Giants-Jets is a bum fight. Giants on 3rd QB, Jets on 3rd center
red zone channel showing a challenge. Never show a challenge
fucking Danny Devito playing QB for the Giants
waller hurt again -- annoying
you don't try a 47-yarder on 4th-and 1. FFS Daboll
switch off the Pats +9.5 to the Panthers +3 at the last second. Also swapped out Texans defense for Ravens. Usually bad to swap out, but we'll see
in a hotel in spain, watching on the laptop. Might have to socialize with our friends at some point, though will try to push through
I’ve been on a roll of late, but still digging myself out after a terrible start. The Normal entries are 18-17 after a 4-1 week, while the Ugly ones are 20-14-1 after a perfect 5-0. I looked at the leaderboard, and the Ugly is still about seven games out of first.
Here are this week’s picks:
Normal 1 and 2
The Football Team usually plays the Eagles tough, and I like buying them low off a loss to the Giants and selling Philly high after a win over the Dolphins.
The Seahawks get a Browns team that lucked into a win last week due to a confluence of miracles not seen since the parting of the Red Sea. Fade.
The Lions got destroyed, so I love buying them low at home against a doormat Raiders team.
The Chargers are a horrendous franchise, and I will almost certainly get rugged here and in Survivor (turns out I already used the Lions.) But I like them in this spot at home against a weak Bears team with a backup QB coming off an easy win.
The Bengals seem more like themselves of late, and the 49ers are starting Sam Darnold. Give me the points.
Ugly
Who in their right mind would take this garbage dink-and-dunk Packers squad getting only 1.5 points? Something’s weird, because this is ugly.
The Giants offensive line is not good, but it’s NFL-level again, and they’ve hung with the Bills and Team the last two weeks. This week, they get star LT Andrew Thomas back too.
My initial lean was the Colts. but I like to fade teams in tight, emotional losses the prior week, and the Saints have a good defense.
The Cowboys looked good against the Chargers two weeks ago, and Dak Prescott was sharp. But I’ll buy low on the Rams here to keep it close. Sean McVay > Mike McCarthy.
I had the Pats as my fifth team, but as I was writing it up I wasn’t feeling it. (Close game last week, Dolphins coming off a bad loss.) So I pivoted to the ugliest of all, the Panthers. I hate that they’re only getting three — in my picking pool, it’s 3.5 — but even though I’m buying the Texans, and the Panthers are a doormat, this feels like a stumble spot. It’s not called the “Ugly” entry for nothing.
THURSDAY NIGHT OBSERVATIONS
This is why it’s better to watch the five minute highlights. I got the 40-minute version this morning, everything was going great — I had Bills -8.5, I had subbed out Baker Mayfield in a league for Mac Jones (Don’t ask it’s drawing dead, but I still want to make the right decision), I have Chris Godwin everywhere and Mike Evans nowhere.
The Bills are up 14, they sack Baker Mayfield to ice the cover (this after they already should have gotten off the field but for a defensive hold), but there’s a facemask. First down. It gets to 4th-and-10, touchdown to Mike Evans. I lose the cover, Evans salvages the day for someone in my league, and it’s no longer a perfect game. (Plus there was some extra garbage time for the Bills on the ensuing drive.)
Granted, it’s my low-stakes home pool, but I was in second heading into that game, and now I’m in third. Just an annoying loss, but I guess after what happened in the Browns game for me in Survivor, I shouldn’t bitch too much.
The story of this game was Dalton Kincaid — he was available in one NFFC league this week, but I didn’t bid nearly enough. He looks like a receiver out there and very nearly had a second touchdown. He’s a top-10 TE already and easily could be top-five ROS.
It was nice to see Stefon Diggs have a modest (16-point) game. Josh Allen played well and spread it around. I faded the early QBs, but Allen in the early third looks very good right now.
James Cook runs well, but he’s strictly between the 20s. Hard to earn a living fantasy-wise with that role and modest target volume.
Mayfield is tough, and he’s not a terrible athlete, but he thinks he’s more athletic than he is. Good arm, though — that Hail Mary made it to the end zone, though oddly it hit the ground with no one touching it. Once the Bills blew the cover, I would have loved to see them lose outright as punishment.
Rachaad White passed the eye test for me as a runner and receiver. He’s no Christian McCaffrey, but competent and a little slippery.
It was odd at the end of the half that Todd Bowles didn’t even try the 59-yard FG after Chase McLaughlin had just made one from 57.
Bills punter Sam Martin was in the zone. It seemed like the Bucs started with the ball inside their own five for half the game.
NBA (NFBKC) DRAFT
My 11.5 year old daughter is into basketball now — she plays five times per week and likes watching highlights of NBA greats. We did an NFBKC playoff pool last year, and this year I told her we’d do a real league.
Of course, I haven’t paid close attention to the NBA in maybe a decade. So I had her go through the RotoWire depth charts over the last month, make notes and build a cheat sheet. Then we scrapped her cheat sheet, downloaded the ADP, sorted by position and drafted off that.
She was a little annoyed after all the work she put in, but I told her it was just an exercise to get her up on the league. Kind of like in Karate Kid when Mr. Miyagi makes Daniel wash his cars and paint his house.
In any event, here’s the team we drafted below. I don’t know half the players in the league, but I do understand the categories, the NFBKC game, and how to make an ADP-based cheat sheet. I’m genuinely curious how the basketball-knowledgeable people think we did.
The rule I made was I’d give her a few ADP-appropriate choices and let her make the call. I mostly stuck to it, but might have swayed her on a couple picks.
We were Team 6:
1.6 Stephen Curry — it was either him or Luka Doncic, and she wanted Curry. I might have gone Doncic due to the age difference, but Curry is only 185 pounds, and his skill set is aging awfully well. Doncic also has a calf injury heading into the year and hurts your free-throw percentage. But there’s always that cliff risk with a player in his mid-30s.
2.7 Kevin Durant — we were hoping for Jaren Jackson to pair him with Curry, but we weren’t even close as he went 14 overall. So we had resigned to take Kyrie Irving, but somehow Durant made it back to us, so we snapped him up. (I don’t remember the strategy being to take two 35-year old players to start your draft, but I’ve been out of the loop for a while, so who knows?) I do love the free-throw base we got with those two, though.
3.7 Myles Turner — We needed a center and some blocks, and Turner was the guy. Sasha wanted Pascal Siakam, but I convinced her we should get the blocks first.
4.6 Pascal Siakam — What do you know, Siakam fell to us anyway. Having shored up threes and blocks, it was good to get another all-around stat producer in Round 4. We passed on LeBron James here, but toyed with the idea of having the oldest team of all-time (and three inner-circle Hall of Famers.)
5.7 Paul George — If we didn’t have the oldest team of all time already, we surely did after taking 33-year old George. But I’ve always found the forwards dry up more quickly than the guards, and now we already had three of them and a center, which seemed like a good build. I also felt like getting another all-around producer with threes, blocks and percentages put us in good shape.
6.6 Brook Lopez — This was a pick I regret, but I let Sasha make the call, and she wanted the second center over the injured Bradley Beal. Plus we needed another 35-year old player to set the NFBKC record for age.
7.7 Bradley Beal — Once again, the guy we almost took came back to us anyway. Beal himself is 30, so he’s not hurting our average that badly. I wanted to target players who can shoot, so we’d have flexibility later too.
8.6 Khris Middleton — Usually you want to eliminate the Middleton, lest you make a middling pick. This was actually a bad pick. We needed rebounds and had Austin Reaves (good rebounder for a guard) queued up, but he went two picks ahead of us, and I just took Middleton because I know who he is. He’s not a good rebounder for a forward, but he is 32 and lights out from the line, so the theme of the squad is intact.
9.7 Clint Capela — This is who we should have taken in Round 8. The biggest knock on Capela is the free-throw shooting, but I doubt he’ll make a dent in the base we’ve built. He’s a beast on the boards, and he gets some blocks, so he’s perfect for us, as our centers (Lopez and Turner) don’t rebound well.
10.6 Bennedict Mathurin — our first young player. We took him over Spencer Dinwiddie who Sasha wanted for some reason. Mathurin was decent as a rookie last year, and at 21 has some upside.
11.7 Russell Westbrook — We needed guards, and we needed rebounds, so Westbrook it was. I’m not concerned about the bad free-throw shooting because we’re built for it. He’s also 34, so he fits with the theme.
12.6 Jonathan Kuminga — I’m not sure why I marked him as a guy with upside, now that I’m re-reading his RotoWire outlook. But Sasha said yes, and I had marked him, so we took him.
13.7 Collin Sexton — We needed a guard, and he is one. Actually, I like that he used to be a big-time scorer and is still only 23.
14.6 Bilal Coulibaly — I marked him as a target after reading his outlook on RotoWire. It’s just looking for upside at this point.
15.7 Cole Anthony — We needed guards, and he is one.
16.6 Kyle Lowry — Had to finish the draft with a 37-year old. But maybe Lowry can get some minutes and hold down the fort if Beal is out for more than a couple games.
Our Lineup
G Stephen Curry
G Bradley Beal
G Bennedict Mathurin
G Russell Westbrook
F Kevin Durant
F Pascal Siakam
F Paul George
F Khris Middleton
C Myles Turner
C Brook Lopez
UT Clint Capela
UT Collin Sexton
So last week was the end of the Seslowsky pool as we were on the Bills. We had wisely picked the Dolphins in Week 6, who sailed to an easy win, rather than the Bills who had lucked into a win over the Giants. But that wound up costing us as it gave us the easy pot-odds pivot off the Seahawks last week, which we would not have otherwise had.
In my home pool, I had foolishly taken the Bills in Week 6, so when I faded the Seahawks, I took the Browns, and lucked (once again) into the win. I covered the insanity and luck of the Browns win in my Week 7 Observations, so I won’t repeat it here.
In any event, I’m still alive, so I’ll keep writing this column.
Let’s have a look at Week 8:
The Chargers, Ravens, Lions, Dolphins and Bills are all roughly the same odds, but the Chargers are 37 percent owned which means you get a little more bang for the buck by fading them.
My first hunch is the Lions, coming off an embarrassing loss, to destroy the Raiders. I also have the Dolphins available, but I worry about them being a bit soft. Hard to trust the Bills after they were life and death with the Giants and lost to the Patriots. The Chargers should be okay in this spot, but their ownership level puts me off them.
So for me, it’s probably Lions.
Guessing The Lines
I don’t know, I’m probably jinxing it, but I’m on a heater the last few weeks, and especially Week 7 where I went 4-1 on the Normal picks and 5-0 on the Ugly. I’m now 18-17 on Normal and 20-14-1 on Ugly. Not yet in contention for the pool, but let’s see if I can’t keep it going.
Here are my numbers for this week:
Most of them are pretty close, but I was off on the Giants (no way I’m I taking the Jets against my own team) and the Jaguars-Steelers. (And actually both those leans are negligible because neither crossed the key number three.)
My early leans, just on feel, are the Lions, the Team and the Seahawks. The Texans seem too obvious, so maybe that’s a sucker play, but I’m tempted to take them. The Packers might be a good ugly pick too.
I don’t want to commit to anything just yet though — will let the process run its course.
Week 7 Observations
Homer’s Odyssey has nothing on the Browns-Colts game. Dante’s journey through hell and purgatory was but a walk in the park by comparison. There are simply no works in the canon sufficient to convey what I experienced in taking the Browns in Survivor this week, but I will try.
On Wednesday, I looked at the percentage-owned numbers, and the Seahwaks were nearly 60 percent. I wanted to fade the Seahawks in my home league pool, but I had already used the Bills, 49ers and Chiefs, so there were no great pivots.
But there were only eight people left, so it was pretty easy to track their histories — none had any of those teams left either, save for one who had the Bills. That meant there was a good chance at least six would take the Seahawks, and the pot odds would be too good to refuse. The only problem was picking the right team.
My first instinct was the Ravens, even though they were hosting the 5-1 Lions. The Lions are pretty good, but probably not that good, and since upsetting the Chiefs on Opening Night, they had mostly beaten up on weak opponents. This just seemed like the kind of spot where they’d fall flat.
So on Friday evening Portugal time I typed Ravens into the email (we still do the old home pool via email), but before I hit send I took another look. The Browns were 3.5-point favorites per the market, the Ravens only three. And my hunch was just a hunch, the Lions were a tough, physical team with a good offensive line, a solid defense and a good coach. The Browns were probably getting Deshaun Watson back, had an elite defense and were playing the Gardner Minshew Colts. Was I really going with the -160 Ravens over the -192 Browns?
Sasha happened to be sitting next to me on the sofa. She’s often been good luck in the past. I said, “Sash, what do you think, Ravens or Browns?” She thinks for a second (knows nothing about the NFL) and says, “Browns.” I say, “Are you sure?” She says, “No, Ravens. No, no, Browns. It’s Browns.”
So I type in Browns and hit send. Now you know what good process looks like.
. . .
Later that night I regretted it, wondered if it were too late to change. The Ravens were *my* pick, the team I thought was in the right spot, and the Browns were just ever-so-slightly more favored by the market. Didn’t I make the same mistake trusting FantasyPros a couple weeks ago? Sure, the Vegas market has much more information and less groupthink that the FPMs (Fantasy Pros Midwits), but fading my own instincts for some other metric on which to hang my hat was the real sin, not which hook I used.
I figured it was probably was too late, but maybe I’d write a post about it Saturday to test the theory. It’s easy to remember all the times you stuck to your guns and won, or sold yourself short and lost, but what about when you did the cowardly market-based thing and won, or rashly overrated your own prescience and lost? It’s easy to forget about those because they don’t fit the narrative.
The next morning (Saturday) I got an email from the pool runners asking a couple of stragglers to get their picks in. So I could change to the Ravens after all! But a voice inside my head said, “Leave it alone — don’t tinker with it now.” I stuck with the Browns and scrapped the idea to write about it.
Sunday morning we got the picks. It turned out, as I expected, six of eight were on the Seahawks, one was on the Bills, while I was on the Browns.
. . .
You can imagine how I felt seeing the Ravens up 28-0 midway in the second-quarter as I watched the games yesterday. They were so obviously the play, and in my nutlessness I was stuck with the Browns who had already lost Watson to an injury in the first quarter, were getting destroyed by Minshew and down 14-7 with P.J Walker at QB.
I can’t get into all the blow-by-blow because it would take too long, but this was one of the most insane games I’ve ever watched, and the only crazier Survivor win I’ve ever had was the 4th-and-19 conversion with 26 seconds left by Lamar Jackson, followed by Justin Tucker’s record-setting 66-yard FG that hit the upright and went through.
A few facts about this game: The Browns blocked a field goal, scored on a defensive fumble recovery in the end zone,* made field goals of 54, 54 and 58 (Dustin “Tucker” Hopkins kicked out of his mind) and only got the W thanks to two penalty calls, one of which was a defensive hold after PJ Walker had fumbled away the game and the other on a ball thrown five yards out of the back of the end zone that by some miracle was deemed catchable enough for a PI. Even then, the Browns got to fourth down and an injured Kareem Hunt just barely got the ball to break the front end of the plane.
*The strip-sack fumble TD came after a 4th-and-4 punt by the Browns from the Colts 43. The announcers questioned the punt, citing “analytics” and saying “I’m going with what the kids are doing.” Of course, it never occurred to them the Browns had Walker as their QB, were facing a backup QB and have one of the best pass rushers of all time in Myles Garrett who casued the fumble. It was almost as if something good were guaranteed to happen after that.
But the only thing that made the game tolerable at all — the only reason I’m writing this today and not residing somewhere beyond the grave after defenestrating — is that at some point in the third quarter it occurred to me I might have already used the Ravens, checked my own history and discovered, to my surprise (and great relief!) that I had in Week 1.
In other words, even though my hunch was completely right, and even though I was still an abject coward in subordinating it to the “wisdom” of the market, neither of those facts had any impact on my pick.
Moreover, the only reason I didn’t take the Bills was that I used them the prior week, even though I had the Dolphins available. So I was unjustly rewarded for taking the Bills (who only beat the Giants due to mismanagement by Brian Daboll and poor refereeing) in Week 6, so that I could luckbox the W in Week 7 too.
The Bijan Robinson story is weird. Was he sick, or was he in trouble? If the former, why did he get one carry in the fourth quarter? If the latter, why the secrecy around it? I only have him in three of five leagues, thankfully.
D’Onta Foreman did Bijan Robinson’s job for me in the Steak League at least. I have Foreman in three leagues, as I had a feeling he might be this year’s D’Onta Foreman when I picked him up off waivers.
Jonathan Taylor looked like himself again, but Zach Moss is still seeing roughly equal work. I’d expect that to settle in at 65/35 Taylor eventually.
If the refs don’t cheat the Giants last week, they would have the same record as the Bills.
Darren Waller and Saquon Barkley looked great to me, though Barkley had an injury scare early on when his arm seemed to dangle limply after a tackle. Waller is the top-five TE he was drafted to be, just took the Giants offense a while to get going.
Tyrod Taylor played well enough. I still believe in Danny Dimes, but the discrepancy between the two is less important than the offensive line play. The Giants aren’t good, but they’re an NFL team again.
Sam Howell took six more sacks. He’s Andrew Luck without the skill.
I went 9-1 ATS in my fake Super Contest. I was also 7-0 in my home pool, but 0-4 in the late games before winning Sunday night. (For some reason I had the Rams in the pool, but the Steelers in the Contest.)
Puka Nacua had a great game, tiptoeing down along the sideline and running with the ball after the catch. Cooper Kupp had his first healthy dud in what seems like three years.
I didn’t go big on or win Zach Evans, but what’s the point of drafting a running back if when his opportunity arises you sign some free agents off the street anyway? At least, unlike the Chargers with Quentin Johnston, they didn’t take him in the first round.
It looks like Christian Watson got dinged up yet again. What a disastrous pick I made in three leagues. There’s no point to the Packers this year.
We thought AJ Brown was the Eagles WR1 and Devonta Smith was 1a, but it’s more like Smith is a distant No. 2.
I only watched the five-minute highlights of the Sunday Night game (DAZN, get on those edits earlier), but the Dolphins didn’t move the ball much against a stout Eagles defense. The Dolphins seem like the kind of team that destroys weak opponents, but falters dramatically against good ones. One of Miami’s two TDs was a gift pick-six.
Why did it not occur to the Chargers to guard Travis Kelce? It seemed like he was wide open on every play.
Austin Ekeler will probably get his eventually, but if you took him, you’re probably out of contention by now. There’s no point to the Chargers, either.
Even though at the time you’d rather be on a team like the Ravens that rolls to a never-in-doubt win, in the end you’re better served by a sweat. It builds character and helps you realize that deserve’s got nothing to do with it.
has it occurred to the Chargers to cover Kelce?
very much hope the Bijan issue isn't cardio related
Puka Nacua is playing great today
it's amazing I used the Bills last week instead of the Dolphins, so they weren't available this week, otherwise I would have used them. So I took the Browns. The levels of irony and lesson here are deep.
second sickest survivor win of my life. Remember: deserve's got nothing to do with it!
another insane call. uncatchable!