Week 12 Observations

I’ll get into the disaster that was Week 12 in a minute, but that Eagles-Bills game just wouldn’t end. I should have gone to sleep at 11, set myself up for the week, but I had to do my NBA FAAB anyway, so I kept watching and at some point got pot committed.

Here are my NOSTR posts on the end and OT (bottom to top):

One nice thing about my Real Man Sports account on NOSTR is so few people follow it, I just use it to jot down notes for these write-ups. I used to like Tony Romo, but have been hearing people complain about him lately and now I know why. He makes some good observations, but just won’t shut up.

It reminds me of one time when I took a train from LA to San Diego, and there was this mother and roughly eight-year old kid sitting behind me. The kid was making basic eight-year-old-kid observations to her, and she was gushing so effusively about everything he said that he just kept going and going, and she kept gushing and gushing for the entirety of the trip.

I can’t remember — it was a long time ago — but I think I conspicuously moved seats, thinking, “You are in a public place FFS! Please control yourself and your kid!” And that’s what it was like listening to Romo just prattle on and on past 1 am while I’m waiting for this game to end, contemplating how my season was destroyed a couple hours earlier and how I was going to start the week with a subpar amount of sleep.

I had the Patriots with my last Survivor entry, and while I knew their QBs were bad, I loved the spot, facing a Giants team coming off a win in which they took nine sacks but got six turnovers. The Patriots threw three soul-crushing picks, benched the indescribably abominable Mac Jones yet again for a nearly-as-abominable Bailey Zappe and yet still were in position to tie the game with a chip-shot field goal before shanking away my season.

Of course, I had Saquon Barkley going in the Primetime, and despite the Giants win he did nothing. It was lose-lose-lose, as the Giants are now getting a lesser draft pick too.

But that’s not all. I’m 0-4 ATS with the Bears pending tonight. (Bet the farm on the Vikings.) The Pats and Texans (lost on a 58-yard FG hitting the cross-bar) were 50/50, but I also had the Lions, Raiders and Jets spread among the different pools. The Raiders were up 14-0 and getting 9.5, but apparently that wasn’t enough. I also started CEH over Royce Freeman in the Steak League, but I still had a big week, thanks to Bijan Robinson, Zay Flowers and IDP Jesse Bates’ pick six and 12 tackles. When your IDPs go off, it’s the best.

• CJ Stroud couldn’t quite get it done. I think if that kick sails through, he’s the MVP frontrunner. Now it’s probably Jalen Hurts who is a solid QB, but not even top-five in real life.

• The Eagles are awfully lucky. Their last two wins are due to an MVS drop and a miscommunication between Josh Allen and Gabe Davis. Then again, Allen was bailed out on that drive by a ticky-tack roughing-the-passer call. Tom Brady was right about the way the NFL has gone. I looked at some old Lawrence Taylor highlights the other day, and half his sacks were horse-collars.

• After fretting about swapping out the Saints defense for the Lions (zero) points on Thanksgiving, I was relieved to see New Orleans score only five. No defenestration necessary.

• Diontae Johnson caught a rare TD for the Steelers that was called incomplete because he lost the ball afterwards while going to the ground. But he had already scored the TD, so what does it matter what happens two seconds later? Put differently, had he just caught it and then spiked it after the same amount of time, it would have counted. This is the legacy of idiotic rules analysts lawyering the “what is a catch?” question into absurdity.

• The Steelers, Bengals and Browns are pointless teams. The Ravens got lucky this year that Joe Burrow and Deshaun Watson are hurt, and that the Steelers are saddled with backup-level Kenny Pickett.

• There’s a post going around about how Austin Ekeler only reached 13 mph (per NextGen stats) on his longest run a few weeks ago. While Ekeler might indeed be washed, I can assure you he can run much faster than 13 mph — running a 15-second 100-meter dash (which I can still do at 52) is 15 mph.

• I could have taken Mike Evans in the Primetime (I considered it), but I went Jerry Jeudy instead.

• This is what I wrote about the Broncos two months ago:

  The Broncos were so close to contending — they had a good defense, good skill players, all they needed was a quarterback. So they traded a king’s ransom for Russell Wilson and signed him to a ruinous contract. That didn’t work because the coach was terrible, so they traded the Saints first, second and third round picks for Sean Payton and paid him roughly $20M per year! And they’re still on the hook for $12M to Nathaniel Hackett over the next four years. Now all they need is a new coach, a new quarterback and a new defense, but unfortunately all their recent draft picks have gone to the Seahawks and next year’s will go to the Saints.

  Now they’ve won five games in a row, including four against teams with winning records. They’re still probably not going anywhere, but I like to note when there are drastic departures from my narratives.

• Kyler Murray really bailed me on in the dregs of the dregs of garbage time. You don’t usually see a franchise QB, coming off a serious injury, left in at the bitter end of a blowout, but I’m sure glad he was.

• It’s odd it took the Chiefs 12 weeks to get Rashee Rice, so obviously their best wideout, 10 targets.

• It’s even more odd Jakobi Meyers (who scored two touchdowns on 207 targets from 2020-21 in New England) now has six TDs on 76 targets in Vegas, while TD machine Davante Adams (43 from 2020-22) has only four on 118.

• Justin Tucker missed a 48-yard FG last night, his fifth miss of the season. And his season-long make is only 50 yards. Sadly, he’s not even a top-10 real-life kicker this year. All the sacred cows get slain eventually.

• The silver lining about getting bounced in Survivor is I will no longer be writing about it this year. If I’m dead to it, it’s dead to me too.