Tuesday Football: Shoulder leads

So the Pets Jets were irretrievably exposed as fakes last night in Massachusetts.  Normally, I'd dismiss a 45-3 loss by a 9-3 team as an outlier, but they're now running out of secondary personnel.  On a team as dependent on defense as the Jets, that's a staggering blow.  They'll advance to the playoffs, but only because the sick bays filled up faster in Indianapolis and San Diego.

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The death of Don Meredith, just a week after Leslie Nielsen passed on, is really saddening.  Too much funny is going away too quickly.

I'm too young to remember Meredith the Dallas Cowboy quarterback, but his years as co-commentator with Howard Cosell made some of the best sports television ever.  "Dandy Don" got Cosell to lighten up just a bit, and Howard conviced Meredith to take himself a bit more seriously.  Those little bits made them a great team, rendered Frank Gifford irrelevant, and made every Monday night game watchable.  If nothing else, I could look forward to hearing Meredith croon out the Willie Nelson chorus that became his signature:

Turn out the lights
The party’s over
They say that
All good things must end
Call it tonight
The party’s over
And tomorrow starts
The same old thing again

Godspeed, Don Meredith.

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Fantasy football update:  Success for the Fluttering Horde, more frustration for the Middlemen.

Anything but Last, the Horde's opponent, lost Percy Harvin early, but it turned out not to matter.  The Horde lineup fell only six points short of its optimal score, blowing away my former in-law, 121-102, and stopping a two-game skid.  ABL won the regular-season crown at 10-3, but I'm proud to say that the Horde accounted for two of those losses.  The Horde finished the regular season at 7-6, good for a #6 playoff seed.  Next up: my nephew and the commissioner, Osogood.

The Middlemen also faced an eight-man team, thanks to Brett Farve's injury, but then the Pets Jets screwed up.  Their defense cost me a critical point, and sent the Middlemen crashing to their fourth straight loss, 95-89.  It's also the third loss the 6-7 Middlemen -- who started 4-1 -- have taken to a short-handed opponent.  But for the fact that the team has "allowed" the most fantasy points in its league, I'd have decided to just let Yahoo! set my lineup this week.  As it is, I might be adding streaking Saints RB Christopher Ivory to the team.  If I can pull that off, the Middlemen still have a shot at the playoffs.

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