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.
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