Tag: LeVeon Bell

The 300s Fantasy Football Round Up – Week 2

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I would like to use this introductory paragraph to point out the fact that so far the Patriots defense is the highest scoring opponent they’ve yet to encounter this season.

Moving along, Week 2 has come and gone in the fantasy world and teams have begun to take shape, some players have been added and dropped, 15 QBs have been ruled out for the season, and one missing a chromosome has been benched and possibly retired.

So without further ado let’s see how the staff here did in Week 2.

Joey B (0-2)

I don’t know what I ever did to deserve this but Ronald Jones getting me .9 points on Thursday proved to be foreshadowing. No one ever showed up and I lost by 20. My RBs are garbage and I need helllllp.

Dom (1-1)

For the second week in a row, the Scruffy Looking Nerfherders were the second highest scoring team in the league. Unfortunately, I played the only team that could’ve beaten me this week. Lame. Once again, most of the boys performed well, and I made the excellent pick up of Mark Andrews of Baltimore, who happens to be the league’s top TE through 2 weeks. The big downside to the week was that James Conner was knocked out with a knee injury, but reports are that it’s not serious thankfully.

Lippa (1-1)

Don’t love my team in my league as much as I have in previous years. Probably because I didn’t have a second round pick (traded it for Antonio Brown last year trying to go all-in en route to a first round playoff loss). O.J. Howard looks like a giant bust, and my general lack of elite players will probably cost me this year. Bright side: JOSH ALLEN time next week at QB after a week of streaming Andy Dalton.

Mattes (2-0)
Even though Dede Westbrook and his pathetic 0.8 points (!!!) almost screwed me, Dak, Dalvin, and Kelce were an absolute force for the second-straight week. Kerryon also had a nice day after a worrisome Week 1. (And it’ll only get better for him with C.J. Anderson getting the axe yesterday!) This week I’ll be replacing Westbrook and Singletary with Matt Breida and Scary Terry McLaurin, AND I nabbed Dallas’s D off waivers this week since they’re playing Miami at home. Reeeaallly trying not to get too cocky yet, and I know it’s early. But The Pride of Kansas is 2-0 and sitting third overall in points so far. I’m feeling good.

Papa G (2-0)

Lamar Jackson! What a stud. Another solid performance from my elite QB out of Baltimore. This week was definitely tougher than last week though. Barely squeezed out a win thanks to Le’Veon Bell on MNF. Njoku got concussed almost immediately in the game so it was all on Bell’s shoulders. 2-0 to start the season, just like my Bills. Inevitable collapse(s) pending.

Red (0-2)

I touched on this a bit yesterday in my blog denigrating Jets fans so I won’t rehash too much, but long story short I needed 8 points from Jamison Crowder. He got 6. The football gods mocked me for putting my faith in a Jets player too and had third stringer Luke Falk taking snaps before halftime just to really make me suffer. You don’t know degenerate levels until you find yourself yelling at the TV for a third string QB to throw a garbage time TD in a blowout on Monday night.

Big Z (1-1)

The Z Men will not go undefeated in 2019. We stand at 1-1 after a 120-96 loss in Week 2. At least my team wasn’t the only team that wasted a great effort from Dalvin Cook. Dude had a touchdown and 154 yards on the ground, only to see Kirk Cousins throw an interception that would have been unacceptable even in a pick up game of groomsmen in the parking lot before a wedding reception. Christian McCaffrey was a disappointment in Week 2 with only 53 total yards, but hopefully that’s an aberration.  My kicker Matt Prater might have been this biggest disappointment of my week though. A missed PAT is -2 in my league, so even with the PAT he made later in the game he still ended up in the red for me and cost me a point.

 

 

 

 

Last Night I Had to Root for the Jets. I Don’t Know How People Do This

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With the prospect of falling to 0-2 staring me dead in the face, I needed an extremely reasonable 8 points from Jamison Crowder to win my fantasy football matchup. For a guy that had 17 targets and 17 points in Week 1 that seemed pretty reasonable, except for the fact the guy that gave him all those targets was out with MONO. I’m not here to slut shame anyone, but you really put me in a shitty spot, Sam.

So with that being said I was tasked with watching the entire Jets game AND rooting for a backup QB to feed my guy. Naturally Crowder had a huge catch called back on a penalty and Trevor Siemian failed to impress all night. At least he was a guy with a few years in the league and 20+ starts under his belt though; that gave me hope for a touchdown pass. Welp, once he broke (probably) his ankle I was then forced to root for a 2nd year THIRD string QB in Luke Faulk who is apparently Chad Pennington reincarnated.

Meanwhile the “offensive guru” (Booger McFarland’s words not mine) Adam Gase just set football back about 50 years as he refused to call a play that didn’t involve Le’Veon Bell running the ball or Le’Veon Bell catching a screenpass at the line of scrimmage. The Jets apparently punted on the entire concept of the forward pass last night and were appropriately rewarded with a 3 point performance.

My guy Crowder? The guy I needed 8 points from? Yea he got 6.

HOW DO YOU PEOPLE LIVE THIS WAY??

PS – My other option was Kenyan Drake, the running back from the Dolphins that just got shutout 43-0 so no that wasn’t an option.

The 300s 2018 Fantasy Football All Cock Tease Team

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Welcome, welcome to our awards. Before we begin I’m going to briefly kick it to our team on tonight’s red carpet…

Thank Joey! Here we see Founder Red wearing a Lakers jersey with camo cargo shorts. I’m really digging his ironic choice that is clearly a protest to our recent cooperation with North Korea. Back to the studio…

Thanks guys! Now before we proceed I should probably explain what these awards actually are about since nobody fucking knows.

We have all picked a bust or 12 throughout our fantasy football seasons, however most are of either the “reach” or “hard on” variety. A “reach”, as is well known, is a player you pick a bit too high, possibly motivated by the fear of someone else picking him. A “hard on” pick, for lack of a more enlightened term, would refer to players that we just personally really like without a ton evidence as to why and that simply don’t work out.

These awards, however, celebrate the “cock teases” – players who are picked at a good time given their value, normally put up good numbers relative to that selection point, yet completely fuck us. They don’t buy us dinner first either, just bend us over the analogous  10, 12, or 16 team table and fuck us.

So without further ado, as composed by and contributed to by our talented staff, I give you The 300s 2018 All Cock Tease Team:

QB: Jimmy Garoppolo, San Francisco 49ers
Red: I was ready for Jimmy G to rise like a phoenix out of the ashes that was my 2017 fantasy season, but in his third game the most handsome ACL in the league exploded and I was stuck with Matt Stafford at QB the rest of the way.

 

RB1: Jordan Howard, Chicago Bears
Mattes: Now, a lot of people might give me crap for drafting Howard in the second round of a PPR draft. First, I’d like to respond by saying it’s only a half-point league, and, second, the guy also had two-straight 1,200-plus-yard seasons and nine touchdowns last year on a bad team. I – like many – expected the Bears to be much-improved this year (which they certainly are), and I also believed new head coach Matt Nagy when he said he’d finally get Howard more involved in the passing game. Then came along Tarik Cohen, and there were also five games this year in which Howard averaged under 2.6 yards a carry. In fact, Cohen actually ended up finishing over FOURTY spots ahead of Howard in the overall rankings this year. Picked the wrong guy, I guess, huh?

 


RB2: Le’veon Bell, Pittsburgh Steelers
GUEST CONTRIBUTION! Patty Blackouts: I mean what is there to say besides he’s a seflish fuck who passed up 850k a week to sit out and try and protect his body to try and get a long term deal. Took him 4th overall thinking he’d show up sometime around end of September or October and nope just sat out all season sending cryptic tweets so you’d think he was going to report and next ya know he’s playing pickup basketball games at the local Y. I hope no one pays him what he wants and he regrets passing up the 14.5 mill he would have been paid this season by signing the franchise tag. But yes I’m bitter because  I used my first overall pick on him in fantasy got the same amount of points out of him as he did paychecks this season….0!

I hope he gets hurt in the next preseason.

Douchebag.

WR1: Quincy Enunwa, Goddam Jets
Red: No one, and I mean no one in my fantasy league watches more Jets games than me as the Mrs. is a huge fan. So watching a team that bad I was determined to derive some value out of it, which is exactly what Quincy Enunwa was going to do for me. Enunwa was going to be the steal of the draft as he put up 15, 12 and 10 points in 3 of the first 4 games, but then his season was derailed by various injuries. He cracked 6 points just once after September…

 

WR2: Golden Tate, Detroit Lions/Philadelphia Eagles
Joey B: Tate started the season as Matthew Stafford’s #1 option in what is normally a high flying Detroit offense. To that end, he kicked off the season with games of  17, 15, 10 and TWENTY FUCKING NINE. After that he completely shit the bed, probably became an asshole in the locker room because he realized his name is fucking Golden, and then got traded to Philly where he had one game of 20, coincidentally the only other time he’s seen the end zone since September, and seemingly is hated by all 12 of Philly’s playoff-ready QBs.

 

TE: Gronk
Joey B: I always pick Gronk wayyyy too high because he plays a position where all of 4-5 guys give you tremendous amounts of points and even among those guys he usually stands out. But this year, as the world knows, was different. He’s just broken and I’m just sad.

 

Flex1: Jarvis Landry, Cleveland Browns
Mattes: Landry wasn’t without a few big games of his own this year. Also like Cousins, Landry was a guy whom I expected to make a huge splash with a new team this season, but instead was super inconsistent. Yes, he had to deal with learning how to play with two different QBs this year, but remember that Baker Mayfield has been playing since Week 3. In the 13 games he’s played with Mayfield, Landry has put up single-digit totals in seven of them. For a guy who averaged 99 catches per season before this year, his mark of 72 through 16 games this year is incredibly disappointing.

 

Flex2: Chris Hogan, New England Patriots
Big Z: With Brandin Cooks in LA and Julian Edelman sidelined for the first four games of the season, I was certain Chris Hogan was a steal in the fifth round. He would be one of Tom Brady’s top targets the first month of the season, and hopefully stay in the mix even after Edelman returned.

Hogan scored two touchdowns in Week 2, but he wouldn’t find the end zone again for three months. By that time I had already dropped him and moved on. Just another cautionary tale of putting too much stock in to a Patriots WR/RB for fantasy football purposes.

 

D/ST: San Diego Los Angeles Chargers
Joey B: With Joey Bosa and company up front and some decent pieces in the secondary, I thought the “pressure creates turnovers” rule would get me some points on D. Instead Bosa got hurt and the Chargers are last in return yards allowed.

 

Kicker: Dan Bailey, Minnesota Vikings
Big Z: Drafting and picking up kickers in fantasy football is a bit of a crap shoot. You just try to pick up a guy who kicks for a team with a good, but not great, offense. If he plays in warm weather or a dome, even better. That’s why I love NFC South kickers and why I will never draft the Bills kicker.

Dan Bailey had a rough 2017 and got released by Dallas. But he was at one time the most accurate kicker in NFL history. When he got picked up by Minnesota, I thought he would be a good guy to take a flier on. Accurate kicker on a good, not great, team that plays its home games in a dome.

Bailey is 20/27 on field goals for the Vikes this year and his 2018 may be worse than his 2017. Yikes. God help the Vikings special teams coach

 

*BONUS: Mid-Season Pick Up Fist Fucker of the Year*

WR: Marquez Valdes-Scantling, Green Bay Packers

Red: MVS was one of the few guys I was first to the punch on in my league and he looked like a STUD. 6’4″ with 4.3 speed and Aaron Rodgers throwing him the ball? Yes please. After a quiet start to the season MVS blew onto the scene with a 4 week stretch of 13+ points. He would post 6+ points just once the rest of the way…

 

 

 

The 300s Podcast Grab Bag – Kirk Minihane, NFL in Mexico City, Olympic Melo, and Fantasy Football Follies

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It’s the week before Thanksgiving, you’re just punching the clock until it’s time to take that 5 day weekend, so we’ve got a Grab Bag of random topics here on this episode. LETS GO!

-As we pretend to be members of the local sports media I think it’d be crazy to start the show without touching on breaking news from one of the biggest names in town with Kirk Minihane officially headed to Radio.com

-The NFL took a hard gulp and swallowed their pride moving the Mexico City game back to the states.

Did you see this quote from Kyrie Irving all but putting out a job offer in Carmelo Anthony’s locker?

The disaster that is the Miami Marlins Park. I even had a Marlins fan chirping me on Twitter about it — “They’re not seats, they’re standing room”

Fantasy football update – Big Z held onto the hand grenade that was Le’Veon Bell which has now exploded in his palm.

All that and more on this episode of The 300s Podcast!

The 300s Bloggers’ Fantasy Football Round Up – Week 1

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Hey Everybody,

So I am going to start posting this every week. An opportunity for you the reader  to both revel and commiserate with your favorite (Me, maybe Big Z) or least favorite (Bills Fan) 300s blogger. So without further or do……….

Papa Giorgio
(Joey B’s Note: PG’s starting quarterback IRL is Nathan Peterman)

“Two words: Total Domination. Was it easy? No. Did I almost throw up blood when Aaron Rodgers was carted off the field with a knee injury? You betcha! Someone I managed to come out of week one 3-0 in all my leagues combined. As someone who does not take fantasy football too seriously, it was a nice start to what inevitably will be a horrifying, disastrous finish.”

Big Z

“I kept Le’Veon Bell in My keeper league. I picked up James Conner as his handcuff, but played Devonta Freeman instead in Week 1. Figured Pittsburgh had lots of other weapons, and might not lean too heavily on the second year player. Conner outscored Freeman by a cool 28 points, as I lost my Week 1 matchup by 12.”

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Joey B

I had a solid, straightforward week 1 win. I only do one team because I honestly just can’t keep track of more than one. Team-wise, I grabbed Gronk in the first because it’s smart and I picked up/started James Connor because the Steelers have relied heavily on the run since Lincoln still had the back of his head. The only thing grinding my gears a bit is that I lost out on the league high score for the week because rather than having even an underwhelming, sub-average game Matthew Stafford shat the bed completely. Oh well, 1-0.

Now we get to the absolute novels written by Red and MATTES GOOOODDDAMN. Asked these guys for a blurb on their fantasy football week and I got Will Hunting’s thesis on the market economy in the southern colonies.

Red

“Ya know, I was initially pretty upset about accidentally drafting Matt Stafford in the 8th round because time ran out on my pick, but now? Well now I’m fucking furious. Thats what I get for playing chicken with the Yahoo fantasy football draft pick timer.

I won a fantasy league I was in with Donovan McNabb as my QB that I picked up in like the 15th round. It was his last year in Philly and his last year as a productive NFL starter, which was perfect for me. Drafting a QB late has been my template ever since. Welp, not this year.

Sure you could attribute my opening day loss to lack of preparation (I didn’t buy an $11 draft magazine this year) or the fact that I continue to rely on Seahawks running backs not named Marshawn Lynch prior to 2015, but I prefer to point out that Matthew Stafford threw 4 picks in the same week Alvin Kamara dropped 38 points on me.

Here’s to hoping Sam Darnold continues to do just what I had hoped and throw the ball to my sleeper pick, Quincy Enunwa, more than anyone else on the Jets. Quincy had 10 targets last night compared to 11 for the rest of the team combined.

On my bench, of course.

Goddamnit, why do I play this game?”

 

Mattes

“I tell ya, it really sucks to be 0-2 after just one week of football. BOTH sqauds lost this weekend, and neither matchup was close in either league. Even worse is the fact I was expected to be the week’s high-scorer in my full-point PPR league – with guys like Larry Fitz, Michael Thomas, David Johnson, and Jarvis Landy – but only two of those guys actually showed up. There was a few fleeting minutes of hope in my matchup against our very own Papa Giorgio, when Aaron Rodgers looked like he was about to be placed on the shelf for the second straight season. But alas, the legend came back and put up another THIRTY-TWO points to crush my Week 1 dreams. Although, with Amari Cooper putting up two whole points on Monday night, maybe it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. It also didn’t help to have the Saints defense in both leagues, who fell victim to some serious FitzMagic and blew chunks in their home opener. In one league, the got me -4, and the other they got me -8.

So I literally would’ve been better off not even starting a D/ST this week. COOL. I did have one particular Saints player, though, who went absolutely BANANAS, catching 16 balls for 180 yards and a score; his name is Michael Thomas, as previously mentioned, and I’m glad I snagged him for the second year in a row. Jordan Howard and Carlos Hyde look like a decent back pairing in one league, but David Johnson and Alex Collins didn’t live up to expectations in the other. Hopefully Kerryon Johnson, my sneaky pick for Rookie of the Year, takes the job away from a hopefully-washed-up LeGarrette Blount and serves as a solid No. 3 behind Howard and Hyde. And if Rex Burkhead ends up being the Patriots offensive MVP, as I predicted in the Pats preview podcast, I could be OK in my other league, too. Russell Wilson also proved he’s matchup-proof, putting up over 30 against a nasty Broncos D. Philip Rivers and Kirk Cousins look like a solid pairing in my two-QB league as well, so I’m not getting too down after the first week. It can only go up from here…right?”

Patriots Dismantle the Steelers On The Way to Their 9th Super Bowl Appearance

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patsafcchamps

The Patriots are going to their 9th Super Bowl. The most in NFL history. Bill Belichick is going to his 7th Super Bowl as a head coach. The most in NFL history. And Tom Brady is going to his 7th Super Bowl as player. The most in NFL history.

larrydavid

The Patriots played their best game of the year in all 3 phases of the game and Pittsburgh just had no answer. Tom Brady went 32 for 42 for 384 yards and 3 TD’s in the 36-17 dismantling of Pittsburgh. A handful of those incompletions were drops or intentional throwaways too. And Brady now has 22 TD’s and 0 INTs in his last 7 games against Mike Tomlin and the Steelers.

Sure, LeVeon Bell getting hurt did not help the Steelers (who appeared very LaDanian Tomlinson-esque on the sidelines), but the Pats shut down Deangelo Williams (34 yards and a TD), who in the past has roasted New England. But they also held All-Pro receiver Antonio Brown in check to just 7 catches for 77 yards. Kudos to Malcolm Butler and also to Mark Zuckerberg for setting up shop in Brown’s head with the whole Facebook Live debacle.

Patriots corner Eric Rowe does scare the shit out of me though. The stats say he had a pick and no huge plays given up, but in reality he was getting burned all night and if it wasn’t for 2 or 3 drops by Pittsburgh receivers this could have been a much tighter game. So he should be a blast to watch against the No. 1 offense in the NFL during the Super Bowl.

The Pats running game wasn’t great, save for that pile-carrying run Blount had down to the 1. But it didn’t need to be as Chris Hogan and Julian Edelman lit up the Steelers questionable secondary all night. The two combined for 17 catches, 298 yards and 3 TD’s. Hogan in fact broke the Patriots record for receiving yards in a playoff game with his 9 for 180, which is all you need to know about last night’s game. The Steelers either didn’t respect him or just forgot to cover him because he found holes all night long for big plays and 2 TD’s. He should have had another huge play too, but Brady underthrew him on a deep crossing route.

Tom Brady was brilliant once again. Completing passes to 9 different receivers. I’m sure the entire week of talk radio and ESPN saying how poorly Brady played against the Texans the previous week and how vulnerable they looked was a good boost of extra motivation.

The Patriots have now won 17 of 20 home playoff games with Belichick and Brady. That is bananas.

And, my goodness this ESPN the Magazine cover. Just look at it. You’ve done a lot of terrible, unforgivable things ESPN, but goddamnit will I be purchasing this beauty.

bradyespnmag

We’re on to the Super Bowl.