It’s Week 17, which means that unless your commissioner has no idea what he’s doing, your fantasy season is over.

As such, we’re forgoing the usual mailbag this week, and instead handing out our first-ever year-end fantasy awards (It’s kind of like the Pro Bowl roster announcement, except this matters). I’ve broken down the best and worst of fantasy football players into three categories: the All-Meast Team, the A-1 Value Team, and the All-Disappointment Team. Let’s start with the best of every position:

Inaugural KSK All-Meast Fantasy Team

QB: Aaron Rodgers. True, Brees has more yards passing, but Rodgers has more TDs, half as many INTs, and three times as many rushing yards and rush TDs. Rodgers’s five touchdown passes in the Week 16 championship seals the deal.

RB: LeSean McCoy, Ray Rice. No one came close to touching McCoy this season. Rice edges out Arian Foster (who had slightly more rushing yards) for catching more passes and not being injured early in the season.

WR: Calvin Johnson, Wes Welker. Megatron gets the nod for being the best human in the world at catching TD passes on a week-to-week basis; Welker gets it for total yards and the off chance that you have a PPR league.

TE: Rob Gronkowski. Here’s me in August: “Yeah, Gronkowski’s good, but Hernandez is going to affect how many touches he gets.” I wil never forgive myself for thinking that.

K: David Akers. Seven field goals of 50+ yards. I mean, you can only give Alex Smith’s stalled drives so much credit.

D/ST: Detroit. Whaaaaa? Yes, the 49ers or Ravens may seem like the logical choices here, but those daunting defenses  scored five touchdowns combined this year; the Lions scored an NFL-best seven. Throw in 39 sacks and 32 turnovers, and the Lions D accrued more points than any other unit in most scoring formats.

Read the rest of this entry »

DeSean Jackson has already had a disappointing season for fantasy owners who burned a third-round pick on him. His yardage and yards per catch are way down this season, and he’s scored just twice all season. So with a matchup against the Cardinals’ terrible pass defense looming, Jackson is inactive for today’s game because he was late to a team meeting on Friday. Dammit, Andy Reid! Let that little concussion-prone burner run free! I’m trying to make the playoffs here.

Anyhoo, it’s a gigantic slate of early games, with the highlights being some key division matchups and a potential shootout between Buffalo and Dallas. There’s going to be smoke pouring out of the RedZone Channel for the next three hours; I fully expect Andrew Siciliano to collapse and die at 4:15 p.m. Eastern after the final game ends, John Henry-style.

Buffalo @ Dallas (Jim Nantz, Phil Simms) ???
Pittsburgh @ Cincinnati (Ian Eagle, Dan Fouts) ???
Houston @ Tampa Bay (Marv Albert, Rich Gannon) ??
Tennessee @ Carolina (Kevin Harlan, Solomon Wilcots) ??
Denver @ Kansas City (Bill Macatee, Steve Tasker) ??
Jacksonville @ Indianapolis (Spero Dedes, Steve Beuerlein) ?
New Orleans @ Atlanta (Kenny Albert, Daryl Johnston, Tony Siragusa) ????
Arizona @ Philadelphia (Dick Stockton, John Lynch) ??
Washington @ Miami (Chris Myers, Tim Ryan) ?
St. Louis @ Cleveland (Ron Pitts, Jim Mora Jr.) I award this game four dog turds.

“You said you wanted a threesome.”

The best thing about bestiality is that the animal doesn’t care if you never call back. You can just hammer out your business in the barn and then go on about your day. Alas, we don’t pursue relationships with animals, but with other people. People with their own needs, their own opinions, and their own little ways of annoying us. People that want to spend time with us, people that want to share animals with us, and people that want to share other people. All these demands for sharing? People can be so selfish sometimes.

Mr. Ufford has handed me the reins this week, and I intend to whip hard, so let’s get to some questions. Heeya! Read the rest of this entry »

REMEMBER THAT FANTASY PLAYOFF LEAGUE? We have P&G prize packs for the top three  finishers, provided by Take It To The House and the BFL.

We need to hear from you before Monday to claim your prize, or else we’ll consider it unclaimed, and start handing them out to the next-best finishers. If they don’t respond before next Friday, then tough toenails for everyone. Use the EMAIL PUNTER addy in the sidebar to get in touch.

Congrats to our winners and thanks to everyone that participated.

How Not to Be in a Fantasy Football League. I’m putting the finishing touches on the Sex/Fantasy Football Mailbag at the moment. While you wait, enjoy this epic tale of grown men acting like bitches. [Boston.com]

Holy hell, it’s hot outside. But the more uncomfortable it becomes outside the closer we get to 350 pound men suffering through two-a-days. And when that time comes, it becomes socially acceptable (relatively speaking) to start obsessing over your upcoming fantasy football draft. Sadly, we’re still weeks away from that, but it doesn’t mean we can’t get in the spirit of things a bit early.

That’s why this week you’ll be drafting your all-time fantasy football team. It’s pretty simple, really. You pick a player and a year, wait for at least ten people to pick after you, then select again. By the end you should have filled out a starting fantasy football lineup (1 QB, 2 RB, 2 WR, 1 TE, 1 K, 1 DEF/ST), and whichever commenter can claim to have the highest point total (1 point for 10 yards rushing/receiving, 1 for 25 yards passing, 6 for rushing/receiving touchdowns, 4 for passing touchdowns, -1 for interceptions) can declare themselves the winner of this furtive time wasting activity.

The ceremonial first pick of the draft is…OJ in 1975! Say what you want about the murder and that other crime for which he was actually convicted, that ’75 season was fantasy magic. That was the year he amassed 2243 yards from scrimmage and 23 touchdowns in a 14 game season. Extrapolate that over the modern 16 game season and you get nearly 414 fantasy points (granted, it’s not the all-time record, but the difference is negligible).

Now it’s your turn. Please pay attention to the rules. And no biting.

Millions of people play fantasy football. Most of them never win anything. The vast majority of these losers fail in uninteresting ways. Occasionally, one of them will break through with a masterstroke of disappointment. We have three readers who fit that bill. But first, one sob story of my own:

One of my four fantasy teams the past two seasons has been in a league comprised of fellow Pittsburgh fans and bloggers. Yes, yes, I know – “Are all your teams named Sixburgh36 and HEREWiiGoStillers6xChamps? Let me guess – Heath Miller went in Round 1″ Haha, no, but seriously, shut up. Anyway, it’s an eight-team league with one significant wrinkle I didn’t catch before the first season – every team makes the playoffs. Not sure why I missed it then, but then who the hell creates fantasy leagues where everyone makes the playoffs? It renders the entire regular season meaningless. You could theoretically finish 0-14 and win the championship. It’s goddamn stupid. Still, no one (to my knowledge) purposefully tanked any games.

Naturally, this rule bit me in the ass right away. I finished the first season 11-3, had the top seed in the playoffs, led the league in scoring, only for it all to come crashing down in the semifinals against a team that finished 6-8 during the season. Suffice it to say, I was pissed and responded by bitching as pathetically as I could about the policy. Surely, it would not stand another year.

Of course, flash forward to this season and, lo and behold, all the teams are still making the playoffs. Once again, I posted another 11-win season. Didn’t lead the league in scoring, but was still in the top 3. No way the same fate would befall me this time, I thought.

And I was right. IT WAS WORSE. I lost my opening playoff game to a team that went THREE AND F*CKING ELEVEN in the regular season. I played the same guy in the final week of the regular season and beat him by 35 points. In the playoffs against me, he posted his highest scoring output of the season by 20. I had Drew Brees and Cop Speed Zulu put up rare pedestrian numbers. IT HAPPENED AGAIN! I’M THE COLTS OF THIS LEAGUE!

Even if they change the policy next year, I’ve been screwed enough that I couldn’t possibly take it again. Plus, knowing my luck, they’d make the change and I would respond by finishing 5-9.

I hate this game.

Now to tales of reader fantasy woe.

Read the rest of this entry »

We’ve been over this before: Lee Evans is fantasy football AIDS. Lee Evans is like a $100-dollar bill from a country that doesn’t even exist anymore. He’s a mirage. For Lee Evans’ projected totals for 2009, every fantasy magazine should simply read, “Seriously?” There’s no redeeming value to his production whatsoever.

And so I took him in the third round. Read the rest of this entry »

Note: If you’re one of those people that doesn’t want to hear about fantasy teams, best move along to the next post. This one’s pretty self-indulgent.

For years I avoided playing fantasy football because I’m very protective of my free time, and I already spend too much time staring at this goddam computer screen.  I finally caved last year because Yahoo’s Andy Behrens made a 12-team blogger league where we could play for free.  I made the six-team playoffs, finished fifth, and was hooked.

This year, with a girlfriend living in London and a ghost of a social life, I fell off the deep end.  I drafted Tom Brady first overall and Marc Bulger as his backup, and my immediate need for a decent quarterback bred in me an obsessive-compulsive streak to tweak my roster.  In 14 weeks I’ve made 36 moves (not counting the four waiver moves this week), 20 more than the second-most active manager.  I engineered two of the three trades in the league (Ryan Grant to Behrens for Kurt Warner in late September, and BenJarvus and Pennington to Shanoff for Brandon Marshall and Matt Schaub just before the trade deadline – SUCKA!).

And you wanna know what excessive tinkering gets you?  A 6-7 record after you single-handedly mismanage your way out of at least three wins.  Some of my fantasy highlights this season:

Week 3: I’m 2-0, but goddammit, T.J. Houshmandzadeh is NOT producing.  I bench that fuckface against the Giants for Bryant Johnson — he’s totally due for a breakout!  And he’s playing the Lions!  Housh gets 146 yards and touchdown for 20 points, Bryant gets me two for a net loss of 18 points.  I lose to Unsilent Majority by nine.  I swear to God it made sense at the time.

Week 8: I’m up against Shanoff, who notoriously sucks at fantasy.  When I find out that his starting WR Santonio Holmes will be sitting out after his pot bust, I taunt him over email. His sincere response is “Thanks! I wouldn’t have realized it otherwise!”  He starts Kevin Walter in his place, who gets 70 yards and two TDs as Shanoff — who didn’t even start a kicker or defense — beats me by three points.  Also, I start Jeff Garcia instead of Warner.  I fucking hate myself.

Week 9: It’s Sunday morning, and the only QBs on Daulerio’s roster are Philip Rivers (bye) and Carson Palmer (out).  I use my four expendable roster spots to pick up any QB who might be worth a shit, leaving him only the run-heavy Ravens’ Flacco against the Browns.  Flacco gets 17 points, I lose.  Granted, I lost by more than 17, but I bring this one up because the Yahoo projections predicted I’d score 93 to Daulerio’s 62.  Daulerio beats me 90-72.  Fuck you, Yahoo projections.

Week 12: I desperately need a win against Maj to have a realistic shot at the playoffs.  Late in the week, with Brandon Jacobs looking iffy for the Arizona game, I plug in Derrick Ward for LenDale White, who’ll be facing the run-tough Jets.  Eight minutes before kickoff, the word is that Jacobs will play, and I see that 67% of Yahoo players are starting LenDale, considerably higher than the percentage starting Ward.  I freak out and make a knee-jerk switch.  White gets 1 touch and zero points.  Jacobs doesn’t play, and Ward gets 15 points.  I lose by 12.  Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.

In the end, with a miraculous Week 13 win against league points leader Behrens, I jumped ahead of three teams to make the playoffs at 6-7, despite my best efforts to fuck everything up.  And who cares what happens in the playoffs, man.  All I care is that I’m playing.  That’s all I want out of fantasy football, every week, 52 weeks a year.  Just to have an added rooting interest in the games.  GIVE IT TO FORTE YOU STUPID FUCK LOVIE!

I’m going to be suicidal come Week 17.

This week, we’re holding the second annual KsK Kares Kharity Drive for Fisher House, which helps build temp housing for disabled veterans and their families. You can donate directly to FH here.

I played in five fantasy football leagues this year; I didn’t make the playoffs in any of them. I bought the magazines and everything, did the research, had discussions about certain players with my friends. And now, All my minutes of waiver wire shopping and proposing shitty trades to Rob Iracane seem to have gone for naught, and so now I’m out $200 and wondering why I didn’t just roll those fantasy mags into a bonfire and throw myself on top of it.

Some people think fantasy sports are just glorified gambling, while others have said that such practices run on websites actually infringe on proprietary information of the NFL. Fuck those people, I say. They’re overlooking the greatest injustice of all: that fantasy football can make somebody like me, a guy who does nothing but watch football, feel like a total football idiot.

Football is, now more than ever, my life. I’ve watched more action in 2008 than I ever watched in the 80s, 90s, or aughts…combined. I write about it, I think about it, I study it. How the fuck could I be so bad at this? Why can’t this just be like sex, where I could just stay drunk the whole time and receive insincere compliments the next morning?

The prime issue might be that I just pour hours of prep into my draft board and then, once that process of picking my cadre of statistical fuckups is over, I take the rest of the fall off. In other words, I run my team exactly the way Mike Brown runs the Bengals. Maybe I should hire a general manager, too.

So now I have to watch everyone else in the leagues I FUCKING RUN AS COMMISSIONER chase that virtual championship, while I sit idly by with my dick in my hand and think of new rules that will fuck everybody over next year. Did you fucks even pay your league fees? I hate this shit.

Oh, but congrats to everyone that made the playoffs in their leagues. I hope you choke on each other’s cocks.