You might have heard sideline reporter Charissa Thompson admitted on a podcast that sometimes she flat out made up reports about what coaches said at halftime because often coaches had no interest in speaking to her during a game.

There was a predictable outcry from the pearl clutchers:

Some midwits even tried to bring race into it!

My take is you should have a code of journalistic ethics when you are journalist — so many for the last 10 years have not when the stakes were infinity higher — and none of these Karens made a peep. Were they calling out Rachel Maddow for lying about the efficacy of the mRNA shot? Any blowback for Mina Kimes after unjustly impugning Aaron Rodgers’ character while it was she who was utterly misinformed?

But Thompson was doing a bullshit job that only exists because network execs and league officals thought it would be a good idea to have coaches use some of their scarce time between halves to speak, against their will, on camera. So they mouth inane truisms that add nothing of value.

To her credit, Thompson knew this was the case and just supplied the truisms for them which was a win/win. Now the coach could focus on second-half prep, and she was spared the unpleasant task of wringing something out of them. Neither the audience nor the executives were any the wiser.

If you have a real job, do it earnestly and with integrity. But when you see something is obviously fake and stupid, go ahead and break the rules. Those feigning outrage on account of their trust being broken sound ridiculous. You really put stock in Coach X saying: “we need to tackle better and take care of the ball?”

Thursday Night Observations

Well that sucked. I don’t mean because of the Joe Burrow and Mark Andrews injuries — unfortunate though they were — but because I started Keaton Mitchell (at the last minute) with Saquon Barkley and D’Onta Foreman both questionable, and in any event, Foreman is possibly losing share this week to Khalil Herbert. The other option was Jerry Jeudy, and he’ll probably go off against the Vikings, but I just can’t any more. Even when there’s not much Justice (Hill) in a game the Ravens won by 14, Mitchell couldn’t do anything.

I also had the Bengals +4 in my home pool, but once Burrow got hurt, that was toast. I had Justin Tucker in a few leagues (he did fine) and Zay Flowers in one (he had his usual modest, short-pass-catching week), while it’s pretty clear OBJ is now the team’s No. 1 on the outside.

Burrow sprained his wrist and is awaiting an MRI. He’s a great quarterback when healthy, but the injuries are piling up.

I wasn’t pleased to see Ja’Marr Chase partially salvage his day with that garbage-time TD. If my players are going to bust, I want others to suffer too.

I only watched the highlights, but Lamar Jackson looked smooth, even if he got lucky on the Nelson Agolor TD off a tipped pass. Odell Beckham is accelerating after the catch like he did with the Giants. The Ravens are going to need him, especially after Andrews’ apparently serious injury.

I’m soured Flowers who seems like he’s all moves and no production. Maybe with Andrews out he and Rashod Bateman will get a boost, but it’s hard to count on either.

Gus Edwards got two more TDs. I was going to nominate him in our TD-heavy Steak League for a buck in the end game, but changed my mind, got outbid on the guy I nominated, and then someone else got Edwards for a buck before my turn came back around. He’s the NFL’s leader in rushing TDs with 12.

Roquan Smith got me 10 tackles which isn’t bad, but a bit of a come-down after last week’s 21.

I came across this meme on NOSTR, and it got me thinking.

The Keynesian economist thinks value is determined by the cost it takes to produce something — for our purposes consider that the ADP at which you’d have to take him.

The Marxist thinks value is determined by how much labor went into it. Anyone who mentions the word-count of the article they post is engaging in that frame. (I’m not sure what the analogy would be for that on draft day, as all players take the same click of a button to draft.)

But the Austrian is talking about everyone doing his own subjective cheat sheet, and the market value being the ADP only after all those people come together to create that market.

At first glance there doesn’t seem to be much difference between the Keynesian’s ADP and the Austrian’s, but in practice there is. In the Keynesian view, the ADP is the ADP. In the Austrian view, the market value is only determined by the personal subjective value judgments of the drafters. In other words, they have to make their own cheat sheets first, and only then will the market value really be known.

I’d argue the NFBC ADP (and that of other platforms) are more of the Keynesian variety. Some people are doing their own projections or cheat sheets, but many (including me at times) are just looking at the ADP itself as the baseline and making small adjustments to it. And the ADP itself is also heavily influenced by the projections systems to which everyone has access. In other words, people are treating as-is ADP roughly as value, even though it’s not really the true aggregate of everyone’s subjective preferences.

If no one had access to ADP or anyone else’s projections, the cross-off list in the draft room were only alphabetical (or sortable by individual stats like last year’s HR, RBI, etc.), then everyone would have to come up with their own rankings. (Even better if there were no tweets, podcasts, cheat sheets, etc. influencing anyone’s rankings.) If each person had to generate a cheat sheet solely through his own research, that would be an especially information-rich, Austrian-style ADP.

And this got me thinking. If our group-think ADP that feeds on itself, i.e., “Why did you take this player in the third round? Because he’s a third rounder,” it might not be an especially good baseline for value. We won’t ever again have the real Austrian-style ADP (maybe we were closer in a brief window 20 years ago), but what we have now is really set by a few early drafters and projectors and mostly adjusted due to news and hype.

As such, I’m resigned to do my own MLB cheat sheets this year, maybe starting in December, and I’ll take great pains to avoid even knowing what the ADP or the big projection systems think until just before the drafts themselves, so I know who to jump and who to wait on.

In fact, I plan to do my first draft blind, so to speak, without even looking at ADP at all.

I got bounced from my home league pool on the Bengals last week. I was initially on the Seahawks, but changed my mind because I trusted Joe Burrow more than Geno Smith. I’m not too upset about because the Bengals lost on a last-second field goal, while the Seahawks won on one. While it really doesn’t matter *how* you lose, the likelihood is you’re going to lose, and it’s better if losing isn’t on account of some truly idiotic presumptions.

It’s kind of like the difference between dying because a meteor hit the earth, and dying because you were drunk and decided it was a good idea to jump into the swimming pool from the roof. Either way, you’re dead, but the former is easier to swallow. At least for me.

In any event, I took Cincy in my home pool also in part because I knew everyone else would be on the Cowboys (they were available to everyone), and so there was no pot-odds consideration between them and the Seahawks, i.e., I would be the only one on either team.

But in my offshore-book pools the Seahawks were far less owned, so I took them in my two remaining ones and still have a dog in this fight. Which is the only reason I’m writing this column as I won’t be writing any columns after I’m dead. (That pool is down to about 800 people for $100K, i.e., I have about $120 in equity which is only a little more than the $100 buy-in for my home pool Week 1.)

In any event, let’s take a look at Week 11:

The Football Team is the most popular given they’re playing the Midgets but keep in mind the Midgets beat them the first time around, albeit with Tyrod Taylor, not Danny DeVito.

The Dolphins, Cowboys and Niners are all similarly large favorites, but lower owned because (a) most people have used them; and (b) most want to save them and use the Team instead. And the Lions (home against the Bears) are also in play.

My lean would be Dallas if you have them — they tend to beat up on bad teams, though they’re better at home. The Dolphins also beat up on bad teams, but they’re a little soft. I could see the Dolphins winning by 40, or getting run over by Josh Jacobs. The Team should handle the Giants but while they’re scrappy and play good teams tough sometimes, they also can lose to anyone.

The 49ers are back on track after three losses, and they should handle a scrappy Tampa team that’s lacks upside. The Lions are good, but their defense has fallen off of late, and Justin Fields gives the Bears a puncher’s chance.

I would avoid the Texans, who lost to the Panthers, against the Kyler Murray Cardinals.

Bottom line it’s Cowboys (who you’ve used), and then probably the Niners (who you’ve also used), then a coin flip between the Dolphins and Football Team. I’d have the Lions a little behind both and I’m not touching the Texans.

Which record falls first:

Gretzky's all-time assists or Nolan Ryan's all-time strikeouts?

I switched to the Bengals from the Seahawks in my home Survivor pool. I went back and forth on it, but decided to trust Joe Burrow and fade the hype on C.J. Stroud. Plus I didn’t trust Geno Smith and the Seahawks against a scrappy Team team. I’m not that mad about it. One team lost on a last second field goal, and the other won.

It was funny because after Burrow threw the second pick down 10 with four minutes and change left, I slammed my laptop shut, took the L, went downstairs to walk Oscar. When I came back up, I couldn’t believe they were inside the 20 again, down three. They actually almost had the go-ahead TD too, but Tyler Boyd dropped it, and they settled for a FG to tie, before losing again. But I was even less mad the second time because it seemed like a miracle they were even back in it.

I also went 1-4 against the spread (and I used the same picks for all three entries.) I knew it was a mistake to describe the process — you never want to get conceptual about something that’s instinctive. There’s no way Tom Brady could explain why he was able to do what he did. The explaining has nothing to do with the doing.

My fantasy teams did well — the Primetime team has 172 points with Jerry Jeudy (good for 3-5 points, typically) still going tonight. It’s probably drawing dead, but a couple more big weeks, and it could get into the mix on points. Dak Prescott and CeeDee Lamb have been massive the last few weeks. The Steak League team also did pretty well thanks in part to my IDPs — Roquan Smith had 21 tackles and Jesse Bates had 11.

Did Rich Eisen really say, when the Pats' lineman was getting oxygen on the sideline, "a Blue Velvet-like moment there?" Pretty sure this is the scene in Blue Velvet to which he was referring. Seriously, click that link and you’ll see how insane the reference was during an NFL game.

So much respect for the pull-the-starting-QB for the potential-game-winning-drive, fake-snap, game-sealing-pick sequence. Every week I ask what the purpose of this Pats roster is, and now I know.

Either NFL defenses are conspiring to leave his receivers wide open, or C.J. Stroud looks like one of the greats already. He somehow gets the ball where it needs to go when it needs to get there, even when he’s under pressure, even when it’s 3rd-and-14. It was back-breaking. My comp for him is Joe Montana.

Noah Brown was solid as a reserve for the Cowboys, he was always open yesterday, and the ball always arrived on time. I should have picked him up after last week, but I didn’t.

Here’s a list of my rough comps for current QBs:

The Burrow one is a bit of a stretch, but like a younger Big Ben, Burrow scrambles more to throw than take off, though he can take off. And Burrow shakes off tackles well in the pocket. While peak Rodgers might seem like a slight to Mahomes, people forget how great 2010-11 Rodgers really was. A total wizard.

The AFC is so loaded at QB, but it also has Mac Jones and QB1.

The buy-low, sell-high paradigm for picking games ATS is useful, but you can’t get too formulaic with it. Complex systems never work so straightforwardly.

Trevor Lawrence doesn’t even merit a comp right now. If pressed, maybe I’d go Ryan Tannehill. There was a play — I’m not sure exactly what happened — where someone fumbled, and the 49ers returned it for a TD I think was overturned, but Lawrence chased the defender all the way to the goal line (like 75 yards) and tackled the guy low like three yards into end zone. No one was hurt, but it was an egregious late hit by Lawrence, though they’d never call a QB for doing that. Maybe his best play of the game.

The Giants-Cowboys game was hilarious. For most of the first quarter the drama was whether the Giants would get a safety on every play, since they were inside their own five for two or three series. Then they just got blown out, but kept trying hard for all 60 minutes. I know the market odds had Dallas as 92 percent to win, but it was really like 99 if you’ve followed the Giants.

Bijan Robinson got his touches, played well, and the Falcons still lost.

Deshaun Watson really got beat up in that game. Is he’s allowed to get a massage.

I’m curious to see Joshua Dobbs when Justin Jefferson comes back. Could be a top-five fantasy QB.

Mike Evans just has to stay healthy for a few more games, and he’ll get his 10th straight 1,000-yard season.

Would it kill Christian McCaffrey to score a touchdown?

The Packers and Steelers are also pointless teams, Pittsburgh’s record notwithstanding.

Kyler Murray passed the eye test for me. I like that the Cardinals got a win, putting the Giants closer to the No. 1 overall pick.

Amon-Ra St. Brown has eclipsed 100 yards in six of eight games this year, and had 56 and 71 in the other two, scoring in both. In other words, he hasn’t had a single dud all year.

The Team’s two leading receivers were its running backs (Brian Robinson and Antonio Gibson) in a game where Sam Howell threw for 312 yards.

Don’t know if you’ve noticed the new logo and watermark on the site, but my daughter, Sasha, designed it. I’m terrible at these things, she’s good at them and I don’t (yet) have to pay her.

Jahmyr Gibbs looking like the guy you drafted now

Giants game is an incredible drama of safety avoidance

Deshaun Watson's gonna need a massage after this game

I won in Survivor on an insane game Browns-Colts and lost in another insane game with Bengals-Texans. In both cases, I had the lesser team.

slammed my laptop shut after Burrow's second INT, out in Survivor, took Oscar for a walk, It's suddenly 27-24, with Bengals in the red zone! Tyler Boyd can't come down with it, Bengals settle for FG to tie. False hope! Stroud does it again. Insane.

Only negative for the Texans is how fast they're scoring

Noah Brown just roaming wide open down the field. I should have picked him up in a few places -- I knew he was a solid backup in Dallas too.

great scramble throw to Chase by Burrow. Like Big Ben, scrambles to throw, rather than run more often.

tackled him low too

Trevor Lawrence should have been flagged for tackling Avery Thomas well into the end zone after the long fumble TD return.

all well and good the Bengals got a FG, but they have to stop Stroud

not as enraged as usual for whatever reason

ridiculous catch by Olave

right now looking at 0-3 ATS and a loss in Survivor. Not ideal if it holds