Season Obituaries - 7th Place
(White vest and white tie, such a fire look......a long time ago.)
One week of the playoffs down, two more to go. The field has been narrowed to just four teams and anything could happen these last two weeks. Will Keetz run the table like everyone expects him to? Will Lamone go from worst to first? Will Robby D make an under-the-radar run to the top? So much to be decided in the next two weeks. The only thing we can confirm is that we will have a new GW Bush League Champion this year. Both of our former champs are out (Guy and Tieg). Guy met his fate Sunday when Dez Bryant fumbled away my football….
Tieg on the other hand had to wait til Monday night to meet his fate. It was a cruel one, but that’s fantasy. Four teams left, two weeks to go. A new GW Bush League Champ will be named.
Annnnd we’re back for the next season obituary. This week we’re just going to feature the 7th place team since 6th and 5th place are still up for grabs. Also, I’m in ‘Lando Florida this week for training (with Guy and shoulda been Ken). I have precious little time to write this as evidenced by the fact I’m writing this at 11:39 on a Tuesday. Oh well, that’s what you get from this Commissioner. Sure, I could go to bed, read some Barstool or look at some NFL.com. But no, I’m here providing the league with entertainment. I’m going to follow the same format as last week, so no further explanation necessary. Enjoy.
Broke Back Caleb (6-7):
Overview:
Coming in 7th place with a record of 6-7 and 1,548 points scored is Broke Back Caleb owned by Kevin O’Connell. Kev scored the 6th most points during the year, but it wasn’t enough to land him in the top 6 teams for the season. He’s actually one of two top 6 scoring teams (along with Frader) to miss the playoffs, which reminds us of one cruel truth about fantasy football – it’s so dependent on who you play in any given week.
What Went Right:
We’ve discussed this, but I just have to mention it here. Kev had the best call-out of anyone this entire year. Sure, Tieg had a great call-out on Frader this week – “hush Gabriel”. And sure Lamone is full of great insults, but Kev took the cake when he called out Ken for wearing Umbro shorts during our Austin Trip. It was a hilarious call-out and a joke that will live on in infamy within our league. Hell, it is 3 months later and I still laugh to myself every time I think of it. I honestly hadn’t noticed that Kenny wore those shorts for the entire weekend. You can’t get that by Kev though, Ken was called out in epic fashion.
What Went Wrong:
I’ll go back to draft day for this as well. The first thing that went wrong for Kev was that he hurt his back playing spike ball in Austin. I’ve never played the game, so I don’t have much say here. Having said that, I’ve never heard of anyone getting hurt playing spike ball. Yous guys played about 10 games and Kev was the only one to so much as twist an ankle. Unfortunately for him, he nearly slipped a disk in his back. I guess we’re getting old after all.
Aside from that, Kev once again had terrible luck. First things first, he started 3-0. Simple match tells us that he went 3-7 over his last 10 games. That’s pretty bad. If he had gone 4-6 over those last 10 he would have made the playoffs. On top of that, Broke Back Caleb suffered some brutal losses. In week 6, he lost by 1.6 points. He only got 8.9 from Devonta Freeman when Freeman scored 24.4 the week before and 15.5 the week after. He also only got 7.9 from Larry Fitz, who scored 23.1 the week before and 11.5 the week after. Swap any of those scores for week 6 and Kev has a win.
The following week, he lost by 4.3 points. It’s not as close, but still a tough loss. Any time you lose by less than 5 points it hurts. He only got 16 points out of Matt Ryan that week, which was Ryan’s lowest score of the season.
Bad things come in threes, so the next week he lost by 1 solid point. That is just brutal, three close losses in a row. I’d rather lose by 30 than lose by 1, I think most people can agree with me on that one. To make matters worse, he put up 123.5 that week which is usually enough to get a win. Robby D’s defense scored 10 points that week and that was the main difference.
Best Owner Move:
I’ll go with Kev’s 6th round draft pick, Melvin Gordon. Gordon was AWFUL his rookie year and as a result, he slipped to the 6th round. Kev took him AFTER Jeremy Langford (Luma) and despite the fact Gordon scored just 1 point this past week, he’s still the #5 scoring RB in fantasy. Gordon had 9 games with 20 or more points and his lowest score of the year was 14 (aside from this past week). He had 5 games with 25 or more points and even had a 43 point game in week 9 when he rushed for 196 yards and a TD. Through the regular season, Gordon was easily in the conversation for fantasy MVP when you consider where he was drafted. Overall a savvy pick by Kev that paid huge dividends.
Worst Owner Move:
Let’s stick with the draft here and talk about Cam Newton. Kev picked Cam Newton as the 13th overall pick and it turned out to be a disaster. Yes, Cam’s ADP was close to that (16), but this isn’t a QB driven league and he could have had him in the third round. Picking a QB in the top 20 is just not advisable and it bit Kev in the ass. Cam is currently the 19th highest scoring QB behind guys such as Blake Bortles, Joe Flacco and Tyrod Taylor. He’s put up *okay* numbers, but it was just way too early. The next QB (Aaron Rodgers) wasn’t drafted until the 32d pick (4th round). He’s only thrown multiple TD passes in THREE GAMES this year and has 6 games with 17 or fewer points. Not what you’re looking for out of your 2nd round pick.
Historical/Pop Culture/Literary Comparison:
You all know I’m Greek, which means a few things. First, I’m greasy as fuck. It sucks, sucks sucks. Second and more relevant, it means I know a little bit about Greek culture, history, literature and mythology. Greek Tragedy is one of my favorite subject areas since the stories are pretty interesting and timeless. They speak to human nature, tragic flaws, suffering etc etc. We’ve all experienced Greek Tragedies in this league, but there is someone who suffers even more. Someone who suffers throughout each and every year. That person is Kevin O’Connell.
There were two separate Greek Tragedies that perfectly fit Kev, so you’ll get a double feature today. The first character is Sisyphus and the second is Prometheus. Let’s go over Sisyphus first:
Sisyphus was a king in Ancient Greece. Not the only king of course, but the king of one of its many city-states. That’s another cool aspect of Ancient Greece - the city-states. It was somewhat similar to Westeros in Game of Thrones when the “Seven Kingdoms” were actually independent kingdoms and not part of the “realm” (before the show, serious fans only). Getting back on track, Sisyphus was a known trickster and a selfish man who could not be trusted. He defied the gods on a number of occasions and the ultimate deceit came upon his death. When he died, Hades came to bring him down to the underworld (Hades was the god of the underworld/death - like a mix of the grim reaper and the devil). Hades brought with him a pair of handcuffs, meant to bind the hands and legs of Sisyphus. The trickster struck again and asked Hades to demonstrate how the handcuffs worked. Like an idiot, Hades obliged and ended up locking himself up. Sisyphus escaped the underworld for a time and continued to live his life.
So far this is nothing like Kev, but I’m getting to the point. The indiscretions eventually caught up to Sisyphus and he was brought down to the underworld to join the rest of the dead people. Still infuriated, Hades drew up a special punishment for him. For all of eternity Sisyphus would be sentenced to hard labor. His task? To roll a large boulder up a hill. Here’s the catch - as soon as the boulder reaches the top of the hill, it rolls all the way down. Sisyphus must then walk down to the bottom of the hill and roll it back up, only to watch it roll back down. On and on and on for the rest of eternity.
The gods chose this punishment because it represents futility and hopelessness. If that doesn’t describe Kev’s fantasy football fortunes then I don’t know what does. One day this may change, but it’s hard to predict when.
Part two of our double feature is about Prometheus, a Titan in Greek mythology. Prometheus was like Sisyphus in that he pissed off the Greek gods. Similarly, he was known for his cunning and deceitful ways just like Sisyphus. The major difference was that this time, Zeus was tricked instead of Hades (Zeus and Hades were brothers, Zeus ruled Mount Olympus/heaven and Hades ruled the underworld/hell – raw deal). Like all Greek Mythology there are about 10 versions of the story, but the main theme goes like this:
Prometheus and Zeus were eating together at a feast on Mount Olympus. Prometheus offered Zeus two meals – one was good meat wrapped inside an ox’s stomach, the other was bones wrapped inside the fat of the same ox. Zeus chose the fat because the ox’s stomache looked gross. It was the wrong choice of course, all he got was fat and bones while the meat inside the ox fat went to waste. Apparently this set some precedent that the gods are willing to eat bones/fat, which caused humans to only contribute bones/fat/inedible pieces of animals when they made their sacrifices to the gods. This infuriated Zeus, who then stole fire away from humanity. Yes, he stole fire from humans as a punishment – boss status.
Prometheus felt bad that humanity would suffer for his actions, so he somehow managed to bring fire back to them. Not sure how the logistics of this all work, but that’s one of the fun parts of Greek Mythology. Anyways, ZEUS WAS PISSED. To punish Prometheus, he chained him to a rock and set an eagle upon him. Every day the eagle would pick away at Prometheus and eat his liver. This was of course excruciatingly painful. You figure Prometheus would die, but not so fast. Every night his liver would regenerate (kind of like our livers). The following day, the eagle would come back to eat his liver and Prometheus would have to suffer all over again. On and on it went.
This is perfect because Kev has to go through this every season. Every year, the eagle comes and pecks out his liver. You think he’s dead, but his liver/will to play fantasy regenerates during every offseason. The season starts again and the eagle comes back, only to eat his liver again. And on and on it goes.
Commissioner’s Prediction:
I say Kev goes 6-7 and is the first team out of the playoffs as the 7th seed. Kev always seems to get screwed in this league and this year will be no different. I could point to all the Justin Tucker games he’s been on the wrong end of, or I could point to the fact that he’s the only person I’ve ever heard of that got hurt playing spike ball. That’s just a preview of the luck he’ll have this season.
When the Commish is spot on, the Commish is spot on. I literally could not have come any closer to getting this prediction right. 2 for 4 on the year, shooting 50%.
Final Notes:
This is the second year in a row Kev has missed the playoffs after getting the #2 seed in 2014. Once again he had terrible luck and this time, he missed out on the playoffs by one game. During the season he scored more points than both the 5th seeded team (Commish) and the 6th seeded team (Guy). Unfortunately for him, head to head matchups mean more than total points scored.
