When your team defense can’t stop the Browns, it doesn’t bode well for your week in fantasy football.

The good news is that both of my teams have clinched playoff spots in their respective leagues. The bad news is that they’ve both picked a bad time to start going into a tailspin. For the second week in a row, I went 0-2. Last week, it was Drew Brees going bonkers again to foil both of my squads (by 1 point in one league). This week, it’s an all-around outbreak of suck that doomed my teams. The Outlaws of the Marsh will likely drop from second to fourth in the standings unless Ray Rice somehow delivers 20 points tonight (which he has done once this season). The main culprit for the team’s probable downfall is, once again, weak receiver play. Mike Sims-Walker followed up the previous week’s 2-point stinker with an even more putrid 0-point outing (1 catch, 12 yards) despite the fact that his quarterback, David Garrard, put up a relatively healthy 238 yards and 2 TDs. Meanwhile, Chris Chambers, who played his way into the Outlaws’ starting lineup this week after a string of productive outings since joining the Chiefs, promptly played himself back to the bench with a 2-catch, 11-yard, 0-point effort. Throw in subpar efforts by four of my five individual defensive players, including the usually reliable James Harrison, and the Outlaws are looking at their second straight loss and dropping to 8-5.

In my other league, the Thamesmen fared even worse, mustering only 59 points. Outside of Tom Brady and Rashard Mendenhall, no one else found the end zone. I correctly benched Vince Jackson (2 catches, 54 yards), but incorrectly started Sims-Walker and Sidney Rice (72 yards) while leaving Calvin Johnson (123 yards, TD) and Santonio Holmes (149 yards, TD) on the bench. And of course Joseph Addai immediately went back to scoring touchdowns as soon as I yanked him from my starting lineup, while can’t-bench guy Adrian Peterson failed to reach double digits in points for the third straight week and barely made it into double digits in rushing yards (13 carries, 19 yards). Even my kicker (Stephen Gostkowski) and defense (Chargers) stunk, combining for just over seven points. At 9-4, the Thamesmen are still in first place, but what was once a comfortable lead has shrunk to just one game with one week left in the regular fantasy season.

Week 13 Highs and Lows

• It didn’t help the Outlaws that their first-round pick, DeAngelo Williams, missed this week’s game against the Bucs with a bum ankle. In his place, Jonathan Stewart ran for 120 yards (best in the league this week) and a touchdown. See what happens when your quarterback isn’t throwing the ball to the other team on every other possession?
• Is Calvin Johnson finally showing signs of fantasy viability after being injured and unproductive most of the season? He has caught a TD in three straight weeks and has gone over 100 yards in two of those games. It’s just too bad that he’s got the Ravens next week.
• Sidney Rice leads the Vikings in receptions and receiving yards, but it’s Percy Harvin who has emerged as the more productive fantasy player in recent weeks. Harvin has had at least 79 yards and scored a touchdown in four of his last five games. Rice, meanwhile, is posting nice yardage totals but has found the end zone in only one game since Week 5 — a two-TD outing a couple weeks ago. For a guy who has already gone over 1,000 yards on the season, he really should have a couple more scores, but the emergence of Harvin and the TD vultury of tight end Visanthe Shiancoe (9 TDs this season) have hurt Rice in that department.

Timing is everything, and Bruce Gradkowski picked a lousy time to start putting up decent fantasy numbers.
• Never thought I’d praise the play of the Raiders’ starting quarterback this season, but Bruce Gradkowski has actually turned that offense into a somewhat functional unit. In the last three weeks he has six TD passes and just one interception — that’s better than what Tom Brady has done in that span — and he had an inexplicable 300-yard day against the Steelers on Sunday. Of course, the key word in that sentence is “inexplicable”, as in “wasted” since Gradkowski likely was on the bench if he was on anybody’s roster at all. If this had come earlier in the season, he might be worth a look, but he’s got the Redskins (No. 4 in the league against the pass) and the Broncos (No. 2 against the pass) coming up. He does have a weak Cleveland team in Week 16, but if you actually make it that far in your fantasy playoffs — likely the championship game — are you really going to start the Raiders’ quarterback?
• Quick, who are the NFL co-leaders in touchdown receptions? You probably would have guessed Larry Fitzgerald, but I bet you won’t have said Vernon Davis on your first try. The 49ers tight end is having the breakout season that has been long overdue. He has either gone over 100 yards or found the end zone in eight of the last 10 games.

Imagine if Steven Jackson actually played for an NFL team.
• You know that old adage about how playing on crappy teams hurt running backs’ production because their teams have to throw a lot while playing from behind? Well, explain this: Steven Jackson plays for the 1-11 Rams, who have the worst offense in the league and get outscored by an average of 26-11 per game. Yet he is second in the league in rushing yards and has averaged 121 yards on the ground, with four TDs, in the last six games. Maurice Jones-Drew, who leads the league with 13 TD runs, plays for a Jaguars team that gets outscored 22-18 per game. DeAngelo Williams and Jonathan Stewart have combined for 14 TD runs while playing for the god-awful Panthers.
• Talk about a rapid rebirth. Laurence Maroney didn’t crack 32 yards in a game through the first five weeks and got double-digit carries only once, but then proceeded to find the end zone in six straight weeks until that streak ended Sunday. His eight rushing TDs actually have him in the top 10 in the league.