Tuesday Review v3.17
*It's not Tuesday, but there's no Monday Night Football this week, so, for the purposes of recapping the week of real and fake football, it might as well be Tuesday.
The drama, suspense, and excitement of Week 17 in the NFL was not duplicated in the PPFFL, as the Cyclones closed out their championship run with the best score in the last week of the season. Youth was served in our fake little league, as the combined ages of our champion's owners (Brady - 9, Will - 9, Jack - 8) fall well short of the ages of our first two champions. Their ages also roughly equal what the Kings shot from the floor last night at Arco against the Celtics.
The Maestro followed last season's championship with a 2nd place finish, holding off The Dragons. The Dominator moved past Team STY in Week 17 to end the season as the PPFFL's equator. The Gnomies finished 6th after being strong for the first 14 weeks, while The Outlaws surged in the last quarter of the season to ensure that every team in this fake league scored over 1,600 points.
Final Standings (Week 17):
Cyclones 1,904.19 (123.87)
The Maestro 1,809.47 (102.95)
The Dragons 1,773.96 (105.81)
The Dominator 1,702.95 (104.52)
Team STY 1,696.73 (69.56)
Gnomies 1,649.00 (66.16)
The Outlaws 1,601.23 (82.79)
The team-by-team summaries will be short today, as there was little excitement in Week 17 and a full season review will be posted soon.
The champion Cyclones effectively wrapped things up when the schedule maker placed the Patriots in a stadium where the players and fans were enjoying winds gusting upward of 75 mph, while Drew Brees (53.22) and the Saints were playing in a dome. Brees nearly broke the single season record for passing yardage in a losing cause for his real team, but a title clinching effort for his fake team. Larry Fitzgerald (26.50) and LaDainian Tomlinson (22.80) chipped in with big games, as their fake team won going away.
The Maestro acquired and started Matt Cassel (7.51) in Week 17, unaware that the Patriots/Bills collision was going to be played in ugly conditions. Days like yesterday make you wonder why anyone would want to live in Buffalo. It's probably a nice city with some really nice people living there. Is that enough, though, to have to endure the bitter cold and wind? The winters must seem like they last for 9 months. Then, you get to the warmer months and have to deal with high humidity. Buffalo's city motto should be "It's really cold in the winter, but it gets really hot and sticky in the summer."
Completing their second upper division finish in a row are The Dragons. Kurt Warner (38.76) bounced back from his horriffic Week 16 to save some face against another of the NFC West's weak sisters. If only the Cardinals could play the Seahawks in the wild card round of the playoffs, the Rams in the divisional round, and the Niners in the conference championship, they might make it to the Super Bowl. Instead, they will be playing Atlanta this weekend at the Giant Sauguaro and will likely get routed on their own turf in their first playoff appearance at home since the team wore leather helmets. Okay, that's an exaggeration and not true, it just seems like they last hosted a playoff game that long ago.
The Dominator has seen it all in the final standings, as he finished near the top in Season 1, at the bottom in Season 2, and lands smack dab in the middle this season. His Week 17 was punctuated by watching Jay Cutler (38.52) launch pass after pass in a 31 point loss that finished a 3-week span where the Broncos went 0-3 and blew a 3-game lead in the standings. The most tan rat-human in the world, otherwise known as Denver coach Mike Shanahan, has done very little of note since John Elway left town to play golf and give motivaitonal speeches full time. His last real accomplishment was continuing to embarrass the Raiders and Al Davis on an annual basis (owning to the fact that he was Lane Kiffin when Kiffin was in junior high school and vowed to exact vengeance on Davis as long as he lived). The annual beatings of the Raiders continued as usual on the first Monday of the season, but ended abruptly in Week 12 when the Raiders came to Mile High and won 31-10. If you're not making the playoffs and you're not whipping on the Raiders anymore, what real purpose do you serve as a coach in Denver?
The leader of the bottom feeders is Team STY. This team looked tremendous at times, but just couldn't sustain anything significant during the season. Kind of like their QB Tony Romo (10.21) and his real team. The Cowboys did more than get pantsed in Philadelphia yesterday. They went into a winner goes to the playoffs game and got stripped, tarred, feathered, and tied to a tree. If you think it couldn't get worse, it did, as Romo reportedly collapsed in the shower after the game. Boy, how things can turn in a hurry. Early in the season, Romo was an MVP candidate. Then, he broke a pinky and was out for a couple of weeks. He came back to right the ship, to the delight of everyone but Terrell Owens. Then, with the playoff hopes of the team on the line, he gave the game away in Pittsburgh, beat the defending champs, stunk until it was too late against Baltimore, then took the gas pipe in Philadelphia and collapsed in the shower. A roller coaster ride, indeed.
If the season only lasted 12 weeks, the Gnomies would be patting each other on the back over a great year. Instead, they're in the same boat as their QB, Brett Favre (16.76). They're all great Ameicans, but they're all sitting at home wondering where in the heck things went wrong. It was a joyride early on, as the old man seemed to find the legs and arm of his youth. As the weather got colder and the games piled up, though, things went south for Favre's real team, as well as his fake one. It also didn't help this fake team to be so reliant on players from the Packers, a team that went 6-10.
There's an old football saying that goes, "You can't win a championship in September, but you sure can lose one". Nobody backed that up like The Outlaws this season. Week 1 was one for the history books as far as futility goes, and it didn't get much better through the first quarter of the season. Unfortunately, this fake team wasn't in a division as weak as their QB Phillip Rivers (29.19). His real team was able to recover from a bad start to win the division on the last night of the season. His fake team, however, was just too far behind when the leaves began to change color, and could never get out of the basement.
Notes:
*It's not Tuesday, but there's no Monday Night Football this week, so, for the purposes of recapping the week of real and fake football, it might as well be Tuesday.
The drama, suspense, and excitement of Week 17 in the NFL was not duplicated in the PPFFL, as the Cyclones closed out their championship run with the best score in the last week of the season. Youth was served in our fake little league, as the combined ages of our champion's owners (Brady - 9, Will - 9, Jack - 8) fall well short of the ages of our first two champions. Their ages also roughly equal what the Kings shot from the floor last night at Arco against the Celtics.
The Maestro followed last season's championship with a 2nd place finish, holding off The Dragons. The Dominator moved past Team STY in Week 17 to end the season as the PPFFL's equator. The Gnomies finished 6th after being strong for the first 14 weeks, while The Outlaws surged in the last quarter of the season to ensure that every team in this fake league scored over 1,600 points.
Final Standings (Week 17):
Cyclones 1,904.19 (123.87)
The Maestro 1,809.47 (102.95)
The Dragons 1,773.96 (105.81)
The Dominator 1,702.95 (104.52)
Team STY 1,696.73 (69.56)
Gnomies 1,649.00 (66.16)
The Outlaws 1,601.23 (82.79)
The team-by-team summaries will be short today, as there was little excitement in Week 17 and a full season review will be posted soon.
The champion Cyclones effectively wrapped things up when the schedule maker placed the Patriots in a stadium where the players and fans were enjoying winds gusting upward of 75 mph, while Drew Brees (53.22) and the Saints were playing in a dome. Brees nearly broke the single season record for passing yardage in a losing cause for his real team, but a title clinching effort for his fake team. Larry Fitzgerald (26.50) and LaDainian Tomlinson (22.80) chipped in with big games, as their fake team won going away.
The Maestro acquired and started Matt Cassel (7.51) in Week 17, unaware that the Patriots/Bills collision was going to be played in ugly conditions. Days like yesterday make you wonder why anyone would want to live in Buffalo. It's probably a nice city with some really nice people living there. Is that enough, though, to have to endure the bitter cold and wind? The winters must seem like they last for 9 months. Then, you get to the warmer months and have to deal with high humidity. Buffalo's city motto should be "It's really cold in the winter, but it gets really hot and sticky in the summer."
Completing their second upper division finish in a row are The Dragons. Kurt Warner (38.76) bounced back from his horriffic Week 16 to save some face against another of the NFC West's weak sisters. If only the Cardinals could play the Seahawks in the wild card round of the playoffs, the Rams in the divisional round, and the Niners in the conference championship, they might make it to the Super Bowl. Instead, they will be playing Atlanta this weekend at the Giant Sauguaro and will likely get routed on their own turf in their first playoff appearance at home since the team wore leather helmets. Okay, that's an exaggeration and not true, it just seems like they last hosted a playoff game that long ago.
The Dominator has seen it all in the final standings, as he finished near the top in Season 1, at the bottom in Season 2, and lands smack dab in the middle this season. His Week 17 was punctuated by watching Jay Cutler (38.52) launch pass after pass in a 31 point loss that finished a 3-week span where the Broncos went 0-3 and blew a 3-game lead in the standings. The most tan rat-human in the world, otherwise known as Denver coach Mike Shanahan, has done very little of note since John Elway left town to play golf and give motivaitonal speeches full time. His last real accomplishment was continuing to embarrass the Raiders and Al Davis on an annual basis (owning to the fact that he was Lane Kiffin when Kiffin was in junior high school and vowed to exact vengeance on Davis as long as he lived). The annual beatings of the Raiders continued as usual on the first Monday of the season, but ended abruptly in Week 12 when the Raiders came to Mile High and won 31-10. If you're not making the playoffs and you're not whipping on the Raiders anymore, what real purpose do you serve as a coach in Denver?
The leader of the bottom feeders is Team STY. This team looked tremendous at times, but just couldn't sustain anything significant during the season. Kind of like their QB Tony Romo (10.21) and his real team. The Cowboys did more than get pantsed in Philadelphia yesterday. They went into a winner goes to the playoffs game and got stripped, tarred, feathered, and tied to a tree. If you think it couldn't get worse, it did, as Romo reportedly collapsed in the shower after the game. Boy, how things can turn in a hurry. Early in the season, Romo was an MVP candidate. Then, he broke a pinky and was out for a couple of weeks. He came back to right the ship, to the delight of everyone but Terrell Owens. Then, with the playoff hopes of the team on the line, he gave the game away in Pittsburgh, beat the defending champs, stunk until it was too late against Baltimore, then took the gas pipe in Philadelphia and collapsed in the shower. A roller coaster ride, indeed.
If the season only lasted 12 weeks, the Gnomies would be patting each other on the back over a great year. Instead, they're in the same boat as their QB, Brett Favre (16.76). They're all great Ameicans, but they're all sitting at home wondering where in the heck things went wrong. It was a joyride early on, as the old man seemed to find the legs and arm of his youth. As the weather got colder and the games piled up, though, things went south for Favre's real team, as well as his fake one. It also didn't help this fake team to be so reliant on players from the Packers, a team that went 6-10.
There's an old football saying that goes, "You can't win a championship in September, but you sure can lose one". Nobody backed that up like The Outlaws this season. Week 1 was one for the history books as far as futility goes, and it didn't get much better through the first quarter of the season. Unfortunately, this fake team wasn't in a division as weak as their QB Phillip Rivers (29.19). His real team was able to recover from a bad start to win the division on the last night of the season. His fake team, however, was just too far behind when the leaves began to change color, and could never get out of the basement.
Notes:
- I was not aware until last week's review was complete that there would be no Monday night game on ESPN this week. This was no doubt a mandate from Commissioner Goodell. He obviously didn't want to have to deal with Stu Scott so soon after Christmas, either.
- The Pillow Fight of the Week was Bengals 16, Chiefs 6. The state logo for Ohio should be changed to caracatures of a Browns player and a Bengals player swinging pillows at each other, while someone in an Ohio State uniform lies in the fetal position.
- We're at the point in the Kings season where Peaches is going to be ramping up to playoff excitement if the team is within 5 points at the 10 minute mark of the second quarter. As he's become the official marketing director of the team and is responsible for begging people to come to games, he's in an unenviable position. He's kind of like the PR director for a Chinese toy manufacturer. "Buy our toys, they're great! For toys with tiny parts you can choke on painted with pure lead, you can't get anything cheaper!" Except, in Peaches' case, the choking and upset stomach for customers doesn't come cheap.
- The San Francisco Giants signed Randy Johnson over the weekend to a one year, $8 million contract. The real Randy Johnson, not some make believe guy who has been dead for 20 years or who hasn't played since high school. The signings of those types of players will apparently be announced after the first of the year.
- In keeping with what we've all come to expect from shows ike Football Night in America (hint: not much), The Bus, Jerome Bettis, broke down for us exactly how coaches should handle the conundrum of whether or not to play star players when your playoff spot is already secured. On one hand, Bus said, you want to keep your guys healthy going into the playoffs. On the other hand, you want them to play so they stay in a rhythm going into the playoffs. Basically, the Bus concluded he didn't have an opinion either way and wished those other guys would quit asking him questions that didn't revolve around running people over or eating large quantities of food.
- Because I couldn't be first, I must tell you that Chris Berman wishes you a Happy New Year. He did this during his 2-Minute Drill on ESPN Friday night. The drill, by the way, lasted more than 5 minutes. Boomer's never been the most adroit at clock management.
Well, that closes the final weekly review of PPFFL Season 3. A look back at the season along with some awards will be posted soon on this very site. As always, if you would like to nominate someone or something for an award or another type of recognition, please email the league office.
Congratulations to the Cyclones. Let's all follow their example and do great things.
The Commish
posted by Patrick Zalasky at 10:16 AM
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