Foolish Thoughts: California Dreams and NFL at 10

It’s easy to pick on Brian Westbrook, but his surprise “inactivity” this week probably caught many fantasy owners off-guard. It caught me off-guard. All indications were that he would take the field, but some headaches on Friday conspired to keep him from playing.

That also prevented me from starting LeSean McCoy over Jamaal Charles. Would have been nice to know, you know, Westbrook?

I spent the past weekend and first half of this week in California for a conference. For some reason, I assumed that free Internet would be easily found and obtained around the state of California, land of tech and startups, but it was pretty lacking around the hotel. Not to mention, the hotel wanted to charge $13 per day to plug into the wall for Internet. What is this? The Dark Ages?

I hadn’t fully adjusted to the time change on Sunday at 10 a.m. when I realized the games were already starting. Football at 10 a.m.? That feels like college. I don’t like that.

The bye week served Tampa Bay well. Not only did they get Josh Freeman up to speed for his first start, but they also got the team excited enough to get after the Packers and get their first win of the season. Quite a way to start off a rookie season. Might be the only good game he has in him this year.

No 0-16 seasons this year. Three weeks ago it looked like it would be a race between the Titans and the Bucs, but now both teams have rediscovered their offenses thanks to quarterback changes and bye weeks. I guess that’s why they have the byes. I just thought the byes were intended to make fantasy football more difficult.

At least we can still hope for 1-15.

Kurt Warner’s having hot flashes. Never has the Warner boom-bust phenomenon been more obvious than his five-touchdown performance one week after his five-interception game.

On the other hand, Cedric Benson proved he’s the model of consistency. Baltimore looked angry last week, ready to destroy Cincinnati in their revenge game, but Benson put up 100+ yards on them again and added a score just to drive the point home.

Much to the delight of DeAngelo Williams’ owners, the Saints let the Panthers roll on them again in the first half. That run defense just can’t hold the line anymore with the injuries that have hit it in recent weeks, but they still come up with the big play.

This week, it was forced fumbles that created the Saints’ scoring opportunity on defense instead of Darren Sharper and that excellent secondary. Even though they let the scores get high, the Saints remain a valid fantasy option by scoring so much on defense.

I really expected the Patriots to exploit the young and inexperienced Miami secondary more than they did on Sunday. Randy Moss had a big day, but Brady didn’t do much more than that. Where’s the evil Belichick I know and love?

Jay Cutler proved that his favorite target is Greg Olsen by throwing him three touchdowns against the Cardinals.

Matt Forte barely remembers what the ball even looks like at this point. The Bears had to abandon the run so that Cutler could try to get them back in it. At this point, you can pretty much call Forte’s season “over.”

It took longer than expected, but Clinton Portis finally went out of a game with an injury this week as the Redskins got run over by Michael Turner. Portis has fallen off a cliff this year after being driven into the ground by Washington last year.

I don’t have many regrets from this week, but I wish I had started Joseph Addai. Here I was thinking that the Texans had finally fixed their problems on the ground, but short-yardage goal line situations are pretty common for the Colts. Addai capitalized.

Oh, hi there, Chris Chambers. Just when I thought you were dead…

Releasing Larry Johnson less than 100 yards before he becomes the team’s all-time leading rusher? Yeah…I’m pretty sure they had nothing against him.

By the way, now that I’m back to the land of the Internets, the waiver wire post from Tuesday has been updated and fleshed out. Feel free to peruse it’s newly formatted goodness all over again. It’s like going from standard definition to high definition.

By Jacob

Jacob founded Fantasy Football Fools in 2007 as a outlet for all the fantasy football conversations he couldn't have in-person. Since then...well, it's only gotten worse.

4 comments

  1. Leverage the Internet? But, but…I can leverage the Internet.

    Clearly, your WiFi-finding kung fu is much stronger than my Tiger-style mooch skills. I hadn't ever heard of openwifispots.com before. Definitely bookmarking that for later.

    In all seriousness, I was sure that California had more WiFi hotspots than a LAN party, but I just couldn't make it out to the ones I identified on a regular basis during my conference. The one I did find and frequent when I could was still several blocks away. Looks like there were a couple more I missed. Ah, the pangs of regret.

    Thanks for sharing the link. I feel my leverage increasing already.

  2. Leverage the Internet? But, but…I can leverage the Internet.

    Clearly, your WiFi-finding kung fu is much stronger than my Tiger-style mooch skills. I hadn't ever heard of openwifispots.com before. Definitely bookmarking that for later.

    In all seriousness, I was sure that California had more WiFi hotspots than a LAN party, but I just couldn't make it out to the ones I identified on a regular basis during my conference. The one I did find and frequent when I could was still several blocks away. Looks like there were a couple more I missed. Ah, the pangs of regret.

    Thanks for sharing the link. I feel my leverage increasing already.

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