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I apologize for the break in my articles, things got a bit much. I don’t like to get into the messy details of my personal life, but I also like contradicting myself, so, here’s my transaction list for the month of October:

October 3rd – Did not practice, labeled as Probable

October 5th – Did  not practice, downgraded to Questionable

October 8th – Scratched before game time due to “personal matters”

October 11th – Ran the field, upgraded to Questionable

October 12th – Coach says I had the best practice of the season, upgraded to Probable

October 13th – Placed on the PUP list until early November

Please, blog, may I have some more?

I can only assume you have read everyone else’s take on Adam Schefter, but it confirms what we’ve been postulating on this very very blurb column. In revealing that he allowed the Washington Football team’s then-president to edit an article about the Washington Football Team, it’s all out in the open now: Big Time Sports Journalists aren’t actually Journalists. Probably better for them in the long run, as most people associate the J-word with lapses in ethics, propaganda, and death threats at this point. In the world of Fantasy NFL blurbing, it has never been more apparent that “official team sources” from “reporters” should be questioned, not immediately blurbed as the gospel. 

Please, blog, may I have some more?

We all play games, whether it be fantasy sports or psychological battles with one’s SIGNIFICANT OTHER, which I’m bolding because I think it should be a horror movie title or a boss in the Dark Souls series. Fantasy Football holds all the hallmarks of a Souls-type video game; You get crushed Week 1, you spend time getting pumped/reading primers to help in your next run, and then you either triumph the next time you play, or you’re sent back to the last bonfire, full of impotent rage and complaining about how the system cheated you. Perhaps a Tecmo Bowl comparison would have worked better, but it’s too on the nose, and it’s been about five years since I last emulated the Eagles to yet another perfect season. Let us continue to explore the biases that reshape our mind’s eyeballs (maybe into cubes, or even tetrahedrons!):

Please, blog, may I have some more?

Now that we’re getting into Week 3, let us gather ’round the campfire and tell scary stories about the Bogeycreatures of our minds: Biases! To know oneself is a difficult task, a task I will perhaps never complete. Correction, I know the parts of me that I abhor, just not the good parts. So yeah, as Meatloaf did not sing, “One out of two ain’t bad.” Now that’s some bad math, friends, so let us impale your encased meats and inflated sugar cylinders on your sticks, stare into the flames, and ponder the first person who decided that flames “lick.” First one to scream in fright has to stay up and make sure the fire’s all the way out. We’re doing A-through-C today. Use these biases to reflect on your drafts, your teams as they stand now, and to manipulate people so you win every argument. People like you a lot better when you insist on winning every argument

Please, blog, may I have some more?

In a just world, blurbs would eat caveats for breakfast. I already went over a list of fantasy football caveats in one of my first blogs on this old corner of the “osphere,” as they say. In a sports media universe that we breathe in the moment we wake up and open social media, after our cat knocks over the drying rack because she’s a glutton for both food and self-flagellation, The Take rules over us all. The Take draws us in with instant magnetic concrete-thinker thuggery. Our amygdalas catch fire, and rupture into the two divine paths, as Robert Frost once cataloged:

Please, blog, may I have some more?

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Projections are hard, especially when it comes to Fantasy North American Football. The list of caveats that come with evaluating a single player’s offensive performance any given week are many.

Please, blog, may I have some more?

Welcome to the Blurbpocalypse, a portmanteau so clumsy that it finally killed the word “Listicle.” We killed a word that has haunted the internet since the very beginnings of time (My kid still can’t conceive of the small portion of my early childhood where every home didn’t have computers/tablets/phones, so I’ve given up explaining the Internet-less world. Zounds, olde fowlkes must ha’e been sinfully bored, what wit the lack o’ 5G)! The aforementioned Blurbpocalypse happens twice a year, once in the MLB and once in the NFL, at the beginning of each league’s season. Teams finalize rosters, which means we collectively scroll through a pantfull of blurbs that look like this:

Sylvester Stone released by the Rams

Stone showed some flashes of his college years over the summer but was unable to carry it into the preseason. Stone was trying to make it a Family Affair, as Los Angeles initially drafted him. Unfortunately, due to some off-the-field issues, the team couldn’t Stand to wait for Stone to get back in shape. Stone released a brief statement: “Thank You (Falletinme Be Mice Elf, Again).

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Once in a while, a good piece of advice can come from the internet. Just yesterday a single person commented on last Saturday’s inaugural NFL Avoiding the Blurbstomp piece first calling themselves a “simpleton of linguistics” before accusing me of needless complexity in the structure of my writing. My superego, the voice of doubt, shame, and embarrassment that works hard to hijack any creative endeavor I pursue, was overjoyed. “Here,” it said, “Your writing style is unnecessary. Don’t be stupid. Write about fantasy sports just like everyone else.” My superego then leaned back against its souped-up, ketchup red Honda Civic with a spoiler and rims that would make Vin Diesel blush and dared me to keep writing. 

Please, blog, may I have some more?

Good afternoon and salutations to you, delicious devourers of pigskin prognostications! I have been providing what some describe as a public service, and others may describe as a self-flagellating farcical fete. I read a lot of blurbs for fantasy sports, whether it’s Rotowire, Rotoworld (NBC Sports Edge, to noobs), FantasyPros. They all have the daunting task of sourcing and re-reporting beat writer Tweets, playing time updates, and whether or not a player is “in game shape.” As a male adult who writes words, my current game shape is polygonal, especially when sitting down to write. This polygonal writer will weekly look for examples of biased or factually/rhetorically incorrect to help you avoid getting blurbstomped. You shouldn’t read a blurb and immediately pick up a bro because a fantasy site told you to.

Please, blog, may I have some more?