I was doing pretty good and was proud of myself the first two weeks of the NFL Fantasy Football League season. Jared Goff was doing well and my trio of Ole Miss receivers were bringing in a decent number of points. Kicking and defense have been suspect, and I haven’t found the rhythm there yet. But I was 2-0 and riding high in the family league that our oldest daughter, Alexandra, had created and built for us. We didn’t have enough members so she added her dog, Shorty, to round out the league.
Now Shorty is a reclamation project. She fostered him and then adopted him. No one knows exactly how old he is or what mix he might be, but he’s small – less than a foot long and only a few pounds. He has mangled teeth and can’t see everything clearly, and you don’t want to mess with him because he might bite for no reason, and those mangled teeth can do some real damage. He barks at things he thinks he sees and those he doesn’t.
That’s Shorty.
Well, wouldn’t you know it, week three was Shorty and me. One thing with the games is they start on Thursday now, so one team might jump out to a lead that you can’t do anything about until Sunday night, and then again on Monday. Shorty and I were neck and neck, and the app shows you the probability of either team winning, shifting quite often during the games as players rack up points. Shorty’s pick of Baker Mayfield and Garrett Wilson gave him a good lead over me, and by the end of Sunday night, he was up on me by 40 or 50 points. It’s a high-scoring league, and he had used all his shots. I had one left in the barrel, though – Jared Goff at Baltimore for the win. That win percentage was at 99 percent for me before the game started. I was confident. Not cocky, but the percentage was in my favor.
Goff put together some respectable numbers dinking and dunking down the field passing and finally got a TD pass and at halftime, the win percentage had dipped but was still favoring me. I needed about 20 points to take the win. It looked good. I was confident.
The second half started and more dinking and dunking but no home run pass to get some big points. The percentage thingy started to wane on my side and grow on Shorty’s side. I was starting to get a little worried. Then the Lions running back broke off a huge 72-yard run in the fourth quarter. They ran it in from there. The Lions were up and winning with little time for Goff to get some passing points. It was definitely the Tale of Two Cities. It was the best of times as my wife and family’s team was winning on the field. And it was the worst of times because my Fantasy Win Streak was about to be broken. By a dog. An old dog. Shorty ended up kicking my rear end, 227.92 to 220.58. There really weren’t any adjustments to the roster I could have made to get eight more points.
So how was your week? I got beaten in fantasy football by literally an old dog. I guess it could be worse…
