Commish Notes Week 5
I seem to be running a little behind this week on the notes, so in the interest of time, let’s skip the sassy intro and just do a series of clips – many of them football related!
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Harsh Mistress
Meaningless real life play turns into 9 points of Fantasy Gold for Eron and the Rat Pack. This play had me in my biggest shame spiral to date this season.
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Steve Smith is just a football player
Steve Smith is a goddam man and this play will prove it to you. Check out the mid-air stiff arm and how he doesn’t even give a FUCK that he is hit late. He just goes right on with his celebration and THEN turns around to kick some ass. (The slow motion replays of the catch are at the end of the clip.)
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The Bo-Zone
This one is for Little Buhr, who probably wants Dwayne Bowe back about now.
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Cruz Control
Had to put this Victor Cruz highlight in. Note that Eli’s great read and pass are really what made the play.
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Sweetness
In honor of that Walter Payton book that just came out, I figured a few highlights of Sweetness might be in order. True he was no Cedric Benson, and also possessed no significant leaping ability, but he could play a little. In fact, it still kind of bums me out that Emmitt Smith broke his rushing record. Emmitt Smith sucked.
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Weekly Awards
Game of the Week
Mitchell’s Marauders 118.48 over Crazy Canucks 102.77
It turns out that once again there were multiple good options for game of the week this week, including Los Pescaderos Monday Night comeback over the Mormon Defenders and The Rat Pack’s dispensing of LT’s Crackheeds. Both were no doubt well played games, but in the end it was the highly hyped Marauders vs. Canucks, undefeated vs. undefeated match-up that takes home the prize. I’m going to call this an upset, because going in it looked like the full strength Canucks had enough ammunition to take home the victory over the bye-and-injury-laden Marauders. But credit those scrappy Marauders, who stepped up and delivered a big time bragging rights victory. Will it be enough to reshape the power rankings?
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Players of the Week
Quarterback
Aaron Rodgers, Crazy Canucks; 31.66 points, 26/39, 396 yards, 2 TD, 1 rush, -1 yards
He trained with Eli in the offseason to learn how to sense and avoid the rush better
Aaron Rodgers makes his second straight appearance here as the QB of the week. His legs may have been oddly dormant but his arm remained deadly as he notched up nearly 400 yards (again) en route to another 30-plus point outing. His lowest output this year has been 28 points, rather impressive. He is now easily the leading scorer in MLOM at 183 points. The next closest is Tom Brady, well behind at 159.
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Running Back
Adrian Peterson, LT’s Crackheeds, 31.17 points, 29 for 122 yards, 3 TDs
You call this an attempted tackle? Pathetic.
It’s kind of hard to shame spiral when a player gets over 100 yards and 3 TDs, but Commish managed to do it this week with All Day. You see, all of AP’s touchdowns came in the first quarter, leading me to the erroneous thinking that he was due for 12 touchdowns on the day (give or take 2 either way). When that did not happen, it was actually kind of a letdown. Fantasy football is a sickness. But still, All Day got the job done, and makes his second appearance here as the RB of the week.
(Costacos Brothers Poster of the Week)
Congratulations to Adrian Peterson who is the recipient of this week’s Costacos Brothers Poster of the Week Award! I found this gem of the ‘original’ Curt Warner on the interwebs and it couldn’t be denied. C-Dub 1.0 used to be a stud RB for the Seahawks back in the day, and his number 28 reminded me of AP. Peterson might be the more talented player, but his uniform pales in comparison. The get up here really is something else; C-dub 1.0 looks like he stepped out of the best science fiction movie EVAR, and comes fully equipped with Moon Boots, a glowing football that looks like a Tron Disc, Laser Tag Breast Plate, Bladder Armor, Flash Gordon Villain Neck Roll, and some sort of football field targeting computer built into his helmet. He looks like he arrived on the scene calmly, but the fire trail on the field behind him tells a different story. And as if he couldn’t kick your ass alone, he’s got Slave I hovering behind him for air support. All in all, early into the third quarter of the Galactic Bowl, I’m surprised the score is ONLY 28-0, Seahawks over Replicants.
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Wide Receiver
Dwayne Bowe, Mitchell’s Marauders, 27.03 points, 7 receptions, 128 yards, 2 TD’s
Double Dwayne Bowe - What does it MEAN?!?
Bowe narrowly edged out Pierre Garcon and his 25 points to claim top honors for the week. One of his touchdown grabs was positively sublime (highlight above). It’s odd that despite Megatron’s dominance he has yet to be featured as the top WR of any week. (When it does happen, though, look for these notes to really devolve into a Megatron love fest.)
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Tight End
Vernon Davis, The Gang; 15.85 points, 3 receptions for 39 yards, 2 TD
This doesn’t seem like an actual Vernon Davis (downfield tight end) stat line. More like Anthony Fasano or his ilk during one random week of the season. Davis managed to beat out Jimmy Graham (last week’s winner) by less than a point. Graham’s numbers, 8 for 129 and 0 TDs, definitely seem more like Vernon Davis numbers. Vernon Davis remains proof that even shitty athletes can succeed in the NFL.
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Team of the Week
The Gang, 127.79 points
The Gang, who let a couple of wins slip away the last few weeks, came out strong this week, winning by the largest margin of any team. They also posted the best overall score and avoided the dreaded losing record, moving instead to 3-2 instead with a solid win over the GBP. Despite just 20.71 points (Yahoo projection: 20.78, now that’s eerie) from Tom Brady, everyone else came up big with double digit scores except for, notably, the Green Bay members of the Gang to include James Starks (5.6 points) and the GB defense (8 points). Huge props to PPR for playing Pierre Garcon whose 25.83 points were good for second best WR output of the week. Going to 2-3 might have been costly for the Gang, but they righted the ship at the right time and should remain firmly etched in the upper tier of the power rankings.
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Coach of the Week
Team Fwob
Despite dealing with multiple players on bye weeks and Andre Johnson sidelined with injury, Team Fwob came out guns ablazin’ this week and backed up their swagger with points and perhaps the victory of the season, over rival and previously undefeated Iwan Thomas and his Canucks. They maintained their undefeated record, and somehow managed to coach a 25.22 point game out of Eli Manning despite his multiple picks and game-ending pick-for-six. The Eric Decker trash talk session might have not have panned out (0.73 points), but perhaps in making Iwan “fear” him, Fwob succeeded in drawing coverage Decker’s way thereby opening the door for the other players to make plays and score points. Bob and Fwats have some serious swagger right now, kind of like the street rappers in Teen Witch. They scare and confuse you a little, and you don’t want to walk to close to their car, but you’re also strangely attracted to them. They wonder aloud, can you ‘top that’?
The Team Fwob Swagger Wagon in Action
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Goat of the Week
Vincent Jackson, 3.77 points
Why the long face?
I had trouble with picking a Goat of the Week this week. Nothing really stood out, but in the end I had to go with an underperforming player on the lowest scoring team in the closest game. And so, I present Vincent Jackson, whose measly 3.77 points seem horrible when considering his talent level, auction price, quarterback, and quality of opponent this week. If that guy even has an average game, The Brown Trout are right in this game and with a just a little extra (that you kind of expect with a player of this caliber) they come away with an easy win. Vincent, until the next time we see you in Oceanaire, come get your horns.
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Interdivision War
Enemies of the Crown – 6 wins
MI-6 – 7 wins
Week 5 was the second in back-to-back all-out interdivision warfare weeks, and credit the MI-6 for taking home another round with a 3-2 game edge. They come out on top 7-3 in the two weeks combined and seem to be making up well for the now all but forgotten 0-3 start.
It will be back to single matches for a few weeks until weeks 9 and 10 when the all-out brawl starts anew, and as we leave our interdivision madness for a few weeks, the cumulative end result of inter-division warfare seems pretty even thus far. The records are close. How about points? It turns out that the Enemies of the Crown have a slight edge with 2842.41 total points as compared to 2753.13 for MI-6. Conclusions? The divisions are closer than the vice-commish and I would like to believe. But the points tell a tale. The MI-6 has more wins despite less points. They are clearly the less talented, luckier division. I think that’s fair. Or put another way, MI-6 sucks! Torrey Pines High School Football rules!
Let’s see how this week’s individual performances shape up.
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The Rat Pack over LT’s Crackheeds
Performance reminiscent of:
“The Chinese have a saying; ‘Before setting off on revenge, you first dig two graves’.”
Roger Moore in For Your Eyes Only
From Wikipedia:
Bond attempts to locate a missile command system while becoming tangled in a web of deception spun by rival Greek businessmen along with Melina Havelock, a woman seeking to avenge the murder of her parents.
A great Moore performance in an underrated Bond film, a nice symbol of Eryn’s (perhaps) underrated performance this week.
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Los Pescaderos over Mormon Defenders:
Performance reminiscent of:
“I know the rules, and number one is "no deals'.”
Pierce Brosnan in Die Another Day
From Wikipedia:
Bond leads a mission to North Korea, during which he is found out and, after seemingly killing a rogue North Korean colonel, he is captured and imprisoned. More than a year later, Bond is released as part of a prisoner exchange, and, surmising that someone within the British government betrayed him, he follows a trail of clues in an effort to earn redemption by finding his betrayer and killing a North Korean agent he considers central to his torture.
One of the better Brosnan films, which unfortunately isn’t saying much. But still it was a nice comeback film after the less than stellar “The World is Note Enough”. Similarly, Gabe had a nice comeback this week. (You see the connection? I spend hours on Bond Wikipedia to come up with crap like this I’ll have you know. )
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Mitchell’s Marauders over Crazy Canucks
Performance reminiscent of:
"That gun, it looks more fitting for a woman."
Sean Connery in Thunderball
From Wikpedia:
The film follows Bond’s mission to find two NATO atomic bombs stolen by SPECTRE, which holds the world ransom for £100 million in diamonds, in exchange for not destroying an unspecified major city in either England or the United States (later revealed to be Miami). The search leads Bond to the Bahamas, where he encounters Emilio Largo, the card-playing, eye-patch wearing SPECTRE Number Two. Backed by the CIA and Largo’s mistress, Bond’s search culminates in an underwater battle with Largo’s henchmen.
Thunderball, a Bond classic, was one of the highest critically acclaimed Bonds of all – just as this victory by Team Fwob was! (Again, note the connections.)
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Fightin’ Birdmen over The Brown Trout
Birdmen’s Victory sponsored by:
“How do you like my personal pantheon of great commanders?”
Brad Whitaker! (One of the villains from “The Living Daylights”)
An ugly win deserves an ugly winner, and who’s uglier than Jo Don Baker playing the role of Brad Whitaker, a fourth tier villain in a third tier Bond film? From Wikipedia:
“Brad Whitaker is an international black market arms dealer from the U.S. He is fascinated by war, but his actual military career is a failure, so he turns to arms dealing to organize his own personal military force. Expelled from West Point for cheating, he spends a short stint as a mercenary in the Belgian Congo before working with various criminal organizations to help finance his first arms deals. He loves military history, and it is implied that he wargames various historical conflicts using automated miniature figures and effects, such as the battles of Agincourt, Waterloo, and Gettysburg. In a conversation with Bond, Whitaker believes that Pickett’s Charge should have been made up Little Round Top, and that if Grant was in charge of the Union at Gettysburg, he would have crushed the Army of Northern Virginia, ending the war.
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Whitaker even has a pantheon of “great military commanders” in his headquarters, which included some of history’s most famous and infamous figures, such as Adolf Hitler, Napoleon Bonaparte, Genghis Khan, Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, and Attila the Hun. Whitaker holds these men in high regard and calls them “surgeons who removed society’s dead flesh”. “
Sounds like an amazing character.
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The Gang over the GBP
The Gang’s victory sponsored by:
"Mr. Bond, you persist in defying my efforts to provide an amusing death for you."
Hugo Drax! (The Villian from Moonraker)
From Wikipedia:
“Hugo Drax is a billionaire living in California in a château that was imported from France. He owns Drax Industries, which constructs space shuttles. Drax sought to destroy the entire human race except for a small group of carefully selected humans, both male and female, that would leave Earth on six shuttles (the one just stolen from NASA to replace one that had faults) and have sanctuary on a space station in orbit over Earth. Using chemical weapons created by Drax’s scientists, derived from the toxin of a rare South American plant, the Black Orchid, at an installation in Italy, he would wipe out the remainder of humanity. After a period of time, when the chemical agents had become harmless, Drax and his master race would return to Earth to reinhabit the planet. These humans would supposedly live in harmony with one another under his command.”
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Slap Chop Official Power Rankings
Watch This - You're Gonna Love my Nuts
Last Week’s Ranks:
1)Crazy Canucks
2)Mitchell’s Marauders
3)The Gang
4)LT’s Crackheeds
5)The Rat Pack
6)Los Pescaderos
7)The Brown Trout
8)The Fightin’ Birdmen
9)The GBP
10)Mormon Defenders
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The big news this week is that the Canucks have been ousted from the top spot. By failing to win over the Marauders despite the injury and bye issues faced by said Marauders, I’ve got no choice but to elevate the Marauders into the lead position. Though Rodgers and the Canucks point totals are to remain feared, I think the top to bottom depth of the Marauders is superior and they proved it Sunday. The Gang, on the heels of their big victory over the GBP, round out the ‘top tier’ at the third position.
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I’ve got the middle tier teams as really, really even, and they include the Rat Pack, Los Pescaderos, and my beloved Heeds. I give the nod to the Rat Pack who have hot players like Stafford and Fred Jackson that seem to put up consistently good numbers week to week, though long term I worry about the Rat Pack WR corps and they have played the easiest schedule in the league (aka they are currently the luckiest team). Los Pescaderos are right there with Lion explosion of Best and Megatron and the re-emergence of Foster, but I’d like to see more consistency from Schaub (and more points) before elevating them further. In regards to my Crackheeds I’m rather harsh on them this week, dropping them two spots, but they need to win, period. The Heeds still have the fourth most points but just 2 wins, that’s not going to cut it (as we’ve seen in years past) and the WR corps is more or less a master’s course in unreliable and inconsistent at this point.
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I’ve got the last four teams in the lower tier, where I have the Birdmen leading that group due to the emergence of Cam Newton as well as the established bonafides, McFadden and Fitzgerald. With a potentially healthy Gates looming, the Birdmen could make some noise in upcoming weeks. The GBP have played the hardest schedule but have been fairly awful the last few weeks and are way too dependent on their WR corps and a faltering (fantasy wise) Rivers. The Brown Trout are sinking faster than the Titanic (and have put up this year’s only two stink bombs) but stay just ahead of the Defenders who can’t buy points right now save for their defenses, and frankly, that’s reason for concern.
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Updated Power Rankings
1)Mitchell’s Marauders (5-0)
2)Crazy Canucks (4-1)
3)The Gang (3-2)
4)The Rat Pack (3-2)
5)Los Pescaderos (3-2)
6)LT’s Crackheeds (2-3)
7)Fightin Birdmen (2-3)
8)The GBP (1-4)
9)The Brown Trout (1-4)
10)Mormon Defenders (1-4)
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Final Word
I’m getting these notes in just under the wire. Look for decent notes again next week but the week following there may be clearly abbreviated notes as my mom and sister will be in town the whole week (meaning I won’t have four-plus hours to spend on notes). We might even have trouble pulling off a podcast that week, but we’ll see what shakes out.
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The podcast has continued to be fun to do. The following managers have yet to appear: Little Buhr, Gabe, Norm, PPR, and Jonny G. I’d like to get them all (not holding my breath on PPR for sure) but if not we’ll start going into round 2 with various guests. I’m also a little disappointed Bob and I couldn’t find time to do a start ‘em/rape ‘em feature this week on the Bobcast. Really that’s poor direction by me. Oh well, next time.
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Good luck to all teams this week,
Commish
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