We have another thing to add to the long list of stuff that, like your sight, hearing and bladder, works a whole lot better when you’re a kid then as an adult – a black eye. I know, right. You’d think they’d still be just as fun as they always were.
Before taking a stray elbow directly to the eye socket (we actually felt the point of the elbow in our eyeball) during Monday's basketball game while playing basketball (It hurt, a lot. We yelled, dramatically. And it turned purple, immediately.) We’d had about 4 black eyes in our life (that we can recall), each when we were much younger:
1. While playing football catch in the backyard with our pops, we decided to practice diving catches … near the chain link fence. Face + Fence = Black Eye #1.
2. While waiting for a ride after ice skating on the night between the two day basketball tryouts sophomore year, one of our super cool friends decided to moon a passing car. The car, of course, contained like 4 big dudes, who got out and proceeded to beat the crap out of us. That was a really good story to tell the coach at tryouts the next day – What happened? You were ice skating? Why? Guess we'll have to make you run today!! To this day we’re convinced we made the team out of pity.
3. Playing football, foot directly to the eye. Big old shiner.
4. Last but not least, playing basketball, altercation with two guys, ass kicked again. That one came complete with a deformed skull to compliment the black eyes. (Sensing a pattern here? Apparently we need some self defense training. Maybe one where you kick the dude with the padded suit in the nuts.)
The thing is when you’re young, getting a black eye is kinda cool. Makes you feel tough. At best, people expect you got hurt playing some sort of sport (“Yeah, it hurt a lot but, of course, I kept playing.”) At worst, people think you’re dangerous, you go around fighting people and shit. ("You should see the other guy.") Maybe they even think you’re trendy and you “train MMA.” You might even get a sympathetic comment or two. It’s not that bad.
The problem is, when your an adult, you don’t get the benefit of any of those helpful assumptions. Since most normal adults aren’t playing contact sports on a routine basis, nobody thinks you got it doing something fun and productive. Everyone just looks at you weird. Instead of looking dangerous and tough, you just look crazy (What if they just think you train MMA? We’d rather be considered crazy) or like your wife kicked your ass. Any sympathetic comments you might have gotten are replaced by accusatory glances and skepticism when you give your lame explanation. Bottom line, you couldn't look any trashier if you were wearing a stained wife-beater, smoking meth and listening to Kid Rock.
Now on to the guys who gave your fantasy reputation a black eye (see what we did there?):
1. Maurice Jones Drew, RB, Jacksonville Jaguars;
If it wasn't for the out-of-nowhere seasons of Arian Foster and Peyton Hillis, MJD would probably be the fantasy MVP (given Jacksonville’s surprising season he might have an even better case for the real life award.) The man who makes Reggie Bush's career look worse every year is on pace for a huge 348 carry, 1,500 yard season and seems to keep getting better as the season progresses, dominating a traditionally tough Titans squad with 31 carries (he's like 4'8") and 186 carries in. Just the type of performance you needed from your first round pick to clinch that playoff spot.
2. Randy Moss, Wide Receiver, Tennessee Titans;
Talk of regular season fantasy MVP's, naturally leads to a discussion of busts. Awful, terrible, mind-blowing busts. This year the "King of All Busts" is our former boy Randy Moss. His 2010 season is just stunning. How do you explain one of the best receivers ever and the consensus #2 WR setting a blistering 27 catch, 375 yard pace (Sunday's 1 catch, 13 yard performance serving only to make projection seem optimistic.) We've been back and forth on Moss all year, expecting a big season only to see him moved twice and, each time, falling for his potential to star in his new digs. Suffice it to say, we've been sorely disappointed. For fun we looked back at his career and we found some precedent for Moss’ ability to simply check out of a situation – in 2006 for the Raiders, he caught only 42 passes for 553 yard. The next season he was a Patriot and exploded for 98 catches, 1,493 yards and 23 touchdowns. Certainly we can't expect that to happen again, but if he decides he wants to actually play, maybe he has a bounce back next year. That doesn’t help you this season though, but if you had Moss murdering your line-up (how to you sit a guy with that track record) you're probably done anyway.
3. Jamal Charles, Running Back, Kansas City Chiefs;
Quick, who is 3rd in the NFL in rushing? That’s right, Double AA Jamaal Charles. (How you got that one so quickly, we’ll never know.) We had our doubts about Charles before the season since he figured not to be in charge of the position due to Fantasy Vulture Thomas Jones. But who needs all the carries when you average 6.3 yards on the ones you get. While he’s losing out on touchdowns (only 3 on the year) his 1,500 yard pace and ability to give you huge games (twice over 170) make him a hands-down fantasy stud who figures only to get better. Plus, he has the distinction of being the only player in memory able to to resist the destructive power of Thomas Jones, so that counts for something. He used to be "Chris Johnson Lite" but if and when Jones moves on to destroy someone else’s fantasy season, it might be CJ who's the one being called "Lite."
4. Kyle Orton, Quarterback, Denver Broncos;
You got us Kyle. Nice work. We really fell for it this time. After 12 weeks in which you threw a touchdown in every game and went for under 200 yards only once, you picked the regular season finale to spring the joke on us and remind us that you are, in fact, Kyle Orton. We never should have trusted you in the first place, you're such a jokester. Despite his success this season (he’s on pace to obliterate his career highs in pretty much every category - 4,649 yards, 27 touchdowns), somehow the 7 for 28, 117 yard performance seems like a return to normal. Add to that lingering feeling of doom the fact that his pass-happy coach just himself fired, and you have a recipe for fantasy playoff disaster. Good luck. Serves you right.
5. Dead Horse, Offense, Buffalo Bills;
Ryan Fitzpatrick: 158 yards, 1 TD, 1 INT.
Fred Jackson: 11 caries, 42 yards, 0 TDs.
Stevie Johnson: 2 catches, 36 yards, 0 TDs.
Lee Evans: 3 catches, 72 yards, 0 TDs.
Does it count if we’re right one out of 13 weeks?
6. Ray Rice, Running Back, Baltimore Ravens;
We finally figured out the turning point of our fantasy season. If occurred about 3 minutes into the draft when we were faced with question of who to take with the 3rd overall pick. With CJ and AP off the board, we narrowed our choice down to MJD and Ray Rice. If we told you we missed the playoffs, can you guess who we picked? Yeah, it wasn’t the guy contending for fantasy MVP. At the time we figured they were so close in value that it was acceptable to let our Rutgers bias break the tie. It was going to be so much fun watching one of our favorite college players carry our team to glory. Yeah, about that. You can’t call anyone who’s on pace for over 1,100 yards a bust but his continuing lack of touchdowns (only 4 this year) and a handful of awful performances like Sunday’s 9 carry, 32 yarder (we know the Steelers defense is good but if you want to be an All-Pro you have to be better than that) don’t have owners cheering his name.
7. The Carolina Panthers, Tankers; National Football League;
We know the Panthers totally suck but how does a team get up 14-0 on a almost-as-bad Seahawks team and then just lay down and let Matt Hasselbeck (what?!?) and Marshawn Lynch (double what?!?) run up 31 unanswered points on them? Did they see their chances for the #1 pick slipping away or did they just remember how awful they are? Either way, Andrew Luck has to be thrilled at the possibility of wearing the legendary teal and white. We’d like to send a special 1998-style shout out to Mr. Lynch for deciding to break 50 yards for only the second time as a Seahawk (he had 85 total in the last 3 weeks combined) and scoring 3 touchdowns after having only 2 on the season. If he was in your line-up as opposed to the waiver-wire and you got the benefit of those 3 scores, please kill yourself.
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