Week One
“We can’t run. We can’t pass. We can’t stop the run. We can’t stop the pass. We can’t kick. Other than that, we’re just not a very good football team right now.”
-Bruce Coslet, former Bengals Head Coach
Bruce Coslet was famously talking about his own paltry Bengals team, but he may as well have been talking about most of you nerds, too—especially Luke. About Luke and his team, current Buffalo Bills owner, Terry Pegula, recently had this to say:
“If the black players [sorry-ass, three-time champion managers] don't like it here, they should go back to Africa and see how bad it is.”
Now, is it okay to alter the words of an ultra-racist billionaire who sees black people as commodities to make a quasi-funny joke directed at our leaguemate who missed the draft due to a trip to Africa? Probably not, but fuck it. If he’s somehow our only three-time champion and also put up the worst week one in the league, he deserves it. That’s in the Fantasy Football Constitution. As if to not be out-racisted by another owner, Jerry Jones, wanted to add that “If Blacks Luke feel[s] some kind of way, they should buy draft their own team and hire draft who they want to hire draft.” These octogenarian walking shit-tubes apparently had a lot to say about Luke and his recent fantasy performance. Fortunately for Luke, Pegula and Jones failed to realize that his season may turn around as he left the most points on the bench of any manager this week and would have scored a resounding 32.2 more points if he knew how to set a line-up, which would have been more than enough to fell Charles and his Baby Got Dak crew. That and—well—it’s Week One. But, what is Week One for if not dramatically overreacting to games and shitting all over your leaguemates?
Jerry Jones, seen here protesting a young black girl from attending a recently desegregated school.
Speaking of overreactions, how about the soon-to-be 0-17 Kansas City Chiefs? Without their sure-handed stallion of a Tight End in Travis Kelce, Patrick Mahomes was forced to rely on a cavalcade of brick-handed receivers that, had they been alive in 1986, would surely have been the cause of the broken chain in Hands Across America. Really, Justin? A Hands Across America burn in 2023? Well, I wasn’t alive back in 1986 so I missed out on all these topical jokes. For those of you that aren’t aware, Hands Across America was a public fundraising event where more than five million people paid $10 to reserve a spot in a chain of people holding hands across the contiguous United States. While raising more than $15 million for USA for Africa to combat hunger and homelessness, the event was seen as a failure by many due to the gaps in the chain where people were replaced by ribbons. They had the number of people to complete the chain, they just ran into the same problem that the electoral college and Congress have—the empty land in giant states fucks everything up. So, they had the pieces, just not the execution. Can the Chiefs receivers prove to be more valuable than a length of ribbon and hold onto anything that Patrick Mahomes throws their way? Time will tell. In the meantime, you learned about Hands Across America. You’re fucking welcome.
The Kansas City Chiefs were not the only offenses sputtering around the league. The Bears are the Bears and have no serviceable starters (sorry, Moore and Mooney), Aaron Rodgers had only three more snaps than his Achilles, and the Giants played one of the most offensive—not to be confused for their complete dearth of offense—games that the league has ever seen. In fact, this was the worst showing for league-wide offenses in the opening week since 2001. So, if you had one of the many, many, many (sweet Jesus, so many manys) under-performing players this week, you are not alone. If, however, you played a defense that happened to go up against one of these teams that might lose to even Nebraska (as if Nebraska could fucking beat anyone), you likely benefited from a surge of points. If you were lucky enough for that defense to be Dallas, you had one of the highest scoring defensive games of all time and the highest scoring player/DST of the week. And that brings us to our league’s newest member and the Rise of Dark-Manda.
She is become death, destroyer of leagues.
Was it beginner’s luck? Was it the Fantasy Gods’ unrelenting hatred of Nick? Whatever it was—Amanda’s team exploded this week. Tyreek Hill and Dallas DST scored enough points combined (79.00) to defeat our two lowest scoring teams on their own—Taylor’s Chubb-Zero (78.08) and Luke’s aforementioned Average Joe’s (70.24). Does this mean that the B-Team All-Stars have a new Mommy, eat her up no crumbs left? Week Two against Mitch’s Walker Texas Rangers will provide us with a glimpse of what’s to come. Speaking of—did anyone else notice that our league Co-Champs played each other in Week One? Mitch barely eked out a Monday Night win against ole MessiMandi with Stefon Diggs. Does that make Mitch our True Champion? No. Suck it, Mitch.
This New York Times Best-Smelling Author can’t wait to see where this season takes us as he watches you all lose in the most hilarious ways possible. Keep dreaming, keep sucking, keep failing—keep having fucking fun, my dudes.
Kisses.
