The 40ft Post: Sad Russell Wilson

I don't like the term surreal.

I don't think you should use it unless you are actually standing in front of a painting that happens to have dripping clocks on it.

No dripping clocks, no surrealism.

You can't have it.

I feel the same way about people who point to their nit-pickyness and say that it's their OCD.

Those who suffer from OCD are TERRIFIED of being caught exhibiting obsessive behaviors. So, in reality, you're not suffering from OCD, you're just kind of an asshole.

Nothing wrong with that, of course, just man up and own it. When you’re at someone’s house and you have the need to straighten one of their wall photos, don’t say; “Sorry, it’s just my OCD.” say: “Sorry, I’m just an asshole.”

Anyway,

So, the point is, last week was surreal.

Dripping clocks and all.

The only bankable things that happened was the Brady grudge match against the world . . . and sad face Eli.

I thought he couldn't get any sadder after that Marshall drop, but then Beckham loses the hot-potato game and poor Manning's iris' swelled up like a dog watching people eat.

All I'm saying is that nothing is sadder than a dog watching someone eat.

Except maybe those who drafted Russell Wilson.

Nobody is sadder than those folks.

Me . . . I'm pointing to me . . . and I did the same thing last  year to similar results, because i don't learn things.

Of the thirteen players on my "Buy My Book" Team, only Frank Gore and Phil Dawson beat their projections.

I came seriously close to dropping everyone and loading that entire team up with old folks. I need to get my hands on Larry Fitzgerald and either Jason Witten or Antonio Gates. I'm not sure.

I'd love to point to any guys my team and blame them, but since it seems to be all of them, I've only myself to blame.

Or . . . 

Or . . .

We remain calm and blame reality.

THE BIG NEWS

Offenses have been terrible.

So terrible.

In one of my fantasy leagues, only one team out of twelve exceeded expectations. Beat projections. Didn't look foolish. Well . . . I guess half of them won . . . So not so foolish, but not pretty.

Compare, for example, Russell Wilson in preseason versus Russell Wilson in reality.

I don't have the direct statistics (they'd be meaningless anyway), but preseason Wilson looked off-the-hook sharp, his receivers two steps ahead of their coverage, his offensive line so ominous John Williams begged to compose their theme song.

(If you don't get that reference, John Williams composed the music for Jaws and Darth Vader)

(He's no slouch when it comes to creating ominous atmospheres)

However, the season begins, and reality steps up and says . . . "Nah"

The Seahawk Offense made Hoyer look dangerous in comparison.

They were so bad I'm considering streaming defenses against them.

(Not really. Between the Browns and the Jets and the Bears and the Niners and the Bengals and the Giants, there are just way too many Pick-6's out there.)

It's like harvest season.

It is harvest season.

And I just read a report that California is in serious agricultural trouble because there aren't enough migrant farm workers. Two million people this year are going to die of famine, and we've got fruit rotting on the vine.

Excellent.

INJURIES AND BAD DECISIONS

Bradford has got a bruised bone.

(I've been staring at the screen for twenty minutes trying to think of the appropriate dick joke . . . But nothing's coming.)

Read that last sentence again.

Everybody is otherwise questionable. Except B.J. Goodson, one of my starting linebackers from Monday night's game. He'll definitely be out.

Which is kinda funny, because he was good to go about ten minutes prior to the game when I checked my line-up, and yet the announcer said he was being replaced by a rookie about two minutes into the game.

Yahoo was kind enough to send me an email to notify me of Goodson's OUT status at about 6:00 am Tuesday morning.

Not sure what kind of algorithm they're using, but it is slower to see trouble than the Giants' offensive line.

Six sacks, bro, they might as well put in a turnstyle and add a cover charge to enter the pocket.

The bouncer at a Chuck E. Cheese is harder to get past.

I could go on, but Steve is getting a text from Peter right now.

"Why can't he leave my Giants alone?!"

Because, and this is the honest truth, I'm a Niners fan, and I'm a sad petty little man.

My bone however, is delightfully unbruised.

FANTASYLAND

Buy My Book 0-2 11th place

Trump's Twitter Game 0-2 10th place

Daily 114k out of 301k

I have nothing really to say about any of this, I'm as unsurprised as you are.

Buy My Book was a terrible idea.

And Trump’s Twitter Game, so funny this time last year, now is literally picking fights with Nuclear Powers across the Globe.

I thought Buy My Book was fun and pithy and on message while I run the marketing portion of my life. The one where I get people to pay me to let them read words.

Not like the free lolz you're getting here.

The professional lolz.

But funny thing happened on the way to the forum; sales tanked right along with my tanking fantasy team.

That's none of your problem (though it is a little funny), however, as well as being small and petty, I'm also curiously superstitious. I don't freak out about black cats or nothing, but when you tie your real life and your fantasy life together . . . maybe they actually do get tied.

Maybe sales dropped because I drafted a bunch of crappy teams.

Maybe my teams are crap because literary fiction by an unknown author is a gamble even when you have a marketing budget and a blurb from Stephen King on the cover.

I have no such blurb.

I could make one up, but that would be dishonest.

And Trumps actual Twitter hasn’t killed anyone yet, but you KNOW it’s only a matter of time.

I'll give it two more weeks.

Then an entire overhaul will be required. Teams, Names, wardrobe choices, hell . . . I might switch from IPAs to something disgusting like Bud Light.

I don't know what that will look like, but there will absolutely be a time when I put Eli in my line-up because he is waaaaaaaaaaay overdue for a killer game.

And so am I.

CRAZY/STUPID PREDICTIONS WEEK 2

Bradford is once again a Top 5 QB.

Sticks and stones may break his bones, but words only bruise.

49er's beat the Seahawks.

It was a moral victory, which they say is the worst kind.

Kaepernick is hired.

No, but there's an amazing piece on him in the Bleacher Report.

Burkhead out-scores Gore, I don't play him but have no regrets.

Actually Gore was my best RB last week . . . No regrets.

Steve and I make it through the afternoon unscathed.

We're both alive, so it's a moral victory, which they say is the best kind.

CRAZY/STUPID PREDICTIONS WEEK 3

Niners get their first win, but Gurley goes off.

I get my first win because Gurley goes off

Cousins starts to rev up his game, but not enough to suggest I wouldn’t be better with Stafford.

Cutler throws for 350 and 2 TDs.

Six Teams in each league outscore their projections.

Allright, that’s enough pandering this week. May your Newtons fig out, may your Cutlers slice and dice, may your Russells be more terrier than jack.

The 40ft Post: Stop Playing With Your Johnson

So I woke up this morning in a delightful mood.

Which is certainly not my default setting.

There was no particular reason for this delightful mood. There's been lots of family chaos, lots of artistic turmoil, and let's be honest, my fantasy football teams got slapped around like a Clinton effigy in a Fox News break room.

But I got up, had some coffee, made breakfast and lunches for the fam, and sat down with my sports apps and readied my brain for the day.

And that's where it hit me.

Thanks to full-on football, I haven't actually read the news in almost two weeks.

And I've really only been paying cursory attention since July.

It's a revelation. It's almost as if I can fix the things I can fix, I can ignore the things I can't fix, and I've got the wisdom to know the difference.

Or something like that.

I still can't fix Kirk Cousins, Russell Wilson, or really anyone involved with those two. I can however avoid them like the plague, unless it's a choice between them and let's say Jay Cutler or an impossibly reinvigorated Sam Bradford.

That was something else wasn't it.

I almost . . . almost . . . felt a little sorry for Adrian Peterson as he watched his legacy go down the tubes.

Almost.

The dude beats his kids.

What kind of dessert is that?

Just Desserts.

Notice he didn't make eye contact with Ingram all game long.

Ingram's like "Bro . . . I can catch out of the back field . . . And my kids receive nothing but positive reinforcement which will disable the cycle of violence in the football community."

Or something like that.

All Day says Peterson.

Nine snaps say Sean Peyton.

The point is . . . Football is underway again, and we have a special few months where when someone mentions Kim Jung Un, you're going to be pressed to figure out if that's a reference to nuclear war, or if he's the new place kicker for the Chargers.

THE BIG NEWS

Obviously, the only thing anyone wants to talk about is David Johnson's injury; I shit you not, there were three essays on CBS Sports alone with advice on what to do about your suddenly shattered life.

But I think, if we're to be honest, you and I, we really need to discuss the utterly fantastic collapse of the New England Patriots.

Now . . . we've all seen high expectations before . . . maybe some of us have had them. We pat our own backs with the feeling of supreme satisfaction when we're finally able to draft Gronk in the third round instead of the first. Where no matter how we did it, we got a piece of the New England Pie.

Instead . . . we got a thin slop of New England Chowder in a sour dough bowl.

And not the good sour dough bowl . . . the cheap one that you get at the Grocery Outlet because you're poor and that's where you have to shop now because, frankly they've got really good kale at cheap prices and don't you judge me.

Now this is not to say that I am fading my stock in members of the New England Patriots. I think this week they've got a grudge match going, indoors, against a New Orleans defense that just made Sam Bradford look like . . . well . . . a young Tom Brady . . . I'm so convinced that they are going to score over 50 points that I'm considering rolling with Burkhead over Frank Gore. And you know how I feel about my Frank.

I mean last week wasn't all a disaster. Brandon Cooks put up a reasonable set of stats sans a TD, and on the other side of the ball, Alex Smith was able to have The Time of His Life.

Smith was the Patrick Swayze to Kareem Hunt's Jennifer Gray.

And nobody was putting baby in a corner.

I hope for Steve's sake that Hunt continues to perform like that throughout the season. He's got a lot invested in Kareem . . . and I've been to his apartment . . . he really needs a win.

(Just kidding, it's a very nice apartment, and I covet his Beatle's Albums, it's just that there are a lot of picture frames with the stock photos still inside.)

Also because Steve lost David Johnson for 8-12 weeks.

Speaking of which . . . 

INJURIES AND BAD DECISIONS

David Johnson . . . Obviously. Allen Robinson, which hurts, but only really on a fan level. His 2015 was so outrageously off the hook, and his 2016 so bland, that it would have been really nice to see if him and Bortles could capture that garbage time magic that they once had.

Now we'll never know.

Eric Berry got bit by the turf monster after shutting Gronk out of an entire game. That might not mean much to you, but if the Chief's secondary is exploitable, then their offense might need to be more aggressive, which means Hunt is going to be a Johnson2016 monster, and Alex Smith is going to sit on the waiver wire all year taunting you.

I mean Alex Smith is going to stare at you with those cold dead eyes of his and judge every QB decision you make. And every time he sneaks into the Top 5, you're gonna find a post-it note in your lunch box that says "Top Five."

Written in cursive.

My wife leaves notes like that.

I don't know what it means.

I'm afraid to ask.

FANTASYLAND

Buy My Book: 0-1, 10th place

Trumps Twitter Game: 0-1, 7th place.

Daily Fantasy: 101,000 out of 252,000

It was not a good week for Fantasy Players. 

Okay . . . Maybe Steve had a good week.

Him and I are going to try and get a good spot at the bar this Sunday and see if we can make it through two full games. If week two is bad, we won't know it till the following Thursday.

But as for Week 1,

It was like everything we hoped for, everything we believed in, every decision we failed to second guess . . . Kicked me right in the pants.

Me.

Specifically.

And The Jets. It's going to be a long year for them.

And Tom Savage. 

Damn . . . Finally getting the nod from your coach . . . You the Man Tom . . . You The Man. And then being the man for an entire thirty minutes until your time to shine is completely over for the rest of your life.

I bet he called his mom crying.

I wonder what his apartment looks like.

But this is just the first week.

And this is where I really like to be.

At or near the bottom of the barrel.

Because, and I'm not saying I would rather this than win, but when you're on the loser-roller-coaster, you have to pay attention to things. 

I mean, when you draft perfectly, you spend the entire season just shrugging your shoulders and doing things like setting your line-up on Tuesday morning. You scroll through the waiver-wire the way a teenager scrolls through Facebook.

Scroll

Scroll

Happy Face.

Sad Face.

Angry Face.

Scroll.

OMG.

Lol. 

When you draft perfectly, you do things like hanging onto two defenses, ignore trade requests, fail to finish your beer.

Things that in any other universe would be punishable by death.

However, you get gob smacked Week One and you know you're going to be fighting all year for a little self respect. Every win is a juggernaut. Every rivalry triple hopped bitter. Every touchdown a reason to yell something inappropriate at someone else's wife.

 Not my wife.

She'll fucking gut you.

But other people's wives.

All I'm saying is that no matter how your game has turned out so far, there ain't no part of the next 16 weeks that is going to suck.

CRAZY STUPID PREDICTIONS LAST WEEK

Zeke joins a committee (Run DMC didn't even suit up.)

Cutler Top Five (Didn't even play)

Niners Win (Didn't even play)

Bills score only one point more than the Jets (21-12)

Josh Gordon News (The only thing I called right. He’s out of rehab, and on the waiver wire. I know you want him bro, I know you do)

CRAZY STUPID PREDICTIONS FOR NEXT WEEK

Bradford has another Top Five outing.

49ers beat the Seahawks, like, badly.

Kaepernick lands on a roster.

Burkhead outscores Gore, and I don't start him, and no regrets.

Me and Steve make it all the way through the afternoon games sober enough to dial an Uber then realize I live like a block away.

All righty everyone. Time's up. May your Kerwynn's play like your Johnsons, May your garbage time and grudge match scores reign supreme, and may your trade offers be accepted with a certain amount of congeniality.