I Don’t Follow Baseball and it’s for My Own Sanity

Summer is meant to be the time of year where you take a vacation, go outside, and hit the reset button. We’re taught this from a very young age thanks to summer vacation from school. Sure originally that became a thing so the kids could go help out on pappy’s farm but it’s still time away from the daily grind of that fancy book learning.

I have to take this same approach to my life as a sports fan or else I’d end up an absolute mess. Growing up I was always a die hard football guy, I thank my lucky stars everyday I was raised a Patriots fan by my former Masshole Dad and his side of the family (the wave of hatred emitted by people reading that feels glorious and feeds me like the sun’s rays feeds plants). I also have lived in Syracuse my whole life and really one of the few things this city has going for it is that we have D-1 sports programs to cheer for. Football was hot garbage for pretty much my whole time as a conscious sports fan we’ll say around 2000. Coach Marone’s tenure was pretty cool before he bolted to Buffalo and gutted the coaching staff. Thing looks like their going in the right direction too with Dino Babers running the show but the team still manages to put out some real stinkers each season. Growing up tho my family had seasons tickets to a program that consistently found itself ranked as one of the 10 worst teams in the country and at one point the idea of folding the program was at least theorized. Oh we’re playing Akron at home this year, sweet we might actually see a win this time! The mental Jekal and Hyde that was Saturday to Sunday would’ve ripped a lesser man to shreds.

Then there was the introduction to fantasy football. Now that’s like football heroine. You’re in high school, you and your buddies decide to hop in on one of those random leagues on ESPN. Next thing you know you’re in 4 different money league, you’re at work tweaking your roster for 6 hours a day and offering handies in exchange for a starting running back. It’s an ugly downward spiral many of us embark on with no signs of looking back.

Another thing that Syracuse is well known for is having winters that on average would be thought of as The Day After Tomorrow becoming a reality in most other regions of the world. I went to school at SU and I was asked by non-locals turned students why seemingly everyone in the city owns Syracuse Basketball apparel even though they didn’t go to school there. I’d reply “well you’ve been here for the winter, if we didn’t all have something to band together over and distract us for those 6 months (it starts snowing in November and doesn’t end till May) then the suicide rate would probably skyrocket and we’d devolve into tribal hordes looking to stockpile resources.” So to say that College Basketball has me by the balls is an understatement. While the real Big East was still a thing it was basically an unwritten law that all the daytime tournament games would be shown during school.

For a long time my level of following the NBA was beginner at best but in recent years that’s been ramped up, thanks in part to it being on in my college dorm/apartment pretty much every night Syracuse wasn’t playing. Also I figured fuck it, I like watching it and already follow these guys like crazy while they’re in college so let’s just keep it rolling.

So let’s do some quick accounting. The NFL season runs from September through early February hitting Monday-Thursday-Sunday and the occasional Saturday but really it’s a Monday-Sunday commitment. Then we got the pre draft buzz, free agency, and preseason making the NFL nearly year round. College Football starts a week earlier and goes till mid January dominating Saturdays and the occasional dosage of Wednesday night MACtion and Friday nights because Syracuse is enough of a brand name that they get TV time but not good enough to get national spots on Saturdays. College Basketball starts in November and brushes up against early April and is also almost a nightly event. Toss in the NBA ending in June and my schedules booked up for the entire year outside of June-early August.

I actually enjoy watching baseball from time to time. Watching two aces go to work in prime time is wildly entertaining and going to see the Syracuse Chiefs play on dollar hotdog Thursday is a summer time staple in the CNY area. The playoffs are absolutely electric, I won’t deny that one bit. But 164 games plus at least one tier of minor leagues I have to be mindful of is just too much for my brain and my heart during the time of year where I’m supposed to unplug. Call my a pussy or whatever for it but I take my summer seriously when it comes to relaxing and that includes weening myself off of being a sports junkie. It just makes relapsing to the sound of the first crack of two helmets colliding in real football not fauxball (wait a minute…goddamnit Rodger) that much more satisfying.

Holla at ya boy

Twitter: @LlFired

How to Use the Helmet Rule to Win Your Fantasy League

So if there’s one thing we’ve learned from these first two weeks of the NFL preseason it’s that Rodger Goodell and the owners aren’t fans of defense. I understand the need to protect players from turning each other’s brains into mashed potatoes but when what were previously seen as clean but hard tackles are now a 15 yard penalty and automatic first down we’re all in for a rough season.

Just take a look at any of the games this preseason and I’m sure you’ll be able to find clips of solid hit, followed by a flag, followed by the announcer declaring this the “worst call I’ve ever seen” and that “they’re officiating defense out of football.” Not to mention this new “Rodgers Rule” where defensive players can’t land with all their weight on QBs because an NFL QBs shoulder maybe actually be the most valuable piece of human flesh outside of Kim K’s “totally not fake” pooper. Shout out Antwione Walker and the Vikings for starting that siege of outcry.

Now I do agree with the notion that the metaphorical sliders are turned up on these hits during the preseason as a way to over emphasize teaching these new rules. However even if these calls are turned back to 50% of what they are now it’s still going to be brutal to watch and the wallets of safeties across the NFL are going to get significantly lighter with the inevitable fines they’ll be receiving. Out of all the positions in football, the job of an NFL safety is probably effected the most, a vast majority of the plays they make come with the offensive players running directly at them, full speed, and now it seems like they’re being forced to resort to ankle biting.

Well as the saying goes, when life give you lemons make lemonade, and I have a strong feeling that this upcoming season in the NFL is going to be a big ol’ lemon. The lemonade is how you can use this stinker of a rule to win some cash and bragging rights from your buddies.

The notion is actually pretty simple, big home run hits are seemingly no longer allowed, or at the very least they’re much more difficult to pull off, so who are the guys that almost always require a big home run hit to take down?

I’m not going to run through my revised big board like I’m the next Mathew Berry but my suggestion is that you keep this notion in mind. Guys who defenders know they have to bring the lumber to in order to have a chance at stopping them are going to have more value to their offenses because of their newfound ability to draw these B.S. penalties. Take a guy like Gronk for example, now I know that he’s already the go to for Tom Brady in most situations but if you go back and look at the film, how often is it that you see a defender turn themselves into a human missile just to try and break up a pass going Gronk’s way? Pretty much all the time because that’s the only way you can slow down that hairless Sasquatch once he gets moving down the field. So now if I’m Brady there’s even more incentive to toss one towards 87 because either he’s coming down with it or we’re getting 15 yards and a first down.

Overall this shouldn’t shake up the top of your draft strategy too much but once you start to fill out the meat of your roster maybe lean towards players who are known for their physicality rather than their quickness. Joe Flacco has made a career out of tossing up PI balls and now offenses are going to be able to keep drives alive through hospital balls. If I was an OC I’m getting the ball in the hands of my biggest guys as often as I can and daring the defense to try to take them down with an arm tackle. Tight Ends and thiccc Running Backs are about to have a big year because they just became that much more of a problem for defenses.

Holla at ya boy

Twitter: @LlFired

I’m All in on the Sam Darnold Hype

It’s officially the dog days of summer now and meaningful football is right around the corner. Last night week 2 of the NFL preseason featured the New York Jets facing off against the Washington R-words and the man of the night was the rookie QB repping Gang Green. Out of all the 1st round rookie QBs Darnold seems to be the one getting the most camp buzz, which as we all know is the first thing we look at when determining who is worthy of enshrinement in Canton. Baker Mayfield is hanging out in an RV like a true Texas high school football legend, Josh Allen’s wow moment so far is a throw that went out of bounds, Lamar Jackson is busy taking Flaco’s master class on making a career of drawing pass interference, and for all I know Josh Rosen is dead and buried somewhere in the Arizona desert. Darnold though, oh boy, he’s One Republic circa ’09 a.k.a. all the right moves. Earlier this week R-words corner Josh Norman tired to quell his excitement about the new king of the NFL but still let the league know that a storm is coming. “So far, he’s impressed me. And I didn’t want him to. That’s the main thing. I want to break all rookies’ backs.” I got news for ya Josh, rule 1 of the Darnold is that ya can’t break the Darnold.

I didn’t actually watch the game last night because I’m a busy man and preseason football is fun for the first 5 minutes but then after that it starts to devolve into a faster version of MACtion. Let’s take a look at Darnold’s stats from the night, 8/11 for 62 yards and an int for a rating of 48.3. Not exactly setting the league on fire but now let’s take a moment to remember that this is football and stats are for nerds. Put this hype train to full throttle and were riding this bitch until the wheels fall off, full steam ahead.

I should clarify something, I’m buying in on hyping Darnold to the high heavens, whether or not we know if he’ll actually end up being any good is yet to be seen. That isn’t stopping Jets fans everywhere are accepting Sam Darnold as their lord and savior and planning out the parade route for the Superbowl he’s destined to bring them. All of this preseason joy is going to make the Jets returning to form as a dumpster fire in the regular season a sight to be seen.

Every pro sports league needs it’s pillars of sadness so that fans of all the other franchises can say, “well shit, at least we’re not those guys.” MLB has teams like the Mets and the Padres, the NBA has the Kings, I don’t watch enough hockey to say for sure who has that title in the NHL but I know a lot of Sabers fans and they seem like a sad bunch. The NFL has the gold standard in this category though with the Browns and their brilliant plan of punishing professional football players by making them play football and the Jets who seem to buttfumble their way to a mediocre at best draft pick every year. Sure there are glimpses of hope from time to time. We had the brief return of the great white hope in Peyton Hillis and Josh Gordon is a fucking monster when the NFL lets him play. The Sanchize and Sexy Rexy seemed like they were the future until they weren’t and hey there was that one day where Bill Belichick was the Jets head coach. At the end of the day though the universe always finds a way to balance itself out. It’s those flashes followed by the subsequent crashing back down to Earth that make them the pillars on which leagues are built upon.

So full steam ahead on the Darnold hype train, just watch out for where they forgot to finish building the bridge once we hit September. It could get ugly but my eyes will be glued to it.

Holla at ya boy

Twitter: @LlFired