Fantasy league 2015 -- week 14 recap

With the Eagles, Giants and Maryland Racial Slurs winning this weekend, the NFC East is guaranteed to have at least a 7-9 team (and probably an 8-8 team) win the division and get into the playoffs. That’s still terrible, because even an 8-8 team would steal a deserving playoff spot from … well, no one, actually. Consider:

-- The Panthers (13-0), Cardinals (11-2) and Packers (9-4) should all win their divisions.
-- The Seahawks (8-5) and Vikings (8-5) are in line for the two wild card spots.
-- The next best teams outside the NFC East are the Bucs and Falcons, both at 6-7.
-- Four other NFC East teams could finish 8-8 if they win their last three.

In the AFC, it looks like one “worthy” team among the 8-5 Chiefs, Jets and Steelers could end up missing the playoffs, but their beef isn’t with the NFC East but instead with the AFC South, which has two teams leading that division with 6-7 records (Texans and Colts).

In summary, everybody sucks this season.

QB: Russell Wilson, 42.78 pts -- started by Mom Doyle
WR: Odell Beckham, 26.57 pts -- started by Dad
RB: Isaiah Crowell, 27.60 pts -- on the wire
TE: Jordan Reed, 19.00 pts -- started by Joanna
K: Chris Boswell, 18.00 pts -- on Jeff’s bench
DEF: Carolina, 28.00 pts -- started by Mom Doyle
D: Andre Branch, 16.50 pts -- on the wire

Special shout-out to the second place defensive player, Oakland LB Khalil Mack, who had 15.00 pts after five sacks and a forced fumble. For the record, the Falcons only have 15 sacks on the year.

Also, this is the third time in the last four weeks Jeff has had the top kicker of the week on his team. And it’s the second week in a row where he didn’t start him. Not great coaching there. Then again, he’s carrying two kickers on his team, so we’re already at the point of poor coaching...


“Skill players” edition

3rd place: Charlie Whitehurst, -1.48 pts -- on the wire
2nd place: Sean Renfree, -1.56 pts -- on the wire
1st place: Glenn Winston, -2.88 pts -- on the wire

I love it when the top performer and the worst performer at a position are from the same team. Cleveland RB Crowell has 145 yds and 2 TDs in his team’s win over the 49ers. Cleveland backup RB Winston had one carry for -8 yds and he fumbled. So his day was not as good.


** Tostitos is currently running a “Party like a Pro” promotion where customer can win food and TVs and stuff. Fine, whatever. But their online ads encourage interested participants to search for “Tostitos PLAP” to get more information. And the last time I had a bad case of Tostitos Plap, the pictures were not something you wanted to search for.

** Natinals OF and reigning NL MVP Bryce Harper this week said he hopes that next year “everybody counts us out so we can prove everybody wrong.” Several problems with this:
-- Everybody called you a World Series contender last year, so you already proved them all wrong.
-- I’ve got bad news if the only way you can motivate yourself is to think everyone is against you: You won the MVP. No one thinks you’re an underdog anymore.
-- It’s December. Why is anyone talking to the Natinals?

With just three weeks left in the season, it’s a good time to look back at our first round draft picks and see how they did. After all, the fantasy football experts had all of our top 10 picks in their top dozen or so, and they’re usually right, right?

#1 -- Adrian Peterson (currently the #1 RB)
** Great work! Exactly how this is supposed to go.

#2 -- Marshawn Lynch (currently the #50 RB)
** Ouch. But, injuries happen. Can’t bash them for that.

#3 -- Andrew Luck (currently the #27 QB)
** Oof, two in a row. Still, two is not a trend.

#4 -- Jamaal Charles (currently the #42 RB)
** OK, but who could have predicted a Charles injury?

#5 -- Eddie Lacy (currently the #27 RB)
** And he’s the second-best RB on his own team.

#6 -- Le’Veon Bell (currently the #35 RB)
** Injuries happen … a lot, I guess.

#7 -- Antonio Brown (currently the #1 WR)
** See! I told you they knew what they were talking about.

#8 -- Dez Bryant (currently the #81 WR)
** But the second best WR Bryant in the league.

#9 -- Odell Beckham (currently the #5 WR)
** Win? That seems like a win.

#10 -- Jeremy Hill (currently the #21 RB)
** I keep telling you that injuries … wait, he wasn’t hurt at all?

So, um, yeah. Fantasy experts are idiots.


The Cowboys have been ruined all year by poor QB performance, lackluster RB work and all-around shoddy offensive play. Of course, none of this comes as a surprise to their defense, who saw the signs of this way back in training camp. Consider their new outside linebacker’s hidden letter message:

Dallas outside linebacker Andrew Gachkar
** A creaked roar dies: We suck at ball handling

If they had addressed it in the summer, maybe the team wouldn’t be 4-9 and … two games out of first place. Ugh.


** Dad went 0-3 in his non-NFC East picks this week and 2-0 in his NFC East picks. Giants and Slurs, man. They’re killing me. I did manage to pick up one in our year-long showdown, leaving me two down with three weeks to go. But the Dolphins could have put me even with him...

** Noted by G this week: There are four AFC East teams -- Patriots (10-2), Jets (8-5), Bills (6-7) and the last-place Dolphins (6-7). Guess which one is the only one the Eagles couldn’t beat. Yeah, the last place one. Ugh.

Week 14 standings

1 -- Lake Weed Monsters (Dad) -- 1855.27 pts
2 -- Gettin' Chippy (Jo) -- 1742.69 pts
3 -- hippo fantasy (Sam) -- 1651.26 pts
4 -- 1.21 Chip-a-watts (Ant) -- 1624.32 pts
5 -- Yelp for help (Mom Doyle) -- 1632.55 pts
6 -- Cosby's Sleepers (Mike) -- 1578.48 pts
7 -- Eat Drink & D Murray (Capt Awesome) -- 1531.70 pts
8 -- Clinton's Email (Jim) -- 1478.04 pts
9 -- Bethlehem Moravians (Bob) -- 1428.14 pts
10 -- Blue Collar Killers (Jeff) -- 1367.52 pts
11 -- May Pay Attention (Paul) -- 1251.06 pts
12 -- Heap Big Chief Reid (Joel) -- 1228.02 pts

I finally made a move to within shouting distance of the top half of this league, but I made the playoffs in my money league, so I can’t even hear your taunting from way over there.

It briefly looked like Joanna had made a real advance on Dad, pulling to within 78 pts of first … until the Monday night game featured 30-plus combined pts from Beckham and Giants K Josh Brown. So Dad remains on cruise control for another championship, with one big caveat: He’s looking at possibly the lowest ever score for an Awesome Cup champion (in the 13 years we’ve been under the current scoring setup).

Right now the Monsters are on pace for just over 2,200 pts, within a short throw of the record-low 2008 championship total of 2123.83 pts set by Mike. The record high, since you asked, is 2,603.94 pts, set by Sam in 2013. He averaged more than 150 pts a week and could not name a single player on his team besides Cam Newton. So, yeah, fantasy football is kind of infuriating.