My old, familiar friend

I'm not disappointed by Missouri's performance in their final trip to Lincoln as conference-mates with Nebraska. I will take this one optimistically. Missouri outplayed them for 45 minutes.

Oh, you say, Missouri only outplayed Nebraska because Nebraska treated Missouri like a six-man high school team from North Dakota for the first quarter. You have me there. Here's a fun stat. For the final quarter of last year's game and the first quarter of this year's game, Missouri was outscored 51-0. That's in a half of football. The heralded defense gave up 256 yards in a quarter and after that, it didn't matter that they got Nebraska's quarterback out of the game. That only prevented the final score from being 45-17 instead of 31-17.

I do appreciate the effort the team made for the final 45. Gabbert pulled the roll out and throw the ball away maneuver more times than I've ever seen. In that time period, Nebraska's defense played like Missouri's had all year, giving up chunks of yardage but stiffening up when they needed to. Attempting a 54-yard field goal that would have cut the lead to 14 was stretching it. Gabbert missed on at least three downfield shots. One was dropped in the end zone, although there could have been interference. The team had first and goal at the one, got a half the distance penalty and then stupidly went into the shotgun and could only get three.

The best play of the day was the fourth and less than one play. Missouri got into a bunch formation. It's as bunch as Missouri gets with two receivers wide, two tight ends slightly behind the offensive line and a RB behind the QB. Nebraska called a time out and sold out on the sneak. Gabbert pitched and downfield blocking got the first TD. I even had a little hope there for a moment.

The team was perpetually one play away from making the game interesting and they failed to make it repeatedly. They made Roy Helu Junior look like what Troy Polamalu might have been had he decided to be a running back.

I wrote last week about Missouri's breakthrough. I was convinced that finally, my team could beat anyone in the country. I'm not sure if they could have defeated Nebraska yesterday. The first quarter MVP for the Tigers was the punter. They competed. If Missouri loses more ground in the poll than Oklahoma lost after last week, I will be unsurprised.

Here are the scenarios for the rest of the season. Missouri wins out and Nebraska loses once more, say to Colorado in the Benedict Arnold bowl in the final game of the season. Missouri goes to the Big 12 Championship and plays a full 60 minutes against Oklahoma/Oklahoma State. They win and get a Rose Bowl berth against Ohio State. They beat the Tressels and finish #3 in the country. No, I do not think a 2007 scenario is happening again.

Scenario two: Missouri wins out but Nebraska holds serve (love the inappropriate other sport metaphors) and goes to the Big 12 title game. Despite the 11-1 record Missouri is passed over by the BCS and whatever the Holiday Bowl in San Diego is called now passes over Missouri to select 6-6 Texas. Missouri plays 8-4 Mississippi State and wins convincingly.

Scenario three: Missouri goes into a minor late-season slide, losing at Texas Tech and to Kansas. They finish 9-3 and return to the Alamo Bowl where they play Michigan and lose.

I'm hoping for at least 10 wins because that would represent a pretty darn good season. I'd say that Pinkel might win Big 12 Coach of the Year but the guy at Baylor should own it already now that the team's guaranteed at least a .500 record in conference for the first time.

Two out of three ain't bad

It's weird to think that the fantasy football regular season is now more than halfway done. Didn't it seem like months of waiting for the season to start? Now we're stuck with bums like Brett Favre and DeAngelo Williams clogging up our rosters.
I haven't bored my four readers with tales of my fantasy teams in months. There are six weeks left in the regular season in all three of my leagues. In the local keeper league there are eight playoff spots and in the two Zealots leagues there are six playoff spots. I'm in the running in all three.

My keeper league has been an Achilles heel for half a decade. In 2006 I stopped being able to draft, trade, or make astute waiver moves. I think I'm over that now. After years of timidly offering rules changes I went all in this year, making our league PPR and adding an extra WR/TE slot. Proving that most successes in life are narrow things, the vote on our new flex spot was tight. The vote was whether to include running backs in the flex position. The vote finished in a tie and the tiebreaker was an Atlanta Braves/Washington Nationals baseball game. The Nationals were on the side of the WR/TE, so I assumed that a third running back would be part of our rosters. The Nationals won and that's one of the reasons why I lead the league in scoring.

I nailed the first half of my draft and I've been better than average with waivers. Six of my first seven draft picks are every-week starters. The one guy who isn't is Knowshon Moreno, and he's not a bad third running back. I was the last guy to draft a QB and Eli Manning has been great the last two weeks after not exactly blowing the fantasy world's skirts up prior to that. In the eighth round I drafted Brett Favre. That's where it all started to fall apart. Of my last ten draft picks, I have three guys left. My lottery ticket picks like Laurence Maroney and Devin Hester didn't pan out.

I officially am off the waivers bandwagon. I want free agent bucks and I want them next year. Despite being in a poor waiver slot nearly every week I've supplemented my roster well. I got Darren McFadden when the bastard who drew the 12 slot in our redraft got the top waiver pick and Arian Foster. I picked up Dustin Keller after the Arian Foster guy released him after week one. I dropped Aaron Hernandez to get him. I find it ironic that I dropped Jared Cook to pick up Hernandez because every Titan fan sees what they wish Cook could become in Hernandez. I haven't had luck with my WR4 slot. I added Mario Manningham one week, then Lance Moore, who I only started in his bad week. I currently have Danny Amendola and I'm starting the Vernon Davis/Dustin Keller combo this week and leaving him on the bench.

After seven weeks I lead the league in record, scoring, and points against. I find the points against to be a badge of honor. The week to week stuff makes fantasy more random than it already is. I need two wins in the next six weeks to have my first winning record since 2005. I want that number one playoff spot and top scoring title. I want it even though the top regular-season squad hasn't won the title since I did it in 2000. I have one ace up my sleeve. In the playoffs, the waiver order reverses, which gives the best team the best waiver slot, and with all of the injuries we've seen, that's going to be valuable.

I rule as usual in Zealots 17. I'm in two Zealots dynasty IDP leagues and there's one difference between the leagues. I always seem to nail my rookie picks in z17 and Ryan Howard my picks in z34. In the third round of my rookie draft in z17 I got Mike Williams and Aaron Hernandez. That's good since my main tight end in Dallas Clark has been IR'd. Last year I started strong, faded out and lost in the first round of the playoffs. I'm aiming for the first-round playoff bye so if I lose in my first postseason game, at least it will be in Week 14. I'm the leading scorer in this league too. I'd say that so far my massive trade for Adrian Peterson has paid off. I usually just start Peterson and Michael Turner and let my deep WR and TE corps hold the day. On my Reggie Wayne bye week I got to start Dwayne Bowe, Percy Harvin, Greg Jennings and Mike Wallace. I have nine wideouts on my roster and eight were draft picks or rookie free agents. With Clark out I can choose between Owen Daniels, Aaron Hernandez, Andrew Quarless and maybe even Jacob Tamme. And when you can get IDP guys like Dave Ball, Desmond Bishop, and Patrick Chung off waivers, you're feeling good.

My last and worst team is my Zealots 34 squad. I just lost Tony Romo for at least the fantasy regular season. I neglected to pick up Jon Kitna so Josh Freeman will be my starting QB. I have pretty solid RB depth here, but the rest of my team is thin. I'm 3-4 in a division with two 5-2 teams. I'm probably screwed since my record "in conference" is 1-4. Yeah, I'm already thinking of draft picks for 2011.

Obviously I want that keeper league title since we have a trophy. The other leagues don't even have a virtual trophy. When you win, you tweet about it. I want some confetti and to shake Roger Goodell's hand.

Faith and Titans

The Titans won again. I should give in and enjoy the season. It feels a little like 2008 in that there isn't a group of elite teams so anyone could jump up and win the championship. I haven't been able to fully enjoy the victories yet. Am I pulling the typical "I don't think I deserve this" emotional crap?

Sunday had to be the best win of the year. The Eagles had just put a beat-down on Atlanta, who was considered to be the top team in the NFC. The Titans were coming off a dominating win over the Jaguars that showed which team was the contender and which was the pretender. Kevin Kolb was on fire, but he wouldn't have DeSean Jackson. The Titans would start Kerry Collins, which clearly affected the run game.

Early on, Collins looked like he was trying to throw the game. He threw two interceptions and missed open receivers. In the middle of the second quarter he found Kenny Britt for a touchdown, but through the second and third quarters the Eagles looked like the superior team. Chris Johnson had some holes to run through in the first half but in the second he was completely ineffective.

There were two turning points. The first was when the Eagles had the ball inside the Titan ten-yard line, about to score a touchdown in the end zone near where my parents sit and many Eagles fans were in their various shades of green. Jason Jones came in unblocked and disrupted the hand off. It has to be one of the top five defensive plays of the year in terms of impact.

After the Eagles took another nine-point lead in the fourth quarter, the game seemed over. Then Collins discovered Kenny Britt. I missed the 80-yard TD because I was flipping to the Red Zone. I was shocked. The disbelief continued when they took the lead on a field goal, and on the following drive Collins looked left, then found Britt down the middle. Kenny Britt of the pathetic Titan pass offense just put up the best fantasy wide receiver day of the year. Moreover, a late field goal and final play pick six made the score 37-19. It looked like a blowout but was another Titan close game special.

I'm not used to this. For the entire 2008 season I waited for the bubble to burst and was not disappointed at the result. Last year's strong second half was fun but was destined to end poorly. This year, I'm not sure. I feel like it's going to end up in a showdown with the Steelers, Ravens, Jets, or Patriots. Can I believe in my team this time?

Rewarding the fan base

The best part of being part of a downtrodden fan base is when the downtroddenness, if that's such a word, appears to be in the past. For Texas Rangers fans, now is the good time. I'll send them good fan karma if there's any left from the 2005 White Sox. Actually San Francisco Giants fans are equal if not higher on the beleaguered scale.

But frankly, when the Yankees lost 95% of the country tuned out on baseball. It's football time. The Missouri Tigers did something odd last night. They exceeded expectations.

We prefer fast turnarounds. We like the worst to first success stories like the 1991 Braves. We don't like the teams that consistently go to the playoffs but rarely pull through, like the Braves of the 90s. Building slowly, especially in a high-profile job like head coach of a major college football program, is not the best recipe.
Gary Pinkel is in his tenth year as Missouri head coach. He had losing records in three of his first four seasons. That was fine because Missouri was a place of low expectations. Record setting QB Brad Smith was on only one bowl winning team when the Tigers 'upset' South Carolina in the 2005 Independence Bowl. He had a 29-30 coaching record after five years.

Expectations changed in 2007 with a number one ranking, a first Big 12 North championship, and a New Year's Day bowl victory. The team backslid the last couple of years, finishing last year with his fourth 4-4 conference record in a decade.

Last year's team was quite young and inexperienced. Still, that painful Texas Bowl loss to Navy made fans wonder. In a decade, no one had made a serious run at Pinkel to take over a higher profile job. The University of Washington job, where Pinkel was offensive coordinator from 1984 to 1990, opened up without much of a hint of interest. Was Pinkel that good of a coach? Was it that hard to beat up on four out of conference creampuffs (Illinois is decent at best) and go 4-4, mainly beating up on inferior Big 12 North programs? We didn't know. The team of mystery shut out Colorado, beat down what seemed to be a good Texas A&M team on the road, and faced number one Oklahoma.

What had been missing from the 2007 and 2008 teams was the ability to make a stop on defense. Despite having three first-round NFL draft picks on those defensive teams, they were shredded in conference play. This year's team was different. But would they be different against Oklahoma?

They were. Yeah, Oklahoma scored 27 points, which is the most the defense has given up all year. The point was, like the Titans of late, Missouri got the turnovers when they needed them. When the offense stalled, the defense put them in positions to succeed. The touchdown drive after Oklahoma took their one lead was clutch. The defense making sure that a 26-21 lead moved to 36-21 was a game clincher.

Missouri stepped up to the big boys and won. What's key about the last two weeks is that Missouri went 0-3 against Big 12 South teams next year. They'll be playing more of those teams starting in 2012, so getting a few wins is important. It doesn't get any easier with Nebraska, Oklahoma State, and Kansas State coming up. I'm not worried about Missouri staying in the national championship race. What I like is knowing that my team has the ability to beat anyone in the nation. For a fan base, that's a big emotional leap.