R.C. Dilan's Blog

My First Year With Villa

My first game: Aston Villa against Crystal Palace at Selhurst Park. My pregnant wife and two-year-old are asleep, so I am left alone to watch. It’s a kind of quiet that I can only get from the hours of 10:30 to 5:00, and it’s the perfect setting to experience my first match. I lay on the couch and start searching for a stream on my phone. I am able to pick up the game about midway through the first half, just in time to see the run on yellow cards. My grasp of the game is elementary at best, so my response is largely dictated by the announcers, who both seem to think they were a bit harsh. After the break, it’s Trezeguet who gets the second yellow and is sent off; the announcers bring up the four yellow cards again — this outcome being a given after what took place in the first half. Soon after it’s a counter; Ayew knocks the ball between two defenders and then sticks it past Heaton for the first goal. Down a guy, it feels like my first game’s not going to be a one to remember. My excitement levels jump as a couple of good chances come and go; the tension builds as the game closes in on the 90. We’re in stoppage time now; I glance over and see that it’s just before one in the morning. Here it is, the last run; Grealish up the middle of the pitch, he’s pushed, kicked, then as he falls to the ground leaves it off to Lansbury who knocks it home! Jumping off the couch, I start silently shouting, “No fucking way! No fucking way!”

I notice the Villa players yelling at the referee. Then it’s announced…a yellow…for simulation. The foul took place before the goal, it’s still 1–0 Crystal Palace, and the final whistle blows. “What the fuck!” This time a little louder than my celebration that has now been rendered pointless.

The announcers are going nuts, Grealish is beside himself, and I’m left angry and confused. I immediately email my coworker to try to get some answers. Even with my lack of knowledge, it seems pretty obvious that we got screwed.

So this was my introduction to the Villa. It was fun, frustrating, and ultimately agonizing, but I loved it. It was exciting. That single game had so many of the things that make the sport great. The first goal happens in a flash. It’s a quick counter, a swift move to open up enough space for a shot, and just like that 1–0. Then the rest of the game is the fight back. One side desperately trying to get on the front foot to equalize, while the other is doing everything they can to defend and slow the pace of play. With each attack that comes up short, the anticipation builds and builds, waiting like a stick of dynamite for the long fuse to reach its point of detonation. Then, when it finally happens, the explosion reverberates through the entire body. It’s those moments that make the whole ninety-plus minutes worth it. Even if your team is playing like shit or nothing really happens, in the back of your mind, you know that one moment could be coming at any minute.

From that point on I was in. I started to watch every game I could — it’d be over a month before I actually saw them win — and I threw myself into learning everything I could about my new club; it became an obsession. Walking to or from the station, I would always be accompanied by a podcast, then it’d be videos, Wikipedia, or a slew of articles as I passed the time on my commute. I’d even sneak a couple of minutes in while laying in bed waiting for my son to fall asleep.

The story of Aston Villa was the type that immediately pulled me in; how could things get so bad, so quickly? How could they go from one of the biggest clubs in England to relegated, seemingly stuck in the Championship League? The concept of relegation is sometimes difficult for American sports fans to really grasp because we simply have nothing that compares, but when I started to read more and hear fans talk about what happened at Aston Villa, it became easier to see how the dominoes can slowly start to fall, and once that final one goes and relegation happens so much uncertainty can start to kick in. Maybe it will be a short stint in the Championship with a quick bounce back up to the top flight, or maybe your Leeds.

***

There has been plenty of heartache in my first couple of months as a Villa fan, namely Liverpool, away. I haven’t lost hope though. The month of December feels like it could be a turning point. It starts off with a few tough games, but we should be able…have to get some points against Southampton, Norwich, and Watford.

12/2 Man United (A) 2–2:

Super Jack is incredible, should have gotten the full three points.

12/5 Chelsea (A) 2–1:

Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh… Tammy Abraham, I never truly knew you, but I miss you.

12/8 Leicester (H) 1–4:

My only positive take away: I learned what a slag is and that Jaime Vardy’s wife definitely is one.

12/15 Sheffield United (A) 2–0:

Not great…

12/22 Southampton (H) 1–3:

I’m canceling Christmas.

Norwich (H) 1–0:

We got three points; that’s all that matters, right?

Watford (A) 3–0:

Watford down a man and Deeny with the final kick in the dick to end the year.

The month of December saw the birth of my second child — which was a nice little distraction from the awful football — and the absolute low point of my first year as an Aston Villa fan with the 3–1 loss to Southampton. I think it was the expectations that I had that things would start to improve. We’d string together a couple of wins and that would be the catalyst for us avoiding the drop — ironically that’s exactly what happened for Southampton after they beat us. Even though I was thoroughly frustrated, I never completely lost hope, nor did I ever doubt my decision to follow the team; it was my chance to learn what it takes to survive as a Villa fan, which is the complete abandonment of all hope and positive expectations.

***

I’ve started planning my baby night shifts around Villa’s fixtures. The game against Watford kicks off at 4:30 am, and the baby is scheduled to wake up around 5:00 for his bottle, so I tell the wife that I can handle this one.

Right on schedule, he wakes up at about the thirty-minute mark. I move him from the crib to the prepared changing location — of course, it’s a poop. While changing the diaper I try to keep an eye on the action, then as I’m walking to drop the shitty diaper into the garbage I’m suddenly struck by the thought of returning to the living room to see that goddamn bluenose, Deeney, celebrating.

I wash my hands, grab the bottle, and look down at my phone to see 1–0 Watford. Fuck! They show the replay, and of course, it’s Deeney making that goddamn face. The baby drinks his bottle and I burp him during halftime. He’s asleep, cradled in my left arm as I hold my phone in the other. El Ghazi moves in from the right, passes to Grealish who dribbles into the penalty box and leaves it off for Target; Target smashes one on goal, it deflects out wide, out of nowhere comes Douglas Luiz who fucking barries it in the back of the net for the equalizer — my arms tense and my fists clench as I quietly say several words that would get me kicked out of church. Luiz runs screaming past the goal, then takes a quick right and jumps into the Holte End. I decide then and there that I will love this man for the rest of my life.

The baby is now back in the crib, light from the sunrise is starting to peek through the window. Time is running out. Guilbert gets fouled. We got one last chance at this. Reina runs up to the ball, just as he stands over it, getting ready to boot it forward, the baby gargles and starts coughing. I quickly use the light from the game to check that he’s okay. The ball gets headed down by Hause, right to Mings who dribbles forward before passing to Konsa, wide open at the top of the box he blasts one top corner for the win! The crowd erupts and the screen starts shaking as I tightly grip the phone in my hands. My face turns red as I let out a silent primal scream, purging the remnants of 6–1 Man City, 3–0 Watford, and 3–1 Southampton. I’m quickly snapped back to reality by the baby and forced to put the celebration on hold as I again check to make sure he’s okay. He’s fine.

The final whistle blows and the celebration continues. “Sweet Caroline” never sounded so good. I pump my fist in the air as the crowd screams, “Fuck the Blues!” I know there is no hope that I’ll get any sleep before the two-year-old wakes up, so I troll the internet for highlights, celebration videos, anything that will prolong this feeling.

And seven days later it happened again. At the death, Aston Villa came through; this time against Leicester to send us into the EFL Cup final. It dawned on me that I had only been following English football for around six months, and what a rollercoaster it had been. But as I was watching videos of the crowd flooding the pitch and ambushing the players, I realized that I wouldn’t change a minute of it. The Watford game meant so much more because of the six weeks prior; I don’t react that way if I don’t sit through all six goals we gave up to Man City nine days earlier. I don’t feel the same sense of retribution against Leicester without the lasting image of Vardy holding his hands up to his ears. It didn’t matter much if they won or lost against Man City in the final, it was the ride to get there. All the lows are what made the highs what they were. You can’t have one without the other.

***

The other British football fan in my office supports Tottenham and I often wonder what would have happened if he had got to me first. I had always been looking for a team in the Premier League to follow and in August I knew as much about Spurs as I did about Villa. I wonder if the team would have meant so much to me as quickly as the Villa did. Spurs haven’t had a great year, they aren’t currently involved in a relegation fight, though. They have some fun players to watch and an entertaining manager, but there’s no Super Jack or Sir Dean Smith. If I spent the same countless hours searching for content in the Tottenham world, I would probably have found that they also have a community full of fun and entertaining supporters like Villa has with the likes of Dan Bardell, Ty Bracey, and Mat Stokes. It’s possible that they have their own version of all the things that I was looking for in a team, but I always come back to a video that I stumbled across one day called Celebrating 140 Years of Aston Villa. In it, David Bradley (he’s an actor, you know him even if you don’t know him, he’s in a ton of shit) says, “They say you don’t choose Aston Villa, Aston Villa chooses you.” And that’s how I feel. Like I had no choice in the matter. Like it was meant to be.

Up the Villa!!

The Adventures of Tate & Noah: Episode 1

“Hey! Noah! Wake up!” Whispered the precocious two-year-old, while leaning over his sleeping parents. There was no response from the young baby, except for the short, rapid movements of the pacifier in his mouth. The two-year-old nudge closer, ever so slowly to make sure he didn’t startle the big ones, and then smacked the pacifier out of his little brother’s mouth. He then quickly used his other hand to muffle the crying.

“Shhh,” he said. The baby looked confused but quickly settled back down. The two-year-old removed his hand, and said, “Listen, we’re going to get out of here for a little while. Come on.”

“But I don’t want to get out of here. I’m hungry. I was just going to start crying so I could have breakfast.”

The older brother looked mildly disgusted, “You can have a bottle anytime. Hurry up, let’s go!”

“What if they wake up? We’ll get in trouble.”

“Wake up!?” The two-year-old rolled on top of his parents jiggling with laughter. “Why do you think I strategically wake them up throughout the night? We can take naps whenever we want. They can’t. When they’re asleep the only thing that can wake them up is one of us, which is why you’re coming with me.”

The baby rolled onto his side and stretched as far as he could; it took a few lunges from there, but eventually, he was able to grab his pacifier. He put it in his mouth and started to think about a way out of this mess. His brother seemed pretty insistent that he come. What if I promise to just lay here while he’s gone, he thought. No, he’d never go for it. He’d probably just accuse me of being a narc. “Okay, fine, I’ll go.”

The two-year-old pumped his fist in the air. “See, it’s things like that, that make me think you could actually be my brother.”

“Where are we going, anyway?”

“I’ve been wanting to get some new toys recently,” all of a sudden one of the big one’s body jolted up and started coughing. The two-year-old, waited, silently burrowed between two blankets, without moving a muscle. Once it seemed like maybe they had gone back to sleep, he started poking them in the face. First gently, and then progressively harder until he knew they were safe, “That was a close one; I thought our day of fun was spoiled before it even started. Anyways,” he carried on like nothing had happened, “I saw this commercial for some new toy cars, and I got to be honest, it’s a little embarrassing to admit, but the advertising people got me, hook, line, and sinker. I got to have it. And I’m sure we can find something that you can slobber on too.”

The baby looked indignant over that last comment, “I’m not a dog.”

“You’re right; I’m sorry. But in my defense, you’re drooling right now.”

The baby looked down and saw a line of drool going from his chin to the pillow. I’m sure he drooled more than I did when he was my age. Big, stupid, dog-faced idiot.

“What are you laughing about?”

“Oh, nothing,” he said with a sneaky grin. He quickly changed the subject, “Won’t they notice if there are new toys that they didn’t buy?”

“Have you seen how many toy boxes I have? Besides, they’ll probably just assume the other one bought it.”

“If you already have so many toys, then why…”

The two-year-old grabbed the pacifier and threw it off the edge of the bed. “Don’t start with me, Noah. Do you want to be cool? Do you want to go on this fun adventure to get more toys? Or would you rather stay here and be lame?” The baby started desperately reaching for his pacifier. “You’re too old to just lay around all day having one of the big ones carry you from place to place, shoving bottles and toys in your face. Show some goddamn initiative once in a while.” The baby looked like he was about to start crying before the two-year-old pointed a finger at him and scowled. “Shhh, don’t wake them up.”

Sensing that he needed a new approach the two-year-old decided to turn on the charm, “Look, I know what you’re probably thinking. We can’t leave without our parents, it’s a scary world out there. You can’t even eat solid foods yet, and trust me I know how difficult that can be; I’ve been there. But we’re brothers, and that’s a bond that will last a lifetime. A lifetime that can begin now, if you get out of this bed, put on some socks and shoes, and walk to the toy store with me — why are you raising your hand?”

“I can’t walk. How am I supposed to get to the toy store?”

The two-year-old was finally stumped. “Hmm, that does seem to be a bit of predicament.” He rubbed his chin with his thumb and forefinger while trying to come up with a suitable solution, “Can you crawl?”

“Nope.”

“Skip?”

“Can you skip?”

“Pfff, of course, I can…no, no I can’t; I actually don’t think people learn skipping until they’re well into their forties, maybe even their fifties.” He thought some more then threw out another option, “What about rolling? I could lay you on your side and just kind of roll you there. What about that?”

“Do I look like a tire to you?”

Suddenly a light bulb went off, “Eureka!”

“Aretha?”

“You’re embarrassing yourself. Seriously, read a book with me and the big ones sometime,” he shook his head. “I mean I have the answer. I’ll put you in that old red wagon that the big one uses for gardening.”

There’s no way I’m getting out of this, he thought. I’ll just go. On the bright side, maybe if he gets some new toys, he’ll stop stealing mine. “Alright, I’m in. Let’s go with the wagon; I enjoy bath time anyways; they’re relaxing.”

“Oh, bad take bro. Bathtime is horrible. Below average toys. High probability of getting soap in the eyes. The whole thing’s a mess. But whatever, we can argue about that later. It’s toy time!!”

The two-year-old not so nimbly fell to the floor, making a slight thud that caused the two hibernating parents to shift in the bed. He then reached up and grabbed the baby, pulling him towards the edge until his foot was left dangling. He stopped, looked to his left, and right, then began scanning the floor. First, he picked up a small pillow, examined it for a moment, and moved on. Next, was a gray woven blanket laying on top of a pile of clothes. He held it next to the pillow, looking back and forth, trying to decide which suited his needs best. Finally, it had been decided. Both.

He ran back over to the side of the bed, placed the pillow on the floor, and then yanked on his brother’s foot. The young baby fell like a rock before bouncing comfortably onto the floor. “See kid, I got it all figured out. Now, hop on this blanket, and let’s get out of here. We’re wasting daylight.” Once in place, the two-year-old bolted through the open doorway, with the baby holding on for dear life behind him.

When they got to the front door, the two-year-old began dressing himself and his baby brother. First, mismatched socks for both of them, then a green coat for himself, and a panda suit for the baby. “Here put on this hat.”

“I don’t think I need a hat. The panda has a hood, remember?”

“That’s funny,” said the two-year-old, while holding a knitted cap in front of his brother’s face. “I didn’t realize I was asking you if you wanted to wear the hat. It’s cold outside. You’re a baby. Put on the hat.” The baby complied, even though he thought he looked ridiculous. “You look great. Now, wait here, I’ll be right back with the wagon.”

Without looking, the two-year-old stuck his hand into the closet and grabbed a coat hanger. He then reached all the way up on his tippy-toes; just tall enough to use the hanger to unlock the door. He quickly disappeared, returning a few minutes later with the red wagon. “I tipped it over first and brushed out some of the dirt. So, don’t be such a baby and get in.”

They were finally free. It was an early Sunday morning, so aside from the occasional passing bird, they were mostly alone. The red wagon squeaked and rattled its way down the street, with the big brother out in front. If their intentions were unknown, or simply less nefarious, the image would have captured the honest affection between brothers. The big one charged forward, determined to reach his desired location, while never failing to occasionally sneak a peek to make sure his cargo was still intact. And the small one looked up admiringly, watching the other’s every move; to the rest of the world he may have been a little kid, but if you could see through the baby’s eyes, that little kid looked like a superhero.

”Do you have money?”

“What?” The two-year-old responded without breaking stride or looking back.

“Money. Don’t we need money to get toys? I mean you’re not suggesting that we should be stealing them are you?”

“Haven’t you ever read Karl Marx? It’s like all about the abolishing of private property, man. The toys don’t belong to any one person, they belong to all of us.”

“Then why do you get so angry when I play with your toys. I mean if they don’t belong to any one person, then why…”

“Don’t start with me, Noah” he snapped.

There was a long awkward silence between the two brothers until the baby cut the tension by asking, “How do you know so much about Karlos Marx?”

“It’s Karl dumb, dumb. The hairy one has a bunch of books from when he was in college. A bit naive the whole communist thing, but they make some solid points…stop putting stuff in your mouth.” He smacked a dirty rock out of the baby’s hands, “How many times do I have to tell you!?” As he turned back around to continue toward the toy store, the baby began to whimper, “Look don’t cry. I’ll get you something nice and clean, and you can chew on that all you want. If you put dirty rocks in your mouth, you’re going to get sick. And then I’ll probably get sick. And the big ones will get sick. Is that what you want? Don’t be so selfi…we’re here!”

The little boy began jumping up and down and chanting, “Toys! Toys! Toys! Toys!” He was so focused on the glory of the grand toy store that he didn’t realize that they were on a slight decline and the red wagon was slowly rolling backwards towards the street. The baby, sensing he was in grave danger, started to wail; the two-year-old immediately snapped out of his toy trance and lunged for the handle.

“Woah. That was a close one,” he said as they looked at each other with pale white faces, sharing a thought that they really dodged one there. “You almost ruined it, baby. You should probably be paying closer attention to what is happening around you.” He then lovingly tussled his hair. “Let’s go.”

They were the first customers in the store and were able to maneuver around mostly unseen and unnoticed. It didn’t take them long to find what they were looking for. The display stretched up as high as they could see and had giant banners spread above their heads, some with cars flying off jumps through flaming hoops, others with powerful trucks crashing through piles of rubble and dirt. The two young children looked up in awe of what was before them.

“This, Noah, is what it’s all about. A tower of toy cars, waiting for us to play with them. Waiting to fulfill their destiny of flying through the air and hitting one of the big ones in the head. It is their reason for being, bringing us enjoyment while causing them entertaining irritations.” The whole time he was talking, the baby was focused on one specific car. It was shiny gold and sparkled in the dull light from above. He reached for it…a bit further…still a bit further…he made one final move and lunged forward with all of his strength until his view turned from one car to a blur of all them running away from the darkness that smacked him in the face.

The loud thud was followed by the baby gasping for air between sobs. He’d be lying if he said the thought of grabbing one of the cars and leaving the baby there to make a dash for the door never crossed his mind. But as he debated what to do, he looked down at his little brother, crying and scared. He realized that all of this was likely his fault. When sat down next to the crying baby it finally dawned on him what it meant to be a big brother. The big ones can’t follow them around forever, and when they aren’t there, it’s on him. He’s the one who has to shelter his little brother from whatever fear and pain is out there. The world can be as unforgiving and as hard as this ground, and at times he will fall, but when things get the hardest, that’s when they have to stick together.

He heard the patter of feet running towards them. It was a big person — not one of his big ones like he hoped — wearing a dark green apron; they asked “Are you both okay?” The little boy said nothing, just looked up at the concerned giant, “Where are your parents?” He looked confused and shrugged his shoulders. Soon, there was a group of giants standing around them, he was starting to feel scared, and tears welled up in his eyes, but again he looked down at his little brother and knew that he couldn’t.

He looked around for anything that could help them and noticed one of the giants looked familiar. He had been coming to this toy store for over two years now and had definitely seen the big ones talking to that one. He started waving at them until he was noticed and then said, “Thank you.”

She smashed her hands together and said, “I know them!”

The baby looked at his brother and quietly asked, “Eureka?” The two-year-old proudly nodded.

“They used to come here all of the time. Jim, you remember them, right? The dad is always talking about his blog and the mom was a school teacher.”

“Oh yeah. They live just down the road in that blue house.”

All the giants huddled together. The boys sat in the red wagon, the baby on the two-year-old’s lap. The older boy started to quietly sing their favorite song, “And did you think that fool could never win? Well look at me, I’m coming back again. I got a taste of love in a simple way, and if you need to know while I’m still standing, you just fade away.” One of the giants turned and ran towards the door. The other giant, the one the little boy recognized grabbed one of the cars off the shelf and tried to hand it to them; they were busy though. The two-year-old was right in the middle of his piano solo, “Don’t you know, I’m still standing better than I ever did. Lookin’ like a true survivor, feeling like a little kid.” The baby was now smiling and gyrating to the music in their ears.

Before they could finish the song for a third time, the parents came bursting through the door and rushed over to them. The dad grabbed the two-year-old, while the mom coddled the baby. They both apologized to everyone, multiple times, and kept asking the kids, what happened? How did you get here? The two boys stuck together though and gave up nothing.

The parents put their kids back into the red wagon and walked out the door, apologizing profusely again to anyone who came in their path. As they exited the parking lot and turned onto the sidewalk, the two-year-old gave the baby a fist bump, “Did you just see that? Tate just gave Noah a fist bump. How cute is that?”

“What!? No way!? One more time kiddo, please,” the dad pleaded as he took out his iPhone, “Come on, one more time. Yes, now hit him with the explosion…he did it! Fucking incredible!”

“Hey! You said you weren’t going to say that in front of the kids anymore!” The dad winced as he realized he let yet another one slip. “What are you going to do if he says that in front of your grandmother? How are you going to explain that, huh?!”

And just like that, it was as if nothing had happened. Tate looked at his little brother and winked, “See, I told you we wouldn’t get in trouble.”

I Loved the NBA

Michael Jordan, the billionaire mogul and international superstar, has always been a presence in my life. I can’t remember a time before he was the most famous athlete in the world — I was born in 1985, a year and two days after he was drafted by the Chicago Bulls. The Jordan I remember most clearly is the one who shot fade away jumpers, but that is not to say I don’t know the other Jordan; the one with hair and the gold chain. I have seen the shot against Georgetown enough times to feel like I experienced it live. I’ve had the argument about how Dominque probably got robbed in Chicago. I played enough Jordan vs Bird (underrated throwback video game, highly recommend it) to really understand young Jordan’s strengths and weaknesses. The Last Dance didn’t provide me with a ton of new information, but it did provide me with nostalgia in abundance; a chance to relive some of my early memories of sports. It not only documented the rise and abrupt end to Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls, it also documented my falling in love with the NBA.

I loved the style of play. The ’80s and early ’90s NBA was a completely different game than it is now, and I realized how much I missed it. The fights. The hard fouls in the lane. Even the old grainy videos elicited a kind of enjoyment that no big-screen HD TV could match. Basketball from this era had a sense of real animosity between the players. That everything that happened was personal. With the trash talk aimed at the core of a motherfucker and meant to break them. And when Jordan shook two guys, before dunking on Ewing, it stuck forever. It also meant that when you got to the top you proved that you deserved it. When Jordan dropped 60 against the Celtics but lost, his legend was starting, but he wasn’t ready. When he got battered by the Bad Boy Pistons two years in a row, it added fuel to his fire. When he finally won, humiliating them, truly getting the last word as they all walked off the court before the game even ended, he had finally made it to the top. The NBA provides this classic trope over and over again, and it never seems less important or less interesting the more you watch it. There is always a new protagonist that has to conquer and overcome the hero who has timed out to become the villain. It makes titles seem taken, not given. Maybe the reason the same story remains interesting is because of all the great players who have faced this challenge and failed. We saw it over and over again in the documentary with Jordan in the role of the unstoppable supervillain. Ewing’s Knicks, nope. Chuck’s Suns, nope. Malone’s Jazz couldn’t even beat the bad guy when he was all but out of bullets. All the failures make the triumphs that much more exciting. All the pain that we saw them endure on their way to the final showdown makes watching the spoils of victory so much more meaningful. Seeing these events in the documentary again allowed me to appreciate it more; it’s hard to really understand what it takes to accomplish those types of things when you’re thirteen and your day consists of playing Super Nintendo and eating frozen pizza rolls.

I loved the game sevens. The dramatic swings in momentum from game to game and play to play in a playoff series. Hearing Reggie Miller talk about going into game 3 knowing that it would be over unless they could pull out a win. Then, again going right at Jordan — offensive fouls be damned — and taking game 4; going from the edge of certain defeat to the driver’s seat. The whole time I was watching this I was rising and falling with each moment; on the edge of my seat waiting to see what came next, even though I already knew. A seven-game series is like a prolonged game of chess, where each move and decision amplifies the importance of the next, making any mistake or wasted opportunity feel like it could be the one. Then, once it gets to the final game, game seven, all that matters is who “can” and who “can’t”. When the game starts, it’s the Pacers taking the early big lead. The Bulls fighting back to take control. The Pacers refusing to go away; retaking the lead. Then it all comes down to the defining moment, the final crescendo. 6:55 left. The jump ball. The Kerr three. The championship pedigree takes it from there. And just like that, the Pacers’ season was over. No guarantee that they’d back, just the realization that they’d have to wait and start again from scratch the following year.

I loved the windows into greatness. If it weren’t for people like Scottie Pippen, Horace Grant, and Steve Kerr, The Last Dance never happens, but even though there’s always a supporting cast of characters that’s integral in winning a title, it becomes more compelling when it turns into the best players from each side going at each other. We saw Jordan go at Clyde Drexler; offended that anyone would compare the two, he made it his mission to destroy him. Next, was Barkley, one of the truly great players of his generation, who gave all he could in that game 2 only to still fall short, knowing as he walked off the court after scoring 42 points that he had no chance. They all came, and they all fell. And we saw it all, every detail because there’s no hiding in basketball. There’s no facemask covering a player’s true emotions. During crunch time, when the clock is running out, there is only one person who everyone is watching, living in the moment with. You can feel the tired legs and the weight of the team on his shoulders. After the ball hits the bottom of the net, and he’s walking back to the bench you can see the grimace as he looks up at the clock and realizes he still has one more defensive possession left. All of it leading to the final buzzer, the six fingers he holds up, and the “Fuck you! Come get it!” in his face.

All of that is visible in the NBA because there is no veil.

It was all those things and more that I loved. The poetry in motion. The sheer power and athleticism on display. The competitive fire. All of it was brought back to me as I watched this story unfold, bringing with it conflicting emotions of happiness and bitterness. Perhaps it’s time I explain the reason I chose the past tense, loved. I was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest and grew up in a sports-crazed family. Most, if not all of our family gatherings quickly move past the pleasantries phase and into the complaining about whichever local team is in season at the moment phase — every 4th of July barbecue inevitably turned into a discussion about what’s wrong with the Seattle Mariners. One of the most retold stories in my family is the one about my uncle waking up my oldest brother in the middle of the night to tell him the Sonics won the NBA Championship — he was two. When I started The Last Dance, even though I knew the end result, I was eagerly waiting to see a glimpse of the last great Sonics team. Seeing Kemp dunk and then sit on Dennis Rodman elicited the same reaction as when I was 11. Even though the Sonics portion of the documentary lasted like ten, fifteen minutes at most, it was enough to make me think about that stretch of three to four years when the team was flying and the city was buzzing. And of course, it made me think about that day. The day it was announced that the city of Seattle was dropping its lawsuit and allowing the team to move to Oklahoma City.

The shock and anger I felt that day has never completed left me, and that day is one that I will forever remember in great detail. I remember where I was sitting when I found out. I remember the cigarette I had on my balcony after reading the headline. The slight laugh because it must have been a joke; bouncing between two polar opposite views of the situation. It’s not true, and even if it is, someone will step in. It will get figured out. They can’t be that stupid. To the realizations that it has gone too far to take back. This has happened. I remember meeting a girl a couple of hours later to hang out, and thinking I had to couch all this shit — we didn’t know each other well enough for me to start crying in front of her.

This all took place like 11 years ago now, and it still fucking bothers me. I don’t think about it all the time anymore. I actually don’t think about it that much at all, but it still bottles up from time to time. I’ll watch a highlight of Gary Payton throwing one up to Kemp, or I’ll hear Kevin Calabro say anything, I’ll feel the excitement again, and smile, only to then shake my head in disappointment.

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Anytime I see David Stern or hear anyone mention his name, I immediately get angry. Seeing him talk in the documentary, with that smug smile, brought back all the intense hatred I have for a person I’ve never met, who is no longer alive, but who I could never forgive for taking the source of some of my fondest childhood memories.

The more I watched the documentary, and the more I thought about how I felt about the NBA. I started to realize that the type of affection I had for it was like the kind I have for times that will never come back. Like when I think about some of the crazy nights I had, drinking until the sun came up. I remember those times for what they were, great stories, and a great time, but I know they are never coming back (the only time I see the sunrise anymore is if I have to go to the office early or if one of my kids pisses all over the bed). And now I think that is how I see the NBA. I remember Magic’s announcement, unretirement, and the three he hit in the all-star game; they feel like significant moments in my life.

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I remember all of the Jordan stuff fondly, as both a fan and an adversary. I remember that great Sonics team and sleepy Sam Perkins. I remember it all. But that is all they are now, memories. I realized this was my last dance too.

What’s the Point of Fantasy Sports?

I love to gamble. It started at a very young age when my mom bought a bunch of scratch and win lottery tickets for us to play. I was in shock, “You mean, all I have to do is scratch this card with a quarter, which is already a ton of fun, and I could win $10,000?” She smiled and nodded. “How many video games can I buy for $10,000? That’s a lot, right?” She nodded. I thought, holy shit — I had two older brothers, and cursed like a sailor from the age of five, let’s move past it — that’s probably the greatest thing I’ve heard in my life. So I feverishly scratched away, one after another, until it finally happened. I won…five dollars. She celebrated like I had won a million, and then promptly asked me, “So, what do you want to do?”

I was confused. What are my options? I don’t know exactly how much money I need, but five dollars isn’t enough for a new video game, right? She could sense the unspoken confusion in my face and said, “Well, you can keep the five dollars, or use it to buy more tickets.” Fucking brilliant! Since that day I have had one answer, and one answer only to that question, and it’s LET IT RIDE!

So, we did. And we lost. And I asked if we could buy more. And she said no. But so it began, my love of gambling. As a kid I would do it anytime I could (with someone else’s money). Super Bowls with the 100 square betting pools (the 10x10 grid and you pay for squares) or betting my dad a dollar here and there.

As I got older I started to wonder why I liked it so much. It’s fun, it’s exciting, but I usually came to a stop at the saying “Money won is sweeter than money earned.” When you win money gambling there is a certain feeling that you got something that maybe you didn’t deserve — for some reason the universe decided that you deserved a little gift. Recently, I’ve started to wonder if that is still the case. Do I still like gambling because its money given to me instead of earned?

I’ve moved on from scratch and win tickets, and bumming money from my parents at Super Bowl parties, to chasing the big bucks of daily fantasy football. And to be honest it no longer feels like money for nothing; in fact, when I think about the time I spend researching players and scheming for victory, compared to the amount of money I’ve made it seems more like indentured servitude. In the weeks leading up to the season I prepared an excel spreadsheet to help organize data and information in order to get the winning edge over my competitors. I haven’t used Excel since high school, so needless to say it took me a while to figure everything out. Then I watched what players were doing in meaningless preseason games, and thought about how that may or may not impact future success. That’s all before I even got to the season.

Now that the season has started I have a series of steps — which are beginning to resemble a work schedule — I need to take in order to be prepared for the upcoming games. For a point of reference let’s take a quick look at my time card from last week.

Monday: Reflected on a relatively positive week (doubled my investment), while simultaneously regretting two decisions that cost me a chance at a big week. Damn you Jordy Nelson and the Packers for not saying anything about his injury!! Time spent: 30 mins.

Tuesday: I’m on call in the morning for my real job, so I wake up at 5:30AM and while waiting for a phone call that never comes, I update the spreadsheets for the current week. I added a couple of new pages, so it took a while — another reminder that I’ve been out of any type of school for almost ten years now and my only technological proficiency is Twitter. Time spent: 4 hrs.

Wednesday-Saturday: Time for the research:

Research in my office (the bathroom)…

Research on the train…

Research before my class…

And in the rain…seriously it’s been fucking pouring for like five days now.

Time spent: 3–4 hrs.

So let’s add it all up. If my math is right, it’s at least seven and a half hours of time spent, and as of going to print on this article, I’m looking at a negative fifteen dollars for my effort, bringing my yearly total to a whopping negative eight dollars. That’s what I have to show for all the effort I put into gaming the system and trying to be more prepared then the random schmo.

So then why? What’s the point? Not just for my obsession with hitting the jackpot of daily fantasy football, but all of it; the entirety of fantasy sports. Obviously, I don’t put seven hours a week into the season long leagues I play with my friends and family, but it still takes up a fair amount of time. I’ve come up with two answers that keep me coming back for more; one, looking at stats and thinking about football is fun — that’s why I also choose to write about it — and the other is it’s a way to stay connected to family and friends, and if I’m being honest I think that’s the real reason I’ll never quit.

Our generation lives in a time that is sometimes too easy to stay connected to the past. I think we’ve all received that friend request from the guy or girl that you didn’t really like in high school and are then confronted with the moral dilemma of telling that person to fuck off (deny) or smiling and feinting excitement at hearing from them again (accept). Fantasy sports is the best of these new forms of staying in touch; you can easily determine who you want to participate with — it’s a group of ten or twelve, not hundreds — and the interactions feel more like the ones I had as an irresponsible youth; it’s not being confronted with the realities of a crumbling society or the inevitability of getting older, instead it’s the more juvenile ribbing about someone’s lack of intelligence or manhood.

Fantasy sports also provides the topics. After a couple of years, we no longer need to send those emails or text about jobs; if you’re like me and you’re in your thirties, work is the same as it’s been for a while now, and even if you change jobs it’s not likely to be that much more or less exciting. But you know what is exciting, or tragic, the fact that I had Dalvin Cook and Odell Beckham Jr, and they both got fucking hurt. And that’s what motivates me to send text messages to my friend and brother with a clever GIF to express my frustrations.

I now live an ocean away from my friends and family, and the amount of communication with them rises significantly during football season. Is that sad? Should I make an effort to call my dad in the offseason so we can talk about the weather? Sure. But I’d rather make fun of him for drafting a kicker to early or talk about how the Seahawks offense is literally going drive me to alcoholism.

A lot of the memories that I look back fondly on are of the times that I sat around with my friends, drinking beer, watching sports, while making our friend wear a scary clown mask for good luck. Or the times I spent before and after Christmas and Thanksgiving dinner talking about how the Seahawks or Mariners or, sobbing…the Sonics…sobbing…had disappointed us all. And those are the same type of conversations I’m still able to have because of sports, and more specifically fantasy sports.

So that’s why I come back for more, even though I more often than not take a shot to the nuts, and lose some money. It’s a small price to pay to not lose touch with the world back home.

Bill Belichick’s Effect On Football Writing Is Getting Old

Widespread opinions about different NFL franchises and front offices dictate the narrative of most offseason storylines. In a way it makes sense. The NFL is one of the most unpredictable leagues from week to week, let alone season to season. Heading into the year David Johnson and LeVeon Bell were the two most unstoppable offensive weapons, now one is injured, likely out for most of the season, and the other hasn’t had much of an impact since returning from a hold out. So I get it. The Washington professional football team is mismanaged and stupid, most of their moves are probably not going to work out. And the Cleveland Browns can’t get anything right; let’s save time by assuming that they will finish in the bottom half of the league. But this idea really starts to bother me when people blindly hurl accolades at moves that are obviously not that great just because a successful team made them. No other team, or executive, gets more of a benefit of the doubt than Bill Belichick and the New England Patriots. And again, I understand the reason they want to do it; they’ve won basically every super bowl since I graduated high school ten plus years ago, but ignoring logic and reason to just say, “Well, it’s Bill Belichick and the Patriots so of course it will work,” is lazy and annoying.

The Patriots made a ton of moves this offseason, and while I’m one-hundred percent sure they will win the AFC East (Who else could, the Jay Cutler led Miami Dolphins…?), and probably another super bowl because they always fucking do, I think most of them were terrible and could be the beginning of the end for their dynasty. I know what you’re thinking, “Who the fuck does this guy think he is? I’m sure Bill Belichick knows more about building a team then some random guy on the internet,” and I would agree with you, but hear me out before you completely make up your mind.

This offseason, the entire NFL community, and every fucking person on twitter, laughed and tweeted that stupid metaphor about one person playing chess while everyone else plays checkers (which is fucking stupid and outdated because the only people who play checkers anymore are four year olds who are too stupid to use an iPhone) as Belichick was bucking conventional wisdom and unloading all of his draft picks for veteran players nearing the end of their rookie contracts. Even though everyone up until that point agreed that the new rookie wage scale made acquiring young salary controlled players through the draft the best way to have sustainable success, but Belichick doesn’t think so anymore, so none of us do either. For the sake of argument let’s take a look at the players he got: TE James O`Shaugnesy, cut before week 1; DL Kony Ealy, cut before week 1; TE Dewayne Allen, three targets and zero catches; Brandin Cooks, five catches and zero touchdowns; not exactly setting the world on fire through two games. In all fairness he also gave up a fifth round pick to sign Mike Gillislee, and he already has three touchdowns which is pretty good, but there is more to his story that I’ll get to later.

The bottom line is he made a shit ton of trades that left him with a total of four draft picks, only one of which is actually playing with the team, and maybe it won’t come back to bite them in the ass this year, but in a couple of years when Brandin Cooks wants a new big money deal, and Dwayne Allen is still looking for his first catch as a New England Patriot, members of the 2017 draft class will be coming into their third year, still making peanuts compared to their veteran counterparts, playing on special teams or contributing as starters. While no one is going to argue that the draft is predictable and easy to navigate; the success rate for first round picks is less than ideal, but is the veteran route much better? With the potential for injury so high and with many players struggling to fit into a new offense or defense you never really know for sure what will happen. Bill Belichick went the “safer” veteran route and got a pile of dog shit for his effort.

Then there is the one trade he didn’t make, Jimmy Garoppolo for a top fifteen pick plus an additional third or fourth that he should have made. One of the key parts to the Patriots success is of course Tom Brady, not because he is arguably the best quarterback in the history of the NFL, but because he is arguably the best quarterback in the history of the NFL and annually restructures his contract to free up salary cap space. This year, Tom Brady’s cap hit is fourteen million dollars; that just happens to be the same as Mike Glennon. Yeah, this Mike Glennon.

There are eighteen other quarterbacks in the NFL that will have a higher cap hit then Brady’s fourteen million. Eighteen! Such players as, Joe Flacco, Carson Palmer, Ryan Tannehill, Andrew Luck, Alex Smith, and the Red Rifle Andy Dalton will take up more of their teams salary cap then Brady does; two of them haven’t played a game this year and another two that there teams probably wish hadn’t. Come next year another name will likely be added to that list, Jimmy Garoppolo. At the end of the 2017 season the Patriots will be faced with a difficult situation without a real great way out. Garoppolo’s rookie contract will expire, making him one of the most sought after free agents ever. The Patriots could try to sign him to a contract extension; not likely unless they send Tom Brady packing. Could Bill really do that? In the past, he has gotten rid of some established veterans for cheaper younger options, but it’s hard to imagine that even he would do that, and Jimmy G won’t be cheaper. Another option would be to franchise him and potentially get two first round picks if a team signs him. That is probably their best bet, but would present a pretty significant risk since the franchise tag for Garoppolo would be around twenty-four million dollars and if no team signed him the Patriots would be shit out of luck — I doubt Tommy B would be willing to take a big enough pay cut to make that one work out. Their final option would be to let him leave and get nothing but perhaps a comp pick in the 2019 draft, which leads back to the whole point of this article, why would we not drill Belichick for not trading this prized asset before the draft? People have argued that it was smart — of course they did — with the state of backup quarterbacks being what it presently is, having one that could come in and win games is the best thing to do, but if Brady goes down do we really think the Patriots are going to win the super bowl? Basically they took a major asset, kept him even though he won’t play, only to trade him a year later for a worse package or lose him for nothing. If any other team did that they would rightly be raked over the coals.

The failure to trade Jimmy Garoppolo wasn’t the only move they made that makes little sense from a salary cap or team construction point of view. Do you remember when I mentioned Mike Gillislee earlier? He’s the one with three touchdowns, and the one that has everyone crooning about another player that the Patriots stole from the hapless Buffalo Bills. The only problem is it wasn’t free and if you add him to the rest of the running back group they have, it’s actually kind of a lot of money. Gillislee will make $3.96 million this year and Rex Burkhead signed for $3.15 million. The Patriots also have two other running backs, James White, who just got a contract extension and will make $1.78 million, and Dion Lewis who has a year left at $1.48 million. Add all those up and you have a total of $10.37 million being paid to their running backs. Do you know how many running backs make more than $10.37 million? One. LeVeon Bell. Now let me ask you a question. Would you rather have those four jerk offs and a couple of million dollars or one LeVeon Bell. Yeah, I’d take LeVeon Bell too. Or they could have not signed Burkhead, not given up a fifth round pick and four million dollars for Gillislee, and just resigned LeGarrette Blount (signed with Philadelphia for one year, $1.25 million), who had eighteen touchdowns last year, and drafted one of the many talented running backs that came out in this year’s draft. Through two games it’s pretty safe to say that there are a few really good ones that could have been had for a relatively low pick. Kareem Hunt, who destroyed the Patriots in the first game, was picked in the third round, his salary $687,000. Or they could have paired Blount with Tarik Cohen, the small guy who seems like the perfect pass catching back that would absolutely kill teams in the Patriots offense; he was picked in the fourth round and makes $623,000. Or they could have kept James White and Dion Lewis, told old LeGarrette ‘Smokes too many’ Blounts to get lost, and drafted Chris Carson in the seventh round, and paid him $481,000 to be the back that rushes five times a game for seven yards and three touchdowns. But they didn’t; they gave up a fifth round pick and eight million dollars for two veterans. But it’s not just the salary that is a problem; it’s the years of control. Burkhead and Lewis will both be free agents next year, meaning the Pats will have to spend either money or draft picks to replace them. Gillislee will be a free agent in 2019, leaving only James White left. Meanwhile the three rookies mentioned above will all be under contract through the 2020 season at less than a million dollars for each year.

Again this isn’t an article arguing that Bill Belichick is a moron and that I am the smartest football mind in the world; it’s to point out that a lot of these moves don’t make sense, and not only do they not make sense they actually seem like they could be detrimental to the team’s future. Scanning other teams’ rosters and finding potential gems is smart (see Randy Moss for a fourth round pick), signing restricted free agents isn’t necessarily bad, but getting rid of nearly all of your draft capital can lead to major problems. Like a lack of depth throughout your roster, or salary cap issues caused by having to use free agency to build your team instead of just adding to it, and no one seemed to even bother to stop and ask, “Was that actually a good deal? Or do we just like it because the Patriots did it?”

Atlanta Falcons; No better than 8–8 in 2017

The Super Bowl hangover is real; both from a physical stand point and a psychological one. Maybe two weeks doesn’t seem like much, but it could be the reason a player is still recovering from an offseason surgery instead of starting training camp in August. The psychological effect can be an even bigger problem, especially if they’re ahead by twenty-five points and choke away what could be they’re only chance to win a Super Bowl. I don’t care what anyone on the Falcons says, anytime they get a lead in the 4th quarter images of the Patriots will inevitably flash in their minds. But having said all that, the Super Bowl hangover is not the reason they won’t make the playoffs — it might be the reason they finish 5–12 instead of 8–8 or 9–7, but the reasons they won’t make the playoffs is much easier to see then the physical and emotional scars of Super Bowl LI.

The Loss of Kyle Shanahan

One of my favorite sayings in football is, “It’s not about the X’s and O’s; it’s about the Jimmys and the Joes.” It sounds cool and at most levels of football is 100% accurate. If you’re coaching a high school football games, and your running back is a 6'2" monster that runs a 4.4, whatever play you call is probably going to end well. That’s not really the case in the NFL. Good and bad offensive coordinators can make all the difference and Kyle Shanahan was a really good offensive coordinator. His replacement, Steve Sarkisian, is not. Sarkisian has one year of NFL experience…as a quarterback’s coach…in 2004. Just to give a little context, in 2004 Daunte Culpepper lead the league in passing yards, Curtis Martin lead in rushing, Muhsin Muhammad lead in receiving (all three are now somewhere in Boca Raton playing bocci ball), and there were only three Harry Potter movies.

Kyle Shanahan’s first year in the NFL was also in 2004, but he has spent the last thirteen years growing with the league, nine of which were spent running above average to elite offenses. In his nine years as an OC, his teams were in the top ten in the league in total yards six times, passing yards five times, rushing yards three times, and points scored three times. Well maybe he just had great players? Not quite, his quarterbacks before getting to Atlanta were: Matt Schaub in Houston, an old Donovan McNabb, Rex Grossman, Robert Griffin III, and Kirk Cousins in Washington, and a year of Brian Hoyer in Cleveland — not exactly an elite bunch. His skill position players weren’t much better, with the exception of Andre Johnson in his prime. His next best weapons were probably Santana Moss and Pierre Garçon in Washington. So with less than superb talent, Kyle Shanahan proved capable of putting together six great offenses.

There is perhaps no better example of his ability to get the best of his players than his first season as an offensive coordinator. At the age of 28, the youngest ever to lead an offense, the Houston Texans had the third most yards in the league. He also got 1,200 yards and nine touchdowns out of Steve Slaton. Who’s Steve Slaton? He was the small guy from West Virginia who in his other four years as a pro rushed for 614 yards… combined.

This is the level of coach the Falcons are losing. Someone who turned cans of tuna fish into mahi-mahi, and turned a talented Falcons offense into a historically great one. To think that they will be firing on all cylinders in the same way this season seems like a bit of a reach, especially with an offensive coordinator that has literally no experience in the NFL. A lot of people talk about Sarkisian as a great offensive mind, but I watched every game he coached at the University of Washington and while at times his offense looked unstoppable, I never got a sense that he had an offensive identity that he could hang his hat on, and he certainly never schemed subpar talent into overachieving performances.

The Fall of Matt Ryan

In order to reach the Super Bowl you need key players to play their best football. No one out played there previous seasons more than reigning MVP Matt Ryan. Last year, Ryan finished with a career best in completion percentage (69.9), quarterback rating (117.1), yards (4944), touchdowns (38), and fewest interceptions (7). In case you were wondering, that’s basically every significant quarterback statistic there is. It wasn’t even all that close in a lot of them either. His quarterback rating last year was eighteen points higher than his second best season. It was also only the second time in his career that he’s thrown over thirty touchdowns, and was seventeen more than he threw in 2015. That’s not just a career season, it’s the type of shit you see in movies where someone sells their soul to the devil only to have things backfire in a heartbreaking way…kind of like blowing a 28–3 lead in the fourth quarter. Hmm, interesting.

The touchdowns, and yards, and all of those other things are great, but the real surprise was the seven interceptions that Ryan threw. In the three seasons before his MVP run, he threw sixteen interceptions in 2015, fourteen in 2014, and seventeen in 2013; all good for top ten in the league. In his nine seasons he has only thrown fewer than ten interceptions in two of them. To drive this point home, in 2015, under the same offensive coordinator that we talked about above, Matt Ryan had twenty-one touchdowns and seventeen interceptions. Does anyone think that the Atlanta Falcons can go to the playoffs if their quarterback puts up that kind of stat line? I don’t.

Is it possible that Matt Ryan finally turned the corner in his career? Absolutely. It happens all the time with quarterbacks. He was the third overall pick in the draft, the first quarterback taken, so it’s not crazy to think that he has the talent to be one of the best quarterbacks in football, but even if all that’s true, I would argue that it is impossible that he will match his 2016 output. So if we start there, the only question is how much worse will he be? In the eight years before his MVP season he averaged twenty-five touchdowns and twelve interceptions, which is exactly what Kirk Cousins did in 2016, leading Washington to an 8–7–1 record. That would be the Kirk Cousins that as a starter has gone 19–21–1 in the regular season and 0–1 in the playoffs.

Injury Luck Doesn’t Last Forever

A healthy roster is the essential ingredient to a super bowl run, and in 2016 few teams were as healthy as the Falcons. The only significant season ending injury they suffered was to Desmond Trufant. While the loss of Trufant was a big deal, the Falcons were still a team that was led by their offense. So the loss of a defensive player wasn’t the kiss of death the way an injury sustained to one of their key offensive contributors would have been. And with the exception of Julio Jones who battled with turf toe and a few other injuries that cause him to miss a couple of games late in the year, the rest of their offense was remarkably healthy.

Their starting quarterback, top two running backs, and top three wide receivers all missed fewer than four games. But more impressively none of their offensive linemen missed a start. Not only did they play every game, they played nearly all of their team’s snaps. The Falcons were one of two teams in the NFL that had five linemen play more than ninety percent of their offense’s snaps, and the other team was the New England Patriots. In fact there were only three other teams that had four linemen play that many snaps — so, twenty-seven of thirty-two teams had three or fewer linemen playing together as much as the entire Falcons’ line[i]. Not all of these low numbers were caused purely by injuries, some of them were probably because the team had shitty offensive lines — cough, cough, Seattle, cough, cough — but the point remains that the health of their line was a huge part of their success and an extraordinary occurrence.

So this is the team coming off one of the most soul crushing defeats that that the sports world has ever seen, and they’re doing it without one of the best offensive coaches in the NFL, with a quarterback coming off a season that cannot be repeated, and an injury free run that would again conjure up ideas of some sort of foul play — maybe not a deal with the devil, instead perhaps a deal with some suspect doctor in Miami. Even if their young defense improves from last year, will it really be enough to overcome the crash down to earth from their offense, especially when it was their offense that carried them to the brink of a title.

If you look at the standings come the end of December, and see the Falcons sitting at 2–13 heading into the last game of disastrous season, you can blame it on a Super Bowl hangover. But if you look up and they’re 7–8 or 8–7, with little to no chance at a playoff berth don’t be surprised, because I warned you in September.

[i] Teams with 5 players over 90%: Atlanta, New England

Teams with 4 players over 90%: Denver, New Orleans, Oakland

Teams with 3 players over 90%: Buffalo, Carolina, Chicago, Cincinnati, Dallas, Green Bay, Houston, Jacksonville, Kansas City, L.A. Rams, N.Y. Giants, L.A. Chargers, Tennessee

Teams with 2 players over 90%: Arizona, Baltimore, Cleveland, Detroit, Indianapolis, Miami, Philadelphia, Seattle, Washington

Teams with 1 player over 90%: N.Y. Jets, Pittsburgh, San Francisco, Tampa Bay

Teams with 0 players over 90%: Minnesota