NUFCED by wikkidpissah

Ooooooo, playoffs, right? This is what it's all about, what all that planning & plotting, sweating & suffering is for, ain't it? Well, for football players, it certainly is. For we practitioners of the fantasy arts, whose love of the real game bred our madness for the fake one, I fear the playoffs to be somewhat anticlimactic. Is that the weirdest thing or what?!

I got into FFB when I moved from Nevada to New Mexico several years ago. I usually had $500 or so in play each week in Reno, but betting with a bookie could cost me my gaming license here, so I had to find a new way to heighten my game enjoyment. Each year, my involvement has increased exponentially, to the point where, now, Sundays find me in front of my friend's eightcast with my laptop set up to provide me streaming results so I can properly sweat the players on my eleven FFB teams, then rush home to throw together a couple of thousand words for you mooyuks on my very own fantasy sports blog. Yeeeeeeesh!

Lord help me, but I enjoy almost everything about it, from checking the playoff matchups of my players during week SIX, to wondering-if-I-want-GB-to-fall-too-far-behind-cuz-then-they-won't-run-Samkon-Gado-enough-but-then-I-also-have-the-Bears-def-and-maybe-Brett-will-throw-more-ints syndrome. I'm sure I even find secret amusement in my noob/WDIS outrage. The only exception may be the playoffs. I set up with the same anticipation but, within two or three series of downs, I'm all "what's up with this one freakin' game at a time bullshit?!".

And I'm not alone. On Fanball this week, for every "Go, Steelers" or "The Pats are back" thread, there were nineteen for the value of this-or-that keeper or Vince Young's pro prospects. Cuz FFB is rarely about the present, it's about the future - the next play, the next game, the next season. I guess I'm OK with that but, next week, I'm going to try to watch Pgh-Den without wondering if Rod Smith can keep it going for another season. Oh, well, let's have a look at the mere four games which constituted this weekend's action.

WASH 17 TB 10
One playoff phenomenon I hate is "don't blow it" football. Is the desire to advance so strong that a team can completely forget or deny what got them to the postseason in the first place? That's what the DC eleven did once they got ahead and, if there had been a QB more competent than "Happy Feet" Simms opposing them, it would have cost them the game...the first item on the Bucs' postseason list should be their o-line . Another season with these guys and Caddy gives up on the wonderful footwork of which he's capable...Washington "sit on it" tactics almost hid the fact that that's a very nice defense Tampa has.

NE 28 JAX 3
It's hard to watch the Pats without that feeling of inevitability settting in, isn't it?...I got my wish for them to face the Broncos (to whom they are surely superior) but then I started wondering, since they gotta get past the Colts anyway to get into their fourth consecutive Super Bowl, wouldn't it have been better for them to have their shot this week, when Superteam has to put it back together after the starters have gone five weeks without playing winning football, than in the conference finals, when they'll have their roll back on? Oh, well, we shall see...Is that the longest sentence you've ever read?...There are kudos to be handed out on the Jaguar side - to their defensive backfield. Never have I seen Brady more flummoxed by coverage than he was in this first half...I fear it won't be long before the talents of the exciting young WR tandem of MJones & EWilford surpass their QBs ability to get the ball to them.

CAR 23 NYG 0
There was no greater proof that Tikitikitiki is the only thing one should worry about when playing the Gints than this game...The Cats were my preseason choice for NFC champion and I feel a whole lot better about that now...One who wants to know how to play from ahead need look no further than this contest...Is there a more sumptuous pleasure in all of sport than watching a New York team get positively thumped in an important game?

PGH 31 CIN 17
What an awful, awful thing that football fans in the Queen City waited this long to see their team play postseason football, only to have the heart ripped from it almost before it began? As savvy a vet as Kitna is, it ain't the same and the lead didn't hold...After watching the Pittsburgh D play as poorly in the first half of this game as they did against Detroit the previous week, they have gone from my outside favorite to go to SBXL to a decided underdog in Thunderdome next week...They have entirely different skill sets, but one thing Ruthlessbergerfrickle has in common with Tom Brady is his unflappability. And, after watching the parade of indecisive clowns that helmed most NFL teams in '05, aren't we starting to see unflappability (I even like typing that word) as a QB's most vital quality?

I have actually seen FFB end a marriage. My first sports pal when I moved back to New Mexico was married to a fellow Iowan and both were vehement (is there another kind?) Green Bay fans. This one week, my friend had a player on his fantasy team that was opposing the Pack. He was able to conceal this from his beloved throughout his rooting, until Favre & Co. had an insurmountable lead, when the good lady returned to the living room with our snack refills to find my friend cheering, if ever so briefly, against the Gold & Green. An argument ensued, which quickly escalated to the throwing of Packer chotchskies. Three weeks later, my pal returned from work to find his place entirely empty. In one of the coldest abandonments I've ever seen, she'd cleaned out the bank accounts, moved their speedboat to moorings in another lake a week previous, taken all his clothes save one suit and failed to even leave soap in the shower. Go Packers and God bless us all. Play hard -