I’m embarking on a journey into the unknown this year. I signed up for another fantasy league this year, which isn’t all that crazy, we all have our JV leagues and our side piece leagues and our work leagues and other leagues that don’t mean as much to us as the one true league, Toppa League. No, it’s not that I’m in another league. It’s who I’m in that league with. I’m in a league with [extreme Borat voice] my wife.

We joined a league with her sister and husband, and two other couples. I think it’ll be fun, and she’s super competitive, so she’ll take it seriously. And now we might actually hang out on Sundays, instead of me just sitting in front of two TVs for 9 straight hours, and the only time she talks to me is when she asks if I want dinner. But the fact remains, I will now be matched up against my wife, in fantasy football at least twice this football season. This part could be rough. What if I destroy her? I can’t just let her win, like I do other games. Except Scrabble. She legit whips my ass in Scrabble. But I can’t take it easy on her by like not playing Zeke Elliot or something. Or what if she destroys me? Not only did I lose to someone who’s never played fantasy football before, but I lost to a WOMAN!! What does that say about me as a man?

The draft was actually a lot of fun. We got a pizza. I had some beers. BoomBoom had some ginger beers. As the draft was starting, she looked at me and said “This is gonna be intense. There’s so much to think about!” After she made her second pick, I said something like “Oh, you already picked,” since I assumed she’d need more time or want to talk it through with me. She responded “Oh did I go to soon?” This is never a problem in our relationship. It’s usually the opposite.

She was into it. It was cute. It’s fun to watch someone who’s never drafted before and teach them how to do it. It’d be like if you spent the whole Toppa Draft hanging out with Timmy.

But after the first few rounds, things started to turn. First, it’s difficult to pay attention to another person after the first 3 rounds or so. At that point, you have to pay attention to your own team and figure out what you’re going to do. (This is why it’s boring to go to draft if you are not drafting, everyone is just paying attention to their computer/clipboard.) So, it became hard to answer BoomBoom’s questions while trying to figure out what I was going to do with my pick. This was exacerbated by the fact that I had the 5th pick and she had the 6th, so I had to answer her questions, at the EXACT SAME TIME I was trying to figure out my pick.

Then this exchange happened:

Me: The guy at the top of the list right now is hurt, so don’t pick him.
Her: Who? Oh, I’m ordering it by my own thing.

Oh okay. I see. You’re doing things YOUR way. You’ve got it all figured out. And she did. As the draft went on, she would ask “Is this a good pick?” and it was, so I’d say yes. Since we have back-to-back picks though, this meant I’d lose the guy I was about to pick. Every. Time. After a while she wouldn’t even ask me, and would just steal the guys I was about to pick. She wasn’t as cute as she was half an hour ago. This might be a bad idea.

It was finally over. 5 minutes after we put our laptops away, she asked, “What’s a running back?” We’ve been watching football together for 4 years and I still have my work cut out for me. After I explained it, she said, “That was hard work. I’m ready for bed.” It was 8:15pm.

Quick aside: This is an 8 team league. Which feels ideal for beginners and lady folk, with their delicate sensibilities. The draft doesn’t go on forever. You don’t have to worry about ultra deep sleepers (A phrase BoomBoom found to be funny, by the way. We’ll always be nerds. Even when talking about sports.) That said, 8 team leagues are ridiculous. I have Zeke Elliot, David Johnson, Odell Beckham, Keenan Allen and Julian Edelman. My team would go undefeated in 2015.

With the draft done and he lineup set, BoomBoom was fired up to watch football this past weekend. She was determined to learn the players, figure out what was going on, all that shit. She was going to watch all the games, not just the first half of the Pats game with me and then go upstairs. She was gonna CARE this year. And she did. 5 minutes into the first set of games she was checking her fantasy scores. She was getting on Scott Hanson when he wouldn’t switch to her games.

But, unfortunately for BoomBoom, she got an education in what playing fantasy is REALLY all about. You see, she had hitched her ride to the Browns Bandwagon and had Baker Mayfield and Nick Chubb as two of her best players. Unfortunately for her, the Browns spent the offseason sniffing their own farts and not actually practicing football. Jen would’ve probably been better off sniffing my farts. At one point, after Baker threw a pick and the camera cut to him, she goes, “He’s not looking too fit!” Yeessss. Let the anger in BoomBoom. Rail against your tubby QB. You don’t know the power of the Dark Side.

She also got to watch as Sammy Watkins racked up long TD after long TD… on her bench. By the end of the 1 o’clock games, she had 85 points sitting on her bench. Watkins ended up with 57 points and she had 118 total points wasting away on her bench. She was so defeated by 5:15pm that she openly started rooting for her kicker. She ended up losing by 62.

But losing makes us stronger. Yesterday, I had to teach her about Waivers, which was fun… for neither of us. I talked her off the ledge. I told her to NOT to completely dump Baker, but instead maybe pick up another QB, just in case. I made sure she grabbed Hollywood Brown. And now she’s projected to win her matchup this week. Of course, we all know that means nothing.

There’s probably one more blog to come this season. I’ll update you when we actually play each other and child protective services have to come to take my unborn child.

Commercial I’m already sick of!

This year I’m switching out the Goodell Bullshitometer because he’s pretty good at staying out of the news lately. He’s also just always up to his same old bullshit, so there’s nothing new or noteworthy. So I’m replacing the commISSIONER I hate with a commERCIAL I hate each week. This week’s nominee:

This dude is out here making EVERY SINGLE guy look bad. During football season?! The actual fuck?!? He pulls the seat up and leaves a coffee in the car for her in the car. Come on!!! Every guy watching this ad is sitting on their couch having salsa fall off a chip onto their shirt, while their wife is watching it going “HMMMMPH!” and leaving the room.

Also it’s the “most technologically advanced car on the market” but you have to manually move the seat forward? Yeah, okay. And how did he get out of the car after moving the seat forward??? He’s like 6-8 inches taller than her. If he moved the seat up, his legs would get stuck in the steering wheel.

Dog Shit of the Week

ESPN. Dude. Dude. How did you not realize that the down and distance thing in the corner is bright yellow and our dumb, football-dog-brains have been trained to think that it’s a penalty? Especially when it pulses and flashes yellow all night?! I don’t know how you make this mistake. Except, I know EXACTLY how you make this mistake. This is not a graphics department mistake. This is some dumb fucker in a suit. I’m sure the graphics team came up with a new color scheme for this year’s Monday Night Football scoreline. I’m sure it had a bukkake of 100s all over it for the 100th NFL season. But some dude who ass kissed his way up the corporate ladder, who probably has white walls in his apartment and uses sheets for curtains and has mismatching towels, took a look at it was like, “No, what about a fluorescent yellow-green?” (because neon colors are back in with the youths, I’ve noticed) but didn’t think about it for one more second after that. I’m sure the graphics team was like, “Well fuck, this is a huge mistake, but that guy makes way more than I do so, yellow it is. Shit. What do we do when there’s a flag and we need to turn the yellow thing yellow? Invert it, so it’s yellow text on black. Sure. Fuck. Is NBCSports hiring?”

Then, at halftime, BREAKING NEWS!!!!!

Seriously? You really think you can just make a stupid mistake like this and change it at halftime, and our dumb, football-dog-brains will forget that you did something? Well you are absolutely correct. Job well done.

Also, ease up Schefty. Changing the graphic on MNF at halftime isn’t exactly breaking news. What a fucking dork.

Week 1 #PowerRanks

We have ourselves a couple tiers to start off the Toppa SZN. In one tier, we’ve got two high powered offenses, scoring 180 & 160 points. In the next tier, we have two solid teams who both put up close to 150 points. Then, there is a tier with 7 teams who all scored around 130 points. The playoff hunt is already looking exciting boys. Oh yeah, and then there’s JBiggs who didn’t even manage to score 100 points.

12. Derby Wing Night (Last Week: 3)

Typical Toppa Bowl hangover right here. JBiggs doesn’t even care about this SZN, he’s still living in last SZN. His players are staying out late every night. They’ve got a camera crew following them around all day for their reality show. Too busy to practice and are doing guest host spots on Get Up! instead. Classic case of Toppa Bowl-itus. Sometimes it takes a loss like this to wake a team up.

11. The Handy (Last Week: 10)

JD had Dak Prescott put up 52 points, which was the most by any player this week. Unfortunately, he didn’t get a whole lot of anything else from the rest of his team. Only Marlon Mack (33 points) was able to put up more than double digit points for JD.

JD and I had the closest matchup of the weekend. I squeaked out a win by only 3 points and needed the Monday Night game to do it. If you look at the line chart Yahoo gives you after each week, it’s a pretty wild ride. I pulled out to an early lead, followed by a huge spike for JD (Dak), then there’s a little smidgen of orange juuuuuust above the black at the very end. Riiiiight here:

10. White Door Key (Last Week: 7)

Micho had a pretty solid day from a lot of his team. 7 of his players scored in double digits, including 20 points from T-Y-T-Y Hilton and another 20 from the Baltimore D. But he couldn’t get over the turd of a game that Cam Newton dropped. Micho got only 7.75 points from Cam, which was ironically the same amount of points he lost by. It’s like Micho’s got ten thousand Cam Newtons and all he needs is a Sam Darnold.

9. Jonesing for Daniel (Last Week: 4)

You know when you’re relying on the New York Football Jets to score you fantasy points, you might be in serious trouble. Two of JeffWho’s best players were the Jets defense and Le’Veon Bell, who combined for 40 points. 6 of JeffWho’s players scored under their projected scores.

I can’t get over JeffWho’s avatar picture. Daniel Jones is the WHITEST looking person in the world. He may as well be drinking a Starbucks coffee on the sidelines. Look at this:

The Giants replaced one goober with another. I actually hope Daniel-san is semi-successful. I look forward to “Daniel Jones Face” replacing “Eli Manning Face” for another 10 years of throwing back breaking pick-sixes.

8. Sympathy Weight (Last Week: 8)

I went to bed trailing JD by 10 points. It was halftime of the first Monday Night Football game and at that point DeAndre Hopkins had 50 yards and 2 TDs. I did some Woody math and figured out he needed 275 yards and an ice cream cone to win. Then I did some real math and figured he either needed to get enough yards to hit the 100-yards bonus or 30ish yards and a touchdown. I thought it was doable. But I wasn’t willing to stay up to watch. Especially knowing that if I did stay up, there was no way he would.

Let’s cut to a video of me checking the score on Tuesday morning:

7. The C.R.E.A.M. Team (Last Week: 1)

#Nick was on the losing end of a real slobberknocker between him and Buckets that featured both QBs scoring over 40 points. Because of that though, the two awesome QB scores canceled each other out, and #Nick and Buckets had to rely on the rest of their team. #Nick had some solid performances with 5 players in double digits. Unfortunately for #Nick he put too much faith in his new hometown. Devonta Freeman only managed 1 point. More like NOTlanta. Get it? #notlanta

6. Duke Caboom (Last Week: 9)

Brendo should come over my house and watch football with BoomBoom so they can both shit on Baker Mayfield together. They can both talk about how unfit he is. I doubt Brendo has given up on him as quickly and as entirely as BoomBoom has. But BoomBoom has been known to hold a grudge for, like, weeks about, I dunno, totally making stuff up here, but maybe not doing the dishes, or maybe farting, so I bet even if she drops him this week, she’ll still be up for some shit talking about her boy Baker for the entire season. If not longer.

5. For The Table (Last Week: 5)

Woody was able to overcome a combined 3.6 points from Corey Davis, Sony Michel, and OJ Howard, including a goose egg from Davis. He pulled out the victory over Micho thanks in large part to Tom Brady Warburton. Shit that’s a typo. No one is supposed to know the name of the baby before it comes. Just Tom Brady. That is the player who helped Woody win this week. Tom Brady. And nothing else.

4. BigRigHewitt (Last Week: 11)

Timmy got 35 points from Drew Brees on Monday night to pull from behind and beat Brendo by 7. Derek Henry had one of the most dominating days of the week as he ran for 84 yards with a TD, had another 74 yards in receiving and another TD, which was a 40+ bonus, for 30 points. The Minnesota defense also scored 25 points, picking off #notlanta 2 times.

3. 5th Pick’s 4 Flint (Last Week: 2)

So, if Buckets’ and #Nick’s QBs canceled each other out, how did Buckets pull out the win? Well, a combined 50 points from two guys with the same last name, but they spell it differently (Mark Ingram and Evan Engram), helps a lot. He also got another 55 points from his 3 wide receivers. That was enough to beat #Nick by 17.

2. James White Claws (Last Week: 6)

You know who didn’t have Sammy Watkins on their bench? PWood. Watkins went off for 49 points. Add in that Pat Mahomes no-looked his way to a 50-burger and then tack on 22 from Amari Cooper, and PWood didn’t need much else to knock off JeffWho by 36 points.

1. TB12 Method (Last Week: 12)

Well, for fuck’s sake. Austin rolls into Toppa League late, like it’s no big deal. Like we weren’t all waiting around for delicious steak tips. Like we weren’t waiting around to do the draft before the draft before the draft. Are you late to work like you’re late to the draft? No. Of course not. You’re late to the draft because of work. You care more for work than you do Toppa League. Do you know where I’m typing this from right now? That’s right. Work. Now Austin is first in the Toppa Ranks with a 97 point blowout of reigning Toppa Champion, JBiggs.

Jesus, a 97 point victory. And it was a total team victory too. He only had two players score in single digits. And now the rich get richer, because Austin has Antonio Brown, who comes to Foxboro and could become Randy Moss 2.0. If he doesn’t go to Foxboro jail first.

Also, what do nickname do we use for Austin. He hasn’t lived in Vegas in like 5 years. The Toppa card says “A. Dias” That nickname is trash. And therefore I will continue to use it.

Set your lineups and make all your picks. Oooo! Tampa Bay (+7) is at Carolina tonight (under 48.5). This game stinks! Thank you NFL for bringing the hammer with bad Thursday Night Football in Week 2 of the season. You didn’t even pretend by throwing a Steelers-Ravens game in there, or even one of those “Is this game good? This game is good… right?” games like Colts-Falcons or something. Nope! Straight to the crap pile. The only thing that would make this better would be some sweet, sweet ColorRush. And we’re getting it. Carolina is going all blue everything versus Tampa’s white on white. And BoomBoom is ready to watch.