Overall my fantasy teams did well going 4-1. Obviously the lone blemish on that record coming from my favorite league. The infamous league in which i slept through the first two rounds of the draft and ended up with Gronk and Graham. The infamous league in which i just recently traded for Chris Johnson in hopes that this would be the week he turns it around.
Due to my sick drafting strategy of TE, TE, i ended up with Steven Jackson and Ahmed Bradshaw at RB1 and RB2, and Reggie Wayne at WR1 with a weekly decision of Danny Amendola or DeSean Jackson at WR2 every week (which i have gotten wrong every week).
Up until this week we were 1-1 with our only loss being a 0.4 point loss. Gronk and Graham had averaged 20pts per and my WR's were good enough with Eli Manning to look like if we got any production at RB we'd be in the thick of the race.
Then this week happened.
Bradshaw and Jackson got banged up, Gronk and Graham decided to not beast it, and Chris Johnson (yes, he has officially lost the nickname along with his fantasy starting player status on all teams for the forseeable future).
This was the risk with Bradshaw and Jackson so let's accept that. CJ2....Chris Johnson looks like he tricked us at the end of last season and should at this point be benched for almost any other starting RB.
Graham had a down game sure but he still put up double digit points in a ppr league.
This Monday Maniac Overreaction isn't about them, it's about one man (and one stupidly hot woman). A beast of a man with maybe the sickest life ever. One man who should be no child's hero but every 15 year old plus male should worship.
This freakout, is about....The Gronk!
When you are a raging degenerate you start to notice patterns in your bets. We don't follow the patterns because we convince ourselves we know better and we have sound logic, and that is what makes us who we are and is one of the requirements of joining the, "I just lost wayyyyy too much money on X form of gambling so now here i am at a much more reasonable stakes game throwing caution and strategy to the wind and getting drunk out of my mind while i try to numb the fact that my children now will have to be happy with eating off the dollar menu for dinner for the next 3 months" Club.
This weekend for example you had a Panthers team that everybody told you was good. I mean Cam Newton (yes he has what 6 wins as a starter?) is the league's greatest player and the defense is sick!. You had the Giants coming off a home loss (like they always do)and going on the road (where they own it) so obviously logic says the Giants losing at home and winning on the road is just a coincidence over a small sample, and the Entertainment (and a little bit of) Sports Programming Network says the Panthers are legit good this year so i gotta go Panthers -2.5.
Except here's the thing, raise your hand if you have tried this logic with the Giants the last 3 years and lost your ass *raises hand*. We have noticed this trend and yet us true degens still went and put our money down on the Panthers and watched in horror as history repeated itself. *insert the "do you know the definition of insanity" quote here*
Trends like this are obivous to us veteran degens who have given up on the hope of being winning bettors long ago. It is only to the well trained degen eye that the Gronk downfall prediction would have been spotted.
Sometimes when things line up perfectly for a player or a bet you just know they are destined to do exactly the opposite. The Packers vs Bears over for example. Or in this case when Gronk started the season meeting his lofty first round pick as a TE expectations through the first two weeks. Welker was being phased out, Hernandez got hurt, and Brady had obviously fallen in love with and been given orders to switch his safety blanket from Welker to Gronk.
And then Bibi Jones happened....
She's a Steelers Spy!!!
Oh Bibi, you amazingly hot yet unenthusiastic "peformer." You "retired" from the industry after getting more famous off a Gronk pic than any of your films. You continued tweeting your slutty pics and name dropping Gronk any time you could until you got....weird. You went back to your real name and got all emo on us but you still had this Gronk connection and Gronk continued to thrive in the games.
Then, on the eve of September 22nd two thousand and twelve Bibi Jones did the unimaginable....she deleted her Twitter account. Poof! Gone! And just like that the golden locks of Hercules aka Gronkowski had been cut. I saw this, i screamed in agony as i saw the future of all my Gronk based teams suddenly losing 15+ points of production a week and falling into the consolation bracket where i pathetically came up short to a team who didn't even start all their players.
I woke up and convinced myself that surely Bibi would not be the downfall of the mighty Gronk and all i had seen was just an overreaction nightmare and not a vision of what was to come.
Sunday played and i had a solid 30 piont lead going into Sunday night with Gronk vs Ray Rice, Grostowsky (Pats Kicker), and Jermicheal Finley. Fast forward and here i am without even a sweat on Monday night as Ray Rice and Grostowsky ourscored 30 points and Gronk.
Gronk finished the night with 3 targets, 2 receptions, and 21 yards. Brady rediscovered Welker and the replacement refs earned the striking refs a BIG raise.
The only thing we can do to reverse the Gronk curse is rally up all the Gronk owners and start a campaign to get Bibi back.
After all she's going to need a new job after the replacement refs are....replaced
And now for the rest of this week's reactions....
The Good:
Jamaal Charles - BEEP BEEP All aboard!!! Charles may not have looked great in the first two weeks - in fact he looked bad - but the Chiefs weren't exactly in a position to let him get it going since they were down 14 - 0 in both games by the time warm-ups were over. Don't expect 532 points a week out of him but he should be a reliable RB1 most weeks.
Larry Fitzgerald - You knew it was coming. Fitz is going to get his (and he was playing me in the degen league so you knew he was going to go off) but the reason i was and still am down on him is his production is going to be so sporatic without a decent QB. Kevin Kolb and Skelton have basically turned Fitzgerald into a Vincent Jackson clone. Highly volatile receivers who will have good/great stats at the end of it but if you owned them you will have no idea how they got those stats as you forget the 5 weeks they owned it and remember the 11 weeks of almost 0 production.
The Bad:
Chris Johnson - Oh how quickly averaging 2.2 ypc vs a soft matchup will take you from the "Trade for" list to the "Bench!!!" list. Really nothing to say here other than wait for the O-Line to hopefully quit sucking and for CJ to have a good game or two before putting him back in your lineup.
Ps Javone Ringer is not the answer. It's not that CJ sucks it's that he's getting hit behind the line of scrimmage too much and the Titans already showed last year they won't make that switch.
Cory Fleener/Donnie Avery - One week does not a fantasy player make. Luck is going to take his lumps and the only sure option is Wayne.
The injured:
Nothing significant i can think of so let's just look at the some of the buttefly affects of the minor ones.
Matty Stafford - Oh look he's getting injured again.
Ahmed Bradsahw - Samesies except it's time to get worried that a time-share is happening here with Brown.
Steven Jackson - Played the whole game and for some reason i feel more secure with him keeping 90% of the carries here than i do with Bradshaw.
Bring Bibi back and we can have more Twitter pics like these
