A generation ago, even the most diehard football fans wouldn't have dared to think that the National Football League could form its own television channel and keep people tuned to it 12 months a year. But these days, you might feel cheated when this channel interrupts its live updates to bring you a Super Bowl rerun.
That's the way sports are these days, especially if you're a fantasy player. When the NFL had its lockout, all we wanted to know was when it was going to end. Now that the lockout and preseason are over, we want to know who's going to play. If you have a fantasy football team, you better not think you can ignore it for six days, come back to it on Sunday and rest assured that your team's fortunes haven't changed.
On Tuesday, if you were paying attention, you learned that the Jacksonville Jaguars had waited until five days before their season opener (and after he appeared at a chamber of commerce luncheon) to fire David Garrard. At first glimpse, this may not seem like a major concern to fantasy football players, since the only reason you would have been starting Garrard is because you had found a bad quarterback league. But football is a team sport, and one player's misfortune affects so many others. Did you spend your late first round pick on Maurice Jones-Drew? Will he now be facing a defense featuring 11 nose tackles? Maybe you took a flyer on a Jaguars receiver in the 13th round. Are you sure Luke McCown even knows that receiver's name?
Then, on Wednesday, if you were paying any attention at all, you learned that Peyton Manning won't be ready to play Sunday. If you rolled the dice and drafted him anyway, do you have a reliable quarterback to start this week? Do you need to go find Kerry Collins (and pray your opponent for this week didn't just get him off the waiver wire just to burn you)? Do all the other Indianapolis Colts players littering fantasy rosters remain valuable now that Collins is calling the shots? If you wait until Sunday to ask yourself these questions, you may find your alternatives to be quite slim.
And those were the relatively easy calls. We haven't even gotten to things like Arian Foster's photogenic hamstring or Ryan Grant's playing time or whether the Cincinnati Bengals really are stupid enough to let Carson Palmer rot on the shelf to make some short-sighted point. Some of these questions may be resolved by the time this post is published. Some of them may still be in the air at 12:59 p.m. Eastern on Sunday.
All of them are why NFL Network won't have to worry about going off the air anytime soon.
Quick reminder: There are polls that need your votes. The kicker poll closes at 5 p.m. Eastern on Thursday. The fantasy NASCAR polls close Thursday night, and the other fantasy football polls close Saturday night. Please contribute your votes to this experiment in fantasy democracy. Thanks.
Showing posts with label Jacksonville Jaguars. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jacksonville Jaguars. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 7, 2011
Monday, October 18, 2010
A Quick Monday Afternoon Update (and Link)
The People's Pigskin is off to a good start this week. The Internet's favorite fantasy football team currenly enjoys a 71-65 lead over cowboys romero. Our contest is far from over, though. The Pigskin has Kenny Britt and the Tennessee Titans defense/special teams in the Monday night game, while the Cowboys have Maurice Jones-Drew of the Jacksonville Jaguars. If Jones-Drew doesn't outscore Britt and the Titans by at least 6 points, the Pigskin will improve to 5-1.
While we wait on that game, I'd be remiss not to share with you a regular feature of one of our fellow bloggers, The Fantasy Geek. Every week, one of the Geek's resident experts, "themajorgray," offers a Sizing Up post in which he analyzes each NFL game and tells you which players should or should not be starting on your fantasy team. For example, here's the list for the Monday night game. (And no, this isn't "stealing." It's paying tribute.)
"Certainly Start: Chris Johnson, Marcedes Lewis, Maurice Jones-Drew. Consider: TEN Defense, Josh Scobee, Nate Washington, Kenny Britt, Mike Sims-Walker. Hold back: JAX Defense, David Garrard, Justin Gage (injury), Javon Ringer, Bo Scaife. Sleepers: Vince Young, Deji Karim."
If you need fantasy advice from someone who doesn't try to call himself "Talented" without demonstrating it, consider the Fantasy Geek.
We'll be back with the football results and a fresh set of polls.
While we wait on that game, I'd be remiss not to share with you a regular feature of one of our fellow bloggers, The Fantasy Geek. Every week, one of the Geek's resident experts, "themajorgray," offers a Sizing Up post in which he analyzes each NFL game and tells you which players should or should not be starting on your fantasy team. For example, here's the list for the Monday night game. (And no, this isn't "stealing." It's paying tribute.)
"Certainly Start: Chris Johnson, Marcedes Lewis, Maurice Jones-Drew. Consider: TEN Defense, Josh Scobee, Nate Washington, Kenny Britt, Mike Sims-Walker. Hold back: JAX Defense, David Garrard, Justin Gage (injury), Javon Ringer, Bo Scaife. Sleepers: Vince Young, Deji Karim."
If you need fantasy advice from someone who doesn't try to call himself "Talented" without demonstrating it, consider the Fantasy Geek.
We'll be back with the football results and a fresh set of polls.
Friday, August 20, 2010
Umm...Oops
Put simply, the people who bring you this Web site fell asleep before setting the lineup for this week. No excuses. We screwed up. It will never happen again.
Yahoo will not allow us to change our drivers at this point for the NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Bristol Motor Speedway. It will only allow us to send starters to the bench and vice versa. So the People's Pitstop has the same driver pool we had last week: Tony Stewart, Jeff Gordon, Kasey Kahne, Jamie McMurray, Jeff Burton, Paul Menard and A.J. Allmendinger. The best qualifiers will start. (Kevin Harvick, who's now ineligible to start, will stay on the bench.)
Meanwhile, on the fantasy football side, you, the Internet, decided that Maurice Jones-Drew should be No. 3 on our draft board (after Adrian Peterson and Chris Johnson), and that Andre Johnson should be the top wide receiver on our board.
We have three new polls up now. One asks which football player should be No. 4 overall on the board. The others ask which quarterback we should rank second after Drew Brees and which receiver we should rank second after Andre Johnson. The results from our previous polls appear below. We'll update this after the qualifying session.
Oh, and there are still spots available in the People's League for those who want to match wits with the Internet's favorite fantasy football team.
UPDATED 8:00 A.M. The results are in. Tony Stewart not only beat out Jeff Gordon, but he also earned us a bonus point for qualifying 4th. Jamie McMurray (7th) and Kasey Kahne (11th) get the B List starting spots. A.J. Allmendinger qualified 10th, just two spots ahead of Paul Menard, who will live to start for us another day.
We'll be back with the weekly predictions.
[polldaddy poll=3630901] [polldaddy poll=3630910] [polldaddy poll=3630921] [polldaddy poll=3630934] [polldaddy poll=3630941]
Yahoo will not allow us to change our drivers at this point for the NASCAR Sprint Cup race at Bristol Motor Speedway. It will only allow us to send starters to the bench and vice versa. So the People's Pitstop has the same driver pool we had last week: Tony Stewart, Jeff Gordon, Kasey Kahne, Jamie McMurray, Jeff Burton, Paul Menard and A.J. Allmendinger. The best qualifiers will start. (Kevin Harvick, who's now ineligible to start, will stay on the bench.)
Meanwhile, on the fantasy football side, you, the Internet, decided that Maurice Jones-Drew should be No. 3 on our draft board (after Adrian Peterson and Chris Johnson), and that Andre Johnson should be the top wide receiver on our board.
We have three new polls up now. One asks which football player should be No. 4 overall on the board. The others ask which quarterback we should rank second after Drew Brees and which receiver we should rank second after Andre Johnson. The results from our previous polls appear below. We'll update this after the qualifying session.
Oh, and there are still spots available in the People's League for those who want to match wits with the Internet's favorite fantasy football team.
UPDATED 8:00 A.M. The results are in. Tony Stewart not only beat out Jeff Gordon, but he also earned us a bonus point for qualifying 4th. Jamie McMurray (7th) and Kasey Kahne (11th) get the B List starting spots. A.J. Allmendinger qualified 10th, just two spots ahead of Paul Menard, who will live to start for us another day.
We'll be back with the weekly predictions.
[polldaddy poll=3630901] [polldaddy poll=3630910] [polldaddy poll=3630921] [polldaddy poll=3630934] [polldaddy poll=3630941]
Monday, November 16, 2009
Monday Update and Reading
It's Monday, and the People's Pigskin is alive and well. We currently lead Big Lough O by a score of 84-80. That means that if the Baltimore Ravens defense/special teams can be held to under 4 fantasy points tonight, the Pigskin will record a victory. How hard could that be? After all, it's not as if the Cleveland Browns have a head coach who has ticked off enough players to draw the union's attention, right?
While we wait to learn about our fantasy football team's fate, here are some links for your surfing pleasure.
Better take a knee for this one. There are countless ways to lose a fantasy football game. It's painful, for example, when your running back is tackled on the 1-yard line and his backup scores the touchdown. It has to be even worse when your running back takes a knee at the 1-yard line on purpose, as Maurice Jones-Drew did Sunday, following the orders of his head coach.
The Jacksonville Jaguars wanted to deny the New York Jets a chance to get the ball back (sound familiar?), so they told Jones-Drew to take a knee if he was in a position to get into the end zone. He apologized later to those who had him on his fantasy team. One of those teams: the Big Lough Os. I'm just saying...
Well, that was quick. As I'm typing this list up, ESPN is reporting that the Cincinnati Bengals will sign Larry Johnson to a contract. The Bengals were pushed into the LJ market by Cedric Benson's hip injury Sunday against the Pittsburgh Steelers.
What kind of first impression will Johnson make in Cincinnati? Hopefully, it will be better than the last impression he made in Kansas City. (Not that the bar is set particularly high.)
On a more positive note. If you used your first-round fantasy pick to draft LaDainian Tomlinson, you're probably starting him no matter what. Still, wouldn't you have liked to know before the game that LDT would have extra motivation after learning that he was going to be a father? It reminds me of when Brett Favre had a monster game a day after his father died. Emotion has a well-deserved reputation for fueling big performances like Favre's and LDT's.
If you're running an NFL pregame show, would it kill you to squeeze a few more notes like this into your broadcast in between the analysts' efforts to talk over one another and laugh hilariously at the drop of a hat? I'm sure fantasy players would really appreciate actually learning something from your shows every once in a while.
This Bud's for you. Imagine if you're the owner of a National Football League team. Imagine that your team just recorded its third straight victory -- and did so in front of its home crowd, the folks who buy your tickets and merchandise and allow you to live the lifestyle you are currently living. Now imagine that you live in a world where cameras are everywhere, and that every single fan in that stadium, friend or foe, could have a camera-equipped phone in his/her pocket.
Knowing all that, how would you celebrate after your team's hard-earned victory? If you're Bud Adams, the owner of the Houston Oil...er, sorry, the Tennessee Titans, you do this. (Warning: This link shows an unsafe-for-work video.)
Bill Belichick is being called stupid in many circles for what he did Sunday evening, but at least his decision had a chance of working out in his favor. I can't say the same for Adams.
We'll be back tomorrow with an update on our matchup with the Lough Os. Until then, enjoy the Monday night game. (And get comfortable with Jon Gruden's voice. You'll be hearing it for a while.)
While we wait to learn about our fantasy football team's fate, here are some links for your surfing pleasure.
Better take a knee for this one. There are countless ways to lose a fantasy football game. It's painful, for example, when your running back is tackled on the 1-yard line and his backup scores the touchdown. It has to be even worse when your running back takes a knee at the 1-yard line on purpose, as Maurice Jones-Drew did Sunday, following the orders of his head coach.
The Jacksonville Jaguars wanted to deny the New York Jets a chance to get the ball back (sound familiar?), so they told Jones-Drew to take a knee if he was in a position to get into the end zone. He apologized later to those who had him on his fantasy team. One of those teams: the Big Lough Os. I'm just saying...
Well, that was quick. As I'm typing this list up, ESPN is reporting that the Cincinnati Bengals will sign Larry Johnson to a contract. The Bengals were pushed into the LJ market by Cedric Benson's hip injury Sunday against the Pittsburgh Steelers.
What kind of first impression will Johnson make in Cincinnati? Hopefully, it will be better than the last impression he made in Kansas City. (Not that the bar is set particularly high.)
On a more positive note. If you used your first-round fantasy pick to draft LaDainian Tomlinson, you're probably starting him no matter what. Still, wouldn't you have liked to know before the game that LDT would have extra motivation after learning that he was going to be a father? It reminds me of when Brett Favre had a monster game a day after his father died. Emotion has a well-deserved reputation for fueling big performances like Favre's and LDT's.
If you're running an NFL pregame show, would it kill you to squeeze a few more notes like this into your broadcast in between the analysts' efforts to talk over one another and laugh hilariously at the drop of a hat? I'm sure fantasy players would really appreciate actually learning something from your shows every once in a while.
This Bud's for you. Imagine if you're the owner of a National Football League team. Imagine that your team just recorded its third straight victory -- and did so in front of its home crowd, the folks who buy your tickets and merchandise and allow you to live the lifestyle you are currently living. Now imagine that you live in a world where cameras are everywhere, and that every single fan in that stadium, friend or foe, could have a camera-equipped phone in his/her pocket.
Knowing all that, how would you celebrate after your team's hard-earned victory? If you're Bud Adams, the owner of the Houston Oil...er, sorry, the Tennessee Titans, you do this. (Warning: This link shows an unsafe-for-work video.)
Bill Belichick is being called stupid in many circles for what he did Sunday evening, but at least his decision had a chance of working out in his favor. I can't say the same for Adams.
We'll be back tomorrow with an update on our matchup with the Lough Os. Until then, enjoy the Monday night game. (And get comfortable with Jon Gruden's voice. You'll be hearing it for a while.)
Saturday, November 7, 2009
Weekend Reading
The polls on the right side of this page will close Sunday morning. While you consider what to do with our lineup and the question about your own fantasy football team, here are some links to visit in between your college games.
Not exactly a fan favorite, is he? The Kansas City Chiefs were having a rough season even before Larry Johnson decided to make a fool of himself. Now some fans have had enough of LJ. They've started a petition asking the Chiefs not to let him get the 75 rushing yards he needs to supplant Priest Holmes as Kansas City's all-time leader. How awkward would it be to have him on your fantasy team and learn that his own team's fans don't want him to put up 75 yards. Of course, with the way he's been producing lately, that could be a moot point.
What do you think you are, a quarterback? There were questions for the Jacksonville Jaguars after Maurice Jones-Drew got only 8 carries (and 177 yards) last week against the Tennessee Titans. Now the Jaguars are saying the fault lies not with the coaches, but with David Garrard, who had been audibling out of run plays and into passing plays. Jack Del Rio says he told his quarterback "Look, just hand it to him and let him run the ball."
If you have Jones-Drew on your fantasy team, I suppose this is good news. Of course, if you have Garrard, being told he can't call a pass play if he's sees an opportunity for one at the line is not very good news. Whether this is good news for the few remaining Jaguars fans remains to be seen.
Need a trophy for your league? You could go to your local trophy shop or to eBay, but now there's another alternative: the Arena Football League, which is selling pretty much everything it has left. Maybe you and your buddies can compete for the right to keep the Arena Bowl trophy in your living room for the next 12 months.
Down with the Drew Brees-loving capitalist horde! In the never-ending quest to provide you with alternative opinions on the game we love, I present a thought from a fellow Wordpress blogger, the Langston Escape Plan. The post's title: "Why the Third World Hates Us: Fantasy Football." The premise: People who spend their day scrounging up enough food to survive and protecting themselves from rampaging thugs don't have the time or resources to worry about whether the Steelers defense can stop the Denver Broncos.
"Imagine, if you will, that you are a fantasy football fan trying to explain to someone from the slums of India, the streets of oppressed Pyongyang or just about anywhere in Somalia why you spend any amount of time on it. What would you say? Because your bros do it? Because you can win even more disposable income? Because it’s fun?"
I imagine the same thing could be said about people who worry about things like Jennifer Aniston's love life, but the point is an interesting one, nonetheless.
Anyway, we'll be back tomorrow with poll results. Until then, enjoy the games.
Not exactly a fan favorite, is he? The Kansas City Chiefs were having a rough season even before Larry Johnson decided to make a fool of himself. Now some fans have had enough of LJ. They've started a petition asking the Chiefs not to let him get the 75 rushing yards he needs to supplant Priest Holmes as Kansas City's all-time leader. How awkward would it be to have him on your fantasy team and learn that his own team's fans don't want him to put up 75 yards. Of course, with the way he's been producing lately, that could be a moot point.
What do you think you are, a quarterback? There were questions for the Jacksonville Jaguars after Maurice Jones-Drew got only 8 carries (and 177 yards) last week against the Tennessee Titans. Now the Jaguars are saying the fault lies not with the coaches, but with David Garrard, who had been audibling out of run plays and into passing plays. Jack Del Rio says he told his quarterback "Look, just hand it to him and let him run the ball."
If you have Jones-Drew on your fantasy team, I suppose this is good news. Of course, if you have Garrard, being told he can't call a pass play if he's sees an opportunity for one at the line is not very good news. Whether this is good news for the few remaining Jaguars fans remains to be seen.
Need a trophy for your league? You could go to your local trophy shop or to eBay, but now there's another alternative: the Arena Football League, which is selling pretty much everything it has left. Maybe you and your buddies can compete for the right to keep the Arena Bowl trophy in your living room for the next 12 months.
Down with the Drew Brees-loving capitalist horde! In the never-ending quest to provide you with alternative opinions on the game we love, I present a thought from a fellow Wordpress blogger, the Langston Escape Plan. The post's title: "Why the Third World Hates Us: Fantasy Football." The premise: People who spend their day scrounging up enough food to survive and protecting themselves from rampaging thugs don't have the time or resources to worry about whether the Steelers defense can stop the Denver Broncos.
"Imagine, if you will, that you are a fantasy football fan trying to explain to someone from the slums of India, the streets of oppressed Pyongyang or just about anywhere in Somalia why you spend any amount of time on it. What would you say? Because your bros do it? Because you can win even more disposable income? Because it’s fun?"
I imagine the same thing could be said about people who worry about things like Jennifer Aniston's love life, but the point is an interesting one, nonetheless.
Anyway, we'll be back tomorrow with poll results. Until then, enjoy the games.
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