2008 Shark Tank Football - Week 2

It was a bad week for Pac-10 football... and I'm talking about performances in the NFL. Carson Palmer and Damon Huard put up negative points. DeSean Jackson gave away a touchdown and cost Kalvin a win. Chad Johnson/Ocho Cinco and T.J. Houshmandzadeh had lousy games because Palmer stunk.

At least there were some decent performances from former Pac-10 studs. Aaron Rodgers had a big game as did his former Cal teammate Marshawn Lynch and Reggie Bush may actually have a good season. Unlike all Pac-10 teams not playing home games at a stadium that has hosted the Olympics twice.

I was at Mile 49 of my race this weekend when I heard the USC/Ohio State game on the radio in the truck of one of the aid station workers. I asked, "Hey, what's the score?" And one of the guys replied, "USC's winning 21-3." I replied, "There's a shock." And the same guy added, "You won't believe the UCLA score. They lost 59-0! What does that prove?" I said, "It proves that the Mountain West is better than the Pac-10." It hurts because I'm the total Pac-10 apologist and after brutal losses by UCLA to BYU, Arizona St. to UNLV and Cal to a weak sauce, ACC-lame Maryland team, it pretty much leads me to believe that USC is the Pac-10's sole hope for football glory. Heck, Oregon almost lost to an overachieving Purdue team. Pitiful.

Kind of like our league. I'm not sure if the Shark Tank is more Pac-10 or SEC or Big XII. Or just Monterey Bay or Shedd. Whatever. Here are the standings after Week 2:

Rk  Team                   W-L    Total    Avg  Strk
 1  This Team Stinks       2-0   190.19   95.10   W2
 2  Under new ownership    2-0   176.63   88.31   W2
 3  Baba Buddha            2-0   159.91   79.96   W2
 4  dan's team             2-0   146.33   73.17   W2
 5  Ophir Gophirs          2-0   138.75   69.38   W2
 6  Flying pigskins        1-1   154.20   77.10   W1
 7  Hana Buttah            1-1   146.49   73.25   L1
 8  The JUNGERNAUT         1-1   134.56   67.28   W1
 9  Make it work           1-1   122.18   61.09   L1
10  Average Joes           0-2   154.73   77.37   L2
11  ESPN List knows best   0-2   128.59   64.30   L2
12  Brown Town Blues       0-2   117.28   58.64   L2
13  Laurie's Team          0-2   104.51   52.26   L2
14  Blue                   0-2    95.94   47.97   L2

Quite a few owners were victimized by the late postponement of the Ravens/Texans game in Houston. Players from both teams somehow remained in lineups on Sunday morning. The good news is that you don't have to worry about them getting a bye week later. The bad news, almost all of you who had them in your lineups went down and went down hard.

The JUNGERNAUT (1-1) 83.84 - Hana Buttah (1-1) 64.73

Byron has dropped half of his team. It must have been the unproductive half because he got double digit performances from five starters and cruised to his first victory over the outmatched Hana Buttah.

Eli Manning went 20-29 for 260 yards and three touchdowns, one of which went to Plaxico Burress who caught five of Manning's passes for 81 yards. Chris Chambers was on the business of end of two touchdown passes and rookie Eddie Royal continues to impress with 37 yards and a touchdown. Kicker Nick Folk tacked on two long field goals and five extra points.
For Warren's Hana Buttah, old man Isaac Bruce, who played for the Los Angeles Rams, had a game reminiscent of ten years ago. Bruce had four caatches for 153 yards. Kicker Stephen Gostkowski took advantage of the Patriots' new-found inability to score touchdowns and had four field goals. But it wasn't enough as quarterback Drew Brees threw for only 216 yards and had two picks. Ryan Grant had another disappointing performance as he had 15 carries for only 20 yards. The Packers could've gotten that from Ahman Green. Or Dorsey Levins. Or Paul Hornung. Today. Willie Parker and Jason Witten each had 100-yard games but neither hit paydirt.

I looked up the word "JUNGERNAUT" on the Interweb and couldn't find it. And then I finally realized that it was a play on words for the word "juggernaut." I wondered aloud, "What exactly is a juggernaut? Sounds like a friend of Archie and Veronica."

Well, according to the most reliable of online sources, Wikipedia, a juggernaut is "a term used to describe a force regarded as unstoppable, that will crush all in its path." Then I wondered, "Why did Byron pick that name then? Unless he's doing some reverse psychology thing. That's like an NFL team naming themselves the Jets when all they really do is run the ball until they got a real quarterback this year. Or an NBA or NHL team naming itself the Kings. It's like, "Our team name is not really descriptive. It's more of something hoped for."

Under new ownership (2-0) 96.47 - Brown Town Blues (0-2) 53.23

Despite personal loyalties including owning a jersey of Ben Roethlisberger, David was able to do the right thing and set aside all personal allegiance for the sake of the fantasy game. Big Ben hit the bench and future Hall-of-Fame quarterback Aaron Rodgers went 24-38 for 328 yards and three touchdowns and Santana Moss had 191 yards from scrimmmage and a score as UNO blew out BTB.

Rookie Chris Johnson ran for 109 yards and Joseph Addai scored on a short-touchdown run to aid the UNO effort. The Packers defense took advantage of the Lions with five sacks, three picks and two defensive touchdowns.

For Brown Town Blues, the sole hero was the man they call Marion the Barbarian. Barber had 114 total yards and two touchdowns. However, the receiving corps had another pitiful performance. It got so bad that BTB did not even start a tight end. But that actually worked out because regular TE Jeremy Shockey had only two catches for 22 yards and ended up with negative points because he lost a fumble.

Last week I mentioned that Troy Palomalu had dreadlocks. Of course, he doesn't - he just has long hair. The Shark Tank football blog regrets the error. Well, not really.

Newspaper and magazine corrections are hilarious to me. The errors are often fairly egregious, at least to the one that had his or her ox gored. So let's say the headline of the New York Times said, "Obama is a Muslim!" Of course, since he says he isn't, the NYT would stick a little tidbit on page 10 that says, "It turns out, Obama is not a Muslim. The Times regrets the error."

Why don't newspapers put on the front page above the fold, "We screwed up!" I guess newspapers reporting erroneous information wouldn't really be newsworthy enough to put on Page One. We regret that we always trust the press. We regret even more that we pay attention to blogs. Perhaps the framers of the Bill of Rights would have said, "As it turns out, we had no idea that this freedom of the press thing would lead to weblogs. We hereby regret that we ever passed the First Amendment. The Founding Fathers regret the error."

dan's team (2-0) 74.21 - Laurie's Team (0-2) 48.09

The Len spousal rivalry returns for the... I don't know how many times. Len Bowl XII? Close enough. This time, man beats woman... err... that doesn't sound so good. How about this time, man defeats woman as Dan gets big games from Julius Jones and Reggie Wayne to outduel Laurie.

Wayne had five receptions for 93 yards and a score while Torry Holt and Tony Gonzalez each had touchdown catches. Marshawn Lynch had a modest 58 yards but also found the end zone. But it was Jones that had a whopping 26 carries for 127 yards and a touchdown. Shawn Alexander who? Rookie Limas Sweed was out for the second straight game but no harm was done to Team Dan who won his second straight.

Carson Palmer had another Trojan-like performace. He went 16-27 for only 134 yards, no touchdowns and two interceptions. In two games, Palmer has a total of 0.70 fantasy points. That's exactly 28 passing yards. I can get my nephew Evan to the other side of my brother's driveway, throw him a NERF ball, he'd catch it and I'd have just as many fantasy points as Palmer. Maybe Carson's real first name is Laura and someone killed her and they're trying to find out who killed the real Carson Palmer.

Meanwhile, Philip Rivers may have taken away Laurie's starting QB job. Or at least he should. Rivers went 38-60 for 377 yards, three touchdowns and one pick. He threw short, medium and long and shredded the Broncos defense. Rivers would have given Laurie 22.43 fantasy points. As it turns out, it still wouldn't have been enough.

Anthony Gonzalez (a "good pick") had 137 yards receiving and Reggie Bush returned a punt 55 yards for a touchdown. But what has to concern Laurie was that Bush had only 10 carries and 28 yards. Not so great.

I asked the married couple to see if they had any sort of wager for the week. And they said, "Well, we decided that whoever loses has to do whatever the winner wants." And I asked, "Oh, so like cooking, cleaning, driving the kids around type stuff?" And Dan said, "Oh no. Something much more serious. Like we decided to kick this to another level."

Curiously but hesitantly, I asked, "What do you mean?"

"Well, the winner would get whatever fantasy players they wanted from the losing team." Well, that doesn't seem fair. "Life isn't always fair, came the prompt reply. Besides, the potential benefit is minimalized since the loser has by definition stinky players else they would have won."

I couldn't argue with that logic but it seems to me that I'd rather not have to clean for a month. "Well, we have a good arrangement. It was either this or the loser would surrender his or her vote in the upcoming election and also have to wait at the DMV or the Social Security Administration office for anything that needed to be taken care of." I guess Laurie got off easy then. If there are any fishy-looking trades, just remember, you can make the same deal if you play your spouse.

Ophir Gophirs (2-0) 74.00 - Blue (0-2) 46.04

Willie looks like he may go from first to worst and in two games, his Blue have totalled fewer than 100 points. In Week 2, Anquan Boldin and Brian Westbrook led the Gophirs to a rout as the Gophirs moved to 2-0.

Boldin had six receptions for 140 yards and three touchdowns. Westbrook had 103 total yards and three touchdowns as well. Rob lost the services of Andre Johnson, Willis McGahee and rookie Ray Rice to the postponement of the Ravens/Texans game but he still managed to put up an impressive point total.

Blue saw Clinton Portis score twice but little else went right. Peyton Manning had an ordinary game and but for a fourth quarter rally, would've done worse than has 8.78 points. No other Blue player reached the end zone though Santonio Holmes did have 104 total yards. Antonio Gates is starting to look like just another Chargers receiver as Philip Rivers has begun to throw to different receivers.

Rob is especially excited that this Friday is the however many annual "Talk Like a Pirate Day." I don't quite get this myself though I remember a couple years ago, my brother was on the front page of the website. I first heard of this about ten years ago on my NPR station at which point, I stopped listening to NPR.

But in all honestly, talking like a pirate sounds like a good idea. Who wouldn't want to call their girls "wenches"? "Ahoy Stef, you wench! Ye land lubber, fill my canteen with grog!" She'd be thrilled.

But you know, pirates are better known for their, you know, piracy. Though I've never been a real pirate, there is some serious piracy going on off the horn of East Africa where Somalian pirates actually hijack ships for ransom. And they get what they want more often than not.

So forget "talk like a pirate day." How abouts "Pirate like a pirate day"? Think about it. Dig your friend's ride? Go ahead and carjack it! A real pirate would do it. "Ahoy matey! Give me ye car keys so I can get ye booty!" Pirates are also known to have rather short tempers. This "pirate like a pirate day" would allow amnesty to anyone that caused bodily harm to another so long as they did so in a true buccaneer fashion. This would allow people to not only talk like pirates but act out their deeply repressed pirate fantasies.

So ahoy matey! Give me ye booty else I put ye in Davy Jones' locker! Avast, Felix Jones' locker.

This Team Stinks (2-0) 106.62 - Make it work (1-1) 60.20

This Team Stinks may actually not stink this year. Elijah's team became the first team this season to break the century mark as he got massive performances from Jay Cutler, Terrell Owens and rookie Darren McFadden to put the hurt on the overmatched and unlucky Make it work.

Cutler is starting to look like the 2008 version of 2007 Tom Brady. The guy with the bad haircut torched the Sandy Eggo secondary for 350 yards and four touchdowns. Sure, he got a little lucky. Had Ed Hochuli correctly called that play, Cutler would've had 344 yards, three touchdowns, a pick, and a fumble and lost a two-point conversion. But hey, after years of crappy luck, something was bound to go right for me.

Owens had three catches for 89 yards and two scores including a 72-yard pitch-and-catch. McFadden may not have been a bad pick after all. After Justin Fargas went down with a groin injury, McFadden came in and ran roughshod to the tune of 21 carries for 164 yards and a touchdown. The Titans D had another big game was they blocked a Bengals punt and got a touchdown out of it.

Matt got a good effort from Earnest Graham who had 128 yards and a score and Larry Fitzgerald who caught six catches for 153 yards but didn't hit paydirt. Matt elected to start Brett Favre which cost him about 15 points as Kurt Warner had a perfect QB rating and accumulated 22.03 fantasy points on the bench. Warner has replaced Favre as the starter.

#1 pick LaDainian Tomlinson had only ten carries for 26 yards and has yet to score this season despite the Chargers scoring 62 points as a team. It seems like Matt lamenting his rotten luck is an annual shark tank ritual. "I feel like I always draft a great white shark and he turns into a guppy."

I don't want to jinx my team by saying too much so I'll just leave it at that.

Baba Buddha (2-0) 76.39 - ESPN List knows best (0-2) 74.06

Andy needed Tony Romo to get nearly 19 fantasy points on Monday Night Football to overtake his post-Sunday deficit to Brent. Romo had a strong game as the soon-to-be Mr. Jessica Simpson went 21-30 for 312 yards and three scores with a pick and a fumble He also took three kneeldowns for -5 yards and one of these days, an owner is going to lose a game because his quarterback killed the clock at the end of his game.

Hines Ward scored his third touchdown of the season but Andy lost Marques Colston and Reggie Brown to injuries. Andy isn't really that concerned about fantasy football right now since the Red Sox are entering playoff mode. "My attention is focused first on the Red Sox. They need all my support this time of year, especially if they don't play the Angels in the first round. If they play the Angels, I can relax." When reminded that he has a young daughter and that perhaps she should have a higher priority than baseball, Andy replied, "She understands. If she were in my position, she'd do the exact the same thing." Karen was unavailable for comment but Addison was shown giddily gyrating while wearing a Red Sox cap and a Big Papi onesie.

Brent got six catches and 129 yards from Calvin Johnson and 167 yards receiving from Greg Jennings. Frank Gore scored his second touchdown in as many weeks. In a shocking development, Michael Turner did not come close to matching his Week 1 performance. Too bad this isn't a roto league. Remember those days?

Since Brent has adopted the name that I suggested, I figured he ought to start building a shrine to the not-so-almighty Buddha. Unfortunately, most players fantasy football are skill players and very few are fat and cherubic like a typical Buddha. Instead, I decided to examine the tenets of fantasy football Buddhism. There are the Four Noble Truths and the Noble Eightfold Path. If Brent hasn't changed his name, I'll go over the Eightfold Path next week as he continues to try to reach fantasy nirvana. But this week, we'll start with the Four Noble Truths of Fantasy Football.

First, fantasy football means suffering. No team will go through a season without turmoil. We have bye weeks, nagging injuries, players listed as "questionable" that play and frustration when a player drops the ball, quarterbacks take knees and other things that are sound in real football that upset us in the fantasy realm. There are positive experiences in fantasy too but heck, we don't remember them. We only remember when we bench a guy that runs for three touchdowns and not the one that gets the points we expect. Fantasy football is about nonpermanence. After all, after every season, we redraft new rosters.

Second, the origin of fantasy football suffering is attachment. We tend to focus on the transient and not on the permanent. We know that we only have these players for one season yet we wildly overrate our own players' values in trades while deflating the values of those trying to rip us off. Our due diligence becomes a crutch because we cling to what we should set free. When we release our attachments, we can succeed in our run to the playoffs.

Third, the cessation of fantasy football is attainable. However, this may take longer than normal. Even though it is Fantasy Football Hinduism that believes in reincarnation, you may feel like karma has slapped you and given you a group of healthy players that somehow becomes entirely injured by Week 3. Buddhism believes that the cessation of suffering begins with detachment. Believe me, many of you that are 2-8 after Week 10 will become so detached from your teams that trade offers will no longer be replied to and you will purposely suffer some more in the hope that in your next life, you will not have to suffer so much pain. Or at least get a higher draft pick.

Fourth, there is an eightfold path to the end of fantasy football suffering. Unfortunately, this path of self-improvement may not take place in one, two or even five years. Just ask Matt. He's still stuck on the first step on the Noble path. We will examine this next week.

Until then, do not needlessly attach yourself to the fantasy football realm. Do not feel obligated to refresh your browser every 30 seconds on a Sunday afternoon. Go out and play basketball or run a 100-mile race. The pain you feel is real and will make fantasy football suffering seem like a harmless scratch by comparison.

Flying pigskins (1-1) 77.23 - Average Joes (0-2) 75.76

If I'm Kalvin, I'm pretty upset this morning. DeSean Jackson prematurely threw the ball away at the end of a long pass from Donovan McNabb. No, I don't miss having DJax at Cal. The boy is a punk. But he's talented. However, that talent turned a 61-yard touchdown catch to a 60-yard reception and Westbrook scored on the next play. No harm for the Eagles but it cost Kalvin over ten fantasy points. And a win turned into a what appeared to be a bitter defeat by less than a point.

But then something strange transpired. The referee of the game, Hochuli came over to Aaron and explained that a play that was ruled a fumble was really an illegal forward pass and so Kalvin would retain possession. So a narrow win became a two point loss for Aaron.

Aaron, incensed, slammed his clipboard to the ground and got into the face of Hochuli. Hochuli said, "I'm sorry, Aaron. I blew it. I feel terrible but I can't change it." Aaron really wanted a piece of Hochuli but realized, "Hmm... he's about 100 lbs. stronger and heavier than I am. Perhaps I should just whine to the press like a typical sore-loser head coach on the losing end of bad calls."

Kalvin said, "It was unfortunate to win this way. Actually, who am I kidding? I'll take wins any way I can get them. You win some and you lose some. And those who are winsome like me win more."

Adrian Peterson had another large game as he stakes his claim to being the #1 overall fantasy pick for the next five years. AP had 180 total yards and has 263 rushing yards already in his quest for 2,000. The Bears D had another strong outing as did Packers kicker Mason Crosby. The game may have not come down to such a controversial finish if rookie Jonathan "The Daily Show" Stewart were in the lineup. Kalvin has the luxury of two quality rookies.

Tight end Tony Scheffler had two touchdown receptions and Aaron got decent efforts from Matt Forte and Ronnie Brown.

Aaron shook off the loss of Brady and decided, "I'm going to replace him with Damon Huard." Well, Huard left his game early with a strained neck muscle and ended up with only 17 yards passing and a pick. But Brandon Marshall came off suspension to have a massive 18 catches for 166 yards and a touchdown. Brandon Jacobs had another solid game. I think Aaron should call his team the "Average Brandons."