The fantasy football season isn't quite over, but as of this week, the Fantasy Island competition is. After 16 weeks and a very tight race, we're pleased to announce that Matt Borcas has won a spot as our fantasy football writer. This week is Matt's soft open of sorts, and when it comes time for rankings and previews next summer, everyone will get a full introduction as we start ramping up to the season. Thanks again to everyone who participated in this year's competition, and to those who've read.
One hundred years after the sinking of the Titanic, another overblown, too-big-to-fail enterprise — the Philadelphia Eagles — is crashing and burning, and Andy Reid insists on bringing fantasy owners down with him. Case in point: On Wednesday, Reid announced that despite LeSean McCoy’s return to the starting lineup, he would employ the dreaded three-way split between McCoy, Bryce Brown, and Dion Lewis.
It didn’t have to end this way for the Eagles. Their skill position players were meant to carry fantasy teams to championships, not to the first overall pick in next year’s draft. But as Reid spends his final days in Philadelphia brooding like Captain Edward John Smith, owners of McCoy and Brown are left to fend for themselves.
This is when one feels like the quiet teenagers in the cafeteria with an earnest passion for Magic: The Gathering. No more than four people on the planet care about your fantasy team, and they are all bloodthirsty adversaries. The waiver wire is an analog channel of lonely, scattered transmissions and Davone Bess reruns — but no lingering contender can afford to forfeit their turn at the well when buckets of upside linger.
Nerves tangle and overwhelm because it’s rarely Aaron Rodgers or Jimmy Graham on a white horse galloping across beaches while you gleefully reach for the title — it’s falling into the arms of Montell Owens. After the scattered fortunes, your difference makers are mostly in-house, and the start/sit game magnifies — T.Y. Hilton is a high-reward burner, but Nate Washington’s 13 targets at Indianapolis can’t be overlooked — until you read too much Bryce Brown propaganda and start him over Marshawn Lynch.
You have to trust the process and carry on — plug in the five lineup stalwarts, ignore kickers, start a matchup-based defense, and look into filling those lineup holes with one of these shiny new wire guys.
In case you were out living a life of leisure, here's what you missed in sports on Wednesday.
Despite Dwight Howard's 33 points and 14 boards, Steve Nash suffered a bruised leg and the Lakers fell to 0-2 with a 116-106 loss to the Blazers. "Look, I don't want anybody saying Mike Brown should be fired, or anything like that," Howard told the media after the game. "He's our coach, and I just don't want to hear that kind of talk. I won't stand for it." When the confused reporters began to tell him that nobody had suggested it, Howard cut them off. "It's way too early for that talk," he said. "Not cool, guys. Mike Brown? Fired? Way too early. Come on."
By Grantland Staff at
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On any given Sunday (or Monday, or Thursday), your NFL Run & Shootaround crew will be gathered around multiple televisions, making inappropriate jokes and generally regressing to the mean. Catch up on all the NFL action right here.
Glory Days, They'll Pass You By
Dez Bryant's great-catch-too-bad-about-the-landing play was the most viewed piece of Dallas-set footage since the Zapruder Film. Sunday afternoon, most of America watched over and over to see if the Cowboys wide receiver had gotten his fingertips inbounds as he fell from the sky. It was great drama, to be sure, and it pretty much defined this Cowboys season, if not the Jason Garrett–Tony Romo era.
A more fascinating moment, for me, however, happened just seconds later, when Bryant, clearly dazed and confused from his free fall onto the Cowboys Stadium turfcrete, tried to escape the watchful gaze of his trainers and check himself back into the game. There was something "I'm not having a heart attack, you're having a heart attack" about it all.
We are so close, degenerates. Just a few short days from now, pro football and — more important — pro football wagering will be back for a glorious 21 weeks. Actually, I’m not sure what I’m so excited about as my Cowboys open up the Wednesday-night game against the Giants. Almost certainly a loss. (I’ll try this reverse-jinx thing one more time — then when it doesn’t work I’ll abandon it for good.)
If you listened to the two-part over/under NFL wins podcast with Simmons and me you may already be familiar with some of these props. Sorry about the redundancy — but it's a small price to pay considering I’m going to make you upwards of a million dollars. Here we go ...
In the debut of our The Trenches podcast, Grantland's Robert Mays and 13-year NFL veteran Ephraim Salaam discuss the song and dance of the NFL's preseason, the Dez Bryant rules, the consequences of training camp holdouts, and Vontae Davis's move from Miami to Indianapolis (Hint: It's a bit of a downgrade).
In case you were out living a life of leisure, here's what you missed in sports on Monday.
Red-hot Mariners ace Felix Hernandez tossed a five-hit, complete game shutout as the M's squeaked by the Twins 1-0. In related news, Las Vegas is now a bankrupt ghost town after more than 100 million gamblers placed significant bets on the Mariners-Twins game ending 1-0.
By Robert Mays at
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Patriots shell out more money to pass catchers, continue blatant taunting of Wes Welker
Every bit of this Karen Guregian blog post for the Boston Herald is so perfectly Bill Belichick that I don’t think anything could make me happier. It starts with the news of Aaron Hernandez’s new $40 million extension, which comes on the heels of Wes Welker’s very public griping about his own contract situation. It’s no secret that Belichick’s Pats have never let loyalty get in the way of business matters, but an apparent willingness to jettison Welker is a far cry from dealing Deion Branch. Welker has caught at least 110 passes in four of his five seasons in New England, including a 122-catch, 1,500-yard 2011 campaign. Allowing Welker to walk would take the Patriot Way to an entirely different place — the place where we might finally be able to conclude that Belichick has lost his mind.
After resisting all summer, the Rose Report finally turns its attention to football. Jalen is super fired up to head to Dallas and see his Wolverines take on the 'Bama boys in Jerry’s house. Something tells me that Dez Bryant will not be champagning and campaigning with Jalen in Dallas. We break down Jerry’s "grounding" of Dez in anticipation of the season, what team will win each division in the NFL, and what the Jets should do about their offensive problems. This fall is going to be fun.
Matt Flynn joins prestigious group of $25 million backups
OK, that might be a bit premature, but at least for now, Russell Wilson is the starting quarterback in Seattle. If Wilson does end up winning the starting job for the Seahawks, it seems easy to laugh about the money the team shelled out for Flynn this offseason only to sit him on the bench. The problem is, it’s tough to blame them. Seattle clearly needed an upgrade at quarterback, and although there was a risk in assuming it was Flynn and his short résumé, there weren’t a ton of options.
The takeaway from this probably isn’t that the Seahawks made a mistake with Flynn, but that they might’ve found a gem in Wilson. As the shotgun permeates the NFL, the dismissal of short quarterbacks will lessen. Wilson is maybe 5-foot-10, but throughout his entire career, he’s shown an ability to create, and it’s been with his arm far more often than he’s given credit for. There were about 10 million guaranteed reasons the Flynn signing was risky. There were next to none in drafting Wilson in the third round. We’ll see if that’s the choice that eventually brings the reward.
In case you were out living a life of leisure, here's what you missed in sports on Monday.
Mariners icon Ichiro Suzuki was traded to the Yankees hours before the two teams played in Seattle, a game the Yankees won 4-1 as Ichiro went 1-4 with a stolen base. I'm not really supposed to editorialize in this space, but I think it's fair to say that the trade is the worst thing to happen to Seattle sports fans since Starbucks hero Howard Schultz was forced to courageously move the Supersonics to Oklahoma after it became clear that the city didn't love them enough.
In case you were out living a life of leisure, here's what you missed in sports on Monday.
The Brazilian basketball team couldn't capitalize on a strong first quarter, and fell to the United States 80-69 in Washington, D.C. Alex Garcia led the early charge with eight first-quarter points, and NBA star Anderson Varejao finished with 12 points and 13 boards for an impressive double-double. But the team's counter-attacking style grew less potent as the game progressed, and an early 10-point lead vanished as the shots stopped falling and the guards committed a slew of costly turnovers. The loss cast serious doubt on coach Ruben Magnano's controversial assertion that this year's team is better than the 1964 Equipe de Sonho, which won the Olympic bronze medal.
