[League Update] Week 7: Football is stupid and life has no meaning

Martin Reisch/Unsplash

Let's talk about how not fun football was last weekend. Tar Heel football hasn't been fun ... well ... at all this season. (I just knew they were gonna upset Miami Saturday. That would be such a UNC football thing to do. But alas.) That Virginia Tech game is one of the ugliest games I've seen, and I was in college during the John Bunting era. Those were not good days.

And then the schizophrenic Panthers decided to have a bad day and look straight up awful against the hapless Bears. Ugly, ugly football. Mitchell "Don't Call Me Mitch" Trubisky completed like four passes and the Bears got like five first downs and, despite all that, it felt like the Panthers had no chance of coming back. And they didn't. Sad.

And for half of the league — including me — the weekend ended with a fantasy football loss. Think about the hours wasted watching losing football last weekend. Think about all of the things you could have done instead: Watched a movie, read a book, had positive interactions with family, raked the leaves. Instead we watched awful, horrible, no good football and got blindingly drunk to numb the pain. 'Merica.

It looks like we're going to have to wait at least one more week to award a new avatar. KB's Belly Shirts and Muscular Mathletes both won last weekend to move to 6-1 on the season. The Mathletes play Something witty this week (just go ahead and mark that as a W) and KB plays Get Off My Dak, which could prove to be a very interesting match up.

Below those two, SugaLumps, who regained his winning form against the hapless Mullets, and Academic Probation sit at 5-2. Three teams sit at 4-3, six are 3-4, two come in at 2-5 and one — guess who! — is 0-7. And yes, if you did the math, that means more than half the league it below .500 just over halfway through the season. Hashtag parity.

Awards

The highest scorer from Week 7 — by less than .8 points — was SugaLumps with 127.86. Not that he needed it, considering the Mullets put up a whopping 63 poings. KB's Belly Shirts followed close behind with 127.08 in an even more lopsided win over There's no 'I' in team (38 points).


via GIPHY


Surely that 38 is the Sad Trombone this week, right? Wrong. There was a tight race to the bottom last week and One McCaffrey Latte Please won it with 34 points in a loss to Blaupunkt (70). That's probably one of the lowest scores we've ever seen, but I'm pretty sure it's not the lowest. If someone wants to research that, go for it.

The Johnny Football Award for Poor Decisions was awarded super early this week. Amari Cooper went ham in the Thursday night game, racking up 210 receiving yards and two touchdowns. That's good for 33 points. And he did it all on Dolphins of Old's bench. Oh, and Dolphins of Old lost to PerpetualMotionSquad by two. Ouch. To Dolphins' credit, Cooper hadn't scored more than 3.3 points since Week 1. But it still hurts.

The Grumble Grumble Award goes to anyone who had a Panthers offensive player in their starting lineup. I'm looking at you There's no 'I' in team (Dickson 1.8 points), McCaffrey Latte (Funchess 4.1), WattCanISayExceptYou'reWelcome (Cam 7.4 points and Gano 3 points). And I'm looking at me (McCaffrey 4.6). Mee-OW.

Oh, and this from SugaLumps, who doesn't trust computers: "Does anyone else feel like expert projections and sit/start rankings are a total crock? I feel like more often than not the intuitions are based on player pedigree and reputation, not statistics. Grumble grumble."

This week

Turns out there was a game in London last week, but they played it at 1 Eastern. Huh. This week, there's an early London game: Vikings vs. Browns. (Gross.) If you have Vikings players, set your lineup early. If you have Browns players, I'm sorry.

Eleanor's Pick of the Week

(She's 5-2 on the season, a better record than her daddy.)

*chews on all four fingers of right hand for a 10 minutes straight*

(Dolphins of Old 77, Bueller 70.)

The Book of Faces

Blaupunkt: "Do I get an award for having a defense score 27pts?"

Get Off My Dak:

Haiku D2

I spent too many hours
Watching terrible football
I need a sad nap

-Corey (I forgot to ask Eve to send one this week. My bad.)

[League Update] Week 6: I get knocked down, but I get up again

Ben Hershey/Unsplash.com

Oh, how the mighty have fallen. And I'm not even talking about Aaron Rodgers. (Sorry, David.)

SugaLumps, he of avatar fame and the 4-0 start, has lost two games in a row and is now tied for third place. Let's hope this streak continues ... because he plays the Mullets this week.

SugaLumps' downfall would normally mean NEW AVATAR ALERT. But alas, as league rules (arbitrarily made up by me) stipulate, the avatar is to remain unchanged until one team has sole possession of the top spot. And we have two teams tied for first at 5-1.

(Fun fact: The only loss for both 5-1 teams was to ... SugaLumps.)

KB's Belly Shirts has had a strong showing in his first RWC season, despite missing the first half of the fantasy draft. (I'm learning more and more that autodrafting is not necessarily a bad thing ...) His only loss came to SugaLumps (107-69) in Week 2.

After losing to SugaLumps 109-92 to open the season, Muscular Mathletes has reeled off five straight wins.

Who will take the avatar? We'll see. The two don't play head to head until Week 11, but if things keep going this way that will be a HUGE matchup.

Behind those top two, four teams are tied at 4-2, four more are tied at 3-3, and five are tied at 2-4. And then, well ... yeah ... something witty is 0-6. I've said my piece on this.

Awards

The highest scorer from Week 6 was the aforementioned Muscular Mathletes with 114 points in a HUGE win over There's no 'I' in team, which ...



... won the Sad Trombone Award for this week with a pathetic 42 points.

The crazy thing is only one player in that matchup scored negative points, and it was J-Stew on the Mathletes. But she also had Ingram (25), Bell (25) and the Rams' D (20?!?!). Meanwhile, There's no 'I' in team had only one player — Ben Roethlisberger — score in double digits. He had 11. That's not great.

In an unusual twist this week, the Johnny Football Award for Poor Decisions goes to two teams that played each other: Get Off My Dak and Academic Probation. So. Many. Points. Left on the bench in this one.

Get Off My Dak won 83-73 but Dak left AP (25), Palmer (20) and Crabtree (11) on his bench. In their place, he started Freeman (7), Ryan (11) and Hogan (1). By my math that's 27 points left on the bench. (I'm not messing with decimal points.)

On the other side, Academic Probation left Watson (23), Ivory (13) and Ginn (12) on the bench and started Brady (16), Murray (3) and Garcon (5). That's 24 points on the bench.

Basically, if either had made better decisions this could have been a totally different game.

Finally, the Grumble Grumble Award goes to PerpetualMotionSquad, which lost to Cant Be That Hard 91-88. Sure, it's hard to complain when your kicker scores 18 points on a Monday night game, but all PMS needed was one more friggin' field goal. Ryan, you Succop. (I basically gave this award to make that lame joke. Deal with it.)

This week

I really thought there was a game in London this week but apparently I'm wrong. That's next week. So you just need to worry about bye weeks for the Lions and Texans.

(Next week is gonna be brutal: Six teams are on bye.)

Eleanor's pick of the week

(Nailed it last week, so she's 4-2 on the season.)

fjkeneiifnfndkjaaaaaa anndnkfhiellllllllkfnfnfklhlghan aguuuu aguuuu ................... akkakaa!

(Academic Probation 91, Something witty 70)

The Book of Faces

It was a little quiet this week. Is everyone OK?

Down, set ... HAIKU!

It’s been a long week
Here’s a sad haiku for you
At least there’s football

-Eve

[League Update] Week 5: Will the real league leader please stand up?

Marianne O'Leary/Flickr

For all the griping I'm hearing about how hard this league is with 16 teams, y'all are handling it pretty well. There's a four-way tie for first place at 4-1, nearly half of the league is above .500 (INCLUDING ME!) and all but two teams are within two games of first place.

Five weeks in, basically everyone has a chance to win the league this year. Except Something witty. Something witty does not have a chance to win the league this year. He's 0-5. He could come back, I guess, but his track record (see the first blog post of this season) suggests he's not going to recover from this. I could go on, but I'll save that for another time. Don't want to use all my Grade A #content in one post.

Blaupunkt gave SugaLumps his first loss of the season, winning 96-76. I would blame NFL bye weeks for SugaLumps' low point total (he only had less than 100 points one week leading into Week 5, and even that was a 97) but ... nah ... that wasn't it. Only one of his players on bye played the week before. His team just decided not to show up.

Which leaves us with a real tight race for first place and the ever-important Twitter avatar. And this is despite the fact that virtually every good player has broken himself this season.

Fun fact: None of the four teams tied for first (SugaLumps, KB's Belly Shirts, Muscular Mathletes and Academic Probation) have won the league before. Will we have a seventh different champion this season? Stay tuned. (That's called a tease. Keeps people coming back. Quality #content.)

Alright, let's get to 'em.

Awards

The highest scorer from Week 5 was Get Off My Dak with 116 in a huge win over Something wit—you know what, no. I said I was gonna hold off on the Something witty stuff but I can't. Let's go ahead and get it out of the way.



The saddest of sad trombones went to Something witty with 34 points. Thirty. Four. What a waste of a good week for Get Off My Dak. How could Something's total be so low? Because three of his players scored 0 points. Because they were hurt and not playing. This is how you become 0-5. (I know, that hurts coming from me. You don't have to remind me of last year.)

When asked about this, Andy responded with this gem on the Facebook:

Bruh. BRUH. C'mon son.

The Johnny Football Award for Poor Decisions goes to WattCanISayExceptYou'reWelcome. Now usually this award is given for a decision that would have changed the outcome of the game. This one didn't. But it's a decision still worth ridiculing because who in their right mind would start Eli Manning over Cam Newton? Relieved of the burden of his Dannon endorsement, Cam Newton and his dumb, sexist comments scored 38 points (355 yards and 3 TDs) while milquetoast Manning scored 13. Sure, the mighty and powerful Mullets would have won anyway because they're awesome, but we should all have learned by now not to play the inferior Manning.

No Grumble Grumble Award this week due to the surprising lack of close games and general non-grumbliness of the Facebook page.

This week

On bye: Bills, Bengals, Cowboys and Seahawks. All games are stateside, so kickoff is 1 p.m. Eastern, 7 a.m. Hawaiian.

Eleanor's pick of the week

(Wrong last week, so she fell to 3-2 for the season.) 

aguuu aguuu aguu *bubbles foaming out of mouth* waaaaaaAAHHHaaaaaAHHH ooooo fioeionagiooianlf splurt gurgle *confused face while pooping* guuuaahhhhhhh ...

(KB's Belly Shirts 77, Bueller 65 #GetInMyBellyShirt. Hashtag credit goes to Bryan.)

The Book of Faces

"Y’all know Mullett is taking a new job as a Male Pole Dancer, right? tbh, I think I’d be more interested in future updates from that occupation over Commissioner of Royale...." -Academic Probation

Darin, you got me. It's true. I start at The Bone Yard next week.

Haiku for me, Haiku for you

Forgot to play Cam
But alas, even his points
Would not have saved me.

-Eve

True.

[League Update] Week 4 (and 2 and 3) — yeah, it's been a while

Mike Hoff/Flickr

So yeah ... I missed a few weeks. But we're back with a brand spankin' new post this week full of hot taeks and stupid jokes.

Let's dive right in.

This season is like NFL "Survivor": The team with the most healthy players at the end wins. We picked one hell of a season to jump to 16 teams, huh? *ducks*

Eve's haiku from last week:

All y’all’s teams are hurt
I have ZERO injuries
And yet, I’m dead last*

*Now next to last. 

Six players that were in RWC starting lineups Week 1 are now on injured reserve. (#research) That doesn't include the random other injuries that have popped up along the way. Needless to say, some weeks it's been hard as hell to set a lineup full of legit starters.

But at least one person has it figured out: SugaLumps sits alone at the top of the league at 4-0, blowing teams out 422.54-289.54. Which means ...

NEW AVATAR ALERT!

That cat has murder in its eyes.

On the other end of the standings is ... sigh ... Something witty at 0-4. From the Facebook: "did something witty misspell their team name in the beginning? maybe something _hitty?" Burn.

Bunched in the middle we have eight teams at 2-2, three at 3-1 and three at 1-3. Off the top of my head I can't remember how many teams make it to the playoffs but the competition should be thrilling.

Awards

SugaLumps was the top scorer in Week 4, beating Dolphins of Old 107-64. (In Week 3 it was Bueller with a ridiculous 133, and in Week 2 Get Off My Dak had 122.)

This week's Sad Trombone goes to Cant Be That Hard who once again prove that, yes, yes it can. He lost to Off Constantly 95-60. (Blaupunkt womped a 56 in Week 3 and Something witty also splatted a 56 in Week 2.)

The Johnny Football Award for Poor Decisions winner for Week 4 helped me out. Get Off My Dak kept Amendola and his 10 points on the bench and started Robert Woods, who scored a whopping 1.7. And I won by 7, 79-72. I'LL TAKE IT.

(I'm not going to take the time to look these up for previous weeks. My research only goes so far. Throw any suggestions in the comments.)

The Grumble Grumble Award for the past two weeks goes to One McCaffrey Latte Please. In Week 3, he lost to Muscular Mathletes by .08 points. (For the record, we have had a tie before in this league. Academic Probation and Off Constantly tied in the first week of the 2014 season). Then in Week 4 he had a nearly 40 point lead going into the Monday night game — and lost 101-95 after KB's Belly Shirts got a butt load of points from Alex Smith and Travis Kelce. Savage.

This week

The dreaded bye weeks start this week. Lord help us. (Atlanta, Denver, New Orleans and Washington are off this week.)

Eleanor's pick of the week

Let's just assume she got the last two weeks right, so she's 3-1 for the season. 

hfdkloooooomkfnnfnfnfnfnfnfaaaaaaahhhhhgggllgllglg splurt grrrrrrrjklnfioanovinveoilakin  fihoihoijkajkom vnkliahimeimne *spit up* (Dolphins of Old 87, Off Constantly 76)

The Book of Faces

"I actively hate fantasy football this season, but I have to say that our Facebook group has never been more entertaining."  -WattCanISayExceptYou'reWelcome. It's true. Y'all are killing the GIF game. Keep it up, team.

Haiku for me, Haiku for you

From Eve:

As kids say these days:
Y’all, our meme game is on fleek!
(By the way, I won.)