I don’t know how my superiors feel about my saying this, but … the upcoming NFL regular season is going to be so pointless. Or at the very least, completely unsurprising. A quick survey of the teams with the first 10 picks of the NFL draft makes one thing abundantly clear: You need a premier quarterback to succeed in the NFL. And none of those teams (save for the Detroit Lions, and even that’s debatable) are going to enter 2013 with a premier quarterback. Not via offseason signing or trade, and not via any of the Geno Smith or Tyler Wilson or any of these other evolutionary Byron Leftwich–Charlie Frye–Rex Grossman–style caretaker QBs in the draft.
For one thing, premier quarterbacks are almost never available as free agents or via trades, but if they are … well, I can’t quite come up with the right Kanye and Kim joke, but rest assured it involved “baggage,” “absurd cost,” and “astronomical weight gain.” Secondly, the Class of 2013 might be even weaker than the 2007 crop of QBs. I could name names, but here are the first six teams that drafted quarterbacks in 2007: Raiders, Browns, Eagles, Dolphins, Lions, Bills. See what I mean?
Hey guys, good news. I've got a fantasy football story for you!
Look, I know it's horrible to hear about someone else's fantasy experience, and I'm being totally self-indulgent here, but I can't help it. This is my first year playing fantasy football. It's like when a comedian has his first kid — they know intuitively that they hate hearing about other people's kids, but holy shit, they have a human child! It's impossible not to talk about it. As someone completely unfit to ever be a father, fantasy football is my newborn infant.
I was never one of those people who was opposed to fantasy football on moral grounds. It always sounded fun, in the abstract. But I tried fantasy baseball once when I still had my soul-killing New York City office job, and lasted about three hours before I stopped caring completely. Then I spent the rest of the season trying to sneak horrible trades by the commissioner to help my friend win, or forgetting to start my pitchers, or filling the lineup with injured players. I was the worst. I just didn't have the constitution for it.
But people kept telling me football was more fun, so this year I agreed to an all-ACC league with a bunch of sports journalists in the Chapel Hill–Durham area. And so far, despite being 1-0 with a great roster (FSU defense!), it's been the worst experience of my life. Here's a list of grievances:
In case you were out living a life of leisure, here's what you missed in sports on Thursday.
Patriots offensive coordinator Bill O'Brien has agreed to be the next head coach of Penn State. "I'm thrilled to be taking my dream job," O'Brien told reporters. "What happened to Joe Paterno, though?"
It was a fine, solid, decent week in college football. Not great, because that would imply the promise of high drama was realized, and that didn't happen very often Saturday. It was a bit of a day-long tease, in fact, with game after game ending one or two plays short of delirium. But as a table-setter, which is all we can really ask, Week 3 delivered.
First, let's begin with some …
Apologies
That no. 1 ranking next to Oklahoma's name didn't feel quite right. As I mentioned in the preview post, the Sooners are 1-5 in their past six BCS bowl games, and they've had some trouble beating Texas over that same stretch. I didn't trust them, and maybe I got a little too swept up in the narrative of Florida State's resurgence.
Ty Hildenbrandt and Dan Rubenstein return to the Grantland Network to wrap college football's third week, review their favorite Road Test Weekend memories, and attempt to figure out screwy conference realignment storylines.
Ty also briefly exhales after an impressive Notre Dame win and discusses his experience at the Temple-Penn State "game" in Philadelphia (his obsession with minimally-armed QBs continues). And finally, your Week 3 Reverbs (listener reaction voicemails) are unleashed onto the world.
