News:

The regular season is all over but the crying. Congrats to those finishing in the top half of the standings. It’s been a journey of injuries and intrigue that’s for sure.

If you are in the toilet bowl, you know how Blue Jays fans felt last week. The good news is, the Jays have other free agents to pursue and we still have as many as three weeks of fantasy football left and other worthwhile goals to pursue that are not the coveted Plastic Helmet of Excellence.

In terms of the consolation bracket, we haven’t made a big deal of last place in our league, to the point where I’m not really sure what last place is. Yahoo stops tracking standings at the end of Week 14. Is that last place? Is it the loser of the 11th place game? I guess it’s probably the latter so do your best to avoid that if you can. As for the toilet bowl winner, one change I am considering for next year is to give the winner of the toilet bowl an extra poker chip in the draft lottery. It would give everyone an incentive to give it their all to the end since someone is going to increase their odds ever so slightly at the number one pick. If everyone likes the idea, we can implement it right now. If not, we can talk about it next August.

For now it’s just about more fantasy football because we all know what the football void feels like when our seasons are fully over and there’s nothing to do apart from watching actual football!

Random Thought of the Week:

If you had Mostert, Etienne, White and Henry pencilled in as top 5 running backs in August, you are in great shape right now. For the 99.9% of us that didn’t, we’re just trying to figure out what to do next year. Interestingly, there aren’t nearly as many eye-raising names on the WR list except maybe Keenan Allen who just lost his QB. That said, Chase is in the top 5 which based on Burrow’s season really surprises me and proves that anything is possible – not that we really needed further proof of that.

Shark Move of the Week:

I have to at least be a strong candidate for shark of the week. As soon as I realized that Ceilidh was going to carry me into the play-offs, I stopped worrying and started drinking Scotch and Guinness. The ancillary benefit is that my team looks a lot better through the bottom of a glass!

Guppy Move of the Week:

Since the tone of this newsletter seems to be more the thrill of victory and the agony of defeat than sharks and guppies, I will touch on the Piper’s predicament with Jeff Justinson this week. The table was certainly set for a measure of poetic justice. Doug has had a pretty miserable season (just like Jefferson), traded for him back in Week 9 and (probably not so) patiently waited for him to return to the field. It just so happens he was declared healthy in Week 14, the last week of the fantasy regular season. I could absolutely see a scenario where he came off the IR and torched the Raiders to almost single-handedly sink my play-off aspirations. Unfortunately, the flip side of that scenario was just as easily foreseeable. Jefferson comes back and has a nothing game to completely emphasize the pointlessness of hoping for anything good to happen in this hobby. You hate to think he looked around at the state of that team, the fact he’s approaching free agency / franchise tag eligibility and suddenly felt his hamstrings tighten up again but in this day and age, some elite athletes absolutely do that. I know I did this week!

Speaking of a nothing game, it was also worth noting that Brian went into his Week 14 contest against AOB with no quarterback. Maybe he was with Sam Howell relaxing on a beach somewhere? Anyway the good news is, it wouldn’t have mattered if he’d started Minshew… or maybe that’s the bad news?

Smack talk award of the week:

Neil summarized the arc of a season and the foibles of the head-to-head format perfectly in the chat window this week. Just like coal, pressure and time make diamonds, timing and circumstances often decide whether you are 4 – 9 or 9 – 4. Looking at points for, Grid and I have obviously received a bit of champions’ luck to make the show. Looking at points against, Neil can definitely claim that everyone showed up when it was time to play him (I can only assume everyone was afraid of the heckling, shame and self loathing). His observation probably ties in better with fantasy hell than smack talk but hey, quote the truth where you find it.

Welcome to Fantasy Football Hell Award of the Week:

Speaking of wins, losses and points, it’s Ken I was feeling the most sorry for after the dust settled Monday night. How do you finish 3rd in points scored, second last in points against and still end up with a record of 7 – 7? The obvious answer is, you lose some very close contests and the weeks you do win, you hand your opponents some very bad beats. I bet Ken is wishing he could put some of those points in escrow for future weeks but unfortunately it doesn’t work that way. He would certainly be the odds on favourite to cruise through the consolation bracket though. Good luck this week!