My Football Fantasy 2014

You smell that?  Me too!  Fantasy Football is just around the corner, and I’m starting to get really freaky excited about it.  Please tell me that I’m not the only one who ends a season (typically before the Fantasy Play-Offs) and is ready to re-draft and start all over again.  Fantasy Football has made me pay attention to the sport on a whole where before I was primarily focused on local teams only.  ESPN and other sports news outlets, make it too easy by providing RSS feeds of the latest stories at minicamp, or OTA’s, or who got arrested this week: all kinds of fantasy-relevant information! 

For instance, did you know that Rex Ryan is a great coach?  No?  Whose opinion is that?  Well, his of course.  Granted, he credits his staff and the players for making him so great…still, I am amazed about the types of headlines the Jets get (non-football related) as compared with their regional rivals, the Giants…whose headlines this week quote Eli as saying that he’s “nervous” about a new offense in the upcoming season.  I think I’d rather a braggart coach than a clammy-handed QB.  Still, the other big Jets news this week was that they’re adopting a point system for season ticket holders to keep the fans in the game.  If you attend a number of home games, you get points.  If you participate in a J-E-T-S chant during the game, more points.  If there’s a sack or INT during the game, points and points.  What can you use them for?  Right now, not much, but they’re working on swag that you can cash them in on, including using points as a lottery ticket so that you can watch the game with the team’s owner, Woody Johnson.  I have said this a number of times, Jets really work to keep their fans while the Giants get next to nothing in game-day takeaways…other than a letter saying “Thanks for spending your money on the Giants…here’s your tickets.” 

I don’t know if the Jets are going to be good this year.  They seemed to take a page out of the Potomac Drainage Basin Indigenous Persons playbook by bringing on some of yesteryears greatest players…i.e. CJ2K and Michael “Dog Pound” Vick.  I hope that Jets get some kind of running game going (mostly for fantasy purposes), but, Vick is an overpaid convicted felon cry-baby, and Chris Johnson, who’s looked great on paper for years, has under-produced in Tennessee for the last 4 years.  Add that to a, largely, untried receiver crew, and Jets could be shaky…or could be excellent…unlike the Giants who are “nervous.” 

Speaking of the Potomac Drainage Basin Indigenous Persons and bad press, it seems that people are fairly polarized on the subject of renaming the team.  And, the US Patent office has rejected the trademarked name of “Redskins.”  My personal feelings is that, when I thought about it (and, honestly, until someone bitched about the name, I really didn’t give it much thought), having a team by that name is almost as offensive as featuring a team in the NYC area called the New York Kikes.  I’m sure there’s a ton of other racial epithets you can “insert here” for a similar joke, but it’s true.  Just because it was OK before, doesn’t mean that it was ever OK, and that it’s not OK now.  Throw on top of that the team’s obstinate owner making statements about how he’ll never change the team name…and, well, methinks he doth protest too much.  Frankly, I think the patent thing will carry the most weight.  Without the trademarking rights, the NFL leaves itself open to losing money as knock-offs, which were once discouraged, will flood the market.  And, if there’s anything the NFL can’t stand losing, it’s money. 

The team of the ‘Skins?  I don’t know.  Every year I’m terrified of playing them because, on paper, they look great…based on last year’s stats.  I’ll admit to not wanting to play against a mobile QB AND DeSean Jackson…but I know that, by the time we (the Giants) play them, they’ll have lost enough games where Jackson will be belligerent and mentally out of the game…just as he was for the Eagles on their, now, mostly racist WR squad.  I can’t say anything else about the ‘Iggles because their QB is freaky-efficient and they can only be better than they were last year. 

That’s about it.  Preseason starts in a couple of weeks.  Giants play in the Hall Of Fame game in Canton, OH.  The Cowboys will implode during Romo’s last season as starting QB (not-so-bold prediction is that he gets pulled mid-season for younger unproven talent and they finish bottom in the division).  Time to start getting some mock-drafts under my belt…but not too many, because there’s plenty of time for my favorite players to get in trouble/arrested/injured/fail drug tests/etc. before it’s time to get serious and draft a team/s.  Are you ready for some football? 

(P.S.  Star Wars + Football = Awesomeness!)