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I wasn’t always so down on Vincent Jackson. In fact, it’s quite hard to be seeing as how he’s had six 1,000+ yard seasons in the past seven years, with four straight from 2011-2014. And mind you, only one of those seasons involved a quarterback named Philip Rivers. Since then, he’s had the likes of Josh Freeman (to be fair, some of it was peak Freeman), Mike Glennon, and Josh McCown throwing to him, so you’d certainly give Jackson a bunch of credit for being an above-average receiver for quite some time in fantasy football. And while the end-of-season numbers always seem to be there, the problem isn’t so much of not having a legitimate NFL quarterback (which he doesn’t), or a running game that takes focus from the defenses (he also doesn’t have this either) or even other receivers to create space (Mike Evans actually does this), the problem is consistency.

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Jay-Cutler-in-Makeup
There would be no other proper way to begin this rant than by saying the four words that are screaming to be ejected from my mouth. Ef you Jay Cutler! What a bag of dog excrement. I don’t know him personally, and he might be a good dude to slam beers with (doubtful), but as far a quarterbacks are concerned, he can just go away. I’m sick of all the “Jay Cutler is a top quarterback” talk that I’ve heard for the past few seasons. He’s not.

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If you go and start with the 2007 season, Greg Jennings has been a consistent touchdown scorer. It was his second year in the NFL, his quarterback was Brett Favre and he played in 13 games, caught 53 passes and 12 of them were for touchdowns. That is a touchdown on every 4.4 catches. Those 12 touchdowns had him in a tie for fourth place among all wide receivers. I want to note that the players ahead of him all had at least 70 catches. The quarterback might have changed (Aaron Rodgers), but over the next four seasons (’08-’11), he caught a total of 34 touchdown passes (8.5 per season). In three of these years, he had at least nine touchdowns. I bring all this up because he was no longer in a Green Bay Packer uniform. His new team was the Minnesota Vikings, and his quarterback was Christian Ponder. (CRAZY! I know…) Yes, he was going to see more targets but the downgrade in quarterback play was going to lead to less quality targets.

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Amazing, isn’t it, my Razzballers? The Fantasy Football playoffs are on the immediate horizon. Seems like only yesterday we were doing mock drafts and arguing about whether to take Adrian Peterson or Doug Martin with the first pick. Hope you went AP. We were all so young, bright-eyed and hopeful then. Sing it: We are the world, we are the children. Three months later, we are a disgruntled bunch of misanthropes throwing back cheap scotch at 8 am, licking our nicotine patches and staring into the dark abyss of Week 11. If you drafted Arian Foster or Aaron Rodgers, it may be time to take up Fantasy Curling. It’s HUGE in Canada. Ask our touque wearing podcast host Nick. He bailed on his team three weeks ago to concentrate on Canada’s national pastime. For the rest of us more “serious” fantasy ballers, it’s time to start thinking a step ahead of the competition and improve our playoff seeds. There is no loyalty when it comes to this silly little game. It’s time to bail on players dragging you down. So long Trent Richardson, your dead to me. Bye, bye, Stevie Johnson, your mom’s here. Colin Kaepernick? Meet me down by the stream so I can tell you about the rabbits. We’re looking for men not mice. It’s time to make the playoff push. It’s time to jam it or cram it.

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The demolition derby of humanity known as the NFL continues to churn on and keeps filling my office with patients.

Doug Martin of the Bucs missed last night’s game with a torn labrum and could be done for the year. Reggie Wayne and Sam Bradford are both toast with ACL injuries. Jay Cutler of the Bears is out for four weeks with a groin injury. Jermichael Finley is done for the year after a scary neck injury and bruised spine.

Let’s go a little more in-depth on the Martin injury.

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My biggest reason for digging daily fantasy leagues, and DraftKings is by far my favorite, is I can brag right away.  As in, “HAHA Nick I owned you this week!”  While I still finished just out of the money, I had a solid team and can still brag to dear Nicholas.  If you didn’t catch it last week, Nick and I tweeted out our line-ups and my immediate response to his was “Josh Freeman?!” This just isn’t Nick’s year for football…  And with DraftKings you get immediate bragging rights unlike your yearly leagues.  Sure my 7-0 Writer’s League Team is going to do better than Nick’s 1-6 team, but hey, at least I know for sure I won DraftKings!

Nick and I are going to face off again in the same $1 challenge to see if I can go double-or-nothing against him.  We’re putting our teams together now and will tweet them out right before kickoff on Sunday as well.  Razzball Nation is of course invited to join and track our teams and see how you stack up against us in the same challenge.  And pick Josh Freeman again Nick!

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The narrative of tonight’s game would best be read in a Sam Elliott voice. No, I’m not talking about those crappy Dodge commercials. No again, I’m not talking about his turn as the Chupadogra in Marmaduke. How’d you even know he was that without Wikipedia anyways? Nah, I’m rocking The Big Lebowski on this one and going with ‘The Stranger’. Sometimes there’s a man…I won’t say a hero, ’cause, what’s a hero? But sometimes, there’s a man. And I’m talkin’ about Peyton Hillis here. Sometimes, there’s a man, well, he’s the man for his time and place. He fits right in there. And that’s Hillis, in New Jersey. And even if he’s a lazy man – and Hillis was most certainly that. Quite possibly the laziest in Bergen County, which would place him high in the runnin’ back world for laziest worldwide. But sometimes there’s a man…sometimes, there’s a man…Aw, I lost my train of thought here. But what I do know is on a night rife with Fantasy futility, the the bridge to a winning week was brought down by the unlikeliest of guys on a night of the unlikeliest suckitude we’ve seen in prime time so far this year. Hillis gave us his best Hynoski impersonation for most of the night as he rumbled for 81 tough yards and a touchdown to help hold down the first win of the NFL season for his beleaguered team mates. Indeed, sometimes there’s a man…who doesn’t really matter and will never be heard from again. You can call Peyton Hillis the dude and I’m just fine with that. But he’s not the capitalized ‘Dude’. He’s some schmo that stumbled onto an 0-6 team and whose lead back for the week got hurt and needed a spark for the night and he was it. And with this narrative, I fully expect the first question to be ‘should I pick up Hillis’ because I’ve trained you all well in the art of snark. Good lord, this game was terrible. Thank you, voice of Sam Elliott in my head, for making it palpable. In other 2013 Fantasy Football news…

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Ugh.  My bench calls last week, in a way to sum them up, is like the Vikings this season.  AP has to go through an unimaginable tragedy, then there’s rumors of him being traded, then they bring in a scrapheap of a QB in Josh Freeman who is going to start.  On a lighter note, ESPN wants the head of whomever scheduled the Monday Night Football games this year.  Wait – that’s lighter?  Ummm, yea if Joe Pesci is the head-deliverer!

I hated going into LSD this week.  Haha, a sentence I never thought I’d say… But yeah, it was a brutal week, and despite utterly clobbering the other Razzball Writers and being one of the handful of teams undefeated in RCLs, I just can’t quite seem to hit my stride in Last Second Decisions so far this year.  But what is hitting its stride is RCL Basketball, and we’re gearing up for the best and biggest season we’ve ever had over there on hoops.  If you need your fantasy get-me-over when NFL is over and until Baseball and daily Grey-dates (what I call Grey updates, but now realize that sounds like a Cougar dating site term), hoops is you perfect go-to through the second half of Winter to early Spring.

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Welcome to Bet the Farm, Razzball’s weekly NFL wagering contest. We’re back for our second season and ready to take you on over the course of 17 weeks of NFL play. For those new to the game, here are the rules:

  • You start with $1,000 in contest money to make wagers with. You may join in any week.
  • You can wager on the spread or Over/Under for any NFL game, so long as your pick is made by kickoff of that game. The Yahoo Sports Odds page is a good place to get betting lines: you may use the best line you find available when you make your post, but revisions to wagers are not allowed.
  • Your wager must be in an increment of $10.
  • You must beat the House: Therefore, you only receive 90% of your wager for a win ($9 on a $10 bet), but lose 100% of your wager on a loss.
  • Your wager may be any amount between $10 and your full bankroll.
  • New this year: If you lose your entire bankroll, you are allowed a re-buy for another $1,000. Unlimited re-buys are available.
  • New this year: Bet the Farm staff will keep track of the full leaderboard for all participants. However, any player who has taken a re-buy will be listed below all players who have not taken a re-buy – even those with lower current balances. It’s always better to not lose all your money. Players with two re-buys will be listed below those with one re-buy, and so on.

Standings After Week 6:

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We might as well just call all weekly rankings ‘play whoever you own against the Jacksonville Jaguars’. Yes, I’d start Mike Glennon against them at this point. Maybe even Ryan Fitzpatrick. That’s how dirty it is in Jagsville. But the reality is, Ryan Mathews had himself a fine day on MNF, gaining over 100 yards as the Chargers ran the clock down against a surprisingly inept Colts offense. Though he didn’t find the end zone, I can’t see how the Chargers don’t take advantage of both him and Woodhead as they control the game. Sure, it might become a bit of a shootout – I trust the Chargers defense about as much as any hollywood gossip mag at the checkout counter. Tori Spelling’s face is melting off due to too much surgery and thus has moved to Minnesota for the cooler climate? Ok, not likely but if that keeps her out of future movies, I could think of worse things. Eh, where was I? Oh yeah, start all your Chargers and enjoy it while you do it. Actually, there are a lot of great matchups this week for guys that are sometimes fringe starters. Alshon Jeffery looks primed for a good day against that Redskins secondary and while Jordy battle Haden, I think James Jones has himself a mighty fine day as a great secondary option for Rodgers. Josh Freeman is being given one of the worst secondaries and I think he takes full advantage. If Jerome Simpson is still floating around out there, it’d be a good week to pick him up in my book. Important notes to note: if Roddy White is a no go, you’re gonna want your Harry D in the lineup for volume reasons and it makes Toilolo an intriguing add in deep leagues. Outside of that, Jordan Reed is quietly sitting just ahead of Rudolph. I like both having a shot at big weeks if you’re stuck with muck at TE or a Jimmy Graham bye week. And with that, let’s kick the jabba to the curb and see what we got. Here’s our week 7 rankings for the 2013 Fantasy Football season…

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