A sports blog by and for Midwest Sports Fans
Two weeks between the NFC and AFC Championship games and the Super Bowl seems like way too long.
I’m a Packers fan, so I’ve been on both sides of the spectrum. Last season, I could not wait for the Super Bowl to come, the anticipation building each and every day.
This season? I can’t wait for it to be over.
This past weekend featured two highly anticipated quarterback matchups – Brady v Tebow and Manning v Rodgers – and a third that unexpectedly ended up being the most thrilling of the weekend – Brees v Smith. And as quarterbacks are wont to do after competing on the field of football battle, these duos all met at midfield after the game for quick makeout sessions in front of the leering press.
Wait…what?
The NFC North features the last two undefeated teams in football in the Packers and Lions, but don’t forget about the other two teams just yet. The two teams below the Packers and Lions are squaring off in a very important game in Chicago.
The Vikings are traveling into Chicago the week after they won their first game of the year over the Cardinals. Adrian Peterson took over with three touchdowns on 122 yards rushing, which gives him 498 on the year.
[Editor's note: Drew and Amanda often exchange Facebook messages, tweets, and emails that include lots of Packers-Vikings trash talk. This post is an email thread between the two in which Drew does his best to jinx the undefeated Packers and Amanda tries to hold back her laughter while discussing the winless Vikings.]
Injuries!
Andre Johnson is gone. Ben Roethlisberger is banged up. Miles Austin is on the mend. Marques Colston is back, but when will he get on track?
With the bye weeks now here, the time has come when fantasy leagues are truly won and lost. If you drafted well, and got a little lucky, you should be near the top of the standings. But nobody can ever completely escape the injury bug. Managing your lineup properly when byes and injuries attack is what separates the good owners from the great ones.
So let’s look at the Week Five games and decide who to start and who to sit this week.
The first quarter of the season seems to have flown by, and Week Four brought a new wave of unlikely fantasy scorers like Jed Collins, Craig Stevens, and Jake Ballard. Hell, even Tarvaris Jackson put up solid fantasy numbers, lending credibility to any rumors that the apocalypse is near.
Six teams (Baltimore, Cleveland, Dallas, Miami, St. Louis, and Washington) have a bye in Week Five, so many fantasy owners will be hitting the waiver wire in search of one week rentals to fill out their rosters while others are trying to fill holes created by injuries or ineffectiveness.
As always, the players listed here are owned in less than 50 percent of Yahoo! leagues.
Week Three is here, and hopefully you aren’t 0-2. Don’t worry, it’s still not panic time…but it very well could be time to shake some things up. As always, let’s recap last week’s predictions before looking ahead.
Because we at MSF try our best to get you our Start Em, Sit Em picks before everyone else, we have to take a few chances. One of the downsides to coming out with these picks on Tuesday is that we won’t know all of the injury updates that come out later in the week. We answer your questions and update our predictions accordingly as more information comes out.
However, a few predictions didn’t pan out this week because of injuries (either during the game, or because guys with nagging injuries didn’t end up suiting up on Sunday)…so out of fairness to me, we are going to throw out Michael Vick, Felix Jones, and Dez Bryant.
So besides those guys who caught the injury bug, I went 29 out of 46 overall…a little under 65%. I improved from week one…and that’s exactly what you should try to do from week to week in fantasy.
When Super Bowl XLVI arrives in Indianapolis come February 2012, it will be 19 years since one of the most iconic moments in the history of America’s most popular sporting event: Michael Jackson’s epic 1993 halftime show.
Unfortunately, the eternal King of Pop is no longer with us (he would have turned 53 just a few days ago on August 29th), and he thus he will never be able to follow in the footsteps of Bruce Springsteen, The Who, John Mellencamp, and others who have taken to the Super Bowl stage as older musicians, but that doesn’t mean that we can’t weave the musical brilliance of Michael Jackson into a post about the National Football League.
So enjoy this homage to my favorite musician of all time, Michael Jackson, as we kick off our coverage of the 2011 NFL season. Here are all 32 Week One starting QBs in the NFL…as Michael Jackson songs.
This post and all of our weekly Chicago Bears previews are made possible by Brouwer Brothers Steamatic of Chicago, which proudly provides restoration, cleaning, and construction services to Chicago, Naperville and the surrounding areas.
Chicago: 312 386-7688 – South Suburbs: 708 396-1444 – West Suburbs: 630 243-4387 – NW Indiana: 219 210-4254
—–
One of the The NFL’s worst defenses travels to Chicago to play one of the NFL’s worst offenses when the Washington Redskins (3-3) travel to the Midwest to take on the Chicago Bears (4-2) this Sunday.
This has interesting match up written all over it.
After a dismal performance against Seattle in a game they should have won, but which was was ruined by another poor performance from the offensive line, the Bears hope to win their last game before the bye week.
Happy Saturday to all!
Below are our NFL Week 4 Games to Watch, so make sure that your remote has a fresh set of batteries and the sofa has an empty seat available because these three games can’t be missed!
Also, let’s see how I do this week, especially since I currently am above .500 this season with a [6-3] record!
Finally, the conference portion of the season is here in college football. I don’t know about you, but I get pretty bored during September watching (mostly) cupcake matchups all Saturday long. We won’t have to worry about that anyone.
This week’s college football schedule is filled with compelling matchups like Alabama-Florida, Oregon-Stanford, and Texas-Oklahoma; and that doesn’t even account for the great games in the Big Ten. So in this week’s Friday Football Preview we spend some time talking about college football, with a focus on the Big Ten.
But don’t worry NFL fans, the bulk of the time is still spent on America’s obsession. I give you my locks, preview the NFL Game of the Week, and discuss Donovan McNabb’s return to Philly with someone who understands the Philly perspective.
This came into my inbox last night straight from the NFL. Some pretty interesting numbers, factoids, and feats from yesterday’s games. Hopefully I get one of these every week; if so, I’ll certainly share.
Here we go: a look at seven statistical highlights from games played at 1:00 p.m. ET and 4:00 p.m. ET on Sunday, September 19, the second week of the 2010 season.
No position in the NFL is more highly scrutinized, debated, and discussed than the quarterback. It’s impossible to build a consistent winner without one (and people who follow the Cleveland Browns would tell you that it’s impossible to find one period).
After this weekend’s Packers loss to the Bucs, Aaron Rodgers was a popular topic of conversation on Twitter. I made the comment that he has not shown me that he has the “it” that people always talk about when it comes to QBs. Some agreed and some disagreed, but it got me thinking about where Rodgers falls in relation to today’s crop of QBs.
Thus, I set out to rank the quarterbacks currently holding starting NFL gigs, taking into account their current age and skill level, future potential, past accomplishments, and the general confidence level I would have if that player was the QB of my team.
Who isn’t excited for the showdown on Sunday night?
The Dallas Cowboys and Philadelphia Eagles are two franchises that despise one another, which always makes for quality television, as well as a good game too. Yet, let’s not forget the last time these two teams met in December of 2008, which was a complete blowout and hardly a game Cowboys fans want to remember.
Losing to their most hated rival 44-6 on the final weekend of the season clearly was not a happy ending or cherry on top of a topsy-turvy 2008 season. For the Cowboys that game has been erased from their minds and currently the squad focused on the 3-game winning streak that has them at the top of the NFC East standings.
Ever since Tony Romo as been at the helm, the Cowboys are 11-1 in November, which includes a win against the Eagles in Philadelphia in 2007. This game means more for to the ‘Boys than the Eagles, especially with all the hype that surrounded this team last season and the scrutiny they continue to receive on a weekly basis.
From a fantasy perspective, no team is more mind-achingly frustrating intriguing than the Philadelphia Eagles heading into Week 3. Not only do the Eagles have what looks to be a pretty sweet matchup against the hapless Kansas City Chiefs, but Philadelphia’s most recent injury report would make for half of a pretty good fantasy starting lineup:
QB: Donovan McNabb – doubtful with rib injury
RB: Brian Westbrook – questionable with ankle injury
WR: Desean Jackson – questionable with groin injury
WR: Kevin Curtis – doubtful with knee injury
Most McNabb owners are probably not counting on him playing this weekend. Certainly they should not be. McNabb is reportedly progressing well, but there is no reason for the Eagles to play him this week and risk further injury when they have a bye week coming up next week.
As for Desean Jackson, he participated fully in Friday’s practice and should be good to go on Sunday. With Kevin Curtis likely out, and rookie Jeremy Maclin lining up opposite Jackson, I expect Desean and Brent Celek to get most of the targets from probable starting QB Kevin Kolb. The reports were pretty solid about Jackson, so he should be ready to contribute normally.
With all that said, the most compelling and influential injury issue in Philadelphia for Week 3 is Brian Westbrook.
Update 9/27: ESPN’s Sal Paolantonio just reported that Brian Westbrook is OUT for Sunday’s game. Play LeSean McCoy.
