In the words of Jimmy Buffett, it's 5 o'clock somewhere as you read this, so while you decide how you'll vote in the lineup poll and the team devotion poll (and please vote), here are some random stories to spice up your day.
I'm a lover, not a receiver. How mad would you be to find out that a player on your fantasy football team was inactivated because he was out late with a female friend and missed a bed check? That's what happened to Mike Sims-Walker of the Jacksonville Jaguars last week. You have to wonder how that would be listed on the injury report. "Out: Mike Sims-Walker (libido)"
Someone's in a world of hurt. It could be worse for Mike. He could have been James Davis of the Cleveland Browns, whose season-ending injury reportedly occurred when he took part in a postgame drill, without pads, against a defender who was wearing pads. No reports on whether head coach Eric Mangini accused him of taking the strawberries.
Fashion statements. The National Football League has some strange ideas about what should be forbidden on its fields. According to the underrated uniformviolation.com, Eric Wright of the Browns (yes, the Browns again) was fined $5,000 last month for wearing pants that exposed his knee. This is on top of Chad Ochocinco's fine, also for $5,000, for wearing an orange chinstrap during a preseason game.
Personally, I'd take the NFL's uniform rules more seriously if the league itself didn't allow sights like these on its fields.
Back on the air. If you live in the Cincinnati area and have a Bengal on your roster (what are the odds, right?), you'll be relieved to know that the game has sold out and will not be blacked out, after all. Now you won't have to rely on fantasy-statistic-updating Web sites for updates on your team. You can watch it the way God intended: on one of these.
No, we don't throw darts (as far as you know). I got an e-mail this week from ESPN trying to explain how the folks in Bristol come up with their fantasy projections each week. Here are some highlights.
"Here's what you need to know about using our projections. It would be very simple for us to take our season-long projections, divide by 16 and simply trot out Adrian Peterson, Larry Fitzgerald and Peyton Manning (or Brees) at No. 1 every week. Simple, yes … but informative? No way. ...
"By mathematically analyzing each team's offensive tendencies in terms of play-calling and targeting choices, and then combining those statistics with the defensive strengths and weaknesses of that week's opponent, the numbers we ultimately come up with show which players can be expected to perform better or worse than usual in a given week. But these numbers are not to be taken as gospel; after all, predicting the future is an inexact science."
The e-mail then tells us why Rashard Mendenhall (remember him?) and Jason Campbell are expected to have big games. Then it tells us this:
"Let's face it; predicting touchdowns in the NFL can be like predicting fly outs to center field in baseball. There's no real rhyme or reason to it. Sure, a guy like Dwayne Bowe might be the most likely Chiefs receiver to find paydirt, but if he gets pushed out of bounds at the 1-yard line after a long pass, it's just as likely someone else (a running back, even Mike Vrabel) will go and steal another handful of potential fantasy points out from under him on the next play from scrimmage."
Glad to see that sometimes, they have no clue, either.
We'll be back tomorrow with Landshark Maniacs projections. Until then, vote.
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