I get knocked down, but I get up again. You’re never gonna keep me down. Chumbawamba repeats this line 27 times in the song Tubthumping. I hope this is the first and last time this year I am forced to use it as the bottom biznatch. In honesty, as the BB, I don’t feel that bad having to write up the LL this week, because 78 points isn’t THAT bad and seems to be a relatively respectable sum (I think I scored 36 in a game one time). Maybe none of you respect it, but I don’t care, you can all eff yourselves with Terrance’s fallen off penis. That conversation escalated very quickly and definitely came to an end prematurely. I would have preferred a bit more foreplay, or maybe even some five or sixplay if you guys were into it. I’ll tell ya'll what, there were two chubbs on my team that night. Icky!! Tubthumping sounds like an Adrian Peterson form of punishment (take ‘em to the tub, beat ‘em, blood goes right down the drain, no messy clean up) or how we might describe what Sean and Eric did to their opponents last week. Congrats on the blowouts guys and a big shout out to Sean for slingin’ dingy at the running back position a few days after getting blasted on the podcast. I didn’t actually listen to the podcast (and to be honest, I am still not even sure who is who on the cast), so I don’t know how rough the “blasting” was, but way to stick it to them nonetheless (even if it is only for one week). I think I mentioned this shortly after the draft, but Schweg’s team looks stacked. It’s really the only scary one in the league. Although, that bagel from the Packer’s D this week was pretty pathetic. Look on the bright side though, the Packers lost in real football, so that’s a plus (you had to stick it to Jensen one way or another). I hope Kyler goes for 17 this week and you beat Jensen by 1 point. It’s nothing personal Jensen, I hope Aaron and Eric lose too, just so I can be the lone 3-1 team in our division after taking down the Dooler. That’s right. I’m calling it. Chase is going down this week and he is going to be bottom biatcharoni. I really need you to do that Chase, because I am not that confident my team is going to crank off this week. I am sympathetic to your current Saquon situation though, as I too have lost a beloved first overall pick. It was just two short years ago that I lost David Johnson to injury. Well, the years were the same length as they are now, so I guess I could just say two years ago. Anyway, it sucks and it’s going to be a tough road ahead, and you’ll probably fail to make the playoffs. I made the playoffs the year it happened to me, but I’ll attribute that to having the luxury of playing everyone on their down weeks. That’s something that just can’t be taught. Well, I just hit 500 words and I believe that is the totally arbitrary, meaningless threshold that we came up with for this exercise. I hope you are all as excited as I am to find out how Devin Singletary pans out as a fantasy play (spoiler: he’s a dud).

Bears win NFC North - JVay pays $20 Vikings win NFC North - JRob pays $20 Packers win NFC North - Jarrett, Aaron and Jensen semen in each other's coffee, but it ends up not being that good Lions win NFC North - Trump nuked the world (he knows more about nuclear than anyone) and only Michigan survived due to a weird mutation where those exposed to copious amounts of lead are immune to the effects of nuclear fall out.

Tis’ the season of mediocrity. Our entire league, save for Erik, pulled a Jensen this year. Erik, he pulled an Erik, like only Erik can. The 100 point mark in a fantasy game separates the mediocrity of the pigskin proletariat from the Lombardi totin’ bourgeoisie. Let’s have a look back at the league’s happenin’s this year. If the list below doesn’t scream average, I don’t know what does. We had: 1. An undefeated start slowly fade into an epic losing streak, resulting in one of our league’s current mediocre records (Chase: 7-6) 2. A star-studded team that lost a few early despite putting up 100 points week in and week out; that same team shat on mediocrity on the D&W podcast, only to fall prey the following week to the jaws of average (Jarrett: 6-7) 3. #Optimizelineup – this gaffe is the only reason Sean isn’t currently in the playoffs. But, average players take the path of least resistance, so you kinda deserve it, Sean*. Can we talk about Sean’s strategy this year? Is it time to load up on pass catchers and move on from RBs? (Todd Gurley and Christian McCaffrey may have something to say about this)? I don’t like it one bit, but it seems that the obsession with tossin’ tuddys may drastically change our league’s draft landscape. We’ll see if Sean was able to sniff it out, the way he sniffs out pre-teens, prior to all the rest of us. (Sean: 7-6) 4. A quartet of other teams that really embraced mediocrity, so much so that we don’t even have a good story line to go along with our sub-par, panty waisted, Jensenesque performances. We just win a couple, lose a couple, win a couple, and lose a couple. (Jensen: 8-5, Terrance: 8-5, Jacob: 7-6, Jake: 6-6-1 are we still doing tie games?) That covers most of it. We do still have two less than stellar teams to cover who have taken a different road to mediocrity. They were living in the shantytown of the fantasy football world, cast out by their working class counterparts. But, they stayed the course and are currently in the thick of it (and in Schweg’s case, by stayed the course, I mean “given the keys to the fantasy football Ferrari by a certain spliff smokin’ serpent”). Aaron and Schweg – well done. I don’t know if either of you will make the playoffs, but at least you put together respectable winning streaks at the right time in the season. A couple more signs of mediocrity: 5. Not one player in the letters division is averaging over 100 points a game (I’ll have you know, I am the closest though). One player in the numbers division (letters and numbers as division names? What kind of lazy, Trump administration effort is that?) is below the 100 point mark. 60% of the league is below the 100 point per game average. Isn’t this going to be the highest scoring year since the league moved away from six points for a passing touchdown? Pathetic! Or, maybe this isn’t surprising. 6. Check out who the current playoff teams are: low scoring, low points scored against teams (aside from Terrance, who got his scoopity poopitied all up on by Sean this week). This is what makes fantasy football fun, right? Aaron and I have a little surprise for the league this year at the banquet related to this!! Cheers to Mediocrity! That wasn’t the end. There has to be a point to this succinct summary of our less than stellar performances, right? What are we to take away from this season at this point in time? Well, and some of you won’t like this, but, I think what I have come to accept is that not a single one of the players in this league is great at, or can be great at fantasy football. You need machine learning or AI to get close to that, and even then I think you still come up short. For us, members of TPDFFL, you are either in the “rotate your draftees” camp or you’re in the “make a bunch of moves” camp. Obviously, there are circumstances that could push you from one camp into another for a week or two. Personally, I like the rotate your draftees approach, and I think the outcomes in this league show it’s a pretty reliable strategy. It’s possible to make the case for the other side, but I think it is a tough sell. Why? This game is driven by at least 75% luck. There is no telling whether Mark Ingram or Alvin Kamara will be the stud, or if they both will, or if they both won’t, and make owners want to razor blade their scrotums like last week. You have to start guys consistently to reap the benefits (aside from streaming in a position where you clearly lack talent). Trying to pick when to sit them is a fool’s errand. You have to start each guy every week, luck be damned. Unfortunately, luck is a fickle bitch that seems to show up at the most inopportune times. Well, bad luck that is. Good luck masquerades as skill, talent, picking the right guy on the week he hangs fantasy football dong. I think it is time we start attributing more of what happens week in and week out to luck and less to owner skill. It may be a hit to your ego, but it’s certainly helped me react better to outcomes and sleep better at night. Maybe none of you needed to hear this, but, I am the loser this week and luckily none of you have anything better to do than read this. Despite all of this talk about luck and how none of what we do actually matters, I urge you all to keep talkin’ shit to each and every member of this league!! That’s really why we’re all here, right? To blame our less than respectable outcomes on bad luck and take credit for luck driven positive outcomes as skill that we hold over our less “skilled” counterparts! Poopity on some Scoopity, ya’ll!! P.S. I would like to get rid of defense and kicker as roster spots, and add a superflex position. *In case your feelings were hurt, Sean, this more so was said to fit the narrative than an as an actual dig at your fantasy prowess. I am, however, using the word prowess quite loosely here!

There is a video for this week's edition, but I can't figure out how to upload it. Stay tuned...

The stakes - 20 smackeroos* The bet - bears have to cover the spread against Miami. The line is 3.5 (it moved to 6 in favor of the bears, but chase agreed to 3.5, so I have to stick with that), so if the bears win by 4 or more, chase takes the stakes. If not, jacob Daniel vaiden wins the bet. *smackeroos = dollars