Week 1: The hand that mocked
I’ve been with my wife for a long time. We’ve been married for nearly seven years, but we first dated from age 17-22 and got back together at 28, so it’s been 13 years of adulthood and counting. She’s the Aaron Rodgers to my Andres. Or, more accurately, I’m the Miles Sanders to her JJ.
There are a lot of wonderful things that come with being with a person that long, but my favorite is that as we age into our late 30s, I have gained the ability to see the future.
As previously expressed, 2024 is the year I have come to appreciate data. The more data you have, the more trends begin to appear, and thus outcomes become more predictable. This is important in marriage because paying attention to the data means you can plan ahead with certainty based on events that would otherwise seem discrete.
For example: If my wife makes an offhand comment like, “You know what people used to make that I haven’t seen in years? Chicken pot pie,” that means I should look at the forecast, identify the coolest day this week, and prepare to eat chicken pot pie for dinner that night. It will never be said aloud, but that shit is absolutely going to happen.
(Editor’s Note: The above paragraph was written on Friday. Sunday night was in the low 60s. Guess what we had for dinner?)
So when she mentioned seeing an ad for a birdfeeder with a camera in it that you can watch on your phone, I began to chart the course of events. First, she would watch the birds from our glass sliding doors, commenting on their various eccentricities. Then there would be a spike in bird-related content on her phone.
Soon after that, she would say that she’s “really thinking about buying that birdfeeder,” and after she would begin to note when various ones were on sale.
She’d view this camera birdfeeder as an amusing, if aspirational, curiosity. But all the while I’d know that thing was bought and paid for already. Our present just needed to progress toward that fixed point in the future.
So we’ve had the camera birdfeeder for a couple of months now.
The companion app saves videos and photos of birds throughout the day so you can check in to see who visited, or you can watch live if you want to know what’s popping off in the avian community at 2 p.m. on a Tuesday. She does both daily, and will often react to a new or interesting bird with so much enthusiasm I’ll think Lebron just broke into our house and dunked over our fridge.
“Oh shiiiiit! Jayyyyyjjj! It’s a young Blue Jayyyyyy!!!!”
I will also be shown images and videos from the birdfeeder.
At first, I was amused by the happenings I saw but mainly just charmed by how much she was enjoying the whole thing. But then, a bird arrived that changed everything. A winged specimen so singular and pure that no other bird matters to me. No other animal matters to me. He is the one I call Herb.
Before you meet Herb, you must have a frame of reference. Here is a standard sampling of guests hosted by our birdfeeder on a given day:
You got your plain Janes, your goths, and your popular kids there. You even have some school hotties:
What a smokeshow, am I right?
Then, you have my beautiful baby boy:
What a fucking unit.
Drink in the Herb. Fat as shit, somehow balding, and always at a table for one. He can barely make it up to the ledge from the ground, and I honestly think that trek is the only time he flies all day. The rest of the time he takes his Rascal where he needs to go; which I imagine is to the bowling alley, or the store (he calls it “the grocer”), or the bank to exchange a comical amount of change for paper money.
What an absolute wagon on my lad.
Herb is a bird who hasn’t changed barbers since the Johnson administration. He can’t understand why anyone would pay more than $3 for socks. He says things like “older than dirt, younger than sand,” when asked how old he is and uses his flashlight to look at the menu in restaurants. He hates self-checkout and pays in cash whenever he can. If he sees a Square terminal, he will leave the establishment. “All this complicated nonsense for a coffee,” he’ll grumble.
But Herb is an endearing grump. He’s the type of guy that turns off his lights for Halloween, but secretly peeks out the window to make sure trick-or-treaters are taking the king-size candy bars he left in the bowl. He remembers everyone’s birthday and still sends letters to old friends. He flirts with the mail carrier and, if a neighborhood kid asks, will always perform the one magic trick he’s known since 1965.
Herb at the sight of any vehicle on his street that he doesn’t recognize
I am blessed to have Herb. If I see a squirrel near that birdfeeder during Herb Time, I charge out of my house to chase that furry piece of shit away. Creatures of the backyard know not to test me. I would kill for my rotund leige.
Pictured: A fuckin’ dead man, that’s who
I want to buy a second camera birdfeeder just for Herb, but I want it to be 8K, cinema-grade, IMAX shit. I want Roger Deakins out here to consult on the cinematography. I will spare no expense.
Villian Corner:
In celebration of our own villains, this week Steve because he is the reigning champion, each dispatch we will take a moment to appreciate a great villain from entertainment history.
The T-1000
It’s been a long time since I have watched T-2, but whenever I think about that movie, I always think about one scene in particular. The phone call.
That shit still creeps me out, man. When I was a kid it really messed with me because the beginning of that call is so convincing. I would have bought it.
That scene tells you everything you need to know about the T-1000’s superiority to us. It:
1. Effortlessly mimics a person after being around them for what is presumably a matter of seconds
2. Does it so convincingly that it completely fools their spouse in their own home
3. Immediately adapts to ancient (relative to the T-1000) technology and vocabulary
4. Violently and instantly kills a human without having to move anything but its forearm (didn’t even have to aim! Just no-looked a murder!)
By the time the camera pans out and you see that super gruesome Xander Berkeley kabob, you realize you’d be hopelessly out of your depth against this thing. Then it dawns on you that Janelle is ALSO dead, and the fact it happened off-camera leads you to imagine that it was even more grisly.
Robert Patrick made that character iconic, and his weird little head tilts and ear cocks while holding an unchanging face made the T-1000 feel like an animal using its senses to hunt. But props Jenette Goldstein for really selling the shit out of THIS scene. The way her face falters and melts, then reforms into something maliciously emotionless is what makes the underlying villain so scary. It’s why you, the viewer, have an atavistic response to the way she looks when she asks “where are you?” It’s why the dog would bark. The T-1000 may be able to change its outer surface, but the malice underneath always eats its way through.
THE
GAMES
THE GAMES
Jimmy Vs. Steve (142.4-141.3)
Better to die at the hands of an old friend, they say.
That ends Steve’s historic 16-game winning streak, which stretched back to Week 13 of 2022. I won’t linger on the fall of the streak other than to say it’s super cool that it happened, I wanted to see it go as long as possible, and it’s a record we are unlikely to see challenged for some time. The two previous records held for six years before being broken, after all. Congrats to Jimmy for doing what so many others could not.
And he was able to do so because holy SHIT the Panthers are bad. I don’t mean comparatively. I mean in an empirical, cosmic sense. There are whole alien societies that rank Carolina Panthers Football among the worst things in the universe and they have no idea what Carolina, a panther, or football is. Such is the transcendence of their shittiness.
Bryce Young threw a pick on his first PLAY! The announcer couldn’t even get through the routine schtick about it being a brand new season of possibilities before Young put that silly bullshit to bed. Gotta respect it. No quarterback has wasted less of their fans’ time. Carolina supporters had to watch for a little bit because the Saints got the ball first, but Bryce set them free as fast as he could. TVs could go off after 2 minutes and 58 seconds of the season. The NFL is a league of efficiency.
After that pick, the Panthers would turn the ball over two more times. They went 1-for-10 on third down and didn’t even get 200 total yards. Toss in four sacks, and baby, the Saints defense has got a stew goin’.
Jimmy was nourished by that stew and its hearty 29 fantasy points, and got side helpings of big games from Joe Mixon (huh), Aaron Jones (…huh), and Chris Godwin (huh?). I’m sorry, what fucking year is it? The combo of Mixon, Jones, Godwin, and the Saints was enough to win a fantasy football game? I’ll be damned.
Steve did everything he could to stave off the foul taste of defeat. Josh Allen went nuclear for 32 points, AJ Brown got nearly 30, George Pickens was useful, and Zeke even got into the endzone (seriously, is this a prank or something? What is the fucking date?). His kicker, John Christian Ka’iminoeauloameka’ikeokekumupa’a Fairbairn, even ripped off three 50+-yarders!
That’s 56 letters worth of big swingin’ kick.
All that, Jimmy’s Lions taking a little lion a snooze, meant the Niners defense had Steve in the lead until the final play of the final game of the week.
Then Tyrod Taylor scored a throw-away touchdown, dramatized above, and Jimmy snatched that victory for himself by 1.1.
So close! Say, raise your hand if you know what the difference in the matchup was!
Yep! Steve is the proud owner of Marvin Harrison Jr., and that young man was so open at the end of the Arizona game I thought the Bills defense had been raptured.
Kyler Murray took one look at that and said, “…nah,” and instead of a game-winning touchdown, there was nothing. The Cardinals lost, and Steve was collateral damage.
And so it ends.
I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—“Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.
Andres VS. JJ (119.1-110.3)
As a general preference, I like having the NFL games spread out during the week. Ignoring the fact that it sucks for the players, having more evenings where fantasy football is a viable diversion is a plus for my restless brain.
The exception, however, is when there are more games on non-traditional-NFL-days in Week 1. That Friday game in Brazil, for example.
My favorite time every season is that wonderful window after the draft until Sunday kickoff. That’s when your team can be anything. I know there’s always the Thursday opener (that shit ripped, btw), but I always treat that like when you watch a trailer for a movie on your couch right before you hit play on Netflix.
Usually, you have 3-4 blessed days where your team is perfect. They are unmarred by the actuality of football and remain whatever they are in your dreams. I like to pull out my phone a few times a day during this period, call up my lineup, and just… look at it. No tinkering, no fussing or fretting, just a mama bird checking in on her babies.
Look at my lads. So ready for greatness. Not a one of them will let me down or get injured, how could they? Champions, they are. Each more beautiful than the last. I will manage this army to perfection, and all lands will be ours.
But then the NFL had to go and fuck with my chi by scheduling a second game before Sunday. One game is like the bread on the table before dinner, two means it’s the start of the meal. And what happened in that second game? I left 39 points on my bench in Jayden Reed and then his QB got his knee Hadouken-ed at the last possible moment in the game.
Like that, the illusion is shattered.
Fuckin’……….~ sigh ~ And now Love is out, so I wasted Reed’s one good game. I mean, I shouldn’t have started him, but you only get so many games where a guy goes off and your oppone-
See what I mean? Chi absolutely gone. I could have had 36 more hours of wistful optimism, Roger. Why did you take that from me?
Anywho, Lamar went bonkers Thursday for Andres, and Rashid Shaheed came into his game Sunday like he had been waiting all offseason to personally fuck me up. Dude had a 59-yard touchdown before the season was three minutes old. Andres got 12 from his punter, 14 from his kicker, and even convinced Jerry Jeudy to score a TD to get back at me for mocking him. It was an unconventional attack.
My response was pretty robust thanks to the Dolphins, but there were, let’s say, areas for improvement. Jonathan Taylor got outrushed by his own QB. CeeDee Lamb was holding out during the part of training camp that covered how many quarters are in a game so he stopped playing just after the halfway point. Jared Goff did just enough to keep me watching theSNF game, but threw a pick when he sensed me reaching for my phone to check my score. In all, I ran out of gas just short of the finish line with two unused fuel tanks sitting on my bench (JK Dobbins had 24.4).
Andres begins 1-0 for just the second time since 2012. The only other opening opponent he beat in that 12-year stretch was Steve in 2022.
I lost my third opener in a row, and the last two years, when I lost the opener I lost the next four games as well. Sure wish that wasn’t a legitimate fear right now.
Know what would have helped prevent that? 39 fucking points from Jayden Reed. God I suck at this.
Kyle Vs. Will (150.9-111.8)
That right there is what it looks like when a ball coach has everybody understanding their role. Team construction at its finest. You love to see when the leader of an organization has a plan and everybody buys in, from the front office down to the waterboy.
Coach Kyle Luke, who is also the GM, told his staff that 2024 was going to be different. He had a draft strategy based on his ideal roster construction, and he told everybody to throw away their whiteboards.
Did his war room balk when he sat back and watched star after star after star go off the board despite having by far the biggest budget? Sure.
Did pundits stammer when they saw the $82 price tag of his first player? They did indeed.
Did fans threaten to riot when he spent $53 on Kenneth Walker III, and $5 on his backup, leaving the team with exactly two starting running backs? Fans are idiots.
Ol’ Luke may have drafted like someone woke him out of a deep sleep 30 minutes into the proceedings, but he was groggy like a fox. With an iron will, he assembled his ideal unit:
Hill for the explosive scores, Nico Collins and Zay Flowers for stable production. Kyren Williams for the style, Walker for the substance. Quarterback? Well, the ball coach still knows his stuff, by golly.
“Who cares if I guy can throw?” He said to Jayden Daniels. “The good lord gave you two perfectly good gams! Use them daggum things!”
Just when everyone thought the old stalwart may have dated ideas, he goes out and gets a run-first QB to prove the doubters wrong. He isn’t afraid of a rookie helming his squad! The game hasn’t passed him by!
ActuallyhedidthendraftTrevorLawrenceandspenttwodollarsonMattStaffordsoheactuallyhasthreequarterbacksonhisteamwhichsortofproveshemightnothavehadtheforward-lookingplanwetalkedaboutbutshutupitdoesn’tmattershutup,ok?god.
By the time Luke took his front office plan down to the field, his players knew exactly what was expected. They all did precisely that, and the result was what the Gridiron Guru had sketched out in his office since early summer. That’s how the greats do it. Adapt, innovate, inspire, and execute. This man’s coaching tree will be in the league’s DNA for years to come.
The unfortunate person facing down this organizational juggernaut led by a mastermind was Will, who had pretty much lost before the Sunday night game started even though he still had three players left.
Any blossoming miracles were snuffed out with a quickness when Puka Nacua was pulled from the game due to his knee. I’m no physician, but when a guy goes down with a knee injury, then is marked questionable, then comes back into the game before immediately leaving the game, then needs to be carted to the locker room, well, that knee probably doesn’t have all its knee parts in the correct conditions or locations the way good knees do.
Nacua had caught all four of his targets and already had a carry when his knee unknee-ed itself, and all the success those numbers portended went STRAIGHT to the backup rendezvous point.
Will, if you’re wondering what might have been, just take Cooper Kupp’s stats and cut them in half. Pick whichever side has a little more yardage. That half was supposed to be yours.
Breece Hall and Garrett Wilson did stuff, good stuff even!, but their efforts were kind of like when a reliever has to enter in the second inning because the starter gave up five runs in the first, and then that reliever throws a no-hitter the rest of the way. Cool, but who cares. The crowd left hours ago.
Why?
Well, Dak Prescott got his record payday then took off his mask to reveal he was Ben Roethlisberger all along. DK Metcalf was trapped inside a haunted carnival ride, where the game was 10-9 at one point and the team with nine had the only touchdown. Najee Harris is a bad fantasy football running back, so he… kept being that, I guess.
Brandon Aubrey was the leading scorer for Will on Sunday, followed by Jamie Gillan. While they may sound like the captains of a particularly problematic lacrosse team, they do in fact play professional football. Just not at the positions you want your leading fantasy scorers to play.
Will also got shit all from Mark Andrews, because the NFL is still selling us the lie of tight ends. They’re a scam, and every year we’re forced to make a place for them on our fantasy teams and spend honest draft money on them because the scam is so good.
“Oh, the depth!” says the man in the shield logo hat. “The variety! The pass-happy offensive revolution means more targets than ever! Come look at our Tight End market! So many viable selections, anyone can be a winner!”
Then the little man lowers his face to ours and salaciously whispers, “I set aside a few special ones, though. They’re the biggest and fastest and catchiest ones. Worth just as much as any top 20 guy on the open market. Wanna see? They’re expensive because they’re just like wide receivers……. but better."
And then Mark Andrews puts up 14 yards and we all pretend to be shocked for a minute because we don’t want to admit we fell for it again. They’re tight ends. This is what they do. Almost always, the ones who have great seasons have them unexpectedly. Then we move them to the expensive special bin for next year, and then they have a tight end season and a tight end career.
But the little man says it’s different this time!
“There’s an Isaiah Likely about to hit the market,” he says excitedly. “And he could be a league-winner!”
*~everyone reflexively reaches toward their wallet~*
Editor’s Note: Yes, there are a handful of ultra-rare exceptions like Rob Gronkowski, Jimmy Graham, Antonio Gates, and Travis Kelce. They’re probably in on it. Necessary goods to perpetuate evil.
Micah Vs. Justin (154.2-123)
(Micah weekly high score)
This is the Caleb Williams Era®! This era is good! This era is exciting and full of big plays! The Bears are undefeated in this era!
*Caleb Williams is not affiliated in any way with the Caleb Williams Era®
Yes, Justin’s beloved ursines were victorious in Week 1 and it had absolutely nothing to do with the offense, of which Justin owns several shares. They were on the field for just over 25 minutes, and the game would have been materially unchanged had they used that time to watch an episode of The Bear at midfield.
That’s because their defense and special teams (which Justin does not have, but Micah sure does) went all 2006 and decided to win the game themselves. 35 fantasy points later, Micah was off to a great start and Justin was confronting a confusing cocktail of emotions.
Hey, remember the draft, when Micah spent roughly 40% of his time complaining that he couldn’t get the several defenses he wanted? It was going to ruin him! He was fairly certain he wouldn’t get a defense at all! He should be allowed to bid $0, damn it! Huh.
Alvin Kamara pitched in for Micah, doing that thing he does where he scores 20+ points but you don’t really remember how. His 20 points are his 20 points, and you accept it like the price of gas. The rest of the squad? Uninspiring.
King Henry had a great start but had to anon early to sup so that he may retire to his chambers at a reasonable hour. Josh Jacobs proved that if at first you don’t succeed, you can try 16 more times and still not succeed. Kyler Murray ran around enough to be interesting, but then decided to forgo the easiest 40-yard TD pass in history.
“TOO easy”
It was an incredible quiet quit from the staff, but it couldn’t impede the churn toward Thoman victory. The Friday night showing of Saquonda Forever kept Justin on life support, but when Cooper Kupp finally gave up his pursuit of being the first man to catch 50 passes without gaining any yards and decided to play for real in the fourth quarter, it put the lights out for good.
Now Micah gets to be 1-0 without feeling all that good about it (can’t start the Bears DST at running back), and Justin gets to go QB dumpster diving on the waiver wire this week (he has Love). I mean he could roll with Bo Nix, who averaged 3.3 yards per pass attempt (wow) and threw two picks, one of which elicited one of the funnier things I’ve heard an announcer say in a while:
But I’m guessing he won’t. “Oh no” is correct, my man.
But is he hot?
On draft night, Micah demonstrated comprehensive knowledge of the aesthetic hierarchy of white players in the NFL. After rigorous scholarship, he is prepared to defend his dissertation asserting Aiden O’Connell is the ugliest of the NFL’s caucasian offerings. This season, we endeavor to test this theory.
The world holds its breath.
Munson Vs. Chris (151 Vs. 134.1)
Munson has finally awoken, emerging from the darkness of his mediocrity cryo-chamber into the bright light of the modern age. So much has changed! Cars drive themselves! Computers can talk to you like people! They made a movie about Sean Payton and he was played by Kevin James!
That cinematic endeavor had a $45 million budget. Here is a list of 10 things you could buy with $20 million (not individually. you could own all 10 of them).
Seems like a waste to spend double that amount on a movie starring Kevin James, Taylor Lautner, and Rob Schneider that seems to be about Sean Payton being an absentee father, but hey- I don’t run Hollywood.
I digress.
Munson having been confronted with archival ignominy that would have broken a lesser man, decided the Horn of Helm Hammerhand would sound in the deep one last time.
He got pretty much exactly what was predicted from every one of his guys, and can rest easy knowing the rumors of Justin Jefferson’s demise were greatly exaggerated.
Chris was ultimately correct that starting a team’s entire running back room is somehow a viable strategy, but she needed overtime to prove it. David Montgomery picked up 45 of his 91 yards on Detroit’s overtime drive, capping it with a score and vaulting him from six points to 16 (the same as Gibbs).
She can also mostly say the same thing about her boys meeting expectations, though she got a little extra from Baker Mayfield and a lot less from Raheem Mostert. That Mostert deficit was costly, too. Had she swapped out Mostert for Xavier Worthy or Brian Thomas Jr. in her flex, a decision she no doubt debated for hours, she would have slipped past Munson and delayed his resurrection. But then again, it’s hard to start two rookie wideouts over a guy who led the league in rushing touchdowns (18) last year and tied McCaffrey for the most total TDs (21). In a civilized society, Raheem would have saved one or two of those for Chris’s rainy day fund.
You know what also would have helped? If the Las Vegas Raiders weren’t run by an absolute coward.
With 7:15 remaining in the fourth quarter, the Raiders were down 16-10 to the Chargers and facing a fourth-and-one on LA’s 43 yard line. Both teams had all their timeouts left. This, by any measure, is when you go for it.
For Chris, this was good news. Her fancy new Brock Bowers was looking spry and involved, and the Raiders extending the drive meant more work for him and a possible score, given how things were going. He might even break free on this play and get one of those long TDs!
But Antonio Pierce seemed to be… weighing his options? Dude, what are you doing? How are you undecided? Unless everyone on your offense is seconds from death, you go for this 100 times out of 100.
You don’t even need to run the numbers to know that shit, but let’s do it anyway:
At that moment, the Raiders had a win probability of 20.3%. Teams that go for it in that exact situation (4th and 1 on the opponent’s 43 ) have a success rate of 66%, which is REALLY good.
If the Raiders convert, their win probability jumps to 30%. If they fail, it drops to 10%. (but again, the chance of converting is 66%)
However, if they choose to punt, their win probably drops to 13% anyway!
So what is Pierce seriously considering here? He either A) attempts to substantially improve his team’s chances of winning at the risk of making a bad situation slightly worse, or B) guarantees the situation gets worse without the potential of any benefit whatsoever.
You know where this is going.
Pierce is a craven football man. A lily-livered invertebrate. A paltroon of the highest order.
Did you know that going for it, REGARDLESS OF OUTCOME, would have actually increased their win probability to 23%? Just trying would have been the better decision.
The Chargers took the ball 92 yards over four minutes for a touchdown, and ate up all three Raiders timeouts in the process. Bowers actually caught two more passes and gained 11 more yards in the frantic Vegas possession that followed, but Gardner Minshew was running a no-huddle offense, so it predictably ended in an interception.
Bowers could have saved Chris if only better choices had been made. But the Raiders actively played to lose, and dragged her down with them.
The Niners treated Chris to the full Brandon Aiyuk Experience Monday night, which consists of getting him some targets early, so you know the OC knows he exists, then ignoring him in favor of Deebo. There will be a target here or there along the way, and their hope is that will be enough to keep fantasy owners watching in hope of one of those signature monster TDs, but not Chris.
Reports from inside the organization are that she called it at halftime, heading to bed so she could get a jump on game planning for Week 2. Seasoned move, right there.
DeWitt Vs. Lee (142-99.9)
One of my most unhinged, yet steadfast beliefs about how our republic should function is that the NFL should never schedule Christian McCaffrey on Sunday or Monday night. If they can’t figure out a way to get him on the field by 3:25 pm Sunday, then move the game to next week. People playing against him in fantasy football deserve this, and there are more of them nationwide than there are Niners fans.
So when they scratched him just before game time (or did they?) I assumed they finally took my many letters seriously.
For a moment, it looked like Lee had life. No CMC? A double-digit lead with a kicker and a backup backup running back (I’m counting Deebo as number 2) going against him? Unlikelier things have happened….
“Fuck you, Lee Morehouse in Columbia, Missouri. Fuck you so hard.”
-Kyle Shannahan, to himself, scheming to break the record for FGs in a game
It’s so goddamn perfect that after mounting his most vigorous campaign yet to oust kickers from the league, Lee had to watch while DeWitt’s Jake Moody put up the highest score ever at the position. Two 50s, two 40s, two 30s, two XPs.
27.6 fantasy points, and that’s all she wrote. While ‘twas the foot that did the most damage, it really wouldn’t have mattered for Lee if I was the Niners kicker.
Jordan Mason, a running back we definitely all knew and cared about, morphed into the second coming of Bo Jackson and dropped 147 and a TD for DeWitt, who smartly drafted the young man for $2 for just such an occasion.
I refuse to believe that any more than two other people besides DeWitt in our league have thought about Jordan Mason before this. I bet you couldn’t tell me where he went to college. If you can, shut up nerd. His Wikipedia page doesn’t even have anything about Monday night on it! No one is editing it, that’s how anonymous he was.
Anyway, he had the night of his life, and then had it ruined when Shannahan threw him under the bus for answering a question honestly (a biiiiiiig no-no in the NFL). For anyone who missed it, Mason was interviewed on the field post-game and said he’d known he was starting since Friday. That was an oopsie, since the Niners didn’t designate McCaffrey “out” until just before game time and Shanny made a big show of being “just as surprised as anybody.”
So the Niners knew for days McCaffrey wouldn’t play, but hid that fact so the Jets would prepare as though he was. You aren’t supposed to do that in the NFL (lol). You’re supposed to disclose all injuries to the league and your opponent, and downgrade a player to doubtful on the Friday and Saturday reports once he’s on the wrong side of the 50/50 line. Or if you know he won’t be playing, designate him as “out.” Keeping him as “questionable” in that circumstance is against the rules, though teams do it all the time. What they don’t do all the time is fail to prep the backup for when he inevitably gets asked precisely when he knew he was no longer the backup.
So after Mason answered “Friday” when he was interviewed on the field, Shannahan said “I never told him that,” during his interview in the press room. By the time Mason got to the press room, he clearly had been screamed at a whole bunch for telling the truth, and wanted nothing to do with the question:
I know I’m annoying about this issue, but it’s not the media’s fault, my guy.
You were asked a super normal question, you answered it honestly into a microphone, and that answer was reported to the public, just as all parties involved knew it would be. Whatever happened after that is on your superiors for not briefing you that you may need to maintain a lie for them.
They could have easily sidestepped any trouble by saying, “Yeah we knew Christian was going to be a game-time decision and could be limited if he was a go, so we told Jordan Friday to prepare as if he were starting.” Boom, solved.
Instead, your head coach denied the conversation ever happened, so you now get to be a liar for having said something untrue about knowing Friday, or you get to be a liar when they make you say you “misspoke.” Either way they’re mad at you, and the fact you just had the best night of your life is now secondary to all that bullshit.
None of that is on “the media.”
Anyway, Mason was awesome and the Niners now don’t have to worry about disclosing the fact CMC actually has calf AND Achilles problems and is likely headed for one of his seasons where he misses a bunch of games but is awesome enough when he plays that fantasy owners cling to him with desperate hope.
“I know my team is 4-6, but if I finally get McCaffrey back next week, I have a stacked lineup again and can make a run!”
Luckily DeWitt doesn’t have to suffer that delusion, thanks to drafting so much depth. Pacheco is still great, and despite losing the best back in football, he has Mason and….
Well he has Mason, anyway.
There wasn’t much else to this matchup, honestly. Both of Lee and DeWitt had pretty disappointing days from most of their guys (including the latest addition to the super-fancy-extra-special TE bin, Trey McBride), but got a few solid starts elsewhere.
Anthony Richardson remains an awesome thing to experience, James Conner continues to reward the 1 guy in 12 who buys into him, and the Dallas defense still rules. Watching them atomically dismantle the Browns was just a real treat. I’m sorry, but Cleveland just makes me giggle.
It’s not just the fact they guaranteed a very bad quarterback five Home Team’s worth of money and are now wasting an all-world defense. It’s that they are so historically inept that the act of merely winning games with them is enough to earn someone Comeback Player of the Year over Damar Hamlin.
The Finalists
| Name: | Damar Hamlin | Joe Flacco |
|---|---|---|
| What did he come back from? | Getting hit so hard in the chest during an NFL game that he died on the field for a bit, then spending nine days in the hospital, four of which were on a breathing machine | Being relegated to the practice squad because he was old |
| What did he achieve? | Returned to the NFL and was good enough to play in the AFC Championship Game. Also he survived something that kills 97 percent of people | Went 4-1 with the Browns. They made the playoffs, then lost 45-14 when he threw two pick-sixes in one quarter |
| Any other notes? | He literally came back from the other side of existence and fought to keep doing the thing that sent him there in the first place | Seems like a nice enough guy |
The judges went with the guy on the right.
Historically, being resurrected is a pretty good PR splash. People tend to celebrate that sort of thing. But that’s the power of the Browns, man.
Lee’s positive takeaway can be that Rashee Rice looks like a serious capital-D dude, and having a Dude in KC’s passing offense is akin to having a fantasy football Game Genie. Of course, you have to start him for it to pay off.
Lee went in a more Drake London-y direction this week, which is sort of like setting aside a perfectly cooked steak and eating a printed-out photo of that steak instead. If you’re just looking at them, they both appear to be steak. But one of them is a cheap facsimile of the other; a reproduction devoid of any of the qualities that made the original worth copying. Eating that one gives you negligible and ultimately pointless returns. Much like Drake London.
Ah well. There’s always next game!
