-Futility Reigns!
-Eddie ties the record
-Jeff gets fantasy advice from a guy named Dopey (who does that?)
-JP...poor JP.
We have reached the halfway point of the 2014 MIISFFL season, and if this past week's results were any indication, we are hardly in midseason form. The Futility Bowl (tm) is a very important piece of MIISFFL lore. Every year, two or three, maybe even four games earn the title of Futility Bowl. It is considered disgraceful in the inner circles of the league to win a Futility Bowl, and even more of a disgrace to lose one.
I mean come on...you can't even score 90?!!?!
What exactly qualifies a game for Futility Bowl status? Well, the criteria are not exactly codified, but there are a few sure-fire ways a game can earn the title:
-Start guys on byes or guys who definitely will be on injury "pitch counts" (if I may use the term)
-Have more than one player finish with a negative score (including defense)
-The majority of players finish in single digit points
-Start anybody by the name of Colt McCoy or Kirk Cousins
-Start players from the Canadian or Arena League (hey the way this week went it could happen)
Why am I sullying this wonderful masterpiece of literature with all this talk about Futility Bowls? Well, if any of you took a look at this week's match results, there were several contests that vied for the title. We have maybe 4 Futility Bowls each year tops. We had 4 contenders this week alone! Don't be fooled by the final scores, going into the Monday night game, lots of teams were just begging to get to 90, let alone triple digits.
So who ended up the biggest loser this week, the lowest of the low, the barnacles on the bottom? Who is the team who only rises to the top of turkey gravy just to get skimmed off the surface?
That would be Dewey. To quote the (usually useless) Yahoo recap:
"U-G-L-Y, Beats by Ray has no alibi!"
Say that 10 times fast and it almost has a nice ring to it.
The other big losers on the day were Gaz and Jeff. Gaz had his crack at unseating the defending champ, but of course he could only muster 77.9 in his effort to maintain his all time MIISFFL record of 12 straight wins. Eddie started slow, but came on strong thanks to big showing by Peyton (who else?) and Kung Fu Antonio in the late games, making a final score that was a lot closer than the margin would indicate. Jeff had a chance to get into a tie for the last wild card at 4-3, but instead fell into the cesspool of chasers at 3-4 by only mustering 77.7 of his own against the Extreme Team, who posted a score of 82 that would lose just about any other week.
Why is Jeff having such a struggling year? His problem historically has been that he's just been outslugged in matches. However, thanks to our crack investigative reporting staff here at the mashup, we have new evidence that Jeff decided to try his luck with some other...ahem...unreliable sources.
Jeff, a word to the wise, fictional characters do not make good fantasy plays.
(Official) Match recaps?
As mentioned, Eddie has tied the all time MIISFFL record for consecutive wins scoring his 12th in a row over a Gaz squad that had one too many wienerschnitzels and pale ales over the weekend. He only had 3 guys crack double digits for the whole weekend. Even his best player, Arian Foster, did his damage after the match had essentially been decided. Eddie's squad can seemingly do no wrong this year as he now is having receivers throw touchdown passes instead of catch them. WHAT? You heard that right. The icing on Eddie's record-tying cake was a touchdown pass from Antonio Brown to a guy that nobody knows, part of a last two-minute flurry the Steelers used to flip the script against the Texans on Monday night. Meanwhile, Peyton is once again making a case for fantasy MVP, and his case this year might be stronger than even it was last year as he may very well be single handedly helping Eddie to his perfect record. Speaking of records, all that stands in the way between Eddie and lucky 13 is a date with 2-5 Dewey. No pressure, man.
Oh that's right, that's the same Dewey who couldn't crack 70 against the commish. Might as well mail it in now, Eddie's got the record. We are planning the parade route now, and Eddie is fine tuning his acceptance speech. Eddie will set the MIISFFL record for all time wins at 13 in a row next week! Can you tell I'm really trying to mess with Eddie's id with all this talk? Dewey prepared himself for his date with the champ by laying an absolute stinker. His dudes only found the end zone once, he started a quarterback who posted a -0.5 (that's negative 0.5) and did I mention that he started a tight end...ON BYE? I mean really, how hard could it have been just to pick up some third string scrub off the free agent wire? The commissioner took advantage, although with only 3 total touchdowns myself, I didn't exactly make it easy. However, with Kaepernick starting against the Denver defense, every sack and turnover cancelled themselves out. It's called strategy folks.
When Jeff wasn't dancing with Disney characters, he was clearly following their advice on how to set his lineup. Jimmy Graham was questionable, questionably absent. He only saw two targets on the whole day and didn't cash in either of them. Larry Fitzgerald only scored 4 points, falling victim to the classic week-after-a-Redskins-beating hangover. I know it's the Raiders, but it's not the Redskins. Not to mention the fact that the Carolina defense also fell down the rabbit hole punching minus-1 score against Green Bay. Tom did himself no favors with only 3 of his guys scoring double digits, but in a matchup of misfits, somebody had to win. Tom had nobody on his squad go negative, so I guess that was good enough. Ladies and gentlemen, with a combined score of a whopping 160, I present to you the OFFICIAL Futility Bowl of Week 7!
If JP's desire was to earn the #1 pick in the 2015 draft, he's going a very long way to securing that prize. The only defense worse than Carolina's this week was San Francisco's. And of course, that is who JP started. The rest of his boys just could not pick up the lack of a negative 3. Drew Brees was respectable at 25, but that was about it. Patrick and the Washington Redskins did just enough to win. After some midseason roster shufffling, the last standing 'Skin is Alfred Morris, who has been a mediocre play at best. Fortunately for the rest of Runskins, Sammy Watkins picked up the slack with a 30-burger, 28 from Golden Tate, and 23 from Luck. Everybody else was fair to middlin', but the way JP's season is going, fair to middlin' is all it will take to not only beat him, but beat him real good.
Patrick is now at 4-3 and tied with Sean for the last Wild Card spot at the half-way point of the season. Sean came within 2 points of the weekly scoring pot thanks to big weeks from Brady (doing something with nothing) and Andre Ellington. LaVeon Bell chipped in with 24 on Monday night after the game had already been decided, saving this matchup from official Futility Bowl status. Sean survived a bust week from DeSean Jackson, but not for lack of trying having a long pass nullified due to a penalty and another prevented thanks to an interference call late in the game. The question now is not whether or not Sean will bench Jackson, but whether or not he will cut him due to the prospect of Colt McCoy throwing him passes...at least for one more week.
Sean's 123 points was just shy of the 125 scored by Chris, who is now putting up far more good weeks than bad. At 5-2, his victory over Kent all of a sudden pulls him even with Kent for the AFC lead, and securely into the first wild card position in his first MIISFFL season. Yes, that's the same villainous Kent who Shadynastied his way last year to an 8.62 point defeat in the MIISFFL playoffs. This week's defeat was not quite that exact, but it was close, 7.34 points. The real kicker though is that Kent ended up with the 3rd highest total of the week. We warned everyone in our season preview though what Jay Cutler would do to Kent's prospects going forward, and yeah verily it is coming to pass. Only 5 points came from the Bears' turnover machine. Meanwhile, DeSean Jackson may get all the pub, but Haitian Sensation Pierre Garcon was left on the bench...along with his 17.2 points. All the highway train robberies in the world will do you no good if you leave points like that on the bench with nowhere to go.
Halfway home folks! Let's take a look at Week 8:
Eddie-Dewey (Eddie goes for the all time record versus a defeatist Dewey squad)
Kent-Gaz (Kent looks to regain the AFC lead)
Tom-Chris (Chris looks to gain it himself)
Patrick-Zach (Zach looks to climb into a wild card position versus the Redskins)
Nick-Jeff (Nick and Jeff look to do the same, one will fail)
Sean-JP (This week it's Sean's turn to kick JP)
Don't forget a couple of calendar items coming up soon:
TRADE DEADLINE: Wednesday November 12th
LEAGUE MEETING: Sunday November 16th
Week 8 is next. PEACE!
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