the funniest one yet came on Monday and it wasn't even meant to be funny. Pueto, watching the 9ers/Cardinals game, asked rhetorically, "Their QB is 8-for-17 for 86 yards and an interception and they're blowing them out?"
I also added, "And their star RB, the person who gets 44% of their total yards from scrimmage, is out for the game?"
Yes, Aaron, the 9ers are killing the Cardinals, on the road, under those exact circumstances. NFC West at its finest. And you wonder why I turned down free tickets to an NFL game 2 weeks ago.
(Author's Note: I was actually writing the previous paragraphs during the MNF game, and of course, because the fantasy football gods are fuckers, Gore suffered a season-ending injury in that game--killing mine & Aaron's chances of winning the regular season in another league we're in where we have Gore. Fuck.)

-How about the back-to-back national TV night games this coming weekend? Steelers @ Ravens on Sunday, and Jets @ Pats on Monday. Amazing 2 nights of football. Guess which one I will most likely miss because of a piss-poor-timed customer event? The most important Patriots game since February 2008, of course.
(Author's Note: This was also written way back on Monday, and things have tentatively changed. There's now a 75% chance I can get out of my obligations in time for this epic event, but if not, I'll be inviting myself over to Mike's later on, since his entire life moves about 3 hours slower than the outside world.)

At the beginning of the week I had grand aspirations for this blog post. But fellas, I gotta say, you're not about to read anything grand or inspiring--you'll be lucky to get marginally entertaining.
You see, my brain is so fried from work this week (and people forcing bong hits & alcohol on me all week long) that I can't even tackle the simple task of writing out the playoff scenarios for all the teams going into week 13.
The short story is that not a single team is mathematically eliminated yet, and only Blanchette, Mike, Werner & Fred can possibly get either of the top 2 seeds (byes). Lots of parity this year.

Moving on...

When I was making my name as the world's funniest ShitList author back in college, a dirty little tramp named Alissa used to always ask me if I'd put her on my ShitList. It was so obnoxious because that's the type of thing that has to happen organically--you can't beg your way into an amazing article.
Five year later and Blanchette is now playing the role of the dirty little tramp. Matt's been very vocal to the Commissioner about his unhappiness with the blog--apparently he thinks if you don't live on the West Coast or your (nick)name isn't "Fred" then you don't get any love in the blog. Basically what he is saying is that a majority of the teams (6) get talked about a majority of the time. Well, yeah. I guess I won't argue with that. Seems like standard logic.
What Blanchette is trying to say is that he wants some love--his 1st place, 9-3 team deserves significant discussion in this blog.

As much as it pains me to give into his demands, let's go ahead & take a deep dive into the JohnThomasMoynahan team.

-At 9-3, JTM is guaranteed no lower than a 4th place regular season finish (compared to the last couple year's 8th & 9th place finishes). With 2 more wins, Blanchette would finish this season with only 3 less wins than his '07-09 seasons combined.
-At this moment, the JTM roster includes: the 4th best QB (Vick), 2nd & 7th best RBs (Hillis, Mendenhall), and 3 top-25 WRs (Bryant, Welker, Britt).

But if we dig a layer deeper...

-JTM ranks only 4th in Points For this year...his opponents have put up the least amount of points, by far (72 less Points Allowed than next closest team).

-Blanchette is 6-1 in his last 7 games. But in his last 5 wins, his opponent hasn't topped 74 points. To put that in perspective, MattyP, who has the least amount of Points For, averages 79.3 points per game for the year. These teams aren't even pretending to put up a competitive score. So to say Blanchette is getting lucky is quite the understatement.

-With so many highly-ranked players, you'd be tempted to think Blanchette had a particularly good draft. Only problem there is that he has exactly 5 players left on his roster from the original draft.

-One of his keepers (Schaub) has only played 3 times in the past 10 weeks, all because JTM picked up Vick on Sept 16th. Blanchette only tried to trade Vick about 7 times in weeks 4-7. Maybe another touch of luck that he wasn't able to make a trade?

-In my 1st blog post this year, after the draft, I mentioned how I'd be concerned if I was Blanchette and had the following players: Marshall, Beanie Wells, Driver, and I also mentioned Spiller would have to come up big. Out of those 4 players, only Marshall is left on the team, and he's clocking in as the 38th-ranked WR. So I'll give Matt the credit of having great waiver pickups. My suspicion is that a lot of these pickups--Vick, Hillis, Britt, Amendola--had more to do with the luck of your waiver position than with any tangible skill.

So Congrats, Blanchette. Stellar year in fantasy so far. The fantasy gods may have dicked me & Aaron over earlier this week, but I'm sure they were also listening to you celebrate a win over The Bink after only 1 game in the books this week. I have no doubt the comments you left on my voicemail today ("You got Vicked last night...28 points, baby!" "...(the other) teams are scared of what they have to face (in my team)") are gonna cost you a week 13 win, and ultimately 1st place. A 2nd place finish & early exit from the playoffs seems certain for JTM at this point.


And finally, it's time to announce the annual winner of "Which Red Sox player is doomed to have an awful season because Ross just bought his t-shirt while back in Boston?"
Please take out the answers that you all wrote down a few weeks ago.
And the winner is...

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......Jon Lester
(In the distance we hear muffled groans of, "C'mon, hasn't he gone through enough already?")