What's up Special Ed?!?!
Welcome to the FIRST EVER "Defend Your Moves Week 14!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"!!!
This 18-week NFL schedule is gonna take some getting used to. It seems like Special Ed League's internal clocks are still set to 2021 time cause we wrapped up the fantasy regular season in a tidy 13 weeks like we always do. All six playoff spots are now clinched and Andy has a 100+ point tie-break advantage. Paul could still sneak up to 2nd and claim the week 15 bye but otherwise the playoff field is set.
The second highest scoring team - Defend Your Moves - is eliminated and DYM's 2022 will go down as the one of the unluckiest season in Special Ed History. This is only the second time that a team has scored over 1600 (or finished with more total points than points against) and missed the playoffs. Only Chris's 2015 - "Yatcha Bitch!" - was more unfortunate: Chris scored 1604 points (123.4 avg - great number!!!!) and only got 5 wins.
😎🤜🤛👻
Coincidentally, we believe Chris played a hand in our downfall this season.
Last week when we were looking for free agents with funny names we came across Saints' WR "K. Merritt" and we thought it would be funny to take him along with us for the playoff run.
Paul astutely pointed out that "Chris would fucking hate that." And he was right!!!!!
Chris absolutely did hate that. So much so that he placed a ghostly curse on Team DYM!!!
Lamar went out after 2 plays and 1.12 fantasy points, and it's a significant knee injury so even if we had won we'd still be fucked in the playoffs. We managed 117 points even without a QB (that's pretty fucking good!), but Paul still BEAT OUR ASS DOWN with 133.
Fortunately we've done a lot of research on ghosts over the last couple years.
We know that ghosts work in mysterious ways - their intentions are often misunderstood - and curses almost always have a silver lining.
In this case, Team DYM's loss was Special Ed The Team's gain.
As many of you know, we are co-managers with Chis in another Summit High School alumni fantasy league.
Every member of that league are PURE degenerates and, admittedly, it's way more competitive than our league. We've been in that league for six years and never made the playoffs. UNTIL NOW!!!! We entered week 13 tied for first with Chaz Carey -- and Chaz had Lamar at QB.
We tried to warn those guys: if Chris were struck down he would become more powerful than they could possibly imagine.
Having a ghost-co-manager gave our squad literally unlimited upside. No one could predict how Chris would extend his supernatural influence over our squad or, perhaps, over the the entire NFL.
We have no doubt Chris was with us on draft day.
We gathered at the Galloping Hills Country Club the day before the season began. Moments before the draft kicked off we took one last look at the NFL futures odds on DraftKings.
It was then that The Commish's divine influence guided our hand to take The Eagles NFC Championship at 10:1 odds (it's less than 2:1 today).
Then, in the draft itself, we simply followed our rankings sheet and walked away with a core of Jalen Hurts, AJ Brown, and Eagles D. 🙏
All season long we've felt Chris's petty, spiteful presence among us, and our wins and losses have come at his whims.
In life, Chris was always reluctant to change our team name in that league -- it had to be "SPECIAL ED🚌" -- so we promised him that we wouldn't change it this year.
Of course we broke that promise around Halloween when we changed the name to "Spooky Buddies👻". That was hilarious, and worth it, even though we took our first two losses of the season on 10/31 and 11/7. Since then we've cycled through a series of Philadelphia-related avi pictures and emojis but we remain "SPECIAL ED" -- and Chris has blessed us with seven wins in the last eight weeks.
Anyways, we just thought we should let you guys know -- Chris finally has a team that does NOT suck.
"Fly Merritt Fly!!!"
WHOS HOT?!?!?!?!?!?!?!
Bring It On moves back up the ranks this week after scoring a league-high 168 in week 13. They are exceedingly likely to finish in first and with the highest season-long point total.
But Pauls Awesome Team is the league's HOTTEST team for the second straight week. In week 14 Paul just needs the two coldest playoff teams to lose (Burglars and Fisto) to earn a first round bye. With Josh Jacobs running wild, Paul's Awesome Team looks like the most dangerous team heading into the playoffs.
FOOD BEEF: EMPANADA PLAYOFFS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Old Havana (westfield) vs. Cafe y Canela (morristown)
This first empanada playoff matchup was a fundamental clash of cultures.
Cafe y Canela was the very best South American representative on the tour. Their cornbread crust was super thin and still soaked up all the grease and came out nicely crunchy. The filling is like a slow-cooked stew. Full of stringy meat, soft potatoes, and delicious spice.
Old Havana represented the Caribbean empanada style. They had a crispy, bubbly, fried filo dough crust. The filling was simple but tasty - just two ingredients: meat and flavor.
In general we'd probably take an average Cuban empanada over an average Colombian one. It's easy to mess up a Colombian empanada. The corn crusts are often too thick or hard, and the stewed filling is complex. There's a lot of room for error, but Cafe y Canela accepted that challenge, and gave us a nearly flawless empanada. Even the boy loved it and he hates potatoes and almost all flavors.
CAFE y CANELA 🇨🇴 WINS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Next week: Pan Casero (Morristown) vs. Delikositas (Madison)
AMERICAS GAMES OF THE WEEK
FISTO KIDDS vs POLK HIGH PANTHERS
and
HAMBURGLARS vs PAULS AWESOME TEAM
THERE'S ONLY TWO GAMES THAT MATTER IN WEEK 14!!!!!
Fisto Kidds can stay in second place with a win, but that's far from a lock even against the lowly Polk High Panthers. Fisto has lost 2 of the last 4 and they are the COLDEST playoff team.
This could be a low-scoring affair; both teams having two starters on bye. They also each have players on both sides of the Chargers-Dolphins game Sunday Night. That's good for them because it's one of the precious few compelling NFL matchups this week. There's six teams on bye and the whole NFC is trash so there's just not that many games we're looking forward to watching in week 14.
Dave started a Thursday D who only got 7 points. That's OK. But Baker Mayfield getting a win in an under-40-point-total Thursday Night game is definitely an inauspicious sign for the rest of the week.
Fisto Kidds: 98.43
Polk High Panthers: 82.34
FISTO KIDDS WINS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Josh Jacobs went out of the game last night with a broken finger. That musta been pretty scary for PAT. But of course we all know Josh Jacobs is The Wolverine and he never stays injured for more than 10 minutes. JJ will be good to go for the playoffs, but he came up short of 100 yds and 20 fantasy points for the first time in four weeks. Paul also has Jonny Taylor and Justin Fields on bye so PAT may be more vulnerable this week than they have been lately.
Even though this is the most important matchup in Special Ed this week, it still doesn't look very exciting. There's three Lions in this matchup - not fun to watch - and if Paul does get the win he certainly won't enjoy it since he's starting a Cowboy stack.
At the moment, Kull has Gabe Davis starting over Garrett Wilson. That seems like a bad idea to us. In week 9 Wilson put 92 yards up against the Bills and Davis had a lowly 33. The Bills have been sneaky bad against top tier WRs this season. The secondary is still in shambles, and we're not sure Tre White is really all the way back (or if he'll ever be this season). The Bills have allowed 20+ points to a fantasy WR four times in the last six games (Juju, Jefferson, Amon-Ra, and Amari). Plus, Wilson is HOT right now with Mike White pitching to him - 250 yards and 2 TDs in the last two weeks.
Gotta start Wilson, dude.
Pauls Awesome Team: 117.28
Hamburglars: 110.44
PAULS AWESOME TEAM WINS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
SPECIAL ED MATCHUPS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
BRING IT ON HOME vs. DEFEND YOUR MOVES
Superhero Movies are CANCELLED.
A couple years ago DYM celebrated the originality and creativity of recent DC Comics movies on HBO. Warner Bros released dozens of animated DC features during the Trump administration that we fuckin loved. We know that they weren't super popular but they weren't expensive to make either so it seemed like a decent plan.
More recently DC shifted their strategy toward much more expensive movies that were also unpopular. So now, cutting their losses, Warner has completely dismantled all plans for future DC Extended Universe content. Batgirl - cancelled, Aquaman - cancelled, Superman - cancelled, Wonder Woman - cancelled. Every future DC movie is cancelled right now except The Batman 2 and Flash. That's kinda weird to us cause we were sure they woulda cancelled Flash after Ezra Miller caught a statutory charge and started a cult. Who are we to judge tho?
The good news is that the cancellation of Wonder Woman 3 brings us one step closer to Gal Gadot's long-awaited CLEOPATRA.
We first heard about the plan for a Cleopatra flick almost 3 years ago, but the rumors are still swirling. It's important to remember that The OG Cleopatra started production in 1958 and didn't release until 1963, so Gal is still on pace.
We're also not mad about Aquaman getting scrubbed because Jason Momoa is gonna have his hands full making the next eight Dune movies.
Dune is the only IP that matters now.
FINGERBANG! vs. 🫙
Shout out to everybody that played against Doug this year.
We stopped writing previews of Doug's games back in mid-October cause his team is just unbearably awful. So fuckin bad, you guys. Doug scored just 62.76 points last week, the second lowest score of the year league-wide (Matt - week 3 - 57.68).
This week they left Van Jefferson on the bench with 11.4 points - which would have been their highest scoring position player last week. Somehow Yahoo still has them projected for over 100 even though they've missed that mark 3 of the last 4 weeks.
Empty jar emoji indeed.
FINGERBANG! WINS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
SHARON ERTZ vs. TOBIN & THE RIPPERS
Week 14 is basically a bye week for these two. Neither of them can finish higher than 3rd or lower than 6th. They're just waiting to find out who they play next week.
They both have a lotta guys on bye, but they have quite respectfully set their lineups this week in order to avoid putting anyone in The Hall of Shame. Great job, fellas!!!
SHARON ERTZ WINS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
