Tuesday, November 24, 2009

Why Fantasy Football Owners buy Insurance, Reason #37

No, I'm not kidding: see for yourself.

Sure, the main (and right now it seems, only) reason is for injury, but there are plenty of other reasons why fantasy football owners suffer indigestion.

Last night qualifies as one of those causes. Going into the game, I needed Chris Johnson to score 15.8 points to win my head to head matchup. Every yard is 0.1 points, and a touchdown is worth 6.

Tennessee received the ball at their own 6 with 2:52 left in a tie game, and Johnson was 39 yards short of the 158 yards he (well, I) needed. No chance, I've resigned myself to losing the game. Johnson proceeds to rip off 32 yards on the first 3 plays of the drive, which, combined with a (terrible) 15 yard penalty on Houston, put Tennessee at their own 48 with over 1:30 left. Wow, my chances have gone from 0 to well over 50/50. Tennessee proceeded to give the ball to Johnson 0 times over their next 5 plays before Rob Bironas (impressively) booted a 53 yard field goal for a 20-17 lead. Game(s) over, less than 7 yards from victory.

Houston proceeded to drive down to the Tennessee 31 with 6 seconds left. Incredible! Overtime is coming, and I have a chance again. Surely if the Titans touch the ball, Johnson will get a few opportunities and can pick up 7 yards with them, if not significantly more than that. Then Kris Brown steps up, and, true to form over his entire career, shanks the ball so that it goes nowhere near the goalposts.

Brown is a career 77.8% kicker, which isn't bad, but isn't outstanding. However, I don't think I have ever seen someone botch so many end-of-game kicks so horribly. He's pretty much the anti-Vinatieri. Even when Houston was terrible and picking first in the draft, Brown was kicking balls into the parking lot when the game was on the line. Really, it was my own fault for getting my hopes up.

And, just to add icing onto this cake, none of this should have been necessary. On a 2nd quarter drive where Johnson accounted for 42 yards on 3 carries, who did Jeff Fisher call on for 1st and goal from the 1 yard line? Lendale "fatty tequilla" White. Humbug.

In the interest of full disclosure, I cannot complain too much. I've been on both ends of narrow margins of victory this season, and over time, the breaks do even out. Still, it does make one think (only for a second) about this insurance thing. Then you quickly remember that it's fantasy football, and you're definitely not the guy who buys insurance on his fantasy players. Much better to be the guy who uses his blog for therapeutic rants. Yeah, that's a totally different class of person. Much, much suaver.

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