“Pressure coming again, Josh in trouble … gets rid of it, fires it down the middle, picked off, intercepted by Josh Allen. Josh Allen of the Bills is picked off by Josh Allen of the Jaguars. Josh Allen of the Bills threw a horrible pass, under pressure again, and Josh Allen of the Jaguars was sitting there waiting for it.”
-Bills radio announcer John Murphy, stumbling ebbity ebbity ebbity uh Porky Pig-style through one hell of a mouthful on the play by play in Week 9. It didn’t get much easier for Murphy, or “Josh Allen of the Bills,” as “Josh Allen of the Jaguars” made his doppleganger’s life hell all day long. On top of the interception, he added a sack, a fumble recovery, and 4 tackles to his game log, all against the one time MVP favorite but now the clearly inferior Josh Allen. It was like some Looper from the future came back through time to hunt his mirror self all game long and finally put an end to him once and for all.
This game was so bad for the Bills that in hindsight it appears to have been some kind of turning point in their season. Before it, their most recent loss had been a 34-31 slugfest with the Titans in Week 6, when Hammerin’ Henry was still healthy and steamrolling everyone in sight. It was a hard-fought game against a burgeoning AFC powerhouse, so there was little shame in it, and thus they remained the favorite to win the conference. They even tried to prove it by coming back the next week and man-handling the sorry Dolphins, though the final score was only a moderately convincing 26-11 against a team they had absolutely buried in a Week Two 35-0 rout.
Then came The Looper and the ugly 9-6 loss to the 1-6 Jag-offs, a dead-last in DVOA team the Bills were favored to beat by 15 points, and a game whose entire scoring consisted of 5 piddly field goals. Hey, any given Sunday, right? Even a top-tier team is capable of at least one stinker per season. They even did their best to wipe that vomit-fest from memory by going all Peaky Blinders and taking a rusty-nailed bat to a very bad Jets team, leaving Gang Green in a 45-17 puddle of blood, Bushmills, and shattered teeth. But then the Colts came and did the exact same thing to them in Week 11, thrashing them to the tune of 41-15, a beating so severe that even a casual viewer couldn’t help but notice that something was really wrong in Buffalo. Looking back, one can see that, with the exception of the Chiefs, all of the Bills wins have come against teams that currently hold losing records. It’s easy to look like a terrifying juggernaut when you play the Jets and Dolphins and Texans every week. But then a feisty little runt like the Jags go full-blown Psycho-Ralphie wailing on Scut Farkus (you don’t need a clip, you’ve seen it 4000 times on TNT), and expose them for the lily-livered frauds they really are. Then they let Jonathan Taylor run for 400 yards and 27 TDs against them, and you start to wonder if they’ll ever beat another above-.500 team again this season.
Part of the problem plaguing the Bills is the same one plaguing the rest of the go-for-broke offenses this season. One of the big stories in the NFL this year is the widespread rise in Cover 2 defenses, which has been successful almost across the board in containing gunslinging QBs like Allen and Mahomes. Hanging two high safeties in soft zone coverage works well to strangle downfield passing attacks and forces the “win on every throw” guys to become methodical underneath passers, carving up the middle of the field with 5 and 6 yard dinks — a method to which restless, rocket-armed maniacs like Allen have a fundamental aversion. Instead, the scheme lures these guys into trying to throw perfectly into miniscule windows downfield in the middle of extremely dicey coverage, until inevitably they are less than perfect and turn the ball over. Despite the effectiveness of this defensive strategy, Allen actually is the most accurate QB on long passes this season, and has contributed to the highest number of “explosive” plays, according to Next Gen Stats. Yet the scheme is as much a psychological advantage as a strategic one. It frustrates QBs used to having their way with defenses, pushing them to think less clearly, force bad throws, and make dire mistakes, and as the QB falters, becomes angry and less confident, the whole offense falters right along with him. If there is no high-octane running game with which to right the ship, things can go south quickly.
The solution so far this season to the 2 high safety defenses has been to run the ball down the defense’s throat, but measly crumbums Singletary and Moss haven’t exactly stricken terror into the hearts of many defensive lines. Meanwhile, Big Josh wants to chuck it down the field to Diggs as much as possible, and failing that, run it himself (preferably leaping clear over at least two defenders in the process). He keeps waiting on tight man-coverage or a blitz, which he consistently destroys, and they are no longer appearing with any regularity (teams went from playing Man 39% of the time against him last year to 27% this year). He’s like a monster fastball hitter getting nothing but nasty breaking shit, but he’s either unable or just outright refusing to adjust to it. He wants to knock it out of the park on every play, and instead he’s striking out all day long.
The result of this is that the Bills have dropped to second in the division (as of Thanksgiving they are back in first, see below) and are in the familiar position of trailing the Patriots. Instead of being the runaway favorites for the top seed in the AFC, they are in the sludge pile, scrapping for a Wild Card spot with about 7 other teams. Which is not to say it will remain that way. If they can get a grip on things, and find ways to answer the defensive looks being thrown at them and start to beat good teams, they still have a shot at the division, and even the top seed (Tennessee appears to be slipping, while the Chiefs and Patriots are on the rise once again). They still have both games against the Patriots coming up, and if they win one or both, that will put them in a much better position to grab home field advantage and a possible bye.
But things are definitely looking down for ol’ Buffalo. And it started when “Josh Allen of the Jaguars” tore open the space-time continuum and terrorized his poor Joseph Gordon-Levitt self. Bills better do some serious badass George McFly shit at the Fish Under the Sea Dance, because their photograph is fading fast.
[PS — They toppled a Kamara-less, Siemian-led crapwagon on Thanksgiving, 31-6, a team that technically had a winning record before the game started, but all things considered it was an even less impressive win than the ones against the Jets and the Texans. The Bills play the Patriots a week from this Monday, which will give us a much clearer picture of who they are. At least they made a meal of a bad team they absolutely had to beat.]
He sure is baby! Just like old times. Makin’ big entrances, doin’ wild and crazy ass flips into the end zone, gettin’ the team fired up on the sideline, throwin’ only a single pass all game that goes further than 19 yards downfield, and most importantly, takin’ that muthafkn L!
I kid ol’ Cam, but really it’s good to see him out there again, even the C+/B- version we’ve been getting. We all wish we could see the old Cam, lighting the field on fire and making life miserable for defenses, taking over whole games and blasting off the charts as a fantasy QB. I miss that fuckin’ guy a whole lot. Kyler and Mahomes and Jalen Hurts are out there doing a lot of the same types of awesome shit and backing it up with much younger bodies. But there’s just something sleek and charismatic and reckless about peak Cam that nobody has quite been able to replicate — moving like a… well, like a panther I guess, flashing quick and dangerous out there in streaks of black and blue and silver.
We are not hurting for fun, great quarterbacks in 2021. The new generation is special and exciting in its own right. But part of me wishes we could get a few more flashes of unstoppable 2015 Cam. I don’t think he’s capable of most of those feats anymore, or willing to take even a fraction of the brutal punishment he used to get handed on the reg. But give me a glimpse. Just one game where he is full-on balls to the wall superstar Cam again, and nobody can take their eyes off him for 60 full minutes, and he makes some starchy white bumpkin like Troy Aikman be all like: “The guy’s talented but I just don’t understand this hip-hoppity kinda football that Cam plays. Is he quarterbacking or break-dancing? Because if that’s quarterbacking, it’s not the kind of football I grew up with. We respected the game. And we certainly didn’t wear paisley scarves and designer sunglasses and big silly hats to post-game press conferences like we were on tour with Prince. I just really don’t get it, Joe.”
Joe Buck: (expertly letting only the tiniest smirk into his voice) “It’s a whole new generation, Troy… and it’s McCaffrey up the middle and he gets the first down!”
Cam is still 12 years younger than Brady, and look at that guy. Figgy Newton’s still got time for a second act.
So let’s get this hip-hoppity party started!
“I don’t want to say it took their soul away, but it did something.”
–Jimmy G talking about the deleterious physical and psychological effects the 49ers relentless running game had on the Rams in Week 10’s 31-10 upset.
NIIIIIIIIIIIINNNNNNNNNNNEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hot diggity dick danglers, it was starting to look pretty darn bleak there for the Red and Gold in 2021. With 19 different starting running backs on crutches or missing a combination of limbs, earlobes, and vital organs; Kittle out with a two week-old porkchop for a calf; a QB controversy that has amounted to picking between “the lesser of two imploding tornadoes of dignity-annihilating mediocrity;” Shanahan play-pretending he’s a stone-hearted disciplinarian genius à la Belichick with his whole inscrutable doghouse routine regarding Sermon and Aiyuk; and the defense flopping around the field like a pile of limp, overcooked noodles — San Francisco was careening wildly toward another lost season. A number of tough losses began the season, but more recently certifiable ass-kickings by the newly jump-started Colts and a Kyler & Hopkins-less Cardinals outfit painted a pretty stark picture of a bad team with no real identity and a coach who thinks he’s better than he really is.
We all know people are shy about sharing their opinions on Twitter, but thankfully there are a few brave souls willing to share theirs, and if those Twitterpinions are any indication, the jury will continue to be out on the head coach. The critiques are not all unjustified, of course — see the opaque doghouse shit above or the litany of questionable personnel and roster-building decisions or his infamous tendency to choke away leads on the biggest stage. But miss me with the recently much-trotted-out fact that Matt Nagy has a better winning record than Shanahan, as if their injury situations can even be compared over the last four years. The fuck outta here with them half-baked pot shots. I get it, the guy’s annoying, but you can come at him with a lot more incriminating shit than that.
However, as for the team’s identity, I think they may have finally rediscovered it. I mean, it’s not dissimilar to who they were in 2019 — minus of course the bone-crushing top-rated defense (they are sans Buckner, Thomas, Sherman, and most painfully, DC Saleh), and the freakishly healthy roster. But fortunately (and probably fairly obviously) this identity appears to jibe with what Shanahan does indisputably well. Remember how I said that the way to beat deep safety shell coverage was to run the ball down the defense’s throat like “Oh Lawdy it’s 1992 all over again?!!” How you gotta slice and dice up the short area like yer Ghostface and this is the second coming of Montana/Walsh? (Mixing mad metaphors like a maniac and I don’t give one fuck.) And you gotta keep at it until you wear them out enough that they don’t see the back-breaking deep shot coming? That’s exactly what the 49ers did against the Rams and the Jags in weeks 10 and 11 — stretch things out with Deebo and Kittle and Aiyuk and then grind the defenses down by hammering into their line for 5,6,7-yard chunk runs behind superior blocking, and control the clock with epic, soul-sucking 8 and 10 minute drives — all powered by Shanahan’s talent for the kind of creative offensive scheming that confuses the hell out of even seasoned defenses. That kept the Niners defense fresh so that guys like Bosa and Armstead and Warner and Jimmie Ward could start to play more consistently at the level we’ve come to expect but haven’t seen nearly enough of this year.
As the league gets more and more pass-heavy, defenses are doing what they can to contain it. So teams that can get the most from their backfield are having a ton of success, especially if they can still threaten the occasional deep ball or heavy-duty YAC play from a dude like Deebo who just cannot, will not, allow himself to be tackled. Heck, look at the games Taylor and Ekeler just had in Week 11. Now, what teams like the Niners or the Patriots are doing may not necessarily translate to fantasy bonanzas like it did with those two RBs — because, well, Jeff Wilson and Rhamondre Stevenson aren’t exactly world-killers on their own — but it’s a recipe for winning IRL. I mean, if you got Deebo on yer fantasy team, you are probably doing pretty well. Kittle maybe, though I bet you wish you drafted him 3 or 4 rounds later than you did. Anybody else on the 49ers, cross your fingers, hope he gets some touches, and pray he doesn’t fall into a tar pit full of whirring chainsaws like every other RB on the roster.
I’m okay with this. Mostert helped torpedo half my teams, and Mitchell hasn’t been much more than a decent band-aid when he’s healthy. But I’m just happy to see them winning, and hopefully they’ve found a recipe that can make them more competitive against good teams. Another test is coming with the Vikings, who seem to play everybody close and make it a tight squeeze down the fourth quarter stretch. We knocked them out of the playoffs pretty handily in 2019, and I’m sure they are all about the payback this year. I don’t want to jinx anything, but if it comes down to field goals at the end, I feel like we may have the edge there. If it comes down to Deebo vs. Jefferson, well then I sure look forward to those fireworks.
“It’s worth remembering that instead of Dan Campbell, the Lions could have hired, you know, anybody else on Earth. They could have hired Dan Mullen and been better off than they are with this lobotomized Care Bear at the helm. That’ll prove doubly painful when they finally cut Campbell loose six years and 100 losses from now and then, after an exhaustive search comprising many attractive candidates, hire his nephew to replace him.”
Professional wise-acre Drew Magary in the Thanksgiving Jamboroo, trashing poor beefy cuddle puddle Dan Campell..
I mean, he’s right I guess. The dude is probably most definitely a lobotomized Care Bear.
But he’s our lobotomized Care Bear! We still love you Dan! We are rooting super duper really hard for you to win like a single game. That’s it. We don’t expect much Bro! We just want you to not go 0-16-1, which somehow actually seems worse than 0-17.
Now wipe away those tears, drink that Twelve Shot Red Eye, and chase it with an entire bottle of ghost pepper sauce, just like you do every morning, and gall dangit find a way to beat the… I dunno, the Falcons I guess? Maybe the Seahawks? That’s about yer only shot cuz the others are going to fucking dismantle you from stem to stern.
Breaking our hearts right along with yours, buddy.
Now let’s turn that frown upside down.
Well, I’m still here, I guess. Grateful, as a survivor might be? As the flavor of the season might dictate? Nah, not really. After the catastrophe of Week 10 and my second 0-4 outing in a row, I knew I needed to do something drastically different than keep sweating out each of the week’s lineups and then sending them all to be slaughtered like soldiers in the trenches of The Somme. To put it plainly, the fun had gone all the way out of it. There’s taking your lumps and having some bad breaks and then there’s just utter, soul-crushing futility week in and week out, where no matter what you do you lose in the most humiliating, face-punching way possible, over and over. So I figured the best way to stop having each Sunday feel like I’d just finished fighting 100 duck-sized horses of frustration and bitterness, was to take all my shitty plastic toys (what was left of them) and go home. Do the minimum, make sure my lineup is filled every week and leave it at that. No trades, no waivers, no blog posts, nada! If trying didn’t work, maybe not trying was the trick!
Reader, it was not the trick. I merely followed two 0-4 weeks with a 1-3 week. Turns out that even when you don’t try your whole team may show up strong but Aaron Rodgers will decide to melt into a pile of Ivermectin goo on the field and give you like 3 points, so that you lose a game you easily should have won. Dak will play like they never actually turned his leg back round the right way and deliver you a whopping -1.62 points. You have Golladay flailing half-assed around the field like a petulant child or somebody trying to find his wheelchair, when all you need is a measly 6 half ppr points for a win. And then of course you have Russ. Remember him? D-D-Dangah-Russ, the runaway favorite for the MVP during the first half of the 2020 season. Now he’s a New Age Weeble Wobble rolling around the backfield, taking sack after sack, throwing no touchdowns, with a completion percentage of 50% and an average QBR of about 17.
And so the Great Flickety Fuckluck Wheel goes round and round again. Isn’t it beautiful? Aren’t we so thankful?
Just fuckin lobotomize me. Please.
I’ve settled on a compromise of sorts. Mild roster tweaking is allowed, though no long, sweated over decisions. Still no trades, and avoid waivers unless there is a player it would be be stupid to not get. Stay on top of availability before game days, and try to not even be aware of what team or players I am playing. Once it’s all set, don’t look at my scores until Tuesday morning when it is all over, no matter what happens. Then just watch football like a normal fucking person and don’t freak the hell out over every single random play, like “Oh my god, how did Arcega-Whiteside get stuffed at the two!!! I must now smash every plate I own!!” The absolute dumbest way to watch football, I have finally come to realize.
It’s sorta working. Better than nothing. I am enjoying football again and my Sundays don’t feel like I watched someone kick my dog for 12 hours anymore. I’ll be back next year as feisty and stupid as ever, but the fantasy gods have put me in my cozy little slime hole this year, and so here I will stay.
A guy in my superflex league said to me when I rejected his trade offer for my only two good players for a bunch of faab and a collection of also-rans: “My motto is to never quit.” I said “Mine is too usually, but if your idea of me not quitting is letting you talk me out of my best players for a pile of rusty screws, chewed fingernails, and a used condom then maybe I’m not quitting after all. I’m merely going down with the ship, and I’m taking my good players with me.”
So I promise that’s the last you’ll hear about me and my shitty fantasy year. I was gonna tell you about the history of long snappers this week, or maybe Seth Wickersham’s fawning deep-dive into the Patriots, called It’s Better to Be Feared, which I have been reading.
No time for all that, so I’ll give you the rundown on the rest of the league. Beggars Shadow, Lady Balls, and Quaranteam continue their vice grip on the top three spots (I could have knocked the latter down a spot if Golladay hadn’t gotten his diapey so soiled during the game against the Bucs — ah well). The top 4 teams (the above three and Team 14) are riding 2, 3, and 4 game winning streaks. They all also have the 4 highest PF, which is as it should be. (It is Tree Frogs and I who have the highest PA. Go figure.)
You know who else is on a 3-game winning streak? That would be Mr. Lovejoy himself, once the deepest, darkest dweller of the Astral Geeks basement, now moving up fast. And who’s that falling fast right past him? That would be… uh, Frig Newtons… who used to be the Dung and the Russless, I’m pretty sure? (I tell ya, here’s a fella even more distraught about his team than I am. You love to see it.) But with Tree Frogs fighting for a way into the top 6 and Dog Altogether somehow against all logic clinging to a playoff spot by a thread, it would not be completely out of the question for Lovejoy to win out and find a way to snag a place beyond Week 15. It’s a good team, it’s not impossible.
As a permanent denizen of the Geek Sewers, we are always happy when one of ours makes it out. Is there some jealousy? Sure. We’ll probably key his car and take care of it that way. But are we rooting for him? You bet your asses we are. The true irony here is this is me rooting not for Greatness, but for the Underdog, cuz he’s our underdog! Sol probably thinks I’m straight crazy and is rooting for the guy with Mahomes or whatever. Cuz greatness.
These Zoomers, I tell ya.
Only 4 games left in the regular season. Ten billion Christmas commercials incoming. Then the New Year, and the icy, desolate wasteland of January. So much to look forward to and be grateful for.
See you again, probably, if I don’t throw every electronic device out my window this Sunday and start watching water polo instead. There s a non-zero chance of this happening.
Until then,
Gear guys, Cool Cars, Banned Chews
tg
GO CHIEFS!!!!!
ASTRAL GEEKS FFL 