Week 3 Of The MFL And Other Football News And Notes

Yes, I finally got a chance to do some actually body-surfing this weekend. Did I do enough of it to quench my appetite for the summer? No, not really…did I do enough of it to miss most of this weekend’s slate of NFL games (including a good portion of the Redskins’ game)? Why yes, yes I did…well, turns out I didn’t miss much…or did I miss everything? Sweet mercy, I f***ing missed everything!

I guess I should start off with my beloved (terrible) Redskins. 1st, I have to admit that I only watched about 64% of this week’s game. When the Skins were down by 2 touchdowns at halftime, I figured I would cut my losses and head back to the beach. By the time we got back to the house, we were greeted with the following from my uncle: you’re not going to believe this, but it’s tied! Tied?!? Well yes, it was at least for a moment…as soon as we got upstairs, Washington’s porous pass D promptly gave up 2 disgustingly easy touchdown drives to Cincinnati, all but putting the game out of reach…that is until RG3 tried to come to the rescue. The potential game-tying 2-minute-drill drive, which was going pretty well I might add, hit a snag in 1 particular mind-numbing sequence where Griffin took a bad sack trying to do a little too much, the Skins jumped offsides, and then offensive wunderkind Kyle Shanahan took a 15 yard penalty for berating an official. After losing what seemed like 80 yards in the sack and ensuing penalties, the resulting 4th down Hail Mary pass fell harmlessly to the turf, but all in all I think this game confirmed what most Redskins’ fans already know. If you’ve watched this franchise for 20 years, transparent defenses, sieve-like offensive lines, coaching mistakes, and end-of-game follies are almost expected at this point. You also have to concede that RG3 looks like the real deal, but those longstanding Washington characteristics may hasten some kind of catastrophic RG-injury if the Redskins aren’t careful. Let’s just say my new founded hope is diminishing week by week.

One of these times, RG3 isn't going to get up if he keeps taking hits like this.

Do I have to talk about my fantasy team? Ok fine, I guess I will talk (a little) about my fantasy team…let’s just say that my team didn’t reach triple digits in points for weeks 2 and 3 combined. Excuse me while I throw up in the empty cubicle next to mine…so much for having the 2nd highest point total in week 1. Through 3 weeks my team has scored the fewest points in our league by far, and I’m not sure if there’s any relief in sight. Shonn Greene, Antonio Gates, you guys are dead to me, and now Stafford might be hurt as well. The worst thing is that my team does have some depth, but I’m rediscovering that depth is not always a great thing in fantasy sports, as you have to play matchup roulette every week…give me a couple of studs and a soft bench over this s*** any day. I’m not sure I can do 14 more weeks of this.

Oh, for crying out loud...

And how can I go a whole NFL post without mentioning the replacement refs? Listen, I’m not going to root for anything cataclysmic to happen. I don’t want to see anyone get hurt or a team lose a game because of officiating (oops, too late), but it’s getting to the point where you almost have to root for things to get more and more chaotic just to get things to change. This was pretty much the same way I always approached the college game’s BCS system…just root for a complete clusterf*** until it gets to the point where the people in charge have no choice but to amend things, because the NFL seems to be too busy doing some serious ass-covering to actually get this right. We’ve already seen the errors of replacement refs decide games, but I’m surprised that we haven’t seen a full-on “Malice in the Palace” type melee yet too. Like maybe somebody blatantly spears a defenseless receiver with a helmet and it goes uncalled, which spawns a bench-clearing battle royal at midfield or something. I’m thinking the 49ers-Jets game is a good candidate for this. Actually, is there any way we can bet on this? I got to go…I got to see a guy about a thing.

Week 2 Of The MFL: Worst...Week...Ever

In terms of my football viewing experience, it was not a good weekend for your resident B-Court All-Star. I knew it was going to be tough sledding for my fantasy team this week: Marshall going into Green Bay, Stafford travelling to San Francisco, Murray on the road in Seattle, Greene heading into Pittsburgh, and Maclin playing against a tough Ravens’ D. But I didn’t know I had this in store for me.

Oscar's sunglasses are hiding his tears.

That’s my team on the left, and that is the worst 1 week fantasy output I’ve had in 7 years of doing this. It was so bad that I wasn’t even angered by it. I was more astounded than anything else, like maybe how I would feel if I saw a meteor crash into my pickup truck or something. It was as if I was saying, “Look at how s***y my team did. Isn’t it incredible? Behold my steaming pile of s*** of a team!”

What was worse was that Krissy’s team put up a solid, respectable week, but she didn’t exactly have 3 people go off at once either, and yet her 2 highest scoring players of the week (Willis McGahee and Green Bay’s D) would have beaten me by 4 points all by themselves. I actually had a big game from Danny Amendola and a decent game from Jonathan Stewart on my bench, but my team was so bad that not even they would have gotten my team within 25 points of Krissy’s team.

In all honesty, I don’t think of my team that negatively. How can I when I nearly paced the whole league in scoring the week before? Like I said in the days leading up to this past weekend, I was none too fond of most of my matchups, and it just seemed to create the perfect storm. I only had 1 player (Stafford) even hit double digits, and I had 2 goose-eggs, including Antonio Gates, who I swear was listed as likely to play until about 5 minutes before the San Diego game kicked off…f***ing cripes.

Seriously? I didn't wait all these years to get you for you to be wearing a headset on the sideline.

Anyway, this week’s already in my rearview. Time to move on to the next, and this week it looks like the NFL schedule will provide me with a little bit more relief…maybe…hopefully…if I’m lucky. Ahhh fantasy football: making me feel bad about myself since 2006.

Hoping Is The Worst: Josh Morgan Pulls A Michael Westbrook

Hope for the best, expect the worst.

Back in the 1997, the Redskins hosted the Giants for a primetime game late in the season. A win would have put Washington in prime position for a playoff berth. The game was as bizarre as it was tightly played. A Gus Frerotte self-imposed neck injury on a post-touchdown celebratory wall headbutt forced backup Jeff Hostetler into the game. Neither team was able to generate much offense, and so you can argue that Frerotte’s, ummm, momentary lapse into insanity singlehandedly offset a great game by Ken Harvey (4 sacks on the night) and the Skins’ D (Hostetler himself threw 3 picks and lost a fumble). As if that wasn’t ridiculous enough, a Michael Westbrook 15 yard unsportsmanlike conduct penalty for taking his helmet off and slamming it down in front of an official pushed Washington out of field goal range with time winding down in overtime. The Redskins got a 50+ yard desperation field goal attempt off as the clock ran down (a kick that head no chance), and the game ended in a tie. You can add statistical improbability to the maddening stupidity, as it was the 1st NFL tie in 8 years. I was only 12 years old at the time, but I don’t have to do any fact-checking to tell you that the ’97 Redskins finished the year 8-7-1, which was good enough to finish just outside of the playoff picture (9-7 would have been good enough to earn a Wild Card that particular season).

RG3 might be the 1st true beacon of hope for Washington in 20 years, but I guess we can’t expect him to erase 2 decades of disappointment in 2 weeks either. In an ugly, penalty-filled, poorly defended game by the Skins, London Fletcher and Griffin still seemed like they were going to have done enough to at least give the Redskins the chance to win in overtime. The Rams played chippy and borderline dirty all afternoon long, seemingly trying to bait Washington into penalties, but the Redskins appeared to keep their cool for the most part. No more evident was this than on the pivotal Washington defensive possession: on 1 play, a St. Louis lineman appeared to cheapshot Fletcher at the tail end of a play. Fletcher complained to the refs to no avail, but instead of doing something stupid, he got the best kind of revenge in forcing a fumble the very next play. Running the 2 minute drill, RG3 appeared to do enough to at least get Washington in position for a game-tying field goal...that is, until 1 Redskin finally did take the Rams' bait. A 3rd down completion to Josh Morgan was a yard short of the 1st down marker, but it would have set up a tough but makeable 48 yard try…until after getting shoved in the face by the Rams’ Cortland Finnegan, Morgan chucked the ball back at Finnegan, which of course drew a flag. Any longtime Washington Redskins’ fan will tell you that throwing a ball at another player is as automatic a 15 yard penalty as, well, ripping your helmet off and slamming it on the field of play, and this forced that once makeable field goal into an almost impossible 62 yard prayer, resulting in 3 point Redskins' loss. Hope is a wonderful thing, but this franchise has shown it still has an uphill battle against history.

A Sad Realization And Week 1 Of The MFL

While I’ve been back and forth and back on getting on iPhone, a couple of instances may have caused me to eventually (and ultimately) go forth again. By now everyone knows that Blackberry App World can be pretty lacking in the whole “app” department. When Krissy and a bunch of other people were downloading and playing the oh-so-addicting (I steal Krissy’s phone every night just to play) “Song Pop,” I knew very well no such game would exist for Blackberry platforms, but I did a quick App World search anyway. The search yielded useless garbage like an app called “HypePopMag,” a Blackberry theme for $4.99 (5 bucks?!? I can rent a movie off iTunes for that much and have a dollar left over!) called “KingPop,” and something called “The WhaleSong Project”...

…the f*** is that?

Suffice to say, there was no “Song Pop,” and of course my old iPod Touch doesn’t have the operating system to handle the intricacies of a mobile name that tune game either…no biggie…but when the same was true for this year’s Yahoo fantasy football app, this was too much to bear. For most things that my ol’ Blackberry and iPod didn’t have available to them, I could live without (or find some kind of workaround at least). I’d even boasted about my perceived ability to do without technology to a certain extent in the past, but you have to draw the line somewhere. Sadly I suppose, for me that line is fantasy football.

Speaking of fantasy football (how’s that for a smooth transition?), week 1 went pretty well for “Jr.’s College Fund.” Despite a weak game from Antonio Gates and Adrian Peterson deciding to apparently not even let Toby Gerhart have 1 week to himself as Minnesota’s featured back, I was able to cruise to the 2nd highest point total of the week and a 1-0 record. While “Triple M” (Marshall, Maclin, and Murray) all came through, I think I have to thank an out-of-the-blue 18 points from Redskins’ kicker Billy Cundiff as well. It also helps to have a quarterback that can throw 3 picks and still get you 20 points…I have a feeling that as long as he stays healthy, I’m going to like having this Matthew Stafford guy captaining my fantasy ship this year.

Kicker? I just met her.

Week 2 has me pitted against the ol’ wifey, so I’m sure there will be a lot of awkward silences and weird tension (for 1 of us at least) this weekend in our apartment. Coincidentally, I’m 3-0 all-time in the 2+ years of this fantasy league against Krissy, but I’m not liking a bunch of my matchups (Stafford vs. the 49ers, Maclin vs. the Ravens, etc.). Yahoo seems to agree, as the line is “SPERM DEPOSIT” by 6 as of today. I might agree too, as I would be inclined to give the 6 and take Krissy’s team. We’ll see what happens though.

Robert Griffin III's Debut Gives Reason For Hope

Hope for the best, and expect the worst. In a Friday morning text, that’s what I told my friend Mac was the longtime Redskins’ fan’s deep-seeded feelings about the franchise. This applies to everything from short term to long term to everything in between. Back when Washington made the trade to move up in the draft and take RG3, I wrote that it was a move the Skins had to make, and yet it still wouldn’t have surprised me if it didn’t work out (thus setting the franchise back another 5 years or so in their seemingly never-ending search for a quarterback). As for Griffin’s 1st year, I fully expected (and still do…kind of) him to put up good numbers on an overall bad team before getting injured at some point because he would be constantly running for his life behind a makeshift offensive line.

In the very very short term, my feelings regarding Washington’s week 1 trip to New Orleans were similar. The Saints have maybe the most potent offense in the entire league and one of the most deafening home crowds to boot. So when the suspensions of 2 Saints players for their involvement in the alleged bounty scandal were lifted, I went from about an 8 to a 12 on the impending doom scale…that is, until a certain rookie QB mentioned above came under center.

I don’t really want to get into a whole local sports talk radio in-depth breakdown of yesterday’s game here, and the Redskins’ 40-32 road win wasn’t all about Griffin. There was the defense that forced a normally hyper-efficient Drew Brees into completing less than 50% of his passes and 5 Saints 3-and-outs. There were virtual unknowns like Aldrick Robinson and Alfred Morris having big games on offense too.

RG3's week 1 performance may have changed Redskins' fans' expectations.

But then again this game was all about Griffin. In my 20+ years as a Skins’ fan, I have seen every kind of quarterback in burgandy and gold. I’ve seen the 1st round bust (Heath Shuler), the flash in the pan (Brad Johnson), the career journeyman (Tony Banks and Rex Grossman), the aging superstar (Donovan McNabb), the grizzled vet (Jeff Hostetler and Todd Collins), and the young stud with some promise that was ruined by coaching, team management, and constant flux (Patrick Ramsey and Jason Campbell). It’s still extremely early, but I’ve never seen Griffin’s “type” (a superstar franchise player) come through the revolving door of Washington signal-callers.

I want to be careful here because of that whole hope for the best, expect the worst thing, but it’s possible we have never seen the blend of Griffin’s talents in a player before. As important as that, there’s his demeanor though…he seems to exude a quiet confidence, a swagger, an I got this mentality when things look like they're about to get tough. Going into the year, there were questions of whether Washington surrounded Griffin with enough talent. Well, is it possible (still trying to desperately temper my enthusiasm) that Griffin is good enough to make everyone around him that much better? So much so that he could make Morris, Robinson, and Pierre Garcon look like Pro Bowlers for much of yesterday's game?

It’s still just 1 game. It’s not exactly a great sample size. It certainly can’t erase 20 years of mediocrity. But that whole expect the worst thing? Maybe there’s some reason for hope after all.

Kevin Ogletree, Weekend Notes, And Week 5 Of The Beltway Baseball Breakdown

1st off, to those of you that own Kevin Ogletree (owned in 28% of all Yahoo fantasy leagues), mazel tov…I’m sure the percentage of people that actually started him last night is much smaller, but for at least a few days this season the Cowboys’ number 3 receiver is the top rated player in all of fantasy football. What I’m sure will also turn out to be true is that the number of people that own and start Ogletree will dramatically go up in week 2. The fact that he had 8 catches for well over 100 yards and 2 TDs was crazy enough…that he caught the game-clinching reception on 3rd down to move the chains and put the Giants out of their misery was almost too much to bear. Normally reserved in any game not involving the Redskins, I couldn’t help myself. “F*** this guy!” I blurted out as my brain processed the play. Kevin “F.” Ogletree…for 1 game at least, he had earned that new middle initial.

Don't forget the "F."

As for the game itself, overall it seemed uneven (much like you would expect the 1st game of the year to be). Up until Dallas’ 1st score with about a minute left in the 2nd quarter, there was hardly any offense to speak of. That was probably partially due to good D, but more due to sloppy offense (the Cowboys wound up with 13 penalties for the game, and Victor Cruz had at least 3 drops by my count). To me, the difference in the game was that other than their 2 2nd half TDs New York’s offense couldn’t sustain any drives throughout the night, and the Giants’ defense just seemed gassed by game’s end. It was vintage New York Giants though, as this year they again look like a team good enough to go about 9-7, barely make the playoffs, and then suddenly turn it on when they need to.

Somewhat lost in the return of the NFL last night was baseball, where the Nationals continue to thump NL Central teams at home. Remember a few weeks ago when I said that Washington was finally getting all their hitters healthy to go along with their filthy pitching staff? Well, they became something like the 3rd team in a million years to have back-to-back 6 homer games last night, 2 courtesy of Bryce Harper (who has gone from ice cold to scorchingly hot all of the sudden). Oh, and Gio Gonzalez struck out 9 in 7 scoreless innings to quietly pick up his 18th win of the year…if only Washington could play the Cubs every night, right? And there’s also that whole Strasburg only has 2 starts left before they shut him down for the year thing, but let’s ride the wave while it’s here, right?

You sure you have to leave so soon, Cubbies?

Not much to report on the O’s really…they took 2 of 3 from Toronto, but lost last night while the Yankees won to drop them a game out of 1st place. They are still tied for the Wild Card, and they have a 4 game series with New York at Camden Yards this weekend, so they have a chance to do some real damage (or conversely fall from the pack) within the next few days. With respect to that, I’ll let the dust settle before I make any meaningful comments on them.

And in “PTI” style, a bittersweet happy trails to Andy Roddick after he bowed out of the US Open yesterday, of which he said would be his last tournament. A perennial top 10 player and the owner of 1 major championship, Roddick’s career has to be considered a success (albeit obviously not on the level of Federer’s or Nadal’s). And he also did well for himself in the marrying department, so no one needs to weep for him, but he will be missed. An even more bittersweet happy trails to ex-Ravens owner Art Modell, who died this morning. Modell was a good owner and a very nice man by all accounts…I’m sure I have some Ravens’ fans out there who were touched by the news of his passing.

Not Warming Up To The Idea

This might come off a little bit “Seinfeld-ian,” but have you ever wondered how in the blue hell 2 opposing tennis players are able to warm up together prior to a match? I was watching parts of the beginning of the Marion Bartoli-Maria Sharapova match yesterday at the gym, and I couldn’t help but wonder...I know tennis is traditionally known as the “gentleman’s game,” but it’s always struck me as truly bizarre. Maybe it really is that gentlemanly, or maybe the culture of individual sports are just different than team sports in that they force that kind of interaction occasionally.

Yep...definitely different.

Can you imagine 2 opposing basketball teams running layup lines at the same basket or 2 baseball teams taking batting practice at the same time though? Hell, if 2 football teams even stretch too close to one another during warm-ups, f***ing Armageddon is likely to break out at midfield. And what is each player thinking as they hit back and forth to one another? Players don’t have to hate each other…in fact, I’m sure most of them respect one another at the very least. Some probably even like one another or, in the case of sibling matchups, love each other. But at the same time, they are competitors…their mindset going into a match no matter what has to be that they want to destroy the person on the other side of the net.

"Hey buddy, f*** you!"

So, as you’re getting loose, do you wimpily try to block every shot back so as not to give away anything in terms of strategy? Do you try to take the other guy’s head off with every f***ing stroke as an act of intimidation? Do you just pretend the other person is some autonomous hitting partner and go ahead practicing shots you would normally take during the game? To anyone that’s ever played tennis, this probably isn’t an issue at all, and I’m making something out of nothing. To someone who has only played if you consider “playing” trying to not clumsily hit the ball into the net or beyond the court fences, then, yes, it’s insane…because of which, maybe we should add tennis players to that “different breed” I talked about before.

Yea, I don't really get it either.