Week 12: Meters, not feet
A quick question for you all since I am tired and trying to finish this before 2 a.m.
It has to do with significant others.
I’m watching a show called Day of the Jackal, which is based on a movie which itself was based on a book. Anyway, it’s about this elite international assassin who is paid millions per hit, and uses a sniper rifle to do it. It’s a pretty good show, and the opening assassination is a really well-done setpiece.
But one of the central conflicts in the show is that our assassin’s wife is slowly starting to wonder about what her husband does for all this money they have. He’s been effectively vague about his profession, but after she starts thinking he might be cheating on her because he’s gone for weeks and doesn’t answer his phone when traveling, she begins investigating.
Long story short she discovers a lot of assassin-y stuff in secret rooms in the house and confronts her husband about it. He half-convincingly gives her an explanation about being a corporate fixer, and currently (episode 6), we are at a tense detente between the two. It’s implied that if she knew what he really did, she’d take their son and leave. However, she might anyway given how obviously untruthful he is being.
Seeing this, I got curious. So the other night I turned to my wife and asked her how she would feel if she found out I was an assassin for hire. I made it clear that I was talking world-class assassin, not the Craigslist, kill-my-husband-for-$1000 type. I explained that I’m good enough to warrant millions of dollars per job, but I do not have some code about only “bad” targets or whatever. I am a true assassin, paid to commit murders.
In retrospect, I should have prefaced this question with the context of my watching the show and what the show was about. Or really any context. But at least this way I got the most honest answer.
That is to say, she would not be thrilled to find out I was an assassin. Initially, she said she would be upset that I had lied all these years, and that my job not only put me at risk of prison or death, but also risked her and my son’s lives. But the more we talked, the more I started to get the sense she was coming around. You’ll notice the murder part of it wasn’t in the top three objections for her. I also pointed out it’s sort of cool if I’m the BEST assassin. Like, if someone is rude at the store she’s never going to feel worried about calling them on their shit. I can murder my way out of any situation.
I saw the daylight when, as she left the room I asked, “Also, I mean your husband is the world’s most dangerous assassin? Kind of hot, though right?” and she PAUSED. As soon as she tilted her head to consider it, she gave it away. She would be furious about me being an assassin, but only because I hadn’t been honest about it. The other stuff is fine.
So I ask you: If your significant other came to you, years into your relationship (or even at this current point in your relationship) and said “I actually kill people for money. And I’ve been doing it the entire time we’ve been together.” How would you take it?
Would you be ok with the profession? Would you call things off or stick it out?
Me, I’m cool with it. Tell me what you think I NEED to know, and I won’t ask anything beyond that. If you need help, I got you. Otherwise let’s get down to the Mexican place before there’s a wait.
Villian Corner:
In celebration of our own villains, this week pace of play for taking half the games into halftime in what felt like 30 minutes, each dispatch we will take a moment to appreciate a great villain from entertainment history.
Le Chiffre from Casino Royale
Anyone who has built a character in a video game knows the deal. You usually get five or so attributes, a certain amount of points to spend, and you choose which of those attributes to allocate your limited points toward. You have to choose if you favor speed over strength, accuracy over damage, etc.
Villains are built similarly. Do you want them terrifyingly strong? Smarter than everyone else? Cruel beyond measure, always two steps ahead, covered in cool gear? Are they eloquent? Do they have a signature voice? Pick what you want to focus on, because no villain can have them all.
This brings us to our man Le Chiffre, who is what happens when you spend all your points on one attribute: Charisma.
He is, from what I saw, not all that good at his job. By the time we meet him in the movie, he’s a very rich and powerful man acting as a banker to the world’s terrorist groups, so we are to believe that he was good at it leading up to the events of the movie. However, during the events of Casino Royale, here’s how things go:
He takes a warlord’s $100 million deposit and immediately uses it to buy shorts of an airline stock, meaning he didn’t have the money to do it himself
He does this, even as his broker is screaming over the phone at him that it’s a bad idea, because he secretly plans to blow up that airline’s new plane, thus tanking their stock and making a fortune. (He also apparently did this around 9/11, too? Seems weirdly complicated but ok.)
The guy he hires (through a middleman) to blow up the plane gets found out and killed by James Bond minutes after getting the green light to begin the operation
He hires a second guy (through the same middleman) and THAT guy gets caught and killed (blown up actually) by James Bond
The middleman also gets caught and killed by James Bond
Now in deep shit, he decides the best way out of this massive financial hole is to- no shit- host a high-stakes poker game
Addendum: He needs $100 million, and the poker game is 10 players, with a $10 million buy-in. I know there’s a $5 million re-buy, but Le Chiffre is supposed to be a mathematical genius. Did it not occur to him to maybe add in some cushion here? We know he’s supposedly the best at poker and plans to win the game outright, but why not make the buy-in $20 million or something?
He does well to start, but then James Bond starts kicking his ass, so he has to poison him
James Bond does not die from the poison and somehow looks better than before he was poisoned
During a game break, Le Chiffre gets jumped in his room by the warlord whose money he lost and is made to look like a complete bitch in front of the woman he was sleeping with
He ultimately loses the game, and has no recourse AT ALL but to kidnap James Bond and his lady friend, and hope he can get the number and passcode for the account where the poker money went out of them
He does not, and is murdered by people who are tired of him fucking things up
So maybe we caught him in an all-time slump, but his execution leaves a lot to be desired. This was less classic Bond villainy and more me in my early 20s: spend money you don’t have on something that seemed like a good idea at the time, panic when it turns out to have been a bad idea, then try to get some of it back at the casino.
But for all his failings, god DAMN Le Chiffre has the rizz.
He wears dope suits, has that silky, non-descript accent, and just oozes class. That man has not eaten a cut of meat that cost less than $100 in a decade. His cheeks haven’t touched a surface without plush cushions. He probably isn’t even aware of off-the-rack clothing.
He also does cool shit at the poker table. In one scene, he has to take a meeting with someone but he’s in the middle of a hand. When he gets up, the other players get upset. Because our fancy man does not have time for this, he just calls out what hand each of them are holding, shows he would have beaten them, and walks away. That’s a cool move. They’re all like “hey what the fuck are we playing or not?” and he dismissively lets them know he was the only one ever playing. They were just present to give him money.
The cooler thing, though, is the little chip flip thing he does at the big game. Everyone at a poker table eventually needs something to do with their hands, and people always try to have at least one cool chip trick they can do over and over to both impress others and kill that restless energy.
Le Chiffre’s trick is slick as hell I am super jealous of it.
It looks really easy, but it’s actually kind of hard to do well. It’s also subtle and still authoritative with that SNAP. Very charismatic. He also bluffs the shit out of James Bond, and actually sells it right up until the reveal, where he gives him that little “oh, what have we here?” face at the end of the clip.
Look how he slow rolls it, man. Rizz for dayyyys.
Oh also he weeps blood. Did I not mention that? I don’t know that it fits my charisma thing, but it’s a very cool villain trait to have. Weeping blood in a suit is much cooler than in any other attire, I would say.
Lastly, and perhaps what cements him among the great villain group, is the torture scene. This is the one villainy thing he does that is just pure bad guy shit, and no one who saw this torture scene has gone longer than three months without thinking about it at least momentarily.
“And of course, it’s not only the immediate agony, but the knowledge that if you do not yield soon enough, there will be little left to identify you as a man.”
That is both villainous AND eloquent, and he still looks dapper as hell given the situation.
Would I hire Le Chiffre to be group treasurer? No. But he is a testament to how effective a villain can be using almost entirely vibes? Very much so, Mr. Bond.
season power rankings
| Rank | Team | Change |
|---|---|---|
| #1 | Justin Childs | --- |
| #2 | Micah Thoman | --- |
| #3 | Will Armistead | --- |
| #4 | Jimmy Slater | --- |
| #5 | Kyle Luke | --- |
| #6 | Andrew DeWitt | ↑1 |
| #7 | Andres Santana | ↓-1 |
| #8 | JJ Bailey | ↑1 |
| #9 | Ryan Munson | ↓-1 |
| #10 | Steve Keers | --- |
| #11 | Chris Bailey | --- |
| #12 | Lee Morehouse | --- |
STRENGTH OF SCHEDULE
| Rank | Team | Change |
|---|---|---|
| #1 | Jimmy Slater | --- |
| #2 | Will Armistead | --- |
| #3 | Micah Thoman | ↑1 |
| #4 | Lee Morehouse | ↑1 |
| #5 | Justin Childs | ↓-2 |
| #6 | Steve Keers | ↑1 |
| #7 | Ryan Munson | ↓-1 |
| #8 | Andrew DeWitt | --- |
| #9 | JJ Bailey | --- |
| #10 | Chris Bailey | --- |
| #11 | Kyle Luke | --- |
| #12 | Andres Santana | --- |
PLAYOFF ODDS
| Team | Odds | Change |
|---|---|---|
| Justin Childs | 98.91% | ↑5.08% |
| Micah Thoman | 98.91% | ↓-0.63% |
| Andres Santana | 98.91% | ↓-0.63% |
| Kyle Luke | 87.27% | ↑19.54% |
| Andrew DeWitt | 87.27% | ↑19.54% |
| Ryan Munson | 87.27% | ↑19.54% |
| Will Armistead | 48.63% | ↓-19.10% |
| Jimmy Slater | 48.63% | ↑18.41% |
| JJ Bailey | 48.63% | ↑18.41% |
| Steve Keers | 11.21% | ↓-19.01% |
| Chris Bailey | 1.17% | ↓-4.64% |
| Lee Morehouse | 0% | --- |
THE
GAMES
THE GAMES
Dewitt vs. LEe (149.5.-85.6)
There was a point there where I almost believed. When Nick Chubb gets two touchdowns in a slopfest and Michael Pittman catches six of Richarchardson’s 11(!!!) completions, the eyebrows start to go up a little bit. Could Lee finally be on his way? Could this be the week he topples someone and simultaneously shakes up the playoff picture?
So DeWitt called up Lee for a chat.
And with that, he flipped the switches and hit the afterburners. 24 hours later, DeWitt had posted his season-high in points, thanks to 24.3 from his kicker and an absolute miracle of a long touchdown from Scary Terry at the end of the batshit Commanders/Cowboys game. JSN kicked in another top-five performance and Chuba Hubbard fought off irrelevance for one more week, leaving DeWitt with 7-5 record and enough points to have a chance at tiebreakers.
Week 14 should be interesting since he has five guys on bye, but before he tackles that little problem, he has to get past Tha Point Gawd. Surely Ja’Marr Chase and Saquon both starting won’t be a problem for him. Still, the man has certainly proved the early Coach of the Year hype was warranted, given that most of his original roster has been awarded a Purple Heart by now.
Lee, Lee, Lee. What a run, my dude. He’s been in three games all year. One against me that came down to the final NFL game of the week, one against Munson he lost because Olave left early and his kicker got zero, and one against Micah he had in the bag until the magic that is garbage-time Cooper Kupp.
He now owns the record for worst start and worst single-season losing streak. If he loses this week, he ties the longest losing streak in league history and is on the cusp of winless immortality.
Of course, that means I would have to beat him. Do I believe I will beat him? I do not. My team is BUILT to underperform in this game. The most fitting thing to happen would be for me to lose, be eliminated from the playoffs, ruin a beautiful losing streak, then have to write about all of it. Can’t wait.
Or, Lee could generously lay down for me and start Braelon Allen and Khalil Herbert. Who’s to say that isn’t the right call anyway?
Kicker watch!
So I set out on this kicker-based journey to aggravate Lee while also proving the position has real value. The lane of “upsetting, but informative” is where I operate best. And this week, I finally achieved maximum saturation in the markets of Lee’s life.
Thanks to my tireless works, kickers have now made their way to the airwaves of NPR. Not only that, a segment called “Are NFL kickers getting too good?” aired on MORNING EDITION (for those who don’t know that’s NPR’s biggest daily show). And let me tell you, they reported the SHIT out of this thing. Online, they even attached graphics!
“The number of 50-plus-yard field goal attempts has taken off dramatically. In the 1990s, an attempt took place once every three games. By 2019, that had risen only to about once every two games. Since then, the pace has nearly doubled.
They also talked to a bunch of coaches and former kickers, and all agree a rule change is imminent- likely in the form of narrowing the posts from 18.5 feet to 14 feet apart. However, this one was my favorite:
"Eventually, they'll probably just have to have a pole back there with a cowbell and you'll have to hit that, at the rate these guys are going."
That would be rad as hell and I want that immediately.
Anyway, the consensus was that coaches are finally catching up to the value kickers offer when leveraged correctly. Now that my campaign has reached the point where not even NPR is a safe space for Lee, I await his surrender.
Jimmy vs. Steve (142.7-134.4)
Man Steve’s boys went down with a fight, didn’t they? He traded for Breece Hall on a bye week, but was vehement he wasn’t packing it in for the year. If he could just get a little help, if he could just SURVIVE, he could deploy a full lineup and sprint down the stretch. He just needed the boys to rally, so he hit em with the Coach Gaines Special.
That’s just what Steve’s lad did. Mahomes put up his season high. Abdullah returned to an NFL field and scored 15 fantasy points. Brian Robinson played through what looked like a season-ending injury and got injured again. Jordan Addison took every steroid within reach and scored nearly 30. Even Keenan Allen thawed himself out of cryostasis to put up 19 points.
They did absolutely everything they could do, giving Steve his best score of the year. But like the Permian Panthers above, their best just wasn’t quite enough.
Jimmy has taken an abject pummeling this season. If he were a boxer, his fights would have broken CompuBox weeks ago given the amount of punches he’s taken. But he clung to life despite having 130 or more points scored on him for the eighth time this season.
Bucky Irving was the hero, setting season highs in rushing and receiving yards en route to 24 fantasy points. Aaron Jones was able to get over his psychosis and crossed the goal line, finally accepting it was just paint and not actually a flesh-melting force field. But the cavalry truly arrived Monday night, when Cameron Dicker and JK Scott suited up for the chargers.
Them boys went for 31.6 combined points and killed Steve’s Hollywood ending.
Fitting, since it was Jimmy who ended Steve’s historic win streak in Week 1, stopping a train that had rolled through 16 straight regular-season stop signs. Steve scored 267.7 points against that little handsome sumbitch this season and went 0-2, losing by a combined 9.4 points.
Jimmy remains alive and dangerous, with the fourth-most points scored and a 6-6 record. He’ll have to earn his way in, though, facing Kyle and Will in the final two weeks.
JJ vs. Andres (112.8-97.3)
I cannot believe that there were two points in this matchup where I was legitimately in a place to lose the game. Andres was starting Cam Akers and Dylan Laube, for fuck’s sake! HOW was this ever a game?!
At the start of the afternoon games, I was up four points. I had Conner, Myers and AJ Brown on SNF to go, so I felt good. Then Conner had nine yards at the half and Myers had a missed extra point. Just a note to the Cardinals here:
You suck ass when you don’t use James Conner.
There have been three games all season where Conner got single-digit fantasy points. In those games, the Cardinals ran him nine times, seven times, and seven times. In those games, the Cardinals have scored 13, 13, and 6 points, their three lowest scores of the season. I’m not a fucking genius, but one plus one still equals two as far as I know.
Anyway, Myers kicked a 50-yarder at the end to scrape something out of nothing, but Monday Night Lamar was growing ever more prominent on the horizon. I still had a 13-point lead, but Steve and I looked up Lamar’s MNF stats and I about shit my spine out.
In his career on Monday night, Jackson has thrown for 1,700 yards, 20 touchdowns, no picks, and has a QB rating of 124. I briefly took solace in the fact the Chargers were allowing the fewest points per game, but that was erased when I learned Lamar is 3-0 when facing the best-scoring defense and has a passer rating of 111.
Thankfully, AJ Brown escaped the reaping and gave me enough to crawl out with a win. But it didn’t FEEL like a win, you know? It was less of a celebration and more like this:
When you sweat that much you still need to lay down afterward. It sort of felt like winning a hot pepper challenge or something. I lost so much of myself in the process.
Andres gets real running backs again now that his byes have passed, so his witchcraft won’t be limited. Expect a season low from Will in Week 13 as the Dark Lord now must make up for the one that got away. AJ Brown taunted him. He will need to make someone an example. I’m betting it’s Achane.
Justin Vs. Micah (158.9-130.1)
Justin Weekly High Score
So this is just gonna be a weekly thing, then? 60 points from somebody until the wheels fall off? After Barkley went for his first 70-yarder I figured the affair was over, but it wasn’t until Micah sent an exasperated text at the second 70-yarder that I realized Justin NEEDED all those points.
If Barkley had gotten 30 or even 40, Micah was still very much in it with Henry to go. The big beefy boy got 140 yards of his own, but missed out on the endzone thanks to the refs’ dogmatic adherence to calling illegal formation on anything slightly out of the ordinary.
Justin had individual guys put up 60 points in two of the last three weeks and kind of escaped both times. This box score looks a little more lopsided than his game with Jimmy, but it’s closer than it appears.
In between those two weeks, he beat Chris by 0.8 points.
Hang on.
Do…. do we have a pretender atop the throne?
Is it all costume jewelry but we thought it was diamonds because the light hit it just right? Have we been tricked?
After all, the greatest deception is not the one the magician performs, but the one we perform on ourselves.
Perhaps Justin has conjured the visage of a great castle, leaving our imaginations to fill its interior with opulence and grandeur when actually it’s decrepit and empty inside.
Behind every mask is a face, Mr. Childs, and behind every face is a story. What’s yours?
A lot to think about.
Micah gets to be fully-loaded for one week before losing Henry for the final game of the season. He should be just fine thanks to all those points, but given the logjam in the middle of the standings, every game is going to end up impacting a playoff spot, so mark your calendars.
This week, he got the Kyler Murray special I talked about a few weeks ago. No quarterback is more simultaneously a league-winner and a lineup-killer. He CANNOT put a string of great games together. After burning Micah in Week 9 with a 4.6 right after posting a 23.9 in Week 8, he then put up 28.1 in Week 10.
The numbers say his next game should be a dud, but I know what Micah was thinking. Forced to start Kyler because Purdy was out, I’m guessing Micah looked at the scoring pattern, and then tried to Devon-Sawa-in-Final Destination his way to predicting a good game.
“It’s the design! Look! Look! The bye week throws off the pattern! It skipped Murray and went to Brock Purdy!”
Nope. You can’t cheat it my man. Murray did his thing and crippled Micah’s comeback chances, despite Josh Jacobs showing up AGAIN when he was most needed.
Also Micah- I know you didn’t start him because you smelled it coming, but isn’t Lamb just fucking infuriating? I don’t think anything makes me angrier in fantasy right now than when I click on Lamb’s name, and the little ESPN box pops up and displays “PRK: 3” below his name.
No the fuck he is not. Stop this. He just got 10 (TEN!) catches and didn’t even reach 12 points. This is not the third-best fantasy receiver to have. Even the points aren’t making sense to me. If they would take my calls, I would call the ESPN Fantasy offices 10 times a day about CeeDee Lamb-related fraudulence from their site.
Micah at least knew what he was buying when he traded for him, but anyone who drafted him was bamboozled.
Can’t Bear It
Did Justin start a Chicago Bear when he shouldn’t have?
He did not! Literally had to start all of them
Who was it?
No one
Who should he have started in his place?
N/A
How many points did it cost him?
Zero!
Examination
For two weeks, Justin has engineered a situation in which he cannot be criticized for his Bears-centric lifestyle. This is like that bit in Moneyball where Brad Pitt (Billy Beane) looked at the analytics and determined playing Scott Hatteberg at first base gave them a better chance of winning more games, despite him never having played first before. Manager Art Howe (rest in power big Phil!) won’t stop playing Carlos Pena at first base because he’s an All-Star, so Pitt just trades Pena away so Hatteberg has to play.
Justin just cleared the road for his boys with some bye weeks. But hey! He was rewarded with DJ Moore’s second useful game of the season! You know what’s funny about DJ Moore, other than the fact he has two good games and seven in single digits? He had the exact same amount of targets and catches as he did last week. Seven and Seven. The Bears have made him entirely touchdown-dependent. His three highest reception totals in a game this season are eight in Week 3, seven in Week 11, and seven this most recent week. If you added the fantasy points from Week 3 and Week 11 together, you wouldn’t match Week 12. Will Justin ignore this and start him this week? Just watch the waiver wires for that Mooney drop. Gotta clear “cap space.”
Season impact:
70.7 lost points
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.
Ashtyn Davis is on an absolute HEATER. We are approaching Breese territory. So I give you “Big Montana” Will Dissly.
Do NOT let that hair fool you. This man is one stressful year away from looking like Flea in The Big Lebowski. Also, as a facial-hair-dependent myself, I know when a man is sporting a beard out of necessity. That’s a load-bearing beard right there. I hope Dissly is taking his vitamins- can’t afford to lose his robust coat.
Kyle vs. Will (135.1-127.8)
Ahhhhh Flexer’s Remorse. I know it well. You can look at CMC getting backup-level points and point to that as the reason Will lost, or even Arizona’s staunch refusal to throw a catchable ball to Trey McBride when he’s open in the endzone, but the truth is much simpler than that.
It was Thursday night, and Will had to choose between Najee Harris and Courtland Sutton, and he chose wrong. I know this. I have the proof on my phone.
That was an 18-point difference, and that was the difference between a win and the loss. As someone who has spent all season obsessing over three different one-vs.-one calls I got wrong that resulted in a loss, I can’t throw stones. I didn’t handle them well. The self-administered tattoos of their names on my chest prove that. Will did not handle it well emotionally either, though I think he woke up Tuesday able to move on, which I’m envious of.
I firmly believe the absolute worst situation fantasy-wise is having a reachable lead but all your players are done for the week while your opponent still has someone going. For some reason when we find ourselves in that position our opponent catching us feels inevitable, but when the situation is reversed, we have no faith we’ll close the gap. Will knew the score, basically that if either Ladd McConkey (grow up and get a real name) or Andrews scored, it was over. He could survive the yards, but a TD would be fatal.
I don’t know what Kyle was feeling, but I can’t imagine having your hopes riding on Ladd McConkey (you ridiculous child) and 2024 Mark Andrews felt great. It didn’t help that the Chargers hadn’t given up a TD to a tight end all year and allowed 40 yards per week on average (a number greatly boosted by Kelce’s 129 against them). But improbably, the touchdown came. And thanks to Quentin Johnston (more on that in a minute), Ladd McConkey (seriously, pick anything else) ended up with enough yards to have won the week anyway by the end.
Kyle, thanks entirely to Jayden Daniels’ panic points at the end of the game against Dallas, stopped his brutal four-game slide. Outside of Nico Collins, no other skill player gave 100 percent. He got a great day out of his punter, but everybody else (except Collins) came in under projections. I guess Andrews exceeded his, but that’s like stepping over a limbo bar in the final round. You could clear that on crutches. It was Daniels, and the seven points he picked up on that improbable McLaurin catch-and-run touchdown, that was the difference in the game. Fantasy, like the NFL, is a game of inches. In Will’s case, the inches on his phone screen between Flex and Bench.
Having staved off death, Kyle draws a very cornered, very angry Jimmy in Week 13, and wouldn’t you know it? All of Kyle’s children appear as though they’ll play! This is what you love to see right here. A must-win game for Kyle with EVERY wide receiver available to choose from and two slots to fill. How lucky is he? I bet he isn’t stressed about it at all.
Munson vs. Chris (98.8-70)
I fucking hate Munson’s team. I’ve stared at it too long. It’s been 12 weeks of mashing my face against my computer screen like a goddamn Magic Eye hoping his roster would turn into something recognizable. Nothing.
Now whenever I look at it I react like a dog that’s just seen a horse on television. I may have never hated anything more, honestly.
He is now down to two good players- the guy at the top of his roster (Nix) and the guy at the bottom (Tommy Townsend). I like Nix! He’s been very good. He should not be the keystone of a 7-5 playoff team.
Nor should Townsend, who looks like the college guy who hits on all the moms when he’s refereeing a children’s soccer game.
“Really? His mom? I thought you were the babysitter”
clicks tongue, winks
But there they are, carrying this collection of dipshits (Allen Lazard and Stefon Diggs are still here? Why?) to postseason glory. His team is proof that all closed systems gravitate toward entropy.
On the other side, Chris got Goffed. She got Goffed real good. That man’s fantasy season is a profound assault on good taste. I don’t think he’s even aware he’s playing in NFL games week to week. I think he’s only tangentially aware he plays football for a living. He just shows up and stands where he’s told, throws the ball when asked, and finds the whole thing pretty darn amusing. There has never been an emptier vessel.
I bet during team activities they just sit Goff down at one of those pediatrician waiting room tables and let him go to town.
The “quarterback room”
I wouldn’t be surprised if they had to jingle a set of keys to get Goff to pay attention to play calls.
Anyway, up until the MNF game, it looked like if Chris had gone with Tua instead, she would have had Munson on the ropes. Despite some bad performances, she had Quentin Johnston still to go, and he’d been trending up! Even with the 20-point hit from Goff, it wasn’t impossible. After all, Johnston had gotten 28 points once already this season, and that’s how much Chris trailed by. Add in that the Chargers are throwing more and the Ravens flat-out do not have a pass defense, and it wasn’t an outlandish notion he could make it a game.
But then, this happened.
I’ll warn you now, you’re about to watch a grown man catch, inflame, and then die from, The Yips. Johnston had a very prominent drop problem last season, so much so that there were legitimate concerns it could derail his career. He seemed to be over it this year, and everyone had a nice sigh of relief. But the thing about The Yips is, it just takes a little spark.
That was near the top of the second quarter, with the Chargers up 7-0. A tough catch, sure, but Herbert put it right in his basket and if he holds on and falls right, that’s a touchdown.
He dropped it, and then things QUICKLY spiraled from there.
Here’s the next target he got. Third and six with 11 minutes to go in the fourth, the Chargers are trailing 16-23 and need a big play.
That’s a PERFECT play call and Johnston is wide open with miles of green once he turns upfield. He would have had to beat a man, but he has two blockers and could very much score a 70-yarder on this.
Yipped.
Next target. Now there’s three minutes left in the game, and the Chargers are down 16-30. It’s likely over, but they still have life if they can score quickly.
Yes, he stumbled a bit on the route, but the ball once again hit him in the hands and that would have moved the sticks and stopped the clock.
Yippers.
The next target came one play later. The Chargers, hoping to snap him out of it maybe, went right back to Johnston on ANOTHER wide open chain-mover.
And the collapse is complete.
Nothing like a full-blown case of the dropsies in a primetime game to help your psyche! Especially when you thought they were in remission and they flared back up in time to cost your totally-not-intense coach a game against his brother. I’m sure Johnston will be fine.
His little whoopsie fest put the nail in Chris’ coffin, however. She fell to Munson’s “team” and dropped to 4-8, which knocks her out of the playoffs barring a cataclysm atop the standings.
