The Official FieldGulls Fantasy Football Thread. Week 15 Edition.

The first rule of Fantasy Football, you do NOT root for players against the Seahawks.

The second rule of Fantasy Football, you do NOT root for players against the Seahawks.

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The Agony of Defeat

I HATE LOSING and honestly, I’m not any good at it. Bear Bryant was credited with saying, "The difference between losing and death? You have to live with losing." I dig it, and I live it. I’m super competitive. Maybe even compulsively competitive. *Insert Charlie Sheen #Winning Joke here. If I was on the USA Basketball team in 1972, not only would I not have accepted the Silver medal, but I probably would have gone Jason Bourne on the officials. I will NEVER acknowledge whatever it is that some people from outside Seattle thought happened in SB XL.

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How anyone could handle losing with frequency and tolerate it I will never understand. I would bite and scratch and yes, even CHEAT if I had to in order to not lose. Yes, I said it. I would cheat to not lose, if that was the only option. Now in fairness, there are levels of cheating I wouldn’t do, and levels I would. I wouldn’t intentionally hurt someone on the other team. That’s a line in the sand. But, I would throw at Albert Pujols’ head if he crowded my plate. I would employ the "hack a Shaq" defense, or the "Jordan Rules." If I’m going to foul anyway, I make sure the guy doesn’t make the basket, and I foul him hard. Kam Chancellor hits men very hard. Sometimes illegally. I encourage him to continue doing so, and support his style of play.

If I was MLB baseball player in the late 90’s, early 2000’s, I would have been on steroids. Even if I was a Hall of Famer before hand, because, well, dammit, everyone else is doing it, I’m doing it too. You can say, "just because everyone’s doing it doesn’t make it right." And that’s not untrue. But in competition, you either do what everyone else is doing to compete, or you compete at a disadvantage, or you quit. Those are your three options. What is a "type A" competitor going to do? Anything it takes to win. It’s like holding in the trenches in the NFL. It happens every play. You can call it cheating, I call it competing. When I played college hoops, I was a great defender. I swam though screens giving elbow pops—it’s the only way to fight through the moving screen after all, grabbed jerseys, pushed players right as they were jumping just enough to get them out of the way so I could grab that rebound, and of course entered the key on a free throw just before the ball was released but not so early as to get called (yes, it was that long ago, we played release not rim). Against the rules? Certainly, if the ref blows the whistle. But it’s how you win.

I get so possessed with winning that I get devious and pragmatic. I would rather lose a little now in order to win more later. A couple times in my high scoring days I’d put up a weak shot against a shot blocker early in the game. He’d be all fired up for that blocked shot, but then two minutes later after a couple pump fakes he’s on the bench with two fouls and his coach is yelling at him to be disciplined. Ever heard about the two bulls up on the hill? The young bull looks at the older one and says, "Hey pop, let’s run down this hill, and have our way with one of the heifers." The older bull says, "No, son. Let’s walk down, have our way with them all." I see winning as heifers, and sometimes you have to walk down and win them all. I feel like Pete and John are about halfway down the hill right now, and are enjoying the view on their walk.

Well, despite having the best team on paper, my primary team in my biggest money league lost last week. I need to take a moment and say that I hate Dez Bryant and of course my entire roster. I’m not going to go into detail on what happened—sharing your losing fantasy football stories is like sharing poker hands. We’ve all heard it and felt it before. I will say that I hate how I create such a strong team that I consistently have too deep of a bench and play the wrong guys. I hate that fantasy football is so random and chaotic and luck is more important than skill. And I hate that my league is a California league, so it wont even be a Seahawk fan who beats me. At least ONE of us could win in something. Just once.

Also, given my fantasy situation and players playing on Monday night, despite the Seahawks looking good and getting a solid win, I had a miserable time watching it. I couldn’t enjoy it, knowing my fantasy season was going down in flames. It isn’t that I broke my own rules on fantasy mind you, I wasn’t rooting against the Seahawks, but my fantasy team’s involvement in the game made it unenjoyable to watch.

Sigh.

Blow it all up and start again next year. FML.

Fantasy Picks

Last week I put my money where my mouth is and played my own predictions. And… you saw above how that went.

QB – I said to play Carson Palmer vs Green Bay, anticipating 300 yards with 3 TD 2 INT in a losing effort. Well, I got the losing effort part right. Palmer was the 42^nd ranked QB last week in my league, on account of his 1 touchdown 4 interception performance.

I didn’t even realize 42 quarterbacks got into the game last week.

That was a decision that cost me my season. Ugh. Stupid effing Raiders.

RB – Maurice Jones-Drew. MJD has been remarkably consistent since week 8, with a TD in 4 of 5 weeks and well over 100 combined yards each week.

Well, at least I picked that one right. 131 total yards and 4 TD’s, two on the ground, two in the air. Nice performance MJD. Well done.

WR – Victor Cruz was my pick here. He had his lowest performance since week 6, and lost some touches to Mario Manningham’s return. However, he still got 6 receptions in 8 targets for 74 yards. Although he also had two big drops in the first half.

This week’s sleeper? Michael Vick. Mike Vick for the Vick’s Sleeper. Mainly since it’s catchy. Vick should play again on Sunday, and is against the Jets, which would logically mean he’s not a good start. But, time and time again this year fantasy football has taught me that logic doesn’t matter. The Eagles and Jets are opposite conference parallels. They get all kinds of attention and play hot and cold frustrating football. Since the Jets appear to be cresting the the Eagles are all but eliminated from playoff contention, this game is ripe for randomness and opposite-land.

Regardless of Mike Vick, I don’t really care about anything but the Seahawks winning out and trying to sneak into the playoffs. My fantasy season in two leagues is over, time to concentrate on the real football games.