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“When was that?”

Well, you should remember, as it was only last week where 97% of the all ACL’s in the NFL collectively exploded. I’m no doctor, so I had no idea that modern medicine was able to take an athlete, who was expected to be out 5-8 weeks, to practicing a few days after his injury, and might actually be playing in today’s game. I’m obviously talking about Jamaal Charles, but he’s not the only one who was affected by this dark wizardry insta-heal. In fact, the only player that seems to have been left out from this wonderful era in medicine appears to be Ryan Mathews.

F*ck me, right?

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Welcome to the Handcuff Report, 2014 primer. The Almighty J-FOH has bestowed upon me the honor of keeping you knuckleheads up to date on the latest NFL arrests, felonies, and misdemeanors. If Steven Ridley and Shane Vereen are smoking weed in a Pontiac Firebird, we’ll be there. If  Titus Young finds his way back into the league, we’ll be there. If Golden Tate decides to steal maple bars from a Detroit bakery, we’ll be there. You get the point…. Wait.?!?! That’s not what this post covers?…. It’s about running back committee’s? …Hmmm I don’t think that’s right. Jay, I think we have a problem…..I had 1,300 words about Ray Rice, Josh Gordon, Le’veon Bell, and LeGarrette Blount. It seemed reasonable, there are a lot of arrests, and they do in fact impact our rosters. But okay… I got it now, you meant handcuff in a less literal sense. Oops! Welp, time to refocus. I guess instead I’ll be discussing the ever evolving Running Back committee situations around the league. For today and at least the first few weeks of the season, I’ll be providing a list of depth charts and commenting on the situations I feel need to be covered. In other words I’ll be spending less time on teams like the Vikings, Bears, or Seahawks and more time on teams like the Lions, Falcons, and Dolphins. As the season progresses, I’ll probably switch to more of a “handcuffs to watch format”, where I’ll cover a handful of backs with expanding roles. But who knows, we’ll see, you guys can tell me in the comments if you like the depth chart rankings. I’m cool with that. After today I will be sticking with the tried and true tiered approach (say that three times fast Micro Machine Man) and the tier names that J-FOH had last year, because what else is there outside of Fuzzy, Standard Issue Police, and Duct taped handcuffs? That pretty much covers the handcuff gamut. No??? Are there other varieties besides the ones covered?  Like those weird plastic ones, that cops use, maybe? Did you notice I said “cops use”… do you know why? Because Standard Issue Police That’s Why!!!

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What, I told them to match my hair with my smile…

As touched upon briefly and legally (I think, you never know with touching) in the post calling Montee Ball overrated, it dawned on me that Ryan Mathews still remains underrated, and he probably shouldn’t be. Here’s the specific quote about Mathews:

“Let’s not forget about Ryan Mathews, who also had these same issues (ball security and pass protection), and it took him three seasons to emerge into last year’s career breakout. It may be an apples/oranges comparison because of the injuries Mathews suffered, probably slowing his development, but it can’t be denied that there were specific game-plan decisions from 2010-2012 based on his weaknesses. And I’m sure there was a fruit basket involved somewhere. Needs more mango if you ask me. And may I add that these years also led to the amazing discovery that Ronnie Brown was actually still alive. Who knew?”

To further elaborate on those 2010-2012 years, even a homeristic (this word exists spell check, I swear!) fan like myself couldn’t bring myself to believe in Mathews. We are, in fact, talking about a back who had more broken more collarbones than touchdowns in 2012. Which, actually, now that I think about it, is pretty impressive. Add with the previously mentioned issues of ball security and pass protection, along with the  fact that he had only one season in his career where he rushed for 1,000 yards, and missed 10 games in those three years…. well, even as one of the 57 Chargers fans (138 when the surf is low), I just couldn’t buy in at all for 2013.

Please, blog, may I have some more?

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I only hold hands when I hold balls. Totally makes sense.

It has been pointed out that in my 2014 Fantasy Football Rankings, Montee Ball ranks quite lower than that of my peers. And while my first argument for this would be: gravity, bro (get it?), there are still many question marks here that prevent me from fully believing, kind of like Scientology. But less-less crazy and with more of Peyton Manning‘s forehead. And, sure, it’s easy to point out that the Broncos offense remains elite from last season’s historic run, which certainly played a large role in Knowshon Moreno‘s gaudy totals. And it should be noted, in that environment, Ball was able to average 4.7 yards-per-carry for the season (5.9 YPG in the final two months). But there are some things still holding me back. But don’t worry, I’m still the big spoon in this scenario. We can all rest easy friends.

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A week is in the books and it’s time to absolutely freak out.  Tom Brady is horrible, time to drop him for Terrelle Pryor!

Like a GOP reaction to Obama having his foot on the Oval Office desk, then the subsequent overreaction to the jokes about overreactions, there’s been a lot of drama to overreactions.  Chill out people!  It’d be like a biologist getting all angry because that’s not what the Fox really says… Idea!  Colbert cuts that video with Fox News people freaking out over the gobbledygook in the chorus.  Comedy gold.

Point is – don’t worry about tough week ones and keep playing your studs.  Barring a late scratch I’m still playing Roddy White, who despite the bum ankle and only out there as a “decoy,” still got a red zone catch and I think gets more involved.  I’m not benching him for some scrub, but he does obviously move down a few spots.

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RCL Season is approaching!  We’re stoked this year for another big RCL season, and we’re still looking for more leagues and more commishes, so as Sky would say “clickity-click this linkity-link” and start up a new RCL league!  As I mentioned on yesterday’s Podcast post, I’m going to give the top scorer every week a shout out and the team they toppled a slurry of French-ish epithets screamed as if atop a castle.

Last Tuesday, we had our first RCL draft in my JB’s Random Commenter League, and I gotta say, Razzball readers are pretty effing smart.  It was like drafting with 11 other mes.  12 JB’s would be 79 feet of fantasy gigantism.  Horrifying.  But I did come away really happy with my team.  As we talked about in our chat, I don’t really have any draft strategies this season, because there’s just so much sleeper/overrated value at different times that I’m going to come away with wildly different teams based on my draft spot.  None of the guys on my team were particular targets, except my love for Cam Newton this year, who I think has a monster season.  But I’m getting ahead of myself…

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It’s championship week in most leagues, so there aren’t many roster holes that need to be plugged. There are teams everywhere who rode Adrian Peterson and Drew Brees to the title game, and they aren’t too worried. But there are also teams that got this far on the backs of Russell Wilson, James Jones and […]

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I don’t know about you, but when I think of Thanksgiving, I think of glazed ham. I think of candied yams sometimes with and sometimes without marshmallows. I think about green bean casseroles and cranberry sauce. I don’t care if it’s homemade or if I can slice a piece of that gelatinous goodness off the […]

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So this was it.  This was the night that Matt Cassel could’ve saved his starting job.  Could’ve saved the Chiefs from a 1-7 start and from forcing Chiefs fans into watching the Brady Quinn era unfold before their nearly gouged out eyes.  Cassel could not have asked for a better matchup to prove his mettle […]

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