The Cowboys and Giants losses on Sunday left the post-season door wide open for the Eagles. Here's all they need to get back into the playoffs this year:** The Eagles win their last four (Dolphins, Jets, Cowboys and Redskins) to finish 8-8.
** The Giants beat the Cowboys twice, but lose to the Redskins and Jets to finish 8-8.
** The Cowboys beat the Bucs but lose those other three games, and finish 8-8.
** The Redskins lose to the Eagles, and finish no better than 7-9.
Then, the three-way tie atop the NFC East would favor the Eagles, with a 5-1 division record topping the Giants' 3-3 record and the Cowboys 2-4 record. If that happens, then the Eagles would get a home playoff game, which would be interrupted at halftime by the four horsemen announcing the destruction of mankind and the end of the world.
Hey, remember when the NFC East was good? Or at least good enough that a 4-8 team had no chance of winning the division?
QB: Cam Newton, 40.36 pts -- started by AntRB: Shonn Greene, 31.53 pts -- on Ant's bench
WR: Percy Harvin, 32.30 pts -- started by Jeff
TE: Rob Gronkowski, 27.47 pts -- started by Ant
K: Connor Barth, 18.00 pts -- on the wire
DEF:(tie) Kansas City, 23.00 pts -- started by Jeff
DEF:(tie) Pittsburgh, 23.00 pts -- started by ChampMike
DEF:(tie) San Francisco, 23.00 pts -- started by Jo
D: Jared Allen, 13.50 pts -- started by NewMike
You'd think with all those names on the top scorers list that Ant had the best week of any team. But, he didn't.
Also, I hate ties. Copying and pasting that coding two extra times wrecks valuable time I could be spending thinking of Andy Reid jokes. Here's one: What's the difference between an Andy Reid team and a dollar bill? You can get four quarters from the dollar bill. Think of how much better that could have been if I didn't have to type in each of those defenses.
"All QBs you thought retired" edition3rd place:Billy Volek, -0.30 pts -- on the wire
2nd place:Caleb Hanie, -0.38 pts -- on the wire
1st place:Bruce Gradkowski, -1.22 pts -- on the wire
Pittsburgh QB Charlie Batch came in as the 4th worst this week, at -0.20 pts. I was pretty sure Batch had retired after each of Pittsburgh's last two Super Bowl wins. Then again, I thought Caleb Hanie was an usual strain of lupus, not a human being, so I'm clearly not up to speed on my backup QBs.
Think you're ready for college bowl season? See if you can figure out which of these are real bowl games, and which are missed opportunities by lazy advertisers.Answers spelled out down in the News and Notes section.
If you're a regular reader, you know I have no love for the folks ESPN and other sports outlets pay to give fantasy advice. They all have no better idea what they're talking about that you or I. If they did, they wouldn't have spent all of August debating whether Mike Vick was worth the #1 overall fantasy draft spot (as of right now, he's only the 17th best fantasy QB in the league).The worst offenders are the idiots on Fantasy Football Live every Sunday, where they rank dozens of players based on their projections. They had the #1 RB (Greene) on the week ranked 19th and the #2 WR (Pierre Garcon) ranked 33rd, so they weren't close on most of them. But the most idiotic thing I saw was this entry:
WR rankings -- #36 -- Denarius Moore -- OAK -- @Mia -- (inactive)
That "inactive" there meant he was "inactive" for the game, meaning not playing, meaning zero fantasy points. And he wasn't a last-second scratch either; As of Friday, no on thought he would play. The ESPN fantasy experts ranked 50 WRs on that list, so in their eyes, 14 other receivers were going to do worse than a guy who wasn't going to play a down.
In fact, 120 other WRs performed better than Moore on Sunday, menaing you pretty much could have started anyone with a pulse and done better than what ESPN advised.
Seriously, if the whole point of your show is just putting together lists full of guesses, can't you update those on Saturday night? It's not like you're doing more than 15 minutes worth of work the entire week.
With the Eagles projected to get a top-10 pick in next April's draft, here's a quick look at the most likely candidates the Eagles will be looking at:** Riley Reiff, OT, Iowa
-- The big lineman could fill a hole in Mike Vick's protection.
** Quinton Coples, DE, North Carolina
-- Andy Reid never misses a chance to improve the pass rush.
** Matt Kalil, OT, USC
-- The big lineman could fill a hole in Mike Vick's protection.
** Courtney Upshaw, DE, Alabama
-- Andy Reid never misses a chance to improve the pass rush.
** Jonathan Martin, OT, Stanford
-- The big lineman could fill a hole in Mike Vick's protection.
** Les Miles, coach, LSU
-- Maybe if they draft a coach first, we'll get the linebacker we need instead of being stuck with another *@#%&! lineman.
Remember just two weeks back, when I explained the cosmic disgust a Cowboys overtime win causes? In case you forgot, here's that anagram:Dallas Cowboys steal overtime win
Ye lot sad: Villain team crows, we sob.
Well, Jerry's boys dropped an extra-time game this week thanks to some terrible coaching in the fourth quarter and terrible tackling in overtime. That made me wonder: Does an overtime loss by the most evil team in the league cause extra joy? Let's take a look:
Dallas Cowboys suffer an overtime defeat
A fun fad: We do celebrate fools' vast misery
We need those kind of fun fads in the NFL today, now more than ever.
Week 13 standings
Ant and I are starting to pull away from the field, thanks to a pair of great weeks from both our teams. Did you know that my savvy draft strategy landed me the two leading rushers in the league (LeSean McCoy and Maurice Jones-Drew)? Or that I've found a way to stay on top even with Eli Manning dopeying up my entire squad? I hope that serves as an inspiration to you as we head into the final stretch.
** Great fantasy week for my team, but an awful weekend for my annual picks with Dad. I dropped all three we had different, putting me five games back with just four weeks left to go. For the record, Dad has a 124-67 record for the year, nearly a 65 percent winning rate. I'm betting ESPN's fantasy experts can't give you any better information than that.** For the record, the only fake bowl games in there are Skittles, Sprite, Geico and UPhoenix. The rest are very, very sadly real.
** Jacksonville has an offensive lineman named Guy Whimper. How have I not made fun of this in the past?
** Broncos S Brian Dawkins had five tackles, a sack and a forced fumble in Denver's big win on Sunday. Not bad for someone too washed up to play in the NFL anymore.
** Thursday night game this week is the Browns at the Steelers. In other news, the NFL still hates you, and that's why they're still scheduling Thursday night games.
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