Week Three Roundup

I just watched Monday Night Football. Green Bay can beat the Seahawks. They did beat the Seahawks. But they can’t beat the Zebras. That was an interception. The replacement refs have finally decided a game, and not just on a questionable call/non-call setting up a decisive drive (although Seattle got the benefit of one of those, too — video here, starting at 1:50 — , but that one fishing pales in comparison to literally deciding the game on a bad call after a booth review). Anyway, I’m too disgusted to write any more about that any more. Your week three fantasy football write up follows the jump.

My team sucks. Let’s just get that out of the way so there’s no accusation of pro-Green Bay rancor tainting that judgment. My team sucking is a problem larger than anything any vision-impared group of black-and-white striped purveyors of instantaneous nonsense could do on the field to any single team on the field. No, my team sucks in a deeper, more intrinsic and innate way than is within the reach of even the most inept and/or corrupt replacement referee to volunteer to referee a Pop Warner game.

Not everyone has this problem. For instance, Stoicdread racked up its first victory against Fuzzy Dunlop in what looked to me to be the most even matchup of the week. The Dunlops were hurt by several game-time decisions, including Chicago’s game-time decision to hold Matt Forte out of Chicago’s successful matchup against the St. Louis Rack-o-Lambs, and the Giants defense shutting Cam Newton down more effective than the referees shut down the Packers on Monday night.

And Multiple Scorgasms continues its undefeated season at the expense of Haulin’ Oats. Ron Mexico was no match for the A.C. Milan-looking Arizona Cardinals, but the real credit for the victory goes to Ray Rice’s strong and consistent running game wore down the Head-On-Fire-Guys (that would be Mrs. Likko’s name. You’ll find yourself using it now.) At this point despite last week’s seeming spectacle of parity prevailing all over the place, it’s fair to say that the Scorgasms are the team to beat in our fantasy league.

Thanks to not one but SIX abysmally bad sit-or-start decisions made by their coach, the Unlikely Pseudonyms were administered an epic beat-down at the hands of the Tebow Ghostwriters, in the blowout of the week. It didn’t help the Pseudonyms that they relied on both Green Bay’s kicker and its defense, who were up against a resilient and talented Seattle team, a tough home venue, and a squad of bumbling buffoons spotting the Seahawks six unearned points with no time left on the clock. What’s truly awesome to contemplate in addition to all that is that had the Pseudonyms made optimal coaching decisions, it still wouldn’t have been enough to win. And, had the Ghostwriters made optimal coaching decisions themselves to match, this score could have been 23 points MORE lopsided than it was.

Black Hole dealt the Not-so-Gentlewomen their first outright loss in the squeaker of the week. The decisive factor here was Atlanta coming to San Diego. The Falcons had a three-point agenda for this away game: 1) establish a running game to counterpoint the Julio Jones threat, 2) eat fish tacos, and 3) abuse the Chargers like they were inexperienced substitute teachers. Mission accomplished. I don’t know about the fish tacos part, but they had their way with the Chargers all afternoon long — in a game that was blocked out of broadcast in the Los Angeles market, even on DirecTV’s supposedly-every-game-every-week NFL Direct package. Not that I was bitter about that or anything, either. It’s just that I had a whole bunch of San Diego fans over to the house to watch that particular game on my goddamned birthday, and we wound up having to catch snippets of it all afternoon on Red Zone thanks to the combination of antiquated blackout rules and the apathy of San Diegans who didn’t seem to actually want to drop several C-notes apiece on the product the Chargers put on the field. I’m sure that Atlanta’s fish tacos were tasty, though.

The Ordinary Marksists scored their second win, beating Legitimate Reception (a team which should have no aspersions cast on its name, as this team is innocent of the embarassment against humanity that was the call of a reception ending this Monday night’s game) with a lot of that matchup coming out of the Bengals-at-Redskins game — one that at the start of the season, looked like the biggest yawner of the whole schedule. Turns out that no, that’s likely to be Cleveland at Indianapolis on October 21, which I predict will result in a controversial end-of-game decision that awards the victory to Seattle.

The comeback of the week was Partisan Warrior getting edged by the Dictionary Kids on the strength of Cedric Benson’s Monday night performance that put an initially dominant Seattle team on its heels, where it stayed for the rest of the Monday night game until the replacement referees (recall, the original referees were locked out because their union insisted on a vision plan as part of their benefits package) became the decisive force causing the Green Bay Packers’ official standing to drop to 1-2.

Rounding out the action was Bullmoose Revival weathering what should have been a Monday-night onslaught from Heisman Cain and The Best Goddamned Quarterback On The Planet™.  I mean, the guy was throwing lightning-fast, Joe Montana-like short passes the entire second half and there wasn’t a fishing thing Seattle could figure do about it. Good thing they had help from the sidelines!

Yes, I am bitter. You would be, too. Anyway, here’s the standings for the week.

Fishin’ replacement refs. There’s not enough Bourbon in this house to make me calm down after that, and my only consolation is that this is why they make asterisks. Oh, but you know who liked the call? Paul Allen! There’s an unbiased source for you.