Horizon Road

The NFL released its 2008 regular season schedule for the league on Tuesday and the Minnesota Vikings, with a good start out of the gate, should be able to coast into the NFC Central Division Championship this season despite their so-called tough schedule. With the 2007 Rookie of the Year, Future Hall of Famer, Adrian “All-Day” Peterson being handed the starting job from the get-go this year; with the addition of the Chicago Bear’s best wide-out from last year, Bernard Berrian; and with Tarvaris Jackson now stepping into his second year after getting his feet wet and hopefully learning from his mistakes last year (Coach Brad Childress is basically staking his NFL coaching career on the fact that he does); and not forgetting about one of the league’s highest scoring defenses returning with a couple of adjustments towards improvement, the Vikings are a sure-in for the Division Title and at least two games deep into the play-offs by the end of their 2008-09 campaign.

According to NFL.com, the Vikings were handed the fifth toughest schedule in the league for the 2008 season, based on the 2007 winning percentage of each team’s 2008 opponents. But those figures, I believe, are a little off. I mean, they play the Green Bay Packers twice since they are in the same division. The Packers represent 30 wins and 2 losses during the 2007 season. But unless Aaron Rodgers has a season ending injury during the pre-season, I think the Vikings have finally seen the last of their #1 nemesis, Bret Favre. Rodgers will be paying his dues this season and the Green Bay Packers will be lucky to get 4 wins for the year, none of which will be against the Vikings. The Vikings and Packers kick off the 2008 Monday Night Football ritual, but without Favre at the helm, it just won’t be the same. Vikings should win that game easily and provide a healthy boost to Tarvaris Jackson’s confidence that he will need to carry with him into the following week.

Week 2 will be the real test for the Vikings. They don’t have to win (assuming they beat they Packers in Week 1 on Monday Night) but they need to show themselves, as well as the media and fans, that they can give Peyton Manning and the Indianapolis Colts a run for their money. The Colts will be hanging around in the end of the season looking for another shot at New England when the time comes. Some things just don’t change that often.

This is probably the tell-all portion of the season for the Vikings, Week 2 through week 5; Indianapolis, Carolina, Tennessee, and New Orleans, respectively. As I said, they don’t necessarily need to beat Indianapolis in Week 2, but if they don’t, they’d better be prepared to win at least two out of the next three. While Carolina is trying to rediscover their identity, Tennessee and New Orleans each know exactly who they are and also have their sights on a quick start and a slip-slide into the play-offs. But as eluded to in the opening paragraph, I think Peterson and Berrian will provide enough of a threat to widen the field enough for Jackson to relax and get his job done even while still learning to get better at it. The Vikings should be 4-1 by the end of Week 5, but they will be able to live with 3-2.

Following that stretch are five games in a row that the Viking SHOULD win. 8-2 after 10 weeks SHOULD be enough for them to coast into the play-offs (where they might win one to get their hopes up, but they won’t win two). Detroit, Chicago, Houston, Green Bay again, and Tampa Bay.

Detroit is Detroit. Home, away, here, there, doesn’t really matter because the Motor City Kitties are never quite sure where they are. Chalk up two wins for being in the Central Division.

Green Bay is not Green Bay. No one knows who they are anymore with Favre gone. This year should provide a sign or two of the answer, but not much more than that can be expected even from the 60,000 owners that show up at the office each Sunday afternoon to watch their investment at play. Two more wins donated to the cause.

Houston is finally getting better and proving that it can play in our league, but they still have another year or two to go before they will actually worry anyone. They’ve proven they can play, but now they have to prove they can stay healthy. The Vikings meet them mid-season, when most of their players are usually still trying to recover from the season’s first few games.

Tampa Bay. At Tampa Bay. If the Vikings won the last four in a row, they may lose this one because they’ll probably be starting to think that they are better than they really are and Tampa Bay will bring them back to reality.

So 8-2, 7-3, at this point. Jacksonville will be a tough game. They are a tough team and Del Rio is a tough coach with Minnesota ties. I give this game to Jacksonville with Maurice Jones-Drew out-shining Peterson (only time it happens this season to Peterson).

And then the Viking slide into home plate with the flailing Bears and Detroit again, and Arizona and Atlanta, two teams that do not know how to win in December, and the final game of the year against the NFL reigning champions (cough, cough) the New York Frickin’ Giants (I still haven’t recovered from that shocker yet). The Giants are not the best team in the NFL, were not the best team in NFL last year, and will not beat the Vikings this year. I’m not quite sure how Eli Manning and his oft injured and banged up crew pulled off what they pulled off last year (I had almost forgotten they were even in the play-offs until I saw who New England was going to have to destroy!) but they won’t even make the play-offs this year.

Final regular season record for the Minnesota Vikings…12-4.

But don’t let that fool you. The Vikings aren’t that good yet. The rest of the Central Division is simply that bad. But Adrian Peterson will certainly be fun to watch each and every week this season, and if Tarvaris Jackson allows Childress to remain head coach for a few more years, they could very well become that good over the next two or three seasons.

I’m stunned. What can I say? I was wrong. The New York freakin’ Giants somehow pulled it off, beating New England 17-14, in the upset of the decade. I mean, I watched it happen and I’m still pinching myself to make sure I am awake. There’s just no room for perfection in this world anymore.

The Giants set the pace of the game where they wanted it by using up almost ten minutes of the clock on their opening drive. By the end of the first quarter, New England was still trying to cap off their opening drive.

In the final minutes, Brady easily drove down the field when he needed to (and had time to) hitting Moss for what looked like the Super Bowl winning TD, and appropriately so considering the season each of them had to get them there.

Then after two genuine missed interception opportunities and an impossible catch made by Tyree, trapping the ball against his helmet as he fell to the ground with a defender draped all over him, Eli Manning’s final drive ended with a lazy bloop TD pass to Palxico Burress over New England defenders that picked the wrong time to fall asleep.

Even as Brady got the ball back with only 35 seconds and 40 yards needed to get into field goal range, I was confident that they would find a way to get to 19-0.

But of course, Brady is not Superman, as I was willing to believe, and Moss is not a man among boys but just a very coordinated, lanky, fast dude with good hands. They are not perfect, and in the end, neither was their season.

Maybe they lost on purpose. Yeah, that’s it. They lost on purpose. If they won it all this year, they’d have nothing to go for next year. Brady knew the only way to keep his team together was to keep them hungry. Their mission is still incomplete. Brady’s still got a few more years left in him. It was a fun year getting this far. He wants to do it again. Yeah, that’s what happened. 19-0 next year. I mean, how else could they lose to the New York freakin’ Giants? Had to be on purpose.

Or maybe I’ll wake up in a few minutes.

18-0 and losing the Super Bowl.

Wow.

New England’s perfect world had been made of glass after all and shattered seconds before its construction was complete.

The New York freakin’ Giants…World Champs…who’da thunk it.

I had predicted that the real Super Bowl was going to be Brady vs Manning in the AFC Championship game this week. Well I was half right. It will be Brady vs Manning in the real Super Bowl, just not the same Manning or the same week.

But does it really matter? I thought Indianapolis was the only team that stood a chance at beating New England, and not much of a chance at that. But Indianapolis stumbled the week before their opportunity and let San Diego put their best effort to the test against the legend in the making. San Diego has certainly proven themselves as one of the top echelon teams this season, but their best this week wasn’t good enough, to no one’s real surprise.

Favre, Romo, Manning, Manning, Rivers, take your pick, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, it doesn’t matter. This season, Brady and the Patriots are in a league of their own. No one has any real chance.

The New York Giants will show up in two weeks, but no one other than the most loyal Giant players and their mothers think they actually stand a chance at ending the fairy tale season that has been authored by the New England Patriots.

The game will be fun to watch because history will be made and there are a few interesting characters that will be making it. But the outcome of the game will never be in doubt. And Mother Nature will not be leveling the playing field in Arizona. Brady and Moss will be unleashed. Giants will be squashed. In a year of million dollar election campaigns while young militant lives are being lost every day in a seemingly increasingly meaningless war being fought abroad, it only seems appropriate that this is the year of the Patriots.

But take away all the window dressing the media will try to decorate this upcoming February 3rd event with and what you have left is still the best NFL team to have ever been put together in the leagues long history.

New England-42
New York Giants-13

The ‘in’ pick this season for the Super Bowl Champion appears to be Indianapolis despite New England’s dominating regular season performance. Everyone seems to be trying to figure out which team has the best chance to beat New England this year. I have to agree that the Colts may indeed have the best chance, but I stand by the idea that it is a slim chance, at best.

New England WILL go 19-0 this season and after the final scores have been entered into the books, all those that were imagining that anyone could beat them this year will be wondering what the hell they were thinking of when New England literally destroys Indianapolis in the AFC Title game.

The New England-Jacksonville game will be over by half-time when the Patriots prove that they simply have too many weapons for the Jaguars to keep track of.

In the ensuing week of the play-offs when the REAL Super Bowl will be played between the Pats and the Colts, New England will be 21 points ahead going into the 4th quarter and end up winning by 10 in a game that will never be in doubt.

The Super Bowl itself will be a major let down as the Pats will make Romo and his Dallas Cowboys look like the Washington Generals going up against the Harlem Globetrotters. This game will be over in the first quarter after Moss and Brady have already connected for two TDs of over 50 yards and Watson adds another from inside the red zone. Final score: New England 56-Dallas 14.

Next year, in the 2008-09 season, having lost almost no one of any significance because most Patriot players would be willing to play for free to stay together and try again, New England will win another Super Bowl after losing only once on the season to a non-play-off team.

You heard it here first.

Another fantasy season comes to an end, the 14th for the Hail Marys, and the results were respectable but not quite as dominating as I had hoped. 121 teams were drafted during July, August, and September before the NFL regular season began. Of the two teams with perfect records (14-0) going into the Super Bowl, one came out a winner holding on to its perfect season finishing (15-0), a first for the Hail Marys. For this final week, the Hail Marys finished (31-25).

For the season:
• (1201-540-8) for a 69% head-to-head win ratio.
• 104 teams (86%) made the play-offs.
• 67 teams (55%) were Division Champs.
• 37 teams (31%) were Wildcard teams.
• 36 teams (30%) became League Champions
  (24 Division Winners, 12 Wildcards).
• +$85.00 (2 money leagues).

16 weeks down - 1 to go. The Hail Marys had a hot and cold week this week in fantasy land winning 6 of 8 Super Bowls that were completed this week and making the Super Bowl for next week with my final wildcard team that was still on the prowl, but currently losing 31 of 54 Super Bowls at half-time (Week Seventeen is the 2nd half).

10 games were completed this week, (7-3).
With 56 games left for the season, (1170-515-8).

Currently at half-time, (22-31-1).

Both my undefeated teams are currently behind at half-time and having a Super Bowl completed during Week Seventeen can have a negative effect on good teams. Many NFL play-off teams are going to be resting or saving their key players next week, preserving them for when it counts in the NFL play-offs. So my undefeated teams, which feature several key players from good play-off teams, may not get much production out of those players when it counts most for these leagues. Smart leagues have their Super Bowl during Week Sixteen when most teams will still be playing their stars for most of the game. Week Seventeen, for many NFL teams, is no more important than a pre-season game and will not play their stars more than a few series’, if at all. You wouldn’t include pre-season stats in your regular season and you should never have your Fantasy League Championships determined in Week Seventeen. This should be a no-brainer.

Yet, that being said, I still seem to have 1 Super Bowl that begins next week and 54 that conclude with next week representing the 2nd half. I suppose I should be glad those 54 Super Bowls are two weeks long considering I would have lost 31 of them if they prescribed to my philosophy in the previous paragraph. I will probably have to try to put together some pretty strange looking line-ups compared to those that got me to this point since many of my season-long starters will be sitting on the bench during my Super Bowl while they rest for a shot at the real Super Bowl in Week Twenty-One. And if you don’t think that’s kind of stupid, re-read the paragraph above this one a few more times. It’s not rocket science.

Anyway, of the 21 teams drafted that completed their season this week in Week Sixteen (the way it’s supposed to work):
19 made the play-offs;
11 were Division Winners;
8 reached the Super Bowl;
6 became League Champions, including Hail Marys 1 (14-1), the very first team drafted back in late July for the 2007 fantasy season.

Final Fantasy Stats for the other 100 leagues will be dutifully posted next week.

Of the 121 Hail Marys drafted this season, 62 are in the big show, and one is still in the second round of the play-offs next week trying to make the Super Bowl for that league in Week Seventeen.

For 8 teams, next week is the Super Bowl in full, while 54 teams are playing the first half of their Super Bowl in Week Sixteen and the second half in Week Seventeen.

19 of 37 Wildcard teams made it to the Super Bowl (1 still running wild next week).
43 of 67 Division Winners made it to the Super Bowl.

For the week, the Hail Marys went (63-35).

For the season, the record is (1163-512-8). 69% is still a little less than what I had hoped for but having 86% make the play-offs and 51% make it all the way to the final game, I can’t complain.

The two teams at (13-0) are both now (14-0). One more (two-week) game to go undefeated for the season. It would be a first, and a second, in Hail Marys history to complete the season without a loss or a tie. Both teams featured Tom Brady at QB, Adrian Peterson (Min) at RB, and the Minnesota Defense. One was complimented with Steven Jackson, Jamal Lewis, and Chad Johnson. The other supporting cast included Joseph Addai, Randy Moss, and Larry Fitzgerald. All were from the draft, my 83rd and 89th.

My 40th team drafted takes an honorable 3rd place with a (13-0-1) record. Again, Tom Brady, Adrian Peterson (Min), and Steven Jackson led the way. I am hoping for, and expecting, all three of those teams to be joined by at least 30 more in Week Seventeen as League Champions.

That would give me about a 1 in 2 chance of getting to the Super Bowl at the beginning of a season, and about a 1 in 3 chance of winning it all. I can live with those odds.

64 of 121 teams still have a shot over the next two weeks.

Week Fourteen was the first week of the play-offs for most leagues. Although I had 95 teams active this week, only 12 games were completed while the other 83 are on an extended half-time.

20 Hail Marys are in a three week play-off format that started this week. 10 of those teams were Division Winners and on a bye for Week Fourteen. 9 teams were active and 1 team didn’t make the play-offs. 3 teams survived the round this week, 6 were eliminated. Next week 13 of the 20 teams will be active in round two.

The other three completed games this week went (1-2). The two losses went to teams already in the play-offs that have not started yet. The win goes to a team needing a win and two other teams to lose to get into the play-off, but the other two teams both won this week as well so those play-off hopes have been officially snubbed.

83 teams are currently at half-time, Week Fifteen being the second half of the first round of the play-offs. The winner of the two-week round is in the league’s Super Bowl which will span over Weeks Sixteen & Seventeen. 50 of those 83 teams are currently leading at the half.

This week = (4-8)
Overall = (1100-477-8)
Still Active = 98 (of 121) teams.

–newswire –9 AM –February 10, 2008 –News from the FutureA recent statement has been released by the Minnesota Department of Transportation regarding the sharp increase this winter season in fatal traffic accidents around the Twin Cities area. Apparently a study conducted by MinDOT, as well as a separate, unassociated study by the University of Minnesota, have both concluded that the “NFL Network” and the “Big Ten Network” are both directly responsible for the dramatic increase in traffic deaths and particular effected families may have a good chance at winning a law suit against the two Networks.”He used to stay home and get drunk while watching the games,” a recent grieving widow told reporters. “But now, ever since the Big Ten Network moved in and prevented him from being able to watch the Gopher basketball games at home, he’s been going out to the bar where he can see the game and getting drunk there. I was afraid this might happen, but what could I do? I begged him not to go. I told him he could just listen to the game on the radio, but he said it wasn’t the same. And now look what’s happened. First they took Al from me two evenings per week. Now they’ve taken him from me forever. They can’t get away with this. I’m going to make them pay.”

Her husband, Al, along with three other men, died tragically in a car wreck while returning home from a bar where they had been watching the Minnesota Gophers lose a tight game against border rival Wisconsin. The sole survivor of the crash said that Al had seen a badger crossing the road and was trying to run it down when the car crashed into the base of the bridge killing four of the five men instantly.

Al’s wife has sued the Big Ten Network for $5,000,000.00 ($1,000.00 for Al’s potential lost wages over the next 20 years and $4,999,000.00 for mental anguish) and now following suit, so to speak, many others who have recently lost their loved ones in a traffic accident while traveling home from seeing an NFL or Minnesota Gopher game that could have once been seen at home but now could only be seen through special networks, have also stepped forward and have filed suits against the appropriate network.

“Jenny didn’t even drink,” a newly single newlywed man reported. “But she just got so damned excited after a win. She was a cheerleader for the Gophers in 02, you know. She was driving home from an unexpected win over the Wolverines and she was probably just so excited bein’ so happy and celebratory and all that she lost control of the car. If it weren’t for the Big Ten Network, she would have seen the game and done her celebratin’ at home like she used to and then she and them other three fellas that were in the car with her would still be alive today.”

The NFL Network is facing even more lawsuits as it deals with the rise in the Thursday and Saturday night traffic related deaths. An expert in matters such as these told reporters that in his estimate, the two networks “…have a 90% chance of losing these suits, the damages possibly reaching hundreds of billions, essentially putting both networks out of business. As a result, next season, the games will need to be picked up by the regular cable networks, as they had been for years previous, if they are going to be aired at all.”

So at least it sounds like the many seemingly pointless deaths over the past few months to the fans of the Minnesota Gophers and the NFL, may not have been for naught. The lives of Al and Jenny and the many others who fell victim to the greediness of these two networks may have been the painful sacrifices necessary to bring back the common sports fan his basic sports viewing rights.

As I mentioned in one of my earlier fantasy football posts, injuries in the NFL have been on a dramatic rise this year. Case in point, last night in the Chicago-Washington match-up where both starting quarterbacks were knocked out of the game, as well as the rest of the season. I believe there have been 51 different starting quarterbacks for the NFL’s 32 teams this season, some being replaced due to lack of productivity of course, but most have been due to injury. Miami, New Orleans, Tampa Bay, Houston all lost there star running backs to injury for the year while many to most other teams had to rely on back-ups at running back for more than half the season to this point. This season, the same is true at most skill positions around the NFL.

With all the steroid issues and the do-whatever-it-takes-to-win mentality that could easily be considered a motto for any professional sports team, the NFL will soon be simply too rough of a sport for human beings to participate in. Instead of counting injuries during a game, it won’t be long before we are counting deaths.

If the sport is to continue to grow and prosper as it has over the past few decades, something is going to need to be done about the risks that players are taking just by going out on the field.

It got me thinking. Tom Brady never gets hurt. Tom Brady shows no emotion on the field. Tom Brady never panics. Tom Brady rarely makes a mistake. Tom Brady is as close to perfect as any NFL player has ever been. Seems to me every team in the league would be telling their defense to hurt Tom Brady, get him out of the game. Take out your opponent’s general and the war is all but won. You can’t tell me, legal or not, spoken aloud or not, that in the NFL, a league full of rich thugs, druggies, and criminals, the idea hasn’t occurred to every coach and defense that has faced the Patriots this season. (Disclaimer: I know there are a lot of good guys in the NFL, too. But my previous statement is equally true, as can be proven watching your local news on any given night.)

Yet Tom Brady still stands tall in the back field, calm, cool, emotionless, firing pass after pass, bomb after bomb, shredding defensive back fields of their dignity, making them look like amateurs. Too perfect. It got me thinking.

Maybe the powers to be behind the NFL had foreseen this trend of the game becoming too tough for the human body to endure. The quarterback we all watch in awe and call Tom Brady could in fact be Prototype #TB12NEPQB, a robotic football scoring machine that can’t get hurt, never gets flustered, and won’t get arrested for drunk driving or beating his wife after a loss.

Ever wonder how or why Brett Favre is still out there? How is it that after contemplating retirement over the last two or three years as his skills and productivity began to noticeably and rapidly decline, given the worst offensive help he’s had in a decade, he suddenly has the best year of his 17-season career?

What if he did retire last year? Prototype #BF4GBPQB could certainly explain a few things.