Rex Grossman Is Our Quarterback

Well, my friends, that about does it. The 2009 regular season is now in the books. Playoff seedings are set, the consolation bracket has been determined, and one unlucky owner has been saddled with the distinction of finishing in last (hello, Marble Ryan!) Just to bring you up to speed, the playoff seedings in the RexQB league are as follows:

1. Black Irish – Favre Dollar Footlongs*
2. Steve Stevens – T.O. Has B.O.
3. Torry Hallelujah/The Mysterious Mr. Tzatziki – The White Sauce**
4. The Slow Eater – The Chefs 2.1

*Team does not actually contain Brett Favre
**Team actually contains Brett Favre

If your league is anything like ours, there’ve been a lot of digital sour grapes passed around via email over the past day or two. So I thought I’d use this space to take a look at some of the most common excuses/complaints fantasy owners give for not making the playoffs.

1. You had to auto-draft.
This is just total BS. First, think back to whatever event caused you to miss the draft to begin with. Was it a wedding, funeral, work event, weekend in Pennsylvania Dutch country? In retrospect, was attending that event really worth four months of total misery spent at the bottom of your fantasy league? I didn’t think so. Prioritize, people. Also, it bears mentioning that Black Irish auto-drafted, and he’s in first place in our league! It’s really unlikely that he’d be there had he actually made his own picks, so if you’re a marginal fantasy player, maybe auto-draft is the way to go.

NB: Michael J. Cox had this to say about the whole situation:

“Black Irish’s auto-draft dominance probably makes all of us feel a lot like the Sports Guy did the first year that his wife out-picked him in the NFL for the year. His solution? Stop letting her pick games. There should be a hard and fast no auto-draft rule in place in the future to eliminate this kind of thing. We should all be allowed to be victims of our own fantasy stupidity.”

2. Your point total wasn’t indicative of your place in the standings.
This happens all the time in fantasy. Some ninth-place mope gets cranky because they were fourth in the league in points. I’m a little sympathetic here, but just like in the actual NFL, it’s not who you play, it’s when you play ‘em. Would you ever hear an NFL head coach complain about the schedule? No? Then you shouldn’t either.

Look, there’s an undeniable element of luck to fantasy football. We all know this going in. It can make things incredibly frustrating at times, I know, but this is the life we’ve chosen.

3. You lost X number of games by only Y points! If only player Z had been able to…
This goes hand-in-hand with #2. Complaining about close losses in fantasy football is only one step removed from complaining about where the ball lands on a roulette wheel. There are millions of variables in each fantasy football contest.

The best way to win close games is the same as the best way to win any game: start better players than the other guy. It’s that simple.

4. You’re too busy at work to keep up with waiver and free agent signings.
If after reading about the next breakout fantasy talent only to find out that someone else in your league had already scooped him up, maybe fantasy football isn’t for you. Or maybe it’s time to find a less competitive league – the public ones on ESPN or CBS Sports might be a good option.

What I love about fantasy football is that it’s totally egalitarian. We all start with a clean slate in August. Prepare, draft well, stay on top of the news, make informed decisions and anyone can succeed. Sure, having a cush job or owning a smartphone can help, but they’re certainly nothing that a little elbow grease can’t make up for. Really, fantasy football is one of the last vestiges of the American dream.

As Conrad Hilton said to Don Draper in the Mad Men finale: “I got everything I have on my own. It’s made me immune to those who complain and cry because they can’t. I didn’t take you for one of them, Don. Are you?”

5. In Week 14, you lost to someone starting a crappy RB.
If you’re fuming over a loss to a team who started, say, Quinton Ganther last weekend, you have an idea of what I’m talking about here. It’s a sad fact of life that crappy RBs have such an impact on fantasy playoff seedings and even championships, but a fact it remains. It happens every year. I repeat: it happens every year.

We all know how short the shelf-life is for RBs in this lig, so it should come as no surprise that by the end of the year, a lot of starting RBs will be finding themselves on the injury report, watching as their unheralded backups unexpectedly churn out 75 yards and a TD.

Most likely, you had a chance to grab the scrub RB in question, but passed because maybe you didn’t need him, or maybe you thought, “I’ve never heard of this guy before. He can’t be any good.” The lesson here, my friends, is this: cut whatever WR6 you’re carrying and just pick up the damn RB. Chances are, one of the teams vying for a playoff spot needs him. They’ll be hesitant to start whatever questionable WR you’ve cut loose (say, Mohamed Massaquoi or even T.J. Houshmandzadeh), but they’ll have no problem plugging Ganther into their giant hole at RB. Trust me.