News:

I normally make every effort to get the newsletter out before the start of the following week but with football on Christmas day, we had a unique set of circumstances this year.

Notable NFL injuries include Tank Dell with another heart-breaking season ender and Jalen Hurts, whose injury now threatens a deep Eagles play-off run – not to mention threatening the end of more than a few fantasy seasons to boot!

In Clan McDonald we saw both top seeds fall to the underdogs to set up a final between BK and the commish. In the consolation bracket, it’s Jay and the Piper squaring off for the porcelain prize!

Shark Move of the Week:

I would normally focus on the semi-final match-ups for this award but I’m going to look league wide because we had some great contests across the board this week. Honourable mention goes to Grid for squeezing a lot of points out of Jerome Ford. Chloe rode Atlanta DEF on the way to an easy win and yours truly got difference-making points out of Cincy DEF and father time, Keenan Allen.

This week though I’m going to go with AOB and the Piper, who didn’t quite start optimal line-ups but were pretty damn close. More importantly, they both squeezed 170+ points out of their squads in a pretty exciting toilet bowl soiree. In the end it was too close to even pin-point what the difference was, apart from 0.23 points.

Guppy Move of the Week:

I don’t normally use this platform as a soapbox but the clear winner appeared this week when Bigplay decided to share his tearful but misguided season recap with us. Did Neil have significant injuries? Sure. Were there teams who finished above him in the standings that had objectively healthier seasons? Also yes but my dude, are you really going to pin your season on the devastating loss of 9th and 10th round picks? Are you actually going to call Zeke Elliot, a guy who clearly looked cooked at the end in Dallas, a bust? Did Dalton Kincaid really rob you of a Plastic Helmet of Excellence?

No, I cannot abide these delusions. The irony is that this misguided recap came on the eve of BgPlay’s 85 point performance where he had four empty roster spots yet still almost managed to have as many points on his bench as he did in his line-up.

Bigplay may yet have a championship in his future but the road to claiming cannot begin until he stops looking at his baseball glove in disbelief every time he misses a ground ball…

Smacktalk Award of the Week:

Tremendous work in the chat room this week which has continued right through to the finals! I did enjoy AOB’s gif illustrating how he came up just a little short in his bid to live the Pug life. In the end I’m going to have to give the nod to the Piper who not only dropped a pic on us but actually showed the initiative to head out to the Home Depot and buy a prop! Outstanding work!

Welcome to Fantasy Hell Award of the Week:

On the surface, the dream appeared to end for Ross and the Dawgs in fairly different manners. One had one of those “small b” bed-shitting weeks at the worst possible time while the other just had a good week instead of a great one. I think most of us have experienced both of these outcomes at some point over the past 18 seasons and I’m of the opinion that upon closer inspection, there’s really little difference between the two. Both were victims of the variability of NFL offences. They were just victimized to different extents. On any given NFL team on any given Sunday, sometimes the passing game leads the way and sometimes it’s the run game. Sometimes the RB is downed at the one and the backup comes in to vulture the TD. Sometimes the QB runs it in himself. Sometimes the WR1 is double covered and the WR2 gets the spoils.

In other words, it’s mostly luck, albeit the more subtle, nuanced luck within the game rather than the more catastrophic luck of injury. What they have in common is that none of us knows what’s going to happen. We’re all just sailing the choppy seas of random collisions and plays – so batten down the hatches and on to the finals!