Complex football for November, both real and imaginary.

I promised to get back to my readers, assuming the species still exists, about the prospects for the local football franchises come early December. It's late November and I can confirm what I thought to be the case in early October. 

This could be the year. 

The 49ers are not mathematically a lock to be in the playoffs yet, but they are statistically a lock. They could still have a massive collapse and one of the teams in their division could catch fire. Because I am a cautious person, I will say the chance of a Niner collapse is remote but possible. I just can't see any team in their division starting to play well enough to catch them. The most likely 49er outcome is breezing to the division title and at least one home playoff game in January. In other words, the brie eating, chardonnay drinking 49er fans get to be as smug as they were in the heyday. 

The Raiders are not as clear a lock, but they are on top of their division and playing well. They have real hope of making the playoffs here in late November, instead of their recent pattern of sucking and making their fans miserable.

Doesn't suck to be a Bay Area football fan.

 

And then there are the Mutant Mercenaries, my fantasy football team. From 1-4 in early October to 7-4 now, in second place due to favorable tiebreakers.

The bad news is the next game is against my brother Michael's team, Cruel Dave, top of the league and on a ten game win streak since I traded Aaron Rodgers to him. (I swear to Lenny, it looked like a good idea at the time.)  If I lose, I can wave goodbye to second place with only one week left.  On the other hand, the chance to make the playoffs looks solid.

Still, the moral of this story is simple.

Winning football, real or fantasy, feels pretty good.

Complex football: Both imaginary and real.

There's a scene in Moneyball where Brad Pitt as Billy Beane goes to the dugout and says to the then struggling A's, "This is a winning team. Now go out tonight and play like it."

I wish I could assemble the Mutant Mercenaries and tell them the same thing, but so far, no dice.

I won the award for the best draft. I have since made some pick-ups on waivers and trades that I think make my team better. Still, after five games we are 1-4 when we could be 3-2 or even with some luck 4-1. Instead, the luck has been almost all bad and we now have to struggle to get into the playoffs when I had hopes we might be trying to get enough wins to get a bye week.


And then there are the local teams, who have both been bitter disappointments for about ten years now. The Raiders and the 49ers both won their first games of the season, beat the uninspiring Broncos and Seahawks respectively. Then came week two, when the Raiders lost late to the Bills and the Niners lost late to the Cowboys, both those opponents seeming less than prepossessing at the time.

Since then, the Raiders have gone to 3-2, beating the Texans this week in an ugly game but nevertheless a win barely 24 hours after Al Davis' death. The 49ers have won three straight, including impressive drubbings of both the struggling Broncos and the allegedly solid Buccaneers in the past two weeks.

The Raiders are in a tougher division and they may have to hope for a wild card spot unless the Chargers go into a nose dive. This week's game hosting the Browns will go a long way in answering the question about whether they are contenders or pretenders.

The Niners on the other hand are in a Group of Cake rather than a Group of Death, and even if they lose on the road to the newly resurgent Lions this week, if they can go 10-6 in their division, they are pretty much a lock to get int the playoffs with a home game, especially since they still have five games left against the Seahawks, Rams and Cardinals, all of whom are somewhere between sad and laughable.

I really do think the Niners could be a playoff team this year. With a little luck, I think the Mutant Mercenaries and the Raiders might join them.

It's nice to have some hope in early October. I'll check back in early December to see if it all was just a mirage.

And since I'm boring you with fantasy football stuff...

This is my new logo.



Because... it's all falling into place.

Every freaking season!

I'm playing fantasy football again this season. I don't expect to set the world on fire, but it's an enjoyable pastime and a chance to insult several male relatives.



You know, bonding and stuff.



With my very last pick in the draft, I went on a flyer that someone would sign Terrell Owens, but Yahoo! says he is no longer to be saluted, so I went to pick up another wide receiver to replace his useless ass.



Instead of being clever, I chose "wide receivers" and clicked on "sort by fantasy points 2010" The best free agent at this position using our league's scoring system was... Danny Amendola.







I had Danny Amendola my first season, picked up as a free agent.



I had Danny Amendola my second season, picked up as a free agent.



As Al Pacino says in the only quotable line from that piece of crap Godfather III: "Just when I thought I was out, they pull me back in."



In correspondence to me, he must be referred to as Danny Fucking Amendola.



Thank you for your kind attention.

Sure I suck at fantasy football, but there are many circles of suckitude hell.

I'm not having a great season in fantasy football. People got hurt, some underperformed though allegedly healthy, I gave up on some guys I should have stuck with, I stuck too long with guys I should have dumped. That said, this week I have a 60 point lead going into a game on Monday night where I still have one linebacker to play and so does my opponent. In fact, we both have a linebacker who plays for the Broncos. In our league, linebackers don't score 60 points. If I didn't know better, I would say this game is a stone cold lock.


But I do know better. This is a picture of Carl, the next door neighbor of the main characters on the cartoon Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Besides being on the cartoon, every week during the N.F.L. season on the Adult Swim website, Carl gives you his Stone Cold Lock Of The Century Of The Week.

The main part of these clips is supposed to be comedy, but it's only funny if you know something about the N.F.L. Carl mocks players for inept play, mocks (or sometimes sympathizes with) players for their off-the-field foibles, almost always lauds players for cheap hits and/or vulgar gestures, then picks the result of a game that will be played that week.

As far as I can determine, Carl has not made one correct prediction this year. He started 0-4, making perfectly reasonable guesses as to who would win and always getting them wrong. In the fifth week he picked both the Cowboys and/or the Titans to win a contest where they were facing one another, so that one doesn't really count. And then we went back to really predicting and really being wrong.

It's not like he's trying to be wrong for comedic effect. The Cowboys were humiliated in week 9 by the Packers 45-7 and Jerry Jones fired the head coach after giving him a public vote of confidence. Carl mocked the Cowboys for their ineptitude, then picked his beloved G-Men to beat the Cowgirls. Instead, the Cowboys beat the Giants in what everyone agrees was an upset.

Carl followed the same flawless logic the next week. The Redskins were destroyed by the Eagles 59-28 last Monday night, so Carl picked the Titans to also run over the Redskins, who have problems on both offense and defense and a coach verbally showing little confidence in his quarterback but not benching him. The Redskins won in overtime.

Of course, Carl has a lot going for him besides his football expertise. He's balding, fat, hairy, rocks a porn 'stache, wears tank tops and gold chains. And he lives in New Jersey.

For those who might wonder how Carl and I differ, I still have a lovely though gray head of hair and I stopped experimenting with facial hair about ten years ago. I also promise never to wear tank tops or gold chains in public or move to the Garden State, and that my friends, is Matty Boy's Stone Cold Lock of the Century... Of The Week!

Fantasy football update: first third of the regular season

My fantasy football team, the Mutant Mercenaries, is 2-2 after four weeks of play. If the playoffs started today, the team would not be in, but the league is closely bunched and good things could happen.

In the interests of full disclosure, bad things could happen, too. My top draft pick Chris Johnson has had two excellent games and two lackluster games. Last season he was pretty much excellent week in and week out. My QB, Matt Schaub of the Houston Texans, was chosen because he played on a team that was often behind without much of a running game. This year, a back named Arian Foster has been a breakout performer in several games, so the Matt Schaub calculated risk is looking more like a calculated bust. As for my first backup QB, Alex Smith of the 49ers, the less said the better. He is no longer wearing a Mercenary uniform, whatever that is.

All the games for week 4 are through, but the official NFL stats can change after the games. There is currently only one undefeated team at 3-0. In week 4, his game currently has him losing by less than a half a point as it now stands. Games like this sometimes switch outcomes when the final stats are in. In any case, I play the previously undefeated team next week. If I catch a little luck, my position could improve dramatically.

It could also go straight into the dumper. Nothing is guaranteed.

Now I understand why people hate Brett Favre.

If you are a right thinking American, or indeed a person of any nation with a lick of sense, you care about the decision making process of Brett Favre to the sum of zero.

Sadly, I am not a right thinking American in this case. I am in a fantasy football league. As my game playing friend Jodi says, fantasy football is Dungeons & Dragons for the guys who beat up people who really play Dungeons & Dragons.

So now, all my Poindexter dweeb calculations are up in the air because Favre may or may not return to NFL for the jillionth time, especially because my league is having the draft on Sunday, two full weeks before the season begins. If he returns and if his ankle is healthy, he should be a starting quarterback for one of the twelve teams in the league in which I play. The returning part looks pretty obvious as of this morning, given that he is following his coy routine of the past few years. The ankle surgery is the big if.

With any luck, I'll pick up one of the quarterbacks that should be better than he is and let somebody else pull the trigger on adding this high-strung prima donna to his or her roster. But regardless of that future event, I am now drinking the Hater-ade when anybody mentions Brett Favre.