You would think a top-notch news organization like NPR would know the difference between journalism and non-journalism. That wasn’t the case, however, in this NPR story titled ” ‘Robot Journalist’ Out-Writes Human Sports Reporter”.

The story really caught on on Twitter, where the original NPR tweet has been widely disseminated (just search for “robot journalist” on Twitter). Here’s a sampling:

The only problem is that the person out-written by the software program is not, and doesn’t even claim to be, a journalist. Instead, the human-produced piece in this case is a press release on the official George Washington athletics website — in other words, a PR piece.

Having read countless sports press releases during my career as a sports journalist, I know these things are kind of hit-or-miss. Some schools have very well written releases that tend to be fair, while other schools produce horrible homerish material. I’ve even seen a number of examples of releases burying great performances by opposing teams, though not quite to this degree. In this case, even as a PR piece for the team that came out on the wrong end of the perfect game, the writer made a bad decision in burying the rare feat. If a journalist reported about this game, however, that mistake in judgement would never have been made because this is as easy a judgement call as it gets for a journalist. There’s no way you’d bury the perfect game. The way the NPR story distorted the facts to call the sports information writer a journalist is a slap to the face for journalists everywhere.

But it gets even better. In case you missed it, Poynter addressed that bad gwsports.com piece a good three weeks before the NPR story (and here’s a bunch of sports journalists discussing it). The money quote from the Poynter piece (emphasis added by me):

“This is the George Washington website,” GWU sports information director Dave Lubeski tells Romenesko. “We’re in the business to promote our athletes and our team. We’re not claiming to be journalists.” What some call “the buried lead” was discussed after the story was posted, says Lubeski, and it was mentioned that the perfect game could have been noted in the sub-hed. But “we’re not in the newspaper business,” notes the SID.

So despite the quote above from the sports information director saying, “WE’RE NOT JOURNALISTS,” whoever wrote NPR’s “robot journalist” story decided to call the person who wrote the piece on gwsports.com a journalist anyway. It’s hard to imagine that anyone could mistake a school’s official athletics site for a journalism site, and I would certainly expect someone working at one of the top journalism companies in the country to know the difference. The question, then, is what’s the motivation for distorting the facts? Is it just because “robot out-writes journalist” makes for a better story than “robot out-writes PR piece trying to hide home team’s embarrassment”? If so, then whoever wrote that NPR piece has no business calling him or herself a journalist. Or if the NPR writer really couldn’t tell the difference between gwsports.com and a journalism site, then he/she should be replaced by a computer program.

Update 1 (4/18)

I should add that I’ve known about Narrative Science’s sportswriting software for a while and I’ve checked out some of its work from the Big Ten Network’s website. For the most part, the stories are actually not bad and definitely usable. If I was putting together a non-rev sports roundup from press releases, I would definitely take these computer-generated stories over some of the ones I’ve gotten in the past because they are a lot easier to extract useful information from. However, there are signs in the computer-generated stories that are relatively easy to pick up that would lead you to wonder if they were written by software, such as the odd placement of a particular factoid.

Update 2 (4/18)

If you were going to ask me which of all the posts I’ve written that’s going to shatter the single-day record for visitors to this blog, I would not have guessed this one, but this story apparently grew legs as it has been picked up by a few other sites and retweeted a number of times (I know, a few hundred views really aren’t much, but considering this blog probably averages around 100 views a day, it’s a big number for me). I’ve had traffic spikes before, but nothing quite like this:

Of course, much more important to me than my traffic numbers is the notion of correcting bad information that’s been widely disseminated. So, thanks to everyone who took the time to check out this post and pass it on. Also on that front, thanks in part to King Kaufman and the folks at the news bug-catching service mediabugs.org, NPR has changed the headline on the story. You can read more about this at mediabugs.org, where Kaufman reported the error and the service contacted NPR about it. Like Mark Follman said in the discussion there, I think NPR does need to post a more prominent correction than just a note in the comment thread on the story.

Update (4/20)

I saw this last night but didn’t have time to update the post until now. NPR has indeed gone back and added a correction at the beginning of the story, as well as on its corrections page.

With a Final Four that has no No. 1 or No. 2 seeds and includes an 8 vs. 11 matchup on one side of the bracket, it’s easy to wonder “what if” as a UNC fan. What if Kentucky had just made one fewer 3-pointer on Sunday? What if John Henson didn’t get into foul trouble? What if Harrison Barnes had gotten going a little bit earlier? If any of those things happened, imagine how tantalizingly close UNC could be to a championship right now. I mean, c’mon, Virginia Commonwealth had even been kind enough to make sure Roy Williams won’t have the psychological nightmare of possibly facing Kansas in the championship game.

Of course, those are the kind of questions that any fan of any of the 64 schools that didn’t make it to the Final Four could ask. In all honesty, I was disappointed for only about 30 seconds after Sunday’s UNC loss to Kentucky. By advancing to the Elite Eight, this UNC team had already so thoroughly surpassed all my expectations that it’s hard to feel unsatisfied at the end of this season like I did when UNC blew a late lead and lost to Georgetown in the Elite Eight back in 2007 or when the Tar Heels got smacked by Kansas in the national semifinals in 2008. There were a lot of things about this year’s team that drove me nuts game in and game out, but in the end, I’m more proud of this team than probably any other UNC squad I’ve watched since I started following college  hoops back in the early 90s.

Going into the season, I thought it was absolutely ludicrous that UNC was eighth in the preaseason AP poll, especially after it had been ranked fourth in the preseason poll the previous year and wound up in the NIT. I thought they should’ve been ranked no higher than in the mid-teens and that that’s probably where they would end up. The Tar Heels finished No. 6 in the season-ending AP poll, and while that might have been a tad inflated by their rout of Duke in the regular-season finale, it’s hard to argue that they didn’t earn it, considering that they dropped out of the poll entirely early in the season and then clawed their way back in and up the rankings incrementally.

The best part about this season was watching the team show tangible growth game by game: Seeing John Henson start to figure out how to be an effective offensive player in the low post and then blossom into a reliable scorer, seeing Leslie McDonald become a key player off the bench, and of course, seeing Harrison Barnes morph from an on-and-off freshman who could hit a few key shots into a star who could take over a game.

What really impressed me about this  team was its knack for doing exactly what it needed to do in the final minutes of close games, especially considering that last year’s team could do almost nothing right in those situations. This year’s squad was far from perfect and probably played no better than a border-line Top 25 team for the first 35 minutes of most games. When it got down to the last five minutes, however, it showed the poise of an elite team of seasoned veterans. The Tar Heels almost always seemed to get the key rebound, make the big defensive stop, and hit the key shots to pull out a win, however ugly it may be. Considering how young this team is, that ability to win close games was simply remarkable. Sure, you could chock up a few of those to luck, but it just kept happening. It happened even before the switch at point guard. You saw it in the two-point win against Kentucky, the six-point win over Virginia, and the three-point win over Virginia Tech. After the Tar Heels pulled out close victories against Clemson and at Miami, I noticed that, as a fan, I actually started to feel confident again about UNC’s chances when it went into the final minutes in a close game, even if it was trailing by a few points. No longer was I constantly waiting for the other shoe to fall or expecting the game to be out of reach when the Tar Heels went down early. Comebacks and clutch plays were no longer surprises, but expected. For almost the entire remainder of the season, that confidence was not misplaced.

This team also impressed me with the way it absorbed every adversity that came up and just kept going, whether it be the unexpected off-season loss of all of its backup low-post players, the even more unexpected mid-season defection of Larry Drew II, or the late-season injury to Reggie Bullock, all of which left the team with basically seven players who see significant action by season’s end. I’ve also been extremely impressed all season long with the way Tyler Zeller and Henson not only held their own, but dominated inside. Henson in particular really surprised me with how effective he was in the post on both ends of the floor, considering how much bulk he was giving up to most opposing low-post players. It was the polar opposite of what the Tar Heels got from Ed Davis and Deon Thompson last season, when they had a big size advantage but always seemed to get outplayed by smaller but more aggressive front lines.

That’s enough rave reviews. The Tar Heels also did plenty to make me scream at the TV in frustration this season, from their late-season knack for slow starts to their inability to put away overmatched opponents. The fact that they were in so many close games is a testament to their shortcomings, and many of those close wins could easily have been close losses. This team needs to learn how to make things easier on itself.

UNC needs more consistent 3-point shooting, and it needs to get better defensively. The Tar Heels did a pretty good job of holding most opponents down points-wise (it also helped that the ACC had a down year as a whole), but after the Drew defection, UNC really had no answer for guards who were adept at penetrating into the lane and also did not force as many turnovers as it traditionally does. I watched one of the UNC games from 2008 from the ACC Vault the other day, and the difference between this team and that one is like night and day. That 2008 team was running up and down the floor on seemingly every possession, with a lot of those transition opportunities coming off of turnovers. This year’s Tar Heels, on the other hand, didn’t get a whole lot of easy baskets by UNC standards and made it much harder on themselves than it needed to be when it came to scoring points. On the offensive end, the 2008 team was smooth and fluid, while this year’s team was more ragtag and herky jerky except in stretches. Some of that certainly is due to inexperience, and I hope this year’s key players will stick around so next year’s team will have that experience. This group may never be as explosive as Hansbrough-Lawson-Ellington-Green, but it does need to find a way to get more easy baskets.

Still, in spite of the headscratching blunders and curse-inducing moments, this year’s team wound up with 29 wins, a regular-season ACC title, and an Elite Eight trip to its name, none of which I expected going into the season. A year like this one also serves as a helpful reminder for us fans about how hard it is to actually be an elite program year in and year out. When your team has to scratch and claw for almost every win, you realize how impressive it is to actually win 25, 30 games a season.

And now, I’ll just savor the culmination of what has been an amazing NCAA Tournament. I’ll be pulling hard for VCU and Butler and their intern-lookalike head coaches. It’s a shame that they can’t meet in the title game, but it’s also nice that one of them is guaranteed a shot at the championship.

You know, I like a lot of the terrific journalism work that Shane Ryan is doing at Reesenews.org, but I just can’t stomach this diatribe of his at his Seth Curry Saves Duke blog (and not because it’s a pro-Duke blog). He starts off by telling the story of his experience at last week’s ACC Tournament and how he sat next to a radio guy who gave him a hard time about being a Duke alum and then lectured him about not cheering on press row when he showed just a teensy flinch of emotion about a great play by Nolan Smith. From there, Ryan proceeds to lambaste basically the whole group of sportswriters at the tournament. An example:

You can’t cheer on press row. You can look at your computer, and back at the court, and back at your computer. You can share tired jokes in an attempt to sound gruff. You can hammer out your two-bit tale in the moments after, trying like hell to beat a deadline. You can gobble up the free food they give you at every venue, augmenting your complacence. You can slowly grow bitter and tired of the thing that brought you here in the first place. You can focus on baskets and touchdowns and home runs and forget why you came. You can forget the people, and the inner human drama that these games actually represent.

…

But the sneaky, waddling, frantic lackeys I witnessed this weekend are not the heart, the soul, or the brain. They’re the fleshy tire around the midsection, weighing the body down. They’re dead weight, and they need to be shed.

Here’s my point: I don’t want to march in lockstep with the drones of inadequacy. I can already tell it’ll swallow me whole. My place is with the fans in the crowd. Failing that, it’s in front of a television. And I don’t have $150 to spend on a scalped ticket, so I’m not going.

I actually agree with one of Ryan’s chief complaints — the absurdity of some of the questions in the postgame press conferences. It’s always been a pet peeve of mine, as the whole postgame press conference is like some absurd stage act where the coaches and players know exactly what the media will ask them and the media knows exactly what the coaches and players will say, with very few exceptions. Some of the questions, in effect, are just another way of saying, “Give me a quote, coach.”

Now comes the part where I start poking holes in the rest of Ryan’s attack on the sportswriters at the tournament.

1. Ryan holds up Dan Wiederer as an exception to the “drones of inadequacy” he’s raging against and points to a three-part series Wiederer wrote about Mike Krzyzewski as example of his excellence and observes:

Interestingly enough, in all the postgame press conferences we attended, I never once saw Dan Wiederer ask a question. Maybe it’s coincidence. Or maybe his narratives are organic creations that don’t have the taint of prefabrication.

But here’s the problem with Ryan’s reasoning. The three-part series he points to is a big feature that was done under completely different circumstances than at the ACC Tournament. The deadline for that feature, I’m sure, wasn’t two hours after the game ended, and I doubt the interviews that went into that series were done in postgame press conferences. So what did Wiederer write from the ACC Tournament? Some examples:

• http://fayobserver.com/articles/2011/03/13/1078213
• http://fayobserver.com/articles/2011/03/12/1078075
• http://fayobserver.com/articles/2011/03/13/1078102
• http://fayobserver.com/articles/2011/03/12/1077965

To be absolutely clear, I’m not offering these examples to say that Dan Wiederer is not a good writer. This post is not about him, and I haven’t read enough of his stuff to form an opinion one way or another. Instead, I offer these links to show that it’s comparing apples and oranges to pit his Coach K feature against stories coming out of the ACC Tournament. Note that his stories from the tournament contain many of the same quotes and cover the same storylines that appear in many of the other stories written by those “drones of inadequacy” at the same event under the same circumstances. Oh yeah, and some of these are the quotes that came from the “dumb, leading, and boring questions” that Ryan is lambasting. The point is, you can’t compare live-event reporting to features. Many of the other sportswriters at the ACC Tournament have written excellent features when they’re not laboring under a tight deadline.

Also, consider how little sense Ryan’s reasoning makes in suggesting that perhaps not asking questions at the postgame press conference is a sign that a writer’s story doesn’t have the “taint of prefabrication.” If the questions being asked are indeed signs of prefabrication, then won’t a key part of getting to the “real” story be asking good questions, rather than no questions at all? If the questions being asked are not getting the real story, and you don’t ask the questions that do, then how is what you write going to be anything but prefabricated? Again, I’m not saying that as a slam to Wiederer, just to show that it makes little sense to say that because someone didn’t ask a question, it could be a sign he’s not going into his story with a prefabricated script (By the way, I didn’t ask a single question in those press conferences either, so by Ryan’s logic, I should be feeling pretty good about myself).

2. Ryan also writes:

But the old world is dying while the old order persists. Except for pieces of local interest, sports sections of newspapers go unread. Especially by young people. I honestly can’t think of one friend who starts his or her mornings by opening a newspaper to read the latest Duke or UNC story.

The problem with that argument is that most of the people covering the tournament were there to cover teams of local interest. In many cases, when the team in a particular newspaper’s coverage area got eliminated, the reporters from that paper went home because there’s no longer any local interest there. That is why there were more and more empty seats on press row as the tournament progressed. Also, while I, too, cannot think of a young person who starts his or her day by reading the latest Duke or UNC story in a newspaper, I sure as heck know plenty who read that same story online at the newspaper’s website.

3. Ryan says sportswriters live for the negative because it makes them relevant and because they only wield power when something bad happens, and that’s why coaches and players try to be bland in interviews. All I can say to that is that in the decade-plus that I’ve worked with sportswriters, I’ve never known one to “live for the negative”. In fact, some of them hate it when a team they’re covering is struggling because it becomes more and more difficult to cover the team without coming off as too negative. I’m simultaneously amused and angered by such attempts to paint sports reporters (and those who work in the media in general) as evil trolls wishing ill on those they cover for the sake of personal gain. I’ve seen journalists who are egotistical, and I’ve seen ones who are incompetent, but in no greater proportion than in any other field. Sportswriters, for the most part, are ordinary folks. They have a job to do, they do it — some better than others — and then they want to tend to other parts of their lives. They aren’t some subspecies of the human race with a particular genetic disposition toward villainy.

4. Ryan writes about his dislike of the “no cheering on press row” rule:

You can’t cheer on press row. But it’s also hard to love the game.

As I wrote in my previous post, I was at that same tournament, sitting on the same press row, and in a similar situation — it was the first time I had been to the ACC Tournament and I’m not a regular member of the sports media at games. I can relate to the feeling that Ryan describes. On press row, you are in the middle of all this emotion and fanfare, and yet you are not a part of it. However, as I wrote in that last post, I don’t find it hard to rein in my emotions or my love for UNC — which I’d pit against Ryan’s love for Duke any day — when I’m sitting on press row.

The way I see it, experiencing a game as a fan and as a reporter are different things and require different approaches. When I’m on press row, I’m there to do a job — to observe the game and then to explain to people what happened. To do that doesn’t require me to live and die with every Harrison Barnes 3-pointer or Nolan Smith drive; instead, it requires that I take a more analytical approach. As some of the commenters on Ryan’s post said, you can have all the emotions you want, just buy a ticket and sit in the stands. Complaining about the lack of cheering on press row is like complaining that the staff at a beach resort isn’t enjoying the fun in the sun as much as the guests are. The people on press row are there to do a job, and I know most of them are plenty passionate and knowledgeable about the game. Don’t mistake the lack of cheering for a lack of love for the game.

In his post, Ryan takes some pretty vicious swipes at the sportswriters at the tournament. Yet, strip away the fluff, and this is what I hear: “I sat next to a prick at the tournament who gave me crap about showing a little bit of emotion on press row, and I found that I don’t like watching my team play without being able to cheer, so not only am I not going to do that again, I’m going to flame everyone who does.”

Is the radio guy in Ryan’s story a jerk? Maybe (certainly from the way he tells it, though a commenter on his blog who was also on press row offered a different take). You don’t like watching your team play without being able to cheer like a fan? No problem. I totally understand, and if you ask me to pick, I’d want to watch as a fan rather than as a reporter. But if you’re going to flame an entire group of people, you better have something substantial on which to base your criticism. In Ryan’s post, aside from the complaint about bad questions — one that I share — I saw little else of substance to back up the rest of the diatribe. I know, I know. Letting words like “facts” get in the way of a good rant is another one of those stupid passé journalism rules like “no cheering on press row.”

Update (3/15)

To his credit, after receiving some not-so-positive feedback on his piece, Ryan has posted a mea culpa apologizing for speaking “too broadly, and too extremely.” It seems like a classy, sincere apology, and thus I’m appeased. (See update below)

Update (3/17)

So after doing right and offering what seemed like a sincere apology, Ryan then wrote in his next post:

*Apology for any Sportswriter I Might Have Offended

Please forgive my swear words and general attitude of rebellion and disrespect. If you were about to give me a job at a high level or even low level organization or were just going to let me cover junior high volleyball for free, please direct me as to which parts of the post I should delete. Better yet, I’ll just give you my login information and you can write this yourself. If I’ve upset any of you fine folks, I sincerely apologize and hope you’ll drop me an e-mail telling me where you’d like me to make confession. Oh wait, I already know; I’ll see you at the Church of the Divine Silence, the Holiest Incarnation of the Blessed Grimace, i.e. press row.

(Grabs crotch defiantly, skateboards off into the distance while a pair of black un-belted pants slowly fall down.

In the context of the post, I can’t decide if he’s just kind of kidding around a bit with this or if he’s serious and has suffered another bout of ass-clownery.

I got the opportunity to not only go to the ACC Tournament in Greensboro this past weekend, but also get an up-close look at the action. The newspaper I used to work for got me a press pass for the tournament — partly as a thank-you for years of meritorious service – and I went to help out a bit with the paper’s coverage of the event. In exchange, I got to take in the action from press row, a mere few feet away from the court.

Some observations from my weekend at the tournament:

The Good

Let’s get the obvious out of the way: Sitting courtside for the ACC Tournament rocks. It was the best seat I’ve ever had at a big-time sporting event. On Friday, my first day at the tournament, this was the view I had:

When the players were inbounding the ball from the sideline, they were literally right in front of me. Things definitely look a little different when you’re this close:

• At first, while I was watching the action, I thought, “These guys don’t look so tall.” And then I realized that the seat I was sitting in is elevated about a foot off the floor, so yeah, these guys are tall, and big.
• From my vantage point, I was a little surprised at how small the court’s dimensions seemed. It just didn’t seem that far from one end to the other or from one sideline to the other. Of course, that probably had something to do with the next point …
• When you’re sitting just a few feet away from the players on the court, you gain a whole new appreciation for how fast the action moves.

Other good things:

• Hey, free food! Ok, so who doesn’t like free food (and sports reporters especially)? The ACC put on a pretty nice spread each day for the media, but the best parts were the candy baskets and the mini-fridge stocked with Häagen-Dazs bars. Oh, there were healthier snack alternatives, but for some reason the fruit basket always stayed pretty full :-)
• The atmosphere was awesome. I’ve covered some college games before, and I’ve been to the Greensboro Coliseum once before for a women’s ACC Tournament game, but the atmosphere this past weekend was unlike any I had experienced. When UNC was making its comebacks in the quarter- and semifinals, the arena was literally deafening, and being down on the floor, the cheers from the stands felt like raucous walls closing in on me. It’s only now that I have a true idea of how big a home-court advantage it can be for the Tar Heels and, to a less extent, Duke to have the ACC Tournament in Greensboro. I took an unscientific measurement of the decibel level in the arena during the games with an app on my iPod, and the meter was fluctuating between about 97 and 100 during those UNC rallies (for context, the same app shows the sound level in my office to be in the 60s). According to the information on the app, that’s roughly the equivalent of noise from a heavy road transport vehicle, a motorcycle, or a circular saw. Of course, the app maxes out at 100 decibels without an external mic attached, so I suspect the actual decibel level was probably above that.
• The Maryland mascot. The terrapin is the only mascot I’ve seen that actually takes part in forming a human pyramid with the team’s cheerleaders, and the tortoise isn’t on the bottom either. No, he gets hoisted up into the air with the cheerleaders. Pretty impressive considering how unwieldy that costume must be.

The Not As Good

• The obnoxious confetti cannons that went off at opposite corners of the court after Duke won the title game. Ok, I’ll admit that if UNC had won, I would probably be more tolerant of the confetti, but regardless, confetti is less fun when you’re sitting a mere few feet away from where they’re getting blown out.
• NO MORE “LIVING ON A PRAYER” … PLEASE!!! Sitting through all or parts of five games, I got to hear the Bon Jovi classic covered relentlessly by seemingly every school band at the tournament. Not that their performances were bad or anything, it’s just that … well … you can only listen to a song so many times in a day, and I think the tournament maxed out my limit for “Living on a Prayer.”

The Flat-Out Horrible

• Duke winning it all. Enough said.
• UNC’s play in the first halves of every game. During a restroom break during halftime at the tournament final, I overheard someone remark that it’s like being in the movie Groundhog Day, and I can’t say I disagree. It’s kind of befuddling to get this sense of déjà vu over and over and over.

Working vs. Watching

Being at the tournament was a fantastic experience, but being at the event as part of the working media was a bit of a strange feeling, especially having watched sports events the past few years as a fan rather than as a journalist. While it was definitely a treat to get to see the action up close and experience the tremendous atmosphere, there was also a feeling of detachedness while sitting on press row. When I watch UNC games at home, I’m the type that yells at the TV and jumps up and down throughout the game. When I set foot on press row, however, it was as if a switch had been flipped. The great surges of emotion that usually accompany my watching a UNC game were replaced with a cool, analytical mindset. Keep in mind that even when I’m watching at home, that analytical mindset is always there, but it seems that when I’m watching at home, the emotions of the experience are amplified, whereas when I was watching from press row, that aspect was minimized while the analytical aspect took centerstage.

I’ve already mentioned that the atmosphere in the stands was tremendous during the UNC comebacks, but I didn’t feel like a part of that atmosphere from press row. I know that if I was watching, say, the Miami-UNC game at home, I would’ve been yelling at the top of my lungs and ricocheting between emotional poles with every play and feeling my heart pounding at the back of my throat. Yet, when I watched from press row Kendall Marshall deliver a perfect pass to Tyler Zeller for the winning basket a mere millisecond before time expired, all I could muster was to mouth a quick “Oh my god.” And the thing is, this restraint required no effort. I didn’t need to try to force myself to stay in my seat. I didn’t even feel the inclination to do so much as a fistpump in celebration while the players, coaches, and people in the stands around me were going nuts. I was right in the middle of something — totally enveloped by it, you could even say — yet I was not a part of it.

The other thing about being at the tournament as part of the working press is that you ARE working as opposed to just there to watch the games. Most of the people on press row were busy keeping play-by-play or taking some kind of notes throughout the games, and it’s a bit of a scramble after a game ends. There’s the dash to the locker rooms and the postgame press conference, then a good solid hour or two of pounding away at the keyboard. And I had it obscenely easy compared to most of the other journalists there. All I was doing was staking out the postgame press conferences, transcribing those quotes, and then typing up a short item or two for a notebook. And even that usually took up so much time that I would end up missing most of the game that followed.

Also, covering a four-day event like the ACC Tournament is a bit of a grind. Making the hour-long drive to and from Greensboro each day and then spending a good eight to eleven hours there adds up after a while, especially when you’re sitting in one position, either on press row or hunched over your laptop in the media room, for much of that time. And again, I had a pretty light workload at the tournament, and even I was feeling a bit drained toward the end, so imagine what the other people who were there doing the actual heavy lifting must’ve been feeling. Sure, as far as jobs go, covering sports is a pretty sweet gig (as most sportswriters would tell you), but make no mistake: It IS a job. All things considered, I think I would probably prefer watching the games as a spectator, even if it meant having to sit a few rows back (ok, more like a few dozen rows back). Nonetheless, it’s good to get a taste of the action every now and then, just to scratch that old journalist itch again, and I couldn’t ask for a better venue in which to do that than the ACC Tournament.

Update

Someone else who was also on press row at the ACC Tournament for the first time had a different takeaway from the experience than I did. Here’s his take, and my response to it.

Five games into the season, and this year’s team is looking a whole lot like last year’s team in all the wrong ways. Start with the offensive struggles in the half court, which were in plain view when UNC had to scrap to reach 60 in the losses to Minnesota and Vanderbilt. In fact, the three games in which UNC has cracked 80 have come against Lipscomb, Hofstra, and UNC Asheville, which hail from, respectively, the Atlantic Sun, the Colonial, and the Big South. And the only game where the offense actually looked good throughout was against Hofstra, which was picked to finish fifth in the CAA. That also happens to be the only game in which the Tar Heels shot better than 50 percent from the field. Frankly, UNC teams, even those that are so-so by UNC standards, should be eating such teams for lunch. A border-line decent Roy Williams team AVERAGES more than 80, which means it tends to go well above that against such relatively weak early-season foes. This team, on the other hand, has struggled just to reach 80 against these also-rans.

The other disturbing similarity between this year’s team and last year’s squad is the myriad of deficiencies they are displaying. They are not struggling because of only one or two shortcomings, but rather because of a number of things that take turns rearing their ugly heads, preventing the Heels from getting into any kind of rhythm or sustaining good play for more than a few minutes. Aside from struggling to find points in the half court, UNC has been misfiring from the free-throw line. The win over UNC Asheville was the first time this season the team had made more than 70 percent of its attempts, and it’s missing an average of nine free throws a game and hasn’t missed fewer than eight in any contest, which really hurts when you consider the Heels’ two early losses have been by five and seven points, respectively.

The problems don’t stop there. There was the late-game breakdown on the defensive glass against Vanderbilt that played a key part in the final outcome. There’s the inconsistency on both ends of the court, as evident in UNC’s being able to spurt out to a 22-point lead in the span of about five minutes against UNC Asheville but being unable to hold it, giving most of it back in the ensuing eight minutes. There’s the lack of a consistent second scoring threat, which also was evident against UNC Asheville, when the Bulldogs aggressively double-teamed Tyler Zeller late in the game and caused the UNC offense to stagnate as UNCA made its comeback. There’s the inability to hit consistently from outside (throw out the ridiculous 12-for-17 performance from 3-point range against Hofstra, and the Tar Heels are shooting only 27 percent from behind the arc in their other four games).  There’s the tendency to muck up what should be easy transition opportunities. And then there are the stretches of just plain sloppy ballhandling that lead to piles of turnovers and squander staunch defensive efforts at the other end of the court.

So where does that leave the Tar Heels? Well, quite frankly, right about where they left off last year — a team that’s closer to the NIT than the NCAA Tournament. In fact, the game against UNC Asheville felt disturbingly like an NIT matchup: A scrappy team from a small conference against a mediocre big-name program from a power conference, each with one or two good players but both plagued by a number of shortcomings. Both teams go through cold stretches in which they fail to capitalize on the other’s struggles. One team goes on a hot streak but then exhibits why it’s not playing in the Big Dance by letting a big lead slip away. You end up with not a good game, just a close game. Eerie.

The good news is it’s still early in the year (and I sure am not ready yet to say this UNC team is NIT-bound again); the bad news is that, as last season showed, these problems won’t magically disappear in a month just because it says “North Carolina” on the jersey or because that’s Roy Williams standing on the sidelines. Near the end of the UNC Asheville game, the TV announcers were talking about how UNC probably needs to win two of the three upcoming games against Illinois, Kentucky, and Texas in order to establish itself nationally. Right now, though, just staying close in any of those games seems like a tall task. The road back to elite status is going to be a long march rather than a quick sprint. Remember: The team that came after the 8-20 season landed in the NIT, and the next year, Roy’s first at UNC, the Tar Heels were nothing more than a middling top-25 team before they got back on top the year after.

A few other observations:

• I didn’t blame all of last season’s woes on Larry Drew, and I even defended him at times. I thought the talk about wishing he would transfer was cruel and overzealous. However, I am ready to see Kendall Marshall get an audition as the starting point guard. The reason is that Drew doesn’t seem to be playing with any confidence on offense. Last season, his main bugaboo was that he would drive toward the hoop with no clear idea of what he’s going to do, often resulting in a turnover when he whips an impossible pass to an unsuspecting teammate. This season, however, he’s not even looking to drive and attack. When he catches the ball on the perimeter, it almost always stays on the perimeter, whether via dribble or pass. That’s too passive a role for a point guard in an offense that relies heavily on its point guard getting into the lane. Marshall has had his off nights, too, but he has clearly shown a much stronger knack for getting into the lane, forcing the defense to adjust, and making things happen (and his passes are actually catchable). In terms of shooting, Drew is showing zero confidence in his shot right now, from the field or from the free-throw line, the latter of which is extremely damaging for a point guard. Marshall, meanwhile, has shown a better-than-expected touch. He’s a freshman, and he’s going to have his ups and downs, but that’s still better than a point guard who won’t drive and can’t shoot.
• Say it with me: Thank you, Alabama, for not offering a masters program in sports administration and thus making it possible for Justin Knox to transfer to UNC and play right away. Knox has really been impressive so far. He doesn’t back down on defense, and when he catches the ball on offense, he’s no Ed Geth. He can actually score with his back to the basket and has shown a nice touch from the free-throw line. You can certainly win in college basketball without a ton of depth, as long as you have the right kind of depth at the right positions, and Knox might prove to be just that for UNC.
• Between Dexter Strickland, Leslie McDonald, and Reggie Bullock, UNC is bound to get more production out of its two-guard position than last year, when Marcus Ginyard couldn’t shoot, couldn’t handle the ball, and didn’t show anywhere near the kind of leadership the team needed. I like Bullock’s game and would like to see him get more time. I like Strickland when he has the ball on a breakaway, but his horrendous assists-to-turnover ratio drives me nuts. McDonald’s jumpshot looks improved, but he’s probably another season away from being a big-time contributor off the bench.
• How good a year Zeller has will depend heavily on whether a second scoring threat emerges, as opponents will soon wise up and start running two guys at Zeller every time he touches the ball in the post.
• Plug Harrison Barnes into the “phenom recruit of the year” role that John Henson occupied last season, along with the “good scorer if he’s hitting from outside” role that Will Graves played, and you basically have the same kind of starting lineup as last year: An on-and-off small forward who does most of his damage outside, a turnover-prone two guard who can’t shoot, and a shaky point guard. Zeller might be an improvement offensively over Ed Davis or Deon Thompson, but like them, his impact on a game is limited by the shaky play of the guards feeding him the ball. And while Thompson and Davis played as if they were undersized post players last year, John Henson is an undersized post player this year.

It looks like for the first time in quite a while (maybe since 2001?), I won’t be playing fantasy football this year. The main reason is just that I’m finding better, or at least more important, uses for my time these days. A secondary reason is that I just haven’t kept up with the comings and goings this past off-season (L.T. is still a Charger, right?), and between work, planning a trip to England, and preparing an application for an online master’s program, I really just don’t feel the motivation to do catch-up research at this point, with the season only a couple weeks away.

I’ve done fairly well in fantasy football in the past. I usually put together high-scoring teams, and I’ve won a couple league championships, including my initial exposure to fantasy football in a cut-throat league where people paid $60 to play and would push your mother in front of a moving vehicle if she stood in their way of picking up somebody’s third-string tailback who might sniff the field that week because the starter is listed as questionable. I do enjoy tweaking my lineups and scouring the waiver wires for hidden gems, but to do that well requires way more time for research than I’m willing to dedicate to it these days. I’m not the type to start a team and then do a half-assed job managing it, and the thought of digging through mountains of stats to decide which team’s backup tight end is a better waiver-wire pickup just makes me cringe right now.

Finding time to do research wasn’t a problem when I worked in a newspaper’s sports department, since I was blitzed with more NFL minutiae than I cared to read every day. Since leaving newspapers, however, my interest in sports has plummeted. I’ve found that I’ve watched a lot more of — and find much more enjoyment in — the sports I really care about (basically UNC basketball), and much, much less of everything else, and I can’t say I’m sorry about that. I haven’t watched a baseball game in years. NASCAR? Yeah right! The NBA? What’s that? Even the NFL, which was probably my second favorite sports-viewing option before, only managed to pull me to the TV for short stretches of a couple games last year. Even college basketball, which flows in my blood given my UNC alum status, has struggled for my attention. Outside of UNC games, I’ve watched maybe a handful of contests the last couple years. I turned on the national championship game this past April just in time to see Butler’s last shot barely miss, and immediately turned it off again.

So I’ll be taking a break from fantasy football this year. I’m sure I’ll miss it at some point, just not as much as I would have before, and I definitely won’t miss having to get up early on Sundays to check the injury report.

It’s been a tough year to be a UNC basketball fan, but last night’s win over William & Mary made up for it a little bit, not because of the game’s significance (it was the first round of the NIT, after all), but because of the atmosphere.

When tickets for the game got slashed to $20 (from $40!), I broke down and bought a couple from a friend who was getting them through W&M. It was the first UNC game I had gone to in the last couple years, and more importantly, it was the first men’s game I’d ever attended in history-rich Carmichael Arena, where the men’s team played before moving into the Dean Dome in the mid-80s. The arena used to hold about 10,000, but recent renovations have reduced its capacity to only 7,000 and the game had been sold out, so I knew it would make for a raucous setting.

Our seats were directly behind the basket near the W&M bench, about five rows up in the upper level. Of course, upper level in Carmichael is like lower level at the Dean Dome, and we could see the action pretty well except for one small blind spot where the shot clock blocked our view of the area directly in front of the opposite basket. The only other drawback to the seats was that we were sitting right behind several rows of W&M fans who, along with their comrades in the section behind the W&M bench, made a lot of noise during the game. Fortunately, the UNC crowd was charged up right from the start as well and countered most cries of “TRIBE!” with their own. The noise level was impressive throughout the game and became almost deafening in the final three or four minutes of the game, as the Tar Heels fought their way back into the lead and stayed there with a staunch defensive effort down the stretch.

As for the game itself, it was the best I’ve seen the Heels play in a long time, undoubtedly in part because of UNC’s decided advantage in the post. Deon Thompson played one of his best games of the year and finished 20 points, Jon Henson almost got a double-double, and Tyler Zeller made several terrific hustle plays on defense to come up with steals on the perimeter that he then took the length of the floor for easy baskets. His last steal and dunk, coming in the final minute, sealed the win.

Alas, there were still mental lapses that showed why UNC is playing in the NIT and not the NCAA Tournament, and the Tar Heels seemed to forget about covering W&M’s most dangerous outside shooter early in the second half, allowing him to go on a spurt that put W&M ahead. However, I was also impressed with the hustle the Heels displayed, such as when Thompson dove along the sideline to keep a loose ball in bounds in the second half. The offense flowed relatively smoothly (you know things were going well when even Marcus Ginyard was hitting jumpshots) and UNC hit the 80-point mark for the first time in 2010. And for once the team made the clutch plays down the stretch. It was a nice home finale for UNC, and at least now I can say I watched the Tar Heels play at home in a tournament game.

I wrote three weeks ago that the Tar Heels were looking more like an NIT team than an NCAA Tournament team after their drubbing at the hands of Wake Forest, and they haven’t changed that impression in the last four games. In fact, if anything, they’ve reinforced the idea that this team is not going to the Big Dance this year. They ended a three-game skid with a win at N.C. State, but promptly reverted to their woeful ways with another three-game skid. With the ACC season halfway over, they are at 2-6 in the league, 13-10 overall.

The good news for UNC’s NCAA hopes is that the league has shown itself to be thoroughly mediocre this season, so there’s a good chance to move up the standings, which currently look like this:

I think if the Heels go 8-8 in the ACC, they will end up with solid NCAA Tournament credentials since that would give them a 19-12 overall record, plus they would have gone 6-2 leading up to the postseason, with at least one win over either Duke or Wake Forest, both of whom are in the top three in the league right now. At that point, even if they don’t win a game in the ACC Tournament, I would say they have a solid shot at an NCAA berth.

If they go 7-9 in the league, however, I think they’re going to be in trouble. The only way I can see them getting into the Big Dance with that record would be if they knock off Duke and make a strong run in the ACC Tournament (probably as in getting to the title game). And even at that point it would be iffy. I can’t see the ACC getting more than six NCAA bids this season, and if you look at the standings, even if the current top five teams in the league all go just .500 the rest of the way, they would still be out of UNC’s reach unless the Tar Heels go at least 7-1 (in which case there would be no worries about UNC’s tournament  hopes anyway). So in essence UNC is fighting for the last bid from the ACC. While UNC certainly can win more games, the problem is that there are currently four teams between it and the sixth spot in the standings. Even if a couple of the top five teams tumble, chances are at least a couple of those four teams in the middle of the standings would rise as a result and keep UNC out of the top six spots in the league. So if UNC goes 7-9 in the league and finishes outside of the top six, it would be hard to give a bid to the Heels over another team that’s ahead of it in the league standings without some additional compelling reason, such as a big run in the conference tournament.

How UNC Will Get in the NCAA Tournament

Of course, the Tar Heels would have to actually start winning games before it has any reason to be scoreboard-watching. On the bright side, UNC’s schedule does get easier than the first half of the season, as it plays the two teams below it in the standings — Miami and N.C. State. UNC also has three games against Florida State, Georgia Tech, and Boston College, three of the four teams in that glut in the middle of the standings, so the Tar Heels do have some control over their own destiny as they play some of the teams they are trying to catch. All of those teams have shown themselves to be inconsistent and beatable for UNC. It’s no easy task to run the table against these teams, but it’s something UNC must do to have any shot at getting into the Big Dance.

That leaves the two games against Duke and the road game at Wake Forest. Duke has looked vulnerable, especially on the road, and is ripe for an upset. The question is whether this UNC team can pull it off. I think it’d be asking too much for these Tar Heels to win in Cameron, so the upset would likely have to come this Wednesday night in Chapel Hill.

So here’s what I think UNC needs to do to more or less secure an NCAA berth: Upset Duke on Wednesday or win at Wake Forest (which I think is tougher to do than beating Duke in Chapel Hill) and go 5-0 against FSU, Georgia Tech, Boston College, Miami, and N.C. State. That would assure them of no worse than 8-8 in the league, with quality wins over top-10 opponents Duke and Michigan State and a tough strength of schedule.

If UNC goes 0-3 against Duke and Wake Forest, then I really think it would need to make a run to the ACC tournament final to have a legitimate shot at an NCAA berth. If they make it that far, they would have naturally picked up a couple quality wins along the way in the ACC tournament while beefing up their overall record.

All these scenarios aside, my gut feeeling is that UNC will play better in the second half of the season, but will likely finish no better than 7-9 (and 6-10 seems more probable), and end up in the NIT. Hopefully, it’ll leave such a horrible taste in the young players’ mouths that they will never want to experience it again.

Looking Back at the First Half of the ACC Season

UNC’s road woes haven’t helped its cause, but if you look at UNC’s three road ACC losses in the first half of the season — at Clemson, Virginia Tech, and Maryland — I think they were to be expected anyway even if UNC was playing better. You knew Clemson’s pressure defense would be a tough matchup for the Heels’ young backcourt, and I expected that one to be ugly. I also expected UNC to struggle at Maryland, considering the Terps and Greivis Vasquez gave last season’s Tar Heels fits, much less this season’s team. And Virginia Tech has become one of the tougher places to play in the league, so I was figuring that game to be a toss-up, which was exactly what it ended up being, going down to the final minute.

The problem has been how the Heels have fared in Chapel Hill since league play began, going 1-3 in ACC games in the Smith Center, with the losses being a last-second defeat to Georgia Tech and drubbings at the hands of Wake Forest and Virginia. Even in the two blowouts, UNC was in a competitive game at some point in the second half. If the Tar Heels could have won two of those three, they would be right in the middle of the conference standings and in decent position to make a second-half run to secure an NCAA bid instead of the backs-against-the-wall situation they find themselves in.

As far as how the team is playing, I think the Heels are performing a little better now than back when they were losing to Clemson, Georgia Tech, and Wake. I can see some of the younger players making progress again, whereas a couple weeks ago they seemed to be regressing. The problem is that this team has not just one, but three big weaknesses — ball-handling, defense, and half-court offense — and two of those three seem to crop up in each game to doom the Tar Heels. Also, their key players are taking turns disappearing each game, and this isn’t a team that can overcome that.

A few other observations:

• I don’t know if anybody is keeping track of such stats, but Marcus Ginyard must have one of the worst touches-to-turnovers ratio in the league. Forget the shooting woes that the TV announcers keep mentioning or the less-than-stellar defense that he has been showing in part because of his injuries. What the Heels need from Ginyard more than anything else is sound decisions with the ball, and he’s not giving them that, not by a long shot. It seems like half the time he touches the ball, he ends up turning it over. Most of the time it’s not even due to good defense, but rather his own mental lapses, whether it be not cleanly handling a simple pass on the perimeter or making terrible passes up court in transition. In many ways, he has shown worse judgment with the ball than the less experienced players.
• I’m getting sick of watching Larry Drew II drive to the basket only to whip an impossible pass every time to an unsuspecting teammate that usually leads to a turnover. The frustrating thing is that he would do this even when he has his man beat and has a decent shot at a driving layup. That’s the main advantage Dexter Strickland has over Drew — Strickland isn’t afraid to drive to the hoop and finish, while Drew is.
• If the Tar Heels are going to make a second-half run, I have a feeling Jon Henson is going to be a big part of it. He has come on strong in the last couple games and seems to be getting more comfortable offensively. His long frame already makes him a good perimeter presence on defense, and he has started aggressively taking the ball to the hoop, something this team has sorely lacked. Even with his lanky build, I think he’s getting closer to becoming a consistently valuable contributor.
• One trend to watch for in the coming weeks: Opposing players getting back on defense trying to poke away from Dexter Strickland from behind. Strickland had his pocket picked from behind a few times while flying up court in the loss at Virginia Tech and showed similar unsteadiness at Maryland. It doesn’t take long for other teams to pick up on the fact that he’s kind of loose with the dribble in transition.
• Ed Davis may be averaging 14.5 points and 9.5 rebounds, but that’s got to be the least impactful near double-double in the country. He just never seems to be a factor when UNC needs a basket, and despite his rebounds and blocked shots, he too often gets muscled into bad position on defense, allowing opposing big men to score easily in the lane. On offense, he doesn’t establish himself enough in the post, and he doesn’t convert enough of the easy first and second chances he gets around the basket.
• Watching this team play, I’m reminded of the 8-20 season back in 2002. I don’t mean this team is as bad as that squad. But I remember watching that year’s team and thinking, “Any moment now, they’re going to have a key play or spurt that flips on the switch and this team is going to figure it out and turn things around.” Of course, they never did. That season taught me that 1) no program is too big to fail, and 2) there is no switch to flip. A team gets better incrementally, and a squad playing horrible basketball with multiple gaping holes isn’t going to become a winning team overnight. The difference between this year’s team and the 8-20 team is that the 8-20 team was bad because it didn’t have good players, while this season’s team is bad because it’s playing with it head in its ass. It’s not being out-talented; it’s killing itself with horrible mental lapses, often on the simplest of plays, such as making a basic entry pass or covering the other team’s best 3-point shooter.
• Going into the season, many people were expecting this squad to play like the 2005-06 team, which had a good season despite losing most of their top players to the NBA after a title year. Here are some surprising stats: This season’s team is actually averaging more points, more rebounds, and more blocked shots than that 2005-06 squad, with an essentially identical assists-to-turnover ratio. Of course, that 2005-06 teams played better defense and shot much better from the free-throw line. By the way, that team was 3-3 in the league before winning nine of its last 10 regular-season games to finish 12-4 in the ACC.
• If you are wondering whether this UNC team is closer to the middle or the bottom of the league in terms other than wins and losses, consider this number: It has lost four ACC games by double digits — more than anyone else in the league, even the two teams below it in the standings. That doesn’t bode well, and is another sign that this isn’t a team that’s on the verge of a turnaround. I would say that right now UNC has a better chance of finishing last than it has of finishing sixth.

Now, more than halfway through the season, I’m getting to the point where I would be thrilled if the Tar Heels, mired in a funk in which they’ve lost three in a row and four of five, just make the NCAA Tournament. Wednesday night’s drubbing by Wake Forest left UNC at 12-7 (1-3 in the ACC) with 12 games left:

Jan 26    @N.C. State
Jan 31    Virginia
Feb 4    @Virginia Tech
Feb 7    @Maryland
Feb 10    Duke
Feb 13    N.C. State
Feb 16    @Georgia Tech
Feb 20    @Boston College
Feb 24    Florida St.
Feb 27    @Wake Forest
Mar 2    Miami (Fla.)
Mar 6    @Duke

If the Heels are to get to 20 wins in the regular season, they’ll need to go 8-4 the rest of the way. Looking at that schedule, I can only see one game that I can honestly say the Heels should win — at Boston College. Every other game is at best a toss-up, and this team hasn’t shown the traits you need to win the close games — taking care of the ball and being mentally tough. Seven of the remaining 12 games are on the road, and aside from N.C. State, none of the other road opponents has lost more than one game at home. UNC, by the way, has the worst road record in the league, going 1-5 away from Chapel Hill so far. The schedule also includes a game against league-leading Virginia; two against second-place Duke, which is playing the toughest defense I’ve seen from Duke in a while; a game at Maryland, whose Greivis Vasquez always gives the Heels fits; and rematches at Georgia Tech and Wake Forest, both of whom have already beaten UNC in Chapel Hill.

The Heels certainly have the talent and the ability to hang with just about anybody in the league, but they haven’t played like an NCAA Tournament team lately. Looking back, this team might’ve played its best ball in the early part of the season, when it held its own in that brutal stretch against Michigan State, Kentucky, and Texas. The Heels went 1-2 in that stretch, but honestly they played better — against tougher opponents and in more hostile environments — than they have in the past two or three weeks. Even when they were winning games around the holidays, they weren’t playing that well. They blew most of a late 17-point lead before pulling away from Rutgers. They routed Albany but ended the game on the wrong end of a 23-2 run in the last seven minutes. Even when they pulled away from Virginia Tech in the second half, that was mostly because they caught fire at the right time and hit five straight 3-pointers. Aside from that, the Heels have frankly been very mediocre. Their big men have been outplayed every night for the past couple weeks despite their preseason hype, and everyone on the team have been timid and careless with the ball. The outside shooting has been missing except for a few spurts. Marcus Ginyard and Deon Thompson have not shown the kind of leadership or experienced play you would expect from two battle-tested seniors. Throw in injuries to Tyler Zeller and Ed Davis, and you might have the makings of a perfect storm that keeps UNC out of the tournament.

Certainly, if the Heels have 19 or 20 wins by the end of the season, their tough schedule will get them into the NCAA Tournament. But that means getting at least seven more wins, and they’ve really left themselves little margin for error.  Strength of schedule only helps you if you actually win enough games to merit NCAA consideration, and right now it’s not a sure thing that UNC can even go .500 the rest of the way. If this team finishes with, say, 17 wins, which would put them at 7-9 in the ACC, I’m not sure if they will get into the Big Dance (or deserve to), regardless of reputation or schedule strength.

All season long, people have been saying that this team will be better in February. Well, February is right around the corner, and UNC has actually played progressively worse. What’s even more worrisome is that while this is a team that’s more talented than its record would indicate, it’s not a team that has played better than its record would indicate. The Heels haven’t lost close games that they should have won. Instead, they’ve lost games they should have won and in other games have actually been fortunate to have lost by as few points as they did.

Right now, this team looks more like the 19-16 NIT team in Matt Doherty’s final season at UNC than the David Noel-led 2006 team that surprised everybody and went 23-8. I’m holding my breath for that Roy Williams magic to kick in any second now and turn this team around. But what worries me most is that, as Roy would likely tell you, there is no magic wand a coach can wave to make a team start playing well all of a sudden. If there were, he would’ve waved it a week ago.

The Falcons’ defense roughed up Terrell Owens and scored a bunch of points for me. Nice!

I’ve barely kept up with football this weekend, what with all the holiday travels and family gatherings. However, Sunday brought me some post-Christmas cheers as The Thamesmen have jumped out to an insurmountable lead in the league championship game. My opponent still has Ryan Longwell left in the Monday night game, but I have Adrian Peterson and a 40-plus-point lead. It’ll be the first time I’ve won this league in the five seasons I’ve played in it, which seems long overdue since I almost always put together one of the highest-scoring teams in the league. Actually, this year’s squad was underachieving in the second half of the season, closing the regular season on a three-game skid before pulling it together for the playoffs. Tom Brady (267 yards, 4 TDs) played like the elite quarterback I expected when I drafted him but saw so little of for much of the season. I also got a big 21 points from the Falcons defense, a waiver wire pickup this week that came through with three turnovers and a fumble return for a touchdown, reaffirming my aversion for not drafting a defense until very late in the draft and just playing the matchup game late in the season. Throw in touchdowns from Antonio Gates and Desean Jackson, a good yardage game by Ray Rice (141 rushing yards), and good defensive performances by Julius Peppers and Lamarr Woodley, another waiver-wire pickup this week, and I’ve got one hand on the league trophy (if there was one).

My other team, the Outlaws of the Marsh, didn’t fare so well in the consolation semifinals of its league, getting stomped by 31 points. I got solid games from Philip Rivers (264 yards, 2 TDs), Ray Rice, Antonio Gates, and Patrick Willis, but once again, the team just didn’t score enough touchdowns. The wideouts, after a strong showing last week, let me down again as Derrick Mason (77 yards) and Chris Chambers (34 yards) combined for just five points. Rashard Mendenhall (36 rushing yards) did find the end zone, but that was about all he did. Dallas Clark couldn’t find the end zone after his recent scoring frenzy, thanks in part to the Colts sitting Peyton Manning in the second half. The Outlaws’ season is still not over, however, as they have a seventh-place game next week. Woo hoo!

Week 16 Highs and Lows

• One of the reasons the Outlaws didn’t have enough fire power this week was the absence of DeAngelo Williams, who went down earl in the previous week’s game with a twisted ankle. In his place, Jonathan Stewart (206 rushing yards, TD) has run for 315 yards and scored three TDs in two games — production the Outlaws could’ve used in their league playoffs. Stewart’s performance probably also casts more questions about how the Panthers’ backfield shuffle will look next season, since it makes Williams look a bit more expendable.
• Ok, this is where I apologize for the mean things I said about Jerome Harrison last week. I didn’t think he could have another strong game, but he did — 39 carries, 148 yards, TD — albeit against the Raiders. Now, I bet he can’t do it three weeks in a row.
• Donovan McNabb (322 yards passing, 3 TDs, INT) seems to be heating up at the right time for the Eagles and his fantasy owners. He has thrown six TDs in the last three games and gone over 300 yards in two of those outings. In the one game in which he didn’t throw multiple touchdown passes, he made up for it by running one in.
• My experience with The Thamesmen this season has shown me that you can never have too many wide receivers on your roster. I stockpiled wideouts in the draft and through waiver-wire pickups during the season and needed every one of them. I started the year with Calvin Johnson and Santonio Holmes — the first two WRs I drafted — as my starters. Then, at one point or another, I started: Donald Driver, Mike Sims-Walker, Sydney Rice, Desean Jackson, and Vincent Jackson. It made for lineup headaches every week, but by the end of the season, it was definitely good to have those options as I was able to rotate back to the two hottest guys.
• The Saints are looking like a team running out of gas. It’s one thing to lose to the Cowboys, but now to the Bucs? And the offense has not been sharp, scoring a season-low 17 points in back-to-back games. Even though they have homefield advantage to play for next week, they’ll be facing a resurgent Panthers squad that dismantled the Giants on Sunday, so it could be another rough outing.
• Speaking of resurgent, how about LaDainian Tomlinson’s fantasy value? He has reached the end zone in six of his last seven games, which include three 2-TD outings. On the season, he has 12 TDs, nine of which have come in the last seven weeks. It’s not like he’s having a spectacular second half of the season, though. He has cracked 70 yards rushing only twice in this seven-week span and averaged better than 4 yards a carry in only one game. The Chargers just seem determined to use him more in goal-line situations.

Having watched my beloved Tar Heels play their first 11 games, I’ve reached this conclusion: This team is smaller than it looks on paper.

Coming into the season, the thing that everybody raved about when they mentioned the Tar Heels was their size. They had six guys in the regular rotation who were 6-foot-9 or taller. However, what the early part of the season has shown me is that this team clearly plays smaller than its height might suggest.

Against lesser opponents — teams that don’t have anywhere near the height to match up with the Tar Heels — UNC can dominate inside. However, when it goes up against one of the top teams, and teams that likely have their own share of big guys, UNC runs into trouble because most, if not all, of their big guys tend to get pushed around inside on the defensive end. It happened against Syracuse, Kentucky, and Texas, and not surprisingly, those are UNC’s three losses thus far. Ed Davis is way too slender to hold his own and gets backed in too far under the basket. Tyler Zeller, at 7-foot, can cause some trouble for opposing big guys but can’t move or jump with the more athletic ones. Jon Henson has the face of a 15-year-old and the frame of a 12-year-old. I really like the Wear brothers’ fundamentals, and they actually probably do a better job boxing out than anybody else on the team, but they still lack the experience to go up against talented big men on good teams. Deon Thompson is probably the only big man on the team that plays with some power, but even he is more of a finesse guy. Compared that to last year, when you weren’t going to push Tyler Hansbrough out of the way without a whole lot of shoving and likely getting whistled for an offensive foul.

I’m not too worried about the Heels’ inside game on offense, since they’ve shown they can score from the post. However, even on this end of the court, you can see them playing smaller than they are. One of the patterns that has emerged early this season has been the Tar Heels’ big men playing volleyball on the offensive glass — getting two or three offensive rebounds but failing to capitalize on them as they just seem to throw the ball back up wildly rather than going up strong to either put it in the basket or get fouled.

I’m really hoping the inside guys pull it together soon and start playing stronger. With basically one solid ballhandler in the regular rotation, UNC is already weak in the turnovers department. They really can’t afford to let opposing big men keep muscling them out of the way.

After weeks of unproductive numbers, Vincent Jackson (83) finally found the end zone again.

If the old adage that it’s hard to beat a team three times in a season is true, then it must be equally hard to lose to a team three times in a season. Fortunately, that held true for The Thamesmen in the first round of the fantasy football playoffs this week. After ending the regular season on a three-game skid, The Thamesmen finally pulled it together against a team that they lost to twice during the season. It helped that Drew Brees, my opponent’s starting quarterback, put up a dud for once, mustering only three points. It’s a good thing, too, because The Thamesmen’s QB, Tom Brady, didn’t exactly tear it up as he posted a paltry seven points. However, a stellar day at wide receiver by the Jackson Two — Vincent (108 yards, 2 TDs) and Desean (140 yards, 1 TD) — led a balanced effort from the rest of the lineup. Adrian Peterson and Antonio Gates each chipped in a TD, and I even got 11.5 points from the Houston defense. I’m up by 28 points, so unless Lawrence Tynes and Osi Umenyiora both have career games tonight for my opponent, I’m going to the title game.

My other team, Outlaws of the Marsh, was not so fortunate in its league’s postseason. I actually made all the right lineup moves this week and even got great production from my wideouts, which had been the Outlaws’ Achilles heel all season. I got double figures from Derrick Mason (87 yards, TD) and Chris Chambers (114 yards, TD), not to mention good games by Philip Rivers (308 yards, 3 TDs), Dallas Clark (95 yards, 2 TDs), and Rashard Mendenhall (111 total yards, TD). My opponent was putting up points, too, but I was still in good position to pull out a win until DeAngelo Williams tweaked his ankle in the Sunday night game, departing for the night without putting up a single fantasy point. It went downhill from there, as I watched Adrian Peterson and Steve Smith find the end zone for my opponent while cursing Jonathan Stewart for racking up the yards and TDs that should have rightfully been Williams’ (and mine). It all added up to an eight-point loss, ending my reign as the defending league champion. Oh well. I won a bunch of games and put up some respectable point totals despite having a crappy receiving corps. It was a solid season.

Week 15 Highs and Lows

Brett Favre’s December magic the last couple seasons has been a disappearing act.

• It sure looks like Brett Favre is going through another late-season swoon. Last season, he threw two TDs and nine interceptions in the Jets’ final five games after a strong start. This year, he has thrown four interceptions and just three TDs in his last three games after putting up 24 TDs and just three INTs in the first 11 games. It doesn’t help that he hasn’t had Percy Harvin at full strength the last couple weeks.
• Matt Cassel had been on the skids ever since I sort of praised him as a viable fantasy starter a few weeks back, having thrown seven INTs and just one TD in three games. He got the cure-all on Sunday — the Cleveland Browns. The Chiefs lost, but Cassel threw for a healthy 331 yards and two TDs. Like I said before, he really is a feast-or-famine guy.
• Somebody explain to me how Ben Roethlisberger can throw three touchdown passes and have none of them go to Hines Ward, Santonio Holmes, or Heath Miller?
• Don’t anoint him the starter in Carolina for next season yet, but Matt Moore sure made a fine case to stay the starter the rest of the season with his 299-yard, 3-TD performance against a tough Vikings defense. Again, the Panthers’ offense is actually pretty decent when its quarterback isn’t throwing the ball into the ground or into opponents’ arms. Jake Delhomme, pack your bags.

Jerome Harrison’s day by the numbers: Rushing yards — 286. Touchdowns — 3. Fantasy impact — 0.
• Really, did anybody see Jerome Harrison’s ridiculous 286-yard, 3-TD game coming? Those 286 yards were only 15 fewer than what he had the entire season going into Sunday’s game, and those three TDs were three more than what he had going in. In his previous five games, he had average 2.3, 3.8, 1.5, 3.5, and 1.3 yards per carry, respectively. And that’s how one of the greatest rushing days in league history became one of the biggest wasted efforts in fantasy football history.
• Jay Cutler’s season is approaching Madden-level of ridiculousness. Before this season, I thought it was only possible for a quarterback to throw 30 interceptions in a season in a video game, but Cutler is on track to prove me wrong. With three more INTs on Sunday, he now has 25 on the year. His last two opponents, the Vikings and Lions, aren’t particularly fearsome against the pass, but Cutler has been throwing picks against just about everybody.

It was one of those dreaded weeks where I got a big effort from a player in one league and played against him in the other.

It was the last weekend of the fantasy football regular season in my leagues, and I suffered the smite of the double-edged sword known as Dallas Clark. The Colts tight end caught three TDs for one of my teams, the Outlaws of the Marsh, and against the other (The Thamesmen). That pretty much lifted the Outlaws to a much-needed victory while keeping The Thamesmen in their funk, as a third straight loss cost them the No. 1 seed in the playoffs. The good news is that the team I lost to happens to belong to my wife, who will most likely jump up into the final playoff spot with her win, so I guess Clark was trying to preserve my marital bliss. So as it stands, it looks like the Outlaws will be a fourth seed in the playoffs, while The Thamesmen will have to settle for the No. 2 seed in their league.

Aside from Clark’s big day, the Outlaws also got big efforts from Ray Rice (219 total yards, TD) and Rob Bironas (19 fantasy points). That trio pretty much lifted the team to victory, overcoming subpar days from Philip Rivers, DeAngelo Williams, and Rashard Mendenhall and a typical day from one of my wide receivers (Jerricho Cotchery: 1 catch, 12 yards). The Thamesmen, meanwhile, were again done in by another so-so game from Tom Brady (192 yards, 1 TD, 1 INT). That squandered a strong effort from Adrian Peterson (97 yards, 2 TDs). It also didn’t help that I left Ray Rice on the bench in this league, along with Desean Jackson (178 receiving yards, 2 TDs), Ryan Grant (132 rushing yards, 2 TDs), and Vincent Jackson (120 receiving yards). I really, really need to add at least one more W/R/T slot to the starting lineup for this league next year. There are too many good players just going to waste on teams’ benches (well, at least my team’s bench).

Week 14 Highs and Lows

• After a strong start to the season, Mike Sims-Walker has been slowed by injuries and poor play the last few weeks. He has 53 catches for 758 yards and 6 TDs on the season, but has had only six catches for 64 yards and no TDs the last three games. That decline has been a key reason for the Outlaws’ recent wide receiver woes.

With a string of solid efforts since taking over for the departed Larry Johnson, Jamaal Charles might be a name worth keeping in mind in next year’s draft.
• The joyride for Chris Chambers might be over in Kansas City now that defenses have realized they need to actually defend him, but fill-in RB Jamaal Charles keeps rolling. He had his biggest day yet since taking over for the released Larry Johnson, rumbling for 143 yards and finding the end zone for the third straight game. And this is despite the fact that his team lost and managed only 10 points total.
• Hakeem Nicks hadn’t made a whole lot of noise fantasy-wise since his four-game TD streak in the first half of the season, but he’s quietly putting together a very nice rookie season. He’s on pace for more than 800 yards and already has six TDs, including one in each of the last two games. He also had his second 100-yard game Sunday. Three of his TDs have been 54 yards or longer, and he’s averaging 18 yards a grab. Another Desean Jackson, perhaps?

Watching opposing DBs run the other way after picking off one of his passes has become a routine for Josh Freeman (5).
• Bucs QB Josh Freeman has oscillated between unexpectedly good and ridiculously bad in his outings. He threw three TDs against the Packers in his debut as a starter and tossed two against the Falcons. In his other four starts, however, he has thrown 12 interceptions and just two TDs. From a fantasy perspective, it’s at least good that the Bucs are letting him keep airing it out despite his woes, since that means (theoretically) more yards for owners of Bucs receivers (and if you are one of them, god help you) and more chances for points for owners of defenses facing the Bucs.
• A study in contrast: While Broncos QB Kyle Orton sent 21 of his 29 completions Sunday in the direction of Brandon Marshall, Rams QB Keith Null spread his 27 completions among nine receivers, which one usually accomplishes only in Madden football games. Heck, Null even completed five passes to three Titans defenders.

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.

One of my teams opened its season by running into a six-TD performance by Drew Brees, and the Saints quarterback is in position to ruin another week for me tonight, as both of my teams are leading but my opponents in both leagues have Brees left up their sleeves, and a repeat of that six-TD explosion would spell trouble for both of my teams.

The Outlaws of the Marsh are holding a 30-point lead despite another subpar week. In fact, the only non-QB in the lineup to find the end zone for the Outlaws this week was tight end Dallas Clark. Normally reliable DeAngelo Williams had his worst game since Week 5, managing just 50 total yards, and Ray Rice and Rashard Mendenhall put up some nice yardage but no touchdowns. The wide receiver position was just flat-out ugly, as Jerricho Cotchery and Mike Sims-Walker combined for just 58 yards, or two fantasy points. There were plenty of points left on the bench this week in Antonio Gates (118 yards, 2 TDs), Chris Chambers (70 yards, TD), and Derrick Mason (62 yards, TD). Yet, thanks to the fact that my opponent was starting the likes of Nate Burleson and Rock Cartwright, I have a healthy lead and still have Roman Harper left to counter Brees.

The Thamesmen, on the other hand, are in a much tighter game, up by less than a point and facing Brees plus the Saints defense, Laurence Maroney, and DL Will Smith. Fortunately, I do have Tom Brady and Stephen Gostkowski left to give me at least a fighting chance. It doesn’t help that my opponent got more than 24 points — 24! — from Charles Woodson alone on Thanksgiving, or that I left Donald Driver’s 142-yard, 1-TD outing on the bench for another disappointing day by Vincent Jackson (27 yards), or that Joseph Addai picked the one week I plugged him into the lineup ahead of Ray Rice to end his touchdown streak. Thank goodness I started Antonio Gates in this league and reaped the reward.

Week 12 Highs and Lows

Vincent Jackson after a catch — an suddenly rare act for him.

• I’m going to rant just a tad more about Vincent Jackson’s funk. He hasn’t sniffed a 100-yard outing in a month and hasn’t found the end zone in three games. His last three games have been atrocious for a guy who was looking like a must-start through nine weeks. In Weeks 10-12, he has a TOTAL of seven catches for 93 yards. That’s after averaging five catches and 90 yards and scoring seven TDs in the eight games before that. This three-game funk coincides with the Chargers’ renewed commitment to the run, even though LaDainian Tomlinson still doesn’t look like his 2007 self. In the last three games, Tomlinson has averaged four more carries, 20 more yards, and scored five times.
• Who would’ve thought that going to the Bengals would give your career a boost, but that’s what happened with Larry Johnson. After getting cut by the Chiefs and scooped up by the suddenly mighty Bengals, Johnson had his best game since Week 16 of last season, running for 107 yards. Of course, it did come against the Browns, so maybe you should take 25 percent off that figure. Johnson would be a hot pickup if not for the fact that Cedric Benson is assured of returning to the starting lineup upon his return.
• If you need help at RB, the successor to Johnson in KC, Jamaal Charles, has shown himself to be a viable pickup. He has run for 103, 58, and 93 yards the last three games, scoring twice, and he’s averaging a pretty gawdy 5.2 yards a carry on the season.
• Ray Rice and Rashard Mendenhall both impressed me Sunday night. Considering they were going up against the league’s No. 1 (Steelers) and No. 6 (Ravens) run defenses, you won’t have expected a whole lot, but both performed at or above their average this season. Rice continued his terrifice all-around play with 88 yards on the ground and 67 through the air, while Mendenhall grounded out 95 yards and added 22 yards receiving.
• I know I’m jinxing myself for writing this, but I think Chris Chambers might be going into my starting lineup next week. In four games since joining the Chiefs, he has averaged 79 yards and found the end zone three times. He has been able to deliver at least one big play per game. You know the Chiefs will throw a lot since they are usually playing from behind, and with Dwayne Bowe suspended, Chambers has quickly established himself as Matt Cassel’s big-play guy.

Just in case writing about T.O. doing well isn’t enough to jinx him, here’s a picture.

• I know I’ve bad-mouthed Terrell Owens a lot, and I still refuse to have him on my fantasy team, but I’ll give credit where credit’s due. Something seems to have clicked for Owens in the last three games. After averaging 35 yards through the first eight games, he has average 126 in the last three. Yes, the 197-yard outing two weeks ago throws that average off a bit, but he has had at least 85 yards each of the last three weeks, with two touchdowns. And he’s had catches of 46, 51, and 98 yards in that span. He at least seems like a viable play now. There, I said it. Maybe that’ll jinx him into sucking again.

Even scrap-heap pickup Chris Chambers managed to put up a 100-yard game for me this week.

The theme for my teams this week was leaving wide receiver points on the bench. In all, between my two teams, I left five 100-yard receiving games on the bench. After getting uneven play from the position throughout the season, the Outlaws of the Marsh had an unbelievable week from its wide receivers. All five of the team’s wideouts had either 100 yards or scored a touchdown. Normally, I would be kicking myself for leaving three 100-yard receivers (Derrick Mason, Mario Manningham, Chris Chambers) on the bench, but on Sunday, those were actually the three lowest scoring wideouts on the Outlaws’ roster as both starters, Jerricho Cotchery and Mike Sims-Walker, had more than 80 yards and a touchdown each. Throw in some balanced scoring up and down the lineup, and it was enough to give the Outlaws just under 100 points and a 19-point lead, with kicker Rob Bironas ready to chip in some more tonight. The Outlaws will improve to 8-3 and strengthen its grip on second place in the league.

My other team, The Thamesmen, also got plenty of production from its wide receiving corps but didn’t get the most out of it. The Thamesmen left Sims-Walker (91 yards, TD), Calvin Johnson (161 yards, TD), and Desean Jackson (107 yards, TD) on the bench in favor of Sidney Rice and Vincent Jackson. Rice paid off with 89 yards and a pair of TDs, but Jackson had his second straight subpar game, which presents a bit of a dilemma about whether to bench him in favor of one of the other guys even though he has been the best wideout on the Thamesmen this season. It’s a good thing Rice exploded, because everyone else in the starting lineup underperformed Sunday, from Tom Brady’s meager one TD pass to Adrian Peterson and Ray Rice combining for about 11 points — about half of their projections. Nonetheless, thanks to my opponent’s even more subpar day, I’ve already secured victory despite a pedestrian 73 points, which will move The Thamesmen’s to 9-2, firmly entrenched in first place.

Week 11 Highs and Lows

After catching a TD on Sunday, Chansi Stuckey is sacrificed to the football gods by the Browns offense in hopes of convincing them to let Cleveland play the Lions the rest of the season.

• It’s a bizarre week when Matthew Stafford and Brady Quinn outscore the likes of Tom Brady, Philip Rivers, and Peyton Manning — in fact, not just outscore, but completely outclass, at least in fantasy production. But that’s what happens when you get to play against Division II schools … I mean, the Browns and Lions. Thanksgiving came early for the immovable objects that are the Cleveland and Detroit offenses as they got to face each other’s defense, and the result was two stat lines that neither of these quarterbacks will likely see again: 422 yards, 5 TDs, 2 INTs for Stafford; 304 yards, 4 TDs for Quinn. Of course, considering that Stafford was owned in 13 percent of Yahoo! leagues and Quinn in only 5 percent, that’s a whole lot of points down the drain.
• Speaking of wasted QB production, who started Alex Smith (227 yards, 3 TDs, INT)? Of course, most of that came after the Packers jumped all over the 49ers. Speaking as a 49ers fan, I want Shaun Hill back.
• After a bit of a slow start to the season, Ryan Grant has been picking up steam. His 129-yard, 1-TD outing Sunday marked the third time in the last six weeks that he has put up double digit fantasy points. Of course, playing a softer schedule helps. Those three games came against the Browns, the Bucs, and the fading 49ers. Still, Grant has received more consistent carries since the team’s Week 5 bye, and he’s got another softy coming up this week in the Lions. Just be prepared for a dip in production when he goes up against the Ravens and Steelers after that.
• Hello, Terrell Owens. Where have you been all year? Oh right, stinking it up in the frozen hell of Buffalo like I knew you would. TO finally had a breakout game Sunday with 197 yards, including a 98-yard TD. If you’re kicking yourself for leaving those points on the bench, don’t. That’s as fluky as it gets, and he’ll go back to his usual three catches a game soon enough.
• Thanks to his team’s lackluster play, Vernon Davis has kind of flown under the radar a bit despite his stellar season. The 49ers tight end is on pace for more than 80 catches, just under 1,000 yards, and more impressively, almost 13 TDs. Those are Antonio Gates numbers back when Antonio Gates was actually getting end-zone love. And Davis has done it regardless of who’s at quarterback, and that’s a good thing considering who is at quarterback for the 49ers.

Since he’s a former Tar Heel, I’m required to like Madison Hedgecock. But if he dares to steal any more TD catches from their rightful owners …

• Anyone who owns Giants wide receivers must have thrown up their hands in disbelief over the fact that Eli Manning could break out of his slump Sunday and throw three TDs, and yet have none of those go to one of his wideouts. Instead, tight end Kevin Boss caught two and Madison Hedgecock — yes, former UNC fullback Madison Hedgecock, who had one career TD before Sunday! — caught the other.
• If you need help at quarterback, consider Matt Cassel, who is owned in just 47 percent of Yahoo! leagues. Aside from two inexplicable stinkers against the Raiders and a 3-INT game against the Chargers, he has actually been pretty good this year. It seems like 200-some yards and two TDs are about his upper limit, and he’s managed two TDs in five games this year. The downside is that he will put up an occasional stinker, and you really can’t predict when that’ll come, since he played well against the Steelers on Sunday and yet has put up ugly numbers in both games against the Raiders this season.

Let’s hope Jonathan Stewart’s pilfering of two touchdowns from DeAngelo Williams doesn’t help my opponent steal a win from me.

The outcomes of both of my games this week are hinging on tonight’s Ravens-Browns game, and they really shouldn’t, considering my teams went up against two opponents that are a combined 5-13. The Thamesmen’s opponent didn’t even bother to swap out his kicker, who’s on a bye, and his tight end, who’s on a bye and out for the season. Thanks in large part to that, The Thamesmen are up by 20 and still have Ray Rice left. That may usually seem like enough, but when your opponent has the Ravens defense going up against a hapless Browns team, you just can’t be certain. I would be breathing easier had Vincent Jackson not inexplicably put up a meager one catch or had Julius Peppers actually managed to do anything. Big games by Tom Brady (375 yards, 3 TDs), Sidney Rice (204 receiving yards), and Adrian Peterson (133 yards, 2 TDs) made up for that.

The action is much tighter for my other team, the Outlaws of the Marsh, who actually find themselves trailing by six points but still have Rice and Derrick Mason on deck, while my opponent only had a defensive lineman, Trevor Pryce, remaining. But again, when you are playing against the Browns, Pryce probably has as good a chance as any to find the end zone for a defensive touchdown. It didn’t help that my opponent’s Panthers running back (Jonathan Stewart) stole two touchdowns from my Panthers running back (DeAngelo Williams).

Week 10 Highs and Lows

• Wait, has the world gone topsy-turvy? We got competent quarterback play from Marc Bulger (298 yards, 2 TDs, INT) and Jake Delhomme (195 yards, 2 TDs) on the same day?! They must’ve performed some sort of voodoo ritual and transferred their suckitude to Jay Cutler, who threw five interceptions Sunday and has thrown nine of his 17 INTs on the season in just two games (Weeks 1 and 10).

Joseph Addai keeps piling up TDs, but it hasn’t done me much good.

• It kills me that I can’t find a spot in my starting lineup for Joseph Addai. He got two more touchdowns Sunday night despite having only 10 carries and two receptions. But he’s stuck behind Adrian Peterson and Ray Rice, both of whom regularly get more touches but not necessarily more points, than Addai. And of course, the one time I’m going to get the guts to bench one of those guys for Addai will be the game where his touchdown streak ends.
• It used to be that 96 yards and two TDs would be a routine game for LaDainian Tomlinson, but now it’s a cause for celebration. The fact that it came against an Eagles defense that’s usually stout against the run makes it even more impressive. Too bad it won’t last.

Why am I showing a Mike Tolbert touchdown? Because I couldn’t find a picture of an Antonio Gates touchdown.

• Antonio Gates is looking like this year’s version of last year’s Owen Daniels — a tight end who makes a lot of catches and gets a good amount of yards, but just can’t get any love near the end zone. Gates is on pace for almost 90 catches and 1,200 yards, both of which would be career highs. But he hasn’t found the end zone outside of the two he scored in Week 4. In fantasy football, that makes him less valuable than many other tight ends (who were drafted much lower) who don’t get anywhere near the touches but are more frequently targeted in the red zone.
• The Titans continued to roll with Vince Young at the helm, and that has brought good tidings for their kicker, Rob Bironas, who was one of the top kickers in the league last year but had been hampered by his offense’s woeful performances in the first six weeks this season. But he has scored in double figures each of the last three weeks. In those three games, he has attempted eight field goals (compared to nine in the first six games) and 12 extra points (after kicking only seven in the first six weeks). He probably got dropped in a lot of leagues after the slow start, and it might be a good idea to snatch him up now as the Titans don’t have a particularly tough schedule the rest of the way.

Mike Sims-Walker’s non-late-night-rendezvous Week 9 helped both of my fantasy teams.

With five weeks left before the fantasy football playoffs begin, both of my teams are starting to pick up some momentum and wins to make their postseason push. The Outlaws of the Marsh are sitting on a 29-point lead and have Rashard Mendenhall and James Harrison left in the Monday night game to counter the opponent’s Heath Miller, Brian Dawkins, and D.J. Williams, so barring any craziness, it’s looking like a win and a 6-3 mark that will move the Outlaws into a tie for second. The Outlaws benefited from a good game by Philip Rivers, who rebounded from a so-so performance the week before to throw three touchdowns, and continued strong play from the backfield tandem of DeAngelo Williams (149 rushing yards, 2 TDs) and Ray Rice (135 total yards, TD). And Mike Sims-Walker (6 catches, 147 yards, TD) actually managed to put up points this week and didn’t get suspended for a late rendezvous or stink it up against a bad defense or anything! It also helped a lot that my opponent inexplicably left Larry Fitzgerald (123 yards, 2 TDs) on the bench in favor of Desean Jackson.

In my other league, the Thamesmen got darn lucky as they are in position for a win despite scoring only 70 points. They hold an eight-point lead with James Harrison going up against Elvis Dumervil tonight. Hold on, and the Thamesmen will go to 7-2 and might strengthen its grip on first place, depending on what the second-place team does. Not bad, considering I was without Adrian Peterson (bye) and had the Bears defense (bye bye from my roster following its 0.98-point performance two weeks after putting up negative points). Sims-Walker and Rice did some damage for me in this league as well. Throw in a couple TDs from Vincent Jackson, and I just might have enough to hold on.

Week 9 Highs and Lows

Turns out that all the Titans needed to be a winning team was a quarterback who can throw for 100-some yards without turning the ball over. Enter Vince Young.

• Who are you guys and what have you done with the Titans? Whether it was the bye week or the quarterback change, Tennessee has looked like a different team on offense the last two weeks. After averaging 14 points in their first six games, the Titans have scored 30 or more in each of the last two, both with Vince Young at quarterback. Young hasn’t exactly torn it up, totaling only 297 yards passing with 1 TD in the two games. But he hasn’t turned the ball over, unlike his predecessor, Kerry Collins, who gave the ball away 10 times in the first six games. The biggest beneficiary has been Chris Johnson, who has tallied season highs in carries each of the last two games and totaled 363 rushing yards and four TDs in that span.
• Seven quarterbacks went over 300 yards passing Sunday, but it was actually a rather inefficient day for QBs. Matt Hasselbeck needed 51 passes to get his 329 yards, Peyton Manning needed 50 to reach 318, and Matt Schaub needed 43 to get to 311. The day’s yardage leader, Jay Cutler, chucked it 47 times for 369 yards, and Alex Smith and Matt Cassel couldn’t even get to 300 despite throwing 45 and 39 passes, respectively. Then there was woeful Lions rookie Matthew Stafford, who threw it 42 times, averaged less than 5 yards per attempt, and tossed five interceptions. Calvin Johnson should get used to sitting near the end of my bench the rest of the season.

You just became a real NFL running back again, Laurence Maroney. How does it feel?

• Could it be? Has Laurence Maroney finally returned from the fantasy football version of Siberia? After being virtually useless the last season and a half, Maroney has shown — gasp! — consistency the last three weeks, averaging 82 yards rushing and finding the end zone in each game. More encouragingly, the Patriots finally seem willing to give him consistent touches, as he has 49 carries in the last three games after getting only 22 in the previous five. The next question, of course, is how long this will last before the Patriots decide to go back to their running back roulette. At this point, though, Maroney is probably worth a flyer if you need some depth at running back.
• And now, our weekly gripe about the Saints backfield-by-committee: Actually, I have good things to say about one of their guys this week. Pierre Thomas found the end zone for the second straight week and has scored six TDs in six games this season despite being stuck in a platoon. That’s not surprising, though, considering he showed pretty much the same nose for the end zone last season, when he had more than 16 carries in a game only once, yet scored 12 touchdowns. That knack for scoring is what makes him a solid play despite having to split carries. It was kind of encouraging that he had 13 carries Sunday while Mike Bell, the other main ball carrier in the platoon, had just five.
• Want more proof that the Panthers can’t win with Jake Delhomme at quarterback? Look at Sunday’s game against the Saints. First quarter, Delhomme throws two passes, Panthers go up 14-0. Second quarter, Delhomme throws three passes, Panthers get outscored 6-3. Third quarter, Delhomme throws seven passes, Panthers get outscored 14-3. Fourth quarter, Delhomme throws 18 passes, Panthers get blanked 10-0 and lose 30-20. See a trend?

Julius Peppers’ big game helped The Thamesmen to a big lead Sunday.

A week after scoring 100 points and losing, the Outlaws of the Marsh took the reverse route to seeming defeat this week, putting up only 69.5 points thanks to a subpar game from Philip Rivers and a goose egg from Mike Sims-Walker. They lead by 1.5 points and have Roman Harper left in the Monday night game. But even in a league that awards a point a tackle, it’ll be hard to hold off John Carney. For the second week in a row, the Outlaws didn’t really leave much on the bench, as no one there had more than three points. So it’s looking like the Outlaws will drop to 4-4 and slide closer to the glut in the middle of the league. It’s a good thing that eight of the 12 teams in this league make the playoffs. (UPDATE: To my surprise, Harper actually outscored Carney on Monday night, lifting the Outlaws to a narrow victory. God, I love the 1-point-per-tackle scoring rule in this league!)

The picture is much rosier in my other league, as the Thamesmen are staked to a 26-point lead and put up more than 97 points before their quarterback, Matt Ryan, takes the field tonight. Getting 26 points from the Bears defense didn’t hurt, neither did Adrian Peterson’s continued strong play (97 yards, 1 TD) or a huge game by Julius Peppers (1 sack, 1 forced fumble, and 1 interception returned for a TD). The Thamesmen are on a roll, about to win their third straight to take sole possession of first place.

Week 8 Highs and Lows

• To harp some more on that two-catch, 9-yard effort by Sims-Walker on Sunday, it’s made even more frustrating by the fact that it came against the league’s worst defense, the Titans, who are 32nd in points allowed, 31st in yards allowed, and 32nd in passing yards allowed. They say good defense beats good offense, but apparently bad defense beats mediocre offense, too. No, I’m not bitter or anything.

This pretty much sums up Steven Jackson’s season: Him running through opposing defenses while the rest of his team is barely in the picture.
• His quarterback is a mess; his wide receivers are … well, he has no wide receivers; and his defense has given up more than 35 points in half of its games. Yet Steven Jackson (149 rushing yards, TD) somehow keeps piling up yards, going over 100 total yards in six of eight games this season. If he were on a team with a semblance of an offense, Jackson would probably be one of the top, if not the top, fantasy running backs. Unfortunately, he plays for the Rams and Sunday’s TD was his first this season.
• Speaking of the Rams-Lions game, it was another case of bad defense beating bad offense. The pitiful play of Lions QB Matthew Stafford against the usually pitiful Rams defense makes it seem increasingly hopeless for Calvin Johnson, whenever he does come back, to post any kind of consistent numbers this season. It’s tough to put up good stats when your worst nemesis is your own QB. If Johnson is Megatron, does that make Stafford Optimus Prime?
• I wrote a couple weeks back about Nate Burleson’ on-one-week-off-the-next pattern, and that continued Sunday. His receiving yards by week: 74, 46, 109, 31, 98, 40, 89. So, time to send him to the bench again this week, even if he is going up against the Lions.
• Hey Greg Jennings, where have you been the last five weeks? Sunday’s 88 yards were the most Jennings has put up since Week 3, and he got his first touchdown since the opening weekend.

For the Panthers, this is how it should be: Jake Delhomme doing little more than cheerleading in the background while a Panthers running back does something good.
• The Panthers might’ve finally realized what the rest of the world had known since Week 1: You can’t win games by letting Jake Delhomme throw the ball. Due in part to being knocked out in the third quarter, Delhomme finished with only 14 pass attempts — his fewest in a game this season. Not so coincidentally, the Panthers scored a season-high 34 points, powered by its backfield tandem of DeAngelo Williams and Jonathan Stewart. Delhomme’s replacement, Matt Moore, threw just one pass.
• LaDainian Tomlinson scored twice Sunday against the Raiders, but he’s still looking like he’s close to done. He managed only 56 yards, right around his average for the season, and managed just 3.1 yards a carry against an Oakland defense that’s 29th against the run and is allowing 4.5 yards per carry. The best that LT owners can hope for the rest of the way is that Tomlinson picks up some short-yardage touchdowns, because that’s about the only way he can put up solid fantasy numbers these days.

Antonio Bryant’s touchdown against the Patriots proved equally meaningless in real and fantasy football.

I went up against the league leader in both of my fantasy leagues this past weekend, scored more than 90 points in each league, and will probably come away 1-1. It’s kind of fitting, since this was a high-scoring week in real football as well, with eight of the 12 games seeing at least one team scoring more than 30 points, including three teams that went over 40.

The Outlaws of the Marsh have already been assured of a defeat despite scoring 100 points, but it’s the kind of loss I can live with: I made basically all the right lineup moves, scored a ton of points, and lost to a good team that scored just a bit more. I did leave Hakeem Nicks’ 10 points on the bench, but it won’t have made a difference, and the rest of the guys on my bench were all either on a bye week, injured, or Willie Parker, so I literally left nothing on the bench. I’m actually surprised to see my squad reach triple digits, considering half of my starting offense was on a bye. But I got a big game from Philip Rivers, a nice all-around effort by DeAngelo Williams, and even correctly guessed that this would be the week Antonio Bryant finds the end zone for a meaningless touchdown while his team gets stomped on.

In my other league, The Thamsmen are holding a 13-point lead and will try to hold off Brent Celek in the Monday night game to pull out a win over the leader in that league, who just so happens to be my wife. If it happens, the victory will be due in large part to her forgetting to swap out her kicker, who was on a bye this week. But hey, a win is a win. I got at least nine points from every offensive position except tight end, and another big game by Tom Brady helped me offset a -1.79 performance by the Bears defense (ouch!).

Week 7 Highs and Lows

Ryan Grant ran for 148 yards Sunday, but it came against the Browns, so it’s more like 80 yards, or, if you left him on your bench like I did, more like zero.

• Just to spite me, a week after I expressed my lack of enthusiasm for Ryan Grant’s performance this season, he explodes for 148 yards and a touchdown. Granted, it came against the lowly Browns, but this makes for back-to-back 90-plus-yard games for Grant, so maybe he’s turning the corner after all (of course, now that I’ve praised him, he’ll probably go back to averaging 2.5 yards a carry the rest of the season).
• A pair of unlikely 3-TD games Sunday: Ricky Williams and Vernon Davis (Davis’ trifecta is largely responsible for the Outlaws’ defeat this week).
• Week after week, you think, “There’s no way Hakeem Nicks can keep scoring a touchdown each week.” And week after week he does, or at least he has for the last four weeks since coming back from injury. The even better news is that he’s been getting into the action early, so it’s not just garbage-time points. If he’s flown under the radar so far in your league, he likely won’t anymore. Get him while you can, though the law of averages says his production will probably level off a bit, unless you are expecting him to finish with 13 touchdowns.

Joseph Addai embodies the difference between real football, where he’s consistently mediocre, and fantasy football, where he’s consistently solid.
• Another guy that seems to find the end zone every week: Joseph Addai. He’s got a mediocre 3.3 yards per carry and loses a fair number of touches to Donald Brown, yet he has proven to be a consistently solid contributor this season, thanks in large part to his nose for the end zone. He has scored a TD in five of the Colts’ six games, including the last four.
• This was a boom or bust week for NFL teams. Nine of the 24 teams that played Sunday scored at least 30, while six couldn’t break double figures, including a big zero from the Raiders. I guess it’s my good fortune that out of the 32 total points put up by those six teams Sunday, players on my fantasy teams accounted for 12 (TDs by DeAngelo Williams and Antonio Bryant).
• When the Saints score 46 points, you figure their strong running attack would rack up some good fantasy points, right? Well, let’s see: Mike Bell: 80 yards, 0 TD; Pierre Thomas: 44 yards, 0 TD; Reggie Bush: 26 yards, 1 TD. That’s a meager breakdown of about 5, 2, and 6 points, respectively. Thank you, backfield-by-committee. And to make matters worse, Drew Brees stole two touchdowns from the backfield with 1- and 2-yard runs. Ugh!