Shana tova Special Ed!!!!!!!!!!!
Sorry for the delay, folks, it’s been a pretty hectic week over here at the DYM Home Office. As it turns out, holding Kindergarten classes over Zoom is a horrible idea.
Absolute shitshow, you guys.
We have some BIG thoughts about the future of the US public education system - especially vis-a-vis The Pandemic - and we’ll surely dig into all that at some point this fall, but for now we’ll just offer one small recommendation for any of you guys with sub-grade-school-age kids: Pick up a copy of Jean Jacques Rousseau’s Emile, read that bad boy and mentally prepare yourself to spend A LOT of time with your child.
For real, this is one of our all time favorite books. Its about parenting (kinda) but we dug it back in college too. Emile has become a bit of a curiosity for philosophy professors, but now, all of a sudden, it’s EXTREMELY relevant.
I’m tellin you guys, there is not a single philosopher in the western canon as well-known and as thoroughly disrespected by today’s Academy as JJ Rousseau. Today it’s more fashionable to trash Kant, but most people that hate Kant just think JJ is a joke. But you see, this is what we call a “reverse-red-flag.”
We’ve been big JJ stans since we were first introduced to him by our old buddhist-beach-bum-phil professors down in Florida. We were pretty surprised to learn that the “Professional Philosophers” at Rutgers didn’t really take him seriously. Of course this was about 15 years ago now, so we wonder sometimes how these guys really feel about Philosophical Pragmatism nowadays.
In our opinion, JJ was actually the most correct philosopher of the entire Modern Era. A bold assertion, to be sure, but well supported, if for no other reason than that pretty much every Rousseau Hater is a bad philosopher in their own right.
We do the same thing with fantasy football research. There’s this motherfucker on FantasyPros called “Walter Cherepinsky” aka WalterFootball and we do NOT fuck with his picks. We like to look up those “Who Should I Start?” rankings matchups when we have a tough Start/Sit decision. Been doing it for several years, nbd. Nowadays it’s become more of an exercise in satiating our confirmation bias than an actually informational one. Over time we started to notice which of the ‘Pros had the same general perspective as we do, and we end up going with those guys’ picks (which are also our own picks). Especially during mock-draft season we kept seeing Walter fade Our Guys. So, now, if we’re consulting the ‘Pros, but already kinda leaning towards a certain side, and WalterFootball is on that side too, we RUN to start the other guy.
To be honest, we’ve never even been to the WalterFootball website, it’s just the WORST name though. Fuck off, Walter!
For week 2, in the other league, we had to choose Anthony MIller or Tyler Boyd. Funny thing is Walter’s square-ass pick ended up being sharp this week cause the entire Browns secondary was injured.
But man, we almost woulda ate our fucking hat if it werern’t for that last second garbage time TD. So, it’s fine, for now. But we’re telling you guys: Anthony Miller is a LOCK for 100yds and a TD this week.
That’s bad news for Andy.The Commish has the WR1 locked and Keenan vs KC is good in the flex. That just leaves one EASY matchup call: DJ Chark is on the road at Tennessee, and Anthony Miller is at home vs NYG. Slam-dunk if you ask us.
OK. I know what some of yall are thinkin:
“Hey, why’s DYM giving out free lineup advice? This is DEFEND Your Moves, not ADVISE Your Moves!!!”
We’re sorry.
But any of you who hath eyes can surely see that The Commish is the most favorite son of the Fantasy Gods this fall. They smiled upon his draft - and the faithful all declared it to be the best in the league this year. They lost week one, sure, but don’t be fooled - like we always say: It’s better to lose early than to lose late. And now, as if to further prove where Their favor truly lies, They have laid at his feet the most marvelous gift a Fantasy League can offer: A landslide of a trade, garnering him the #1 WR in all of football. For his FOURTH RB!!! IN WEEK 2!!!!! Are you kidding me?!?
Folks, we dare not refuse to heed the Fantasy Gods’ decree, especially in this High Holy Day Season.
Now when we first saw the trade we thought maybe Matt was a more intrepid DYM Scholar than we had previously supposed. One could have reasonably read last week’s advice to “Draft 4 RBs” and inferred that any RB one could draft in the first four rounds is inherently more valuable than any WR in the same range.
We don’t think that’s the case, but we will grant that it is a not entirely unreasonable interpretation.
So, the really confusing part, to us, was how he dropped Kerryon for Desean Jackson like ten minutes after. Sure, Kerryon’s beat up and a beta personality, but why would you want the oldest guy on the Eagles?
Anyway, we thought about it a lot, then we decided to pick up Adrian Peterson as a performative lesson for Matt on how to properly acquire Starting RBs in week fucking two.
WEEK TWO?? 2?!?!
AMERICAS GAME OF THE WEEK!!
Paul’s Awesome Team VS. Pickle Ricks!!
AGoTW Prediction record: 0-1
Its a 2019 Final Four Rematch in week two!!
There’s an interesting quirk in this league’s 2020 schedule. For week two, every team that won week one is playing a team that lost week one. This makes it very likely that we’ll have multiple teams at 2-0 and multiple 0-2 teams. Of course its still early, but that kinda deficit is an awfully long hill to climb later in the season.
You don't ever want to say theres a “must win” game this early but all 5 of this week’s Special Ed matchups are as pivotal as a week 2 game can possibly be.
Last year PR started out 2-3 averaging less than 100 per game before reeling off 7 wins in the last eight weeks of 2019. That run felt miraculous, and unlikely to be repeated, but at their worst last year they were only 3 games out of first place. Any team that starts 0-2 this year will be, more or less, fucked.
Good news for PR is they woulda coulda been Dumpster Diver of the Week if they hadn’t been upstaged by New Abby. Both his pickups this week could start (over Edelman and Ingram. They’ll want to keep Gallop in at home vs ATL) and their highest scoring player last week was on the bench. So this is still a highly flexible roster. We love it.
But PAT’s lineup is very likeable as well. He's got our jedi padawan Nyheim Hines vs the Vikes’ sneaky bad defense and/or Singetary @MIA. Both are pretty good options to replace James Conner or just to bench TY Hilton. Amari should ball out against ATL too, but Hill and Lockett have two of the toughest matchups of the week on paper.
PREDICTION: PICKLE RICKS!! WINS!!
I knows pandemics 👾 VS. Polk High Panthers
Free win for Doug!!
I KNOWS PANDEMICS WINS!!
Tobin & The Rippers VS. Zombie Paternos
This one’s off to a great start already. Both these guys started Browns RBs on Thursday. In a vacuum that sounds like a bad decision, but it wasn't!! Chubb and Hunt each piled up over 100 combined yds and a TD, 2 for Chubb.
FUN FACT: That Thursday nighter was the highest scoring Browns-Bengals game of the last 15 years. In week 12 of 2004 The Bengals beat The Browns 58-48 - the 2nd highest scoring NFL game ever. Kelly Holcomb put up 413 yds and 5 TDs for CLE, and the great Rudi Johnson ran for 202 yds and 2 TDs for CIN.
Check it out!
TOBIN & THE RIPPERS WINS!!
DefendYourMoves.com🤲 VS. Sharon Ertz
The Eagles are a mess, you guys. First of all, Zack Ertz is their best offensive player and they’re treating him like cold leftovers. We don’t get it, it’s not like he’s a running back. The other candidates for Eagles’ Best Non-RB, Lane Johnson and Jason Peters have each sustained multiple knee/high-ankle snappers in the past year. We suspect The Eagles have a NY Mets-esque inclination to bring guys back as soon as the player says he’s “fine.” They’re not fine. Jordan Howard was week-to-week for 2+ months last year. With that spinal case QB, you’d think they’d want to keep big guys in front of him happy and healthy, of which they are neither.
There’s not very many good matchups to choose from on this roster. But after this week there are two or three guys we like on this team, so watch out for those trade offers coming soon!!
We didn't really know how we were gonna feel about Cam in NE and Brady in Tampa until we saw them in action last week. We always used to like Cam, and of course The Bucs are our former home team. Turns out we hate all of them now. Hate Cam, don’t hate the Pats or Brady any less, and now we even hate the entire Bucs too. It's a shame, we didn't want it to be this way.
DEFEND YOUR MOVES WINS!!
Bring It On Home VS. THE WhiteJesusPoison
This should be another pretty good week for BIOH’s Kylo+Drake stack, as The Cards play The Team at home this week. But Ryan+Julio is, in our opinion, the best stack one can roster in 2020. We had Julio as our #1 WR pre-draft, and now that Mike Tom is out we’re feeling pretty confident in that pick.
Congrats Commish. 2020 Special Ed Champion*
THE WHITE JESUS POISON WINS!!
HAVE A GREAT WEEK EVERYBODY!!
