Opening Night Observations

I don’t know if I’ll do this for all the standalone games like I did in years past. That’s the beauty of running your own operation — there’s no longer any need to do things for appearance sake.

One thing I don’t do for appearance sake, but because it’s deeply satisfying to me is I link to everything. First off, it directs people to more of my work, but more importantly, it gives me the feeling I’ve been thorough and transparent. If I say I was on a guy, or I drafted a guy, or I faded a guy, it’s all verifiable, timestamped and laid out clearly. It also makes me feel like everything I write now is built on something I wrote before.

I’m not doing justice to this feeling, but linking to everything, interconnecting everything is the way. Just like eating all of one’s leftovers and making use of all the food in the fridge before it spoils is the way. These are almost religious beliefs for me.

I do have some thoughts about this game, it turns out. First, my dream of going 272-0 ATS in my picking pool is dead — I took the Rams and the points, and truth be told, the game wasn’t as close as the 31-10 score.

To go 272-0, is 1 in 2^272 which just 7.5 with 81 zeroes after it. You’re more likely to guess a random atom in the entire universe of which there are only 10 ^ 80. (For a warmup, you can try guessing a random atom in a grain of salt, of which there are a quintillion.) It would take you 32,000,000,000 years to count to a quintillion, more than double the age of the universe, by the way, so you better make fast guesses.

In any event, a few other things jumped out at me too:

• I’ll be starting Trevor Lawrence Week 1 in my highest stakes NFFC Primetime league (because teams still draft over the weekend, you can sub out Thursday night players, and Matthew Stafford is my QB1.) I didn’t think of it, but in the two NFFC leagues I have Matt Gay, I probably should have FAABed a kicker just in case Gay got shut out. Luckily, he kicked that 58 yarder, or I’d really regret it.

• Thankfully I faded Cam Akers, who was an afterthought. I did consider getting back in when he slipped to Round 6, but someone saved me from myself in the Primetime. You can say, relax, it’s early, and you might be right, but take a look at his price over the weekend — I bet he slips to Round 9 or 10 in some drafts.