Season Preview
Awwwww Yeaaaaahhhhhh! We are back baby, and another electrifying edition of Fantasy Football is finally on our doorsteps, ready to engulf us in a haze of exhilaration like a giant cloud of the sticky purps emanating from a classic Kyle blunt. It really doesn’t get much better than this, fellas. With the draft now in the rearview mirror, it’s nothing but wide-open roads straight to our first Sunday Kickoff gloriously awaiting us on the not-so-distant horizon. With the return of football, I think you all know what that means? That is right. It is I. The Connoisseur of Criticism, the Master of Metaphor, the Purveyor of Puns, the Simile Specialist himself, and the Ultimate Fantasy Whisperer, back once again for the 2021 season, and you best believe I am coming at you better than ever. My highly trained staff (of just me) has spent the entire offseason putting in the work ironing out the kinks in the Power Rankings, Awards, and Headlines to reinvigorate our long hard staff of fantasy insight and wisdom named the Passionate Playback and I’m ramming it, full Gandalf, straight up y’alls puckered little assholes until every last drop of my infamous Fantasy Information loads are fully ejected deep inside the yearning loins of each and every one of you. Majestic stuff.
I know what you all are thinking: Yes, we have eloquently outlined for you all, in a very special video essay, a 2021 season welcoming already. However, that was only because we just couldn’t resist showing off the full array of our artistic capabilities by extending ourselves out to the video format… No big deal. So, gents, let this formally mark me and the staff’s first official welcome to you for the 2021 Fantasy Season. I hope what you all internalized from our video portraying such a powerful, prevailing message was the inimitable importance of complete and total focus this league demands of its participants each and every week of the season. So often is the case, year after year, once the draft is over, we inevitably hit the after boosters on the calendar and fly Mach 5 straight through first few weeks of the year. Before you even have a chance to blink, you will abruptly be tossed into the vicious blood sucking snake pit that is the Emotional Friends FFL mid-season waiver wire battle. It’s approximately Week 5 when it dawns on most of you that the majority of the breakout players have all been rostered weeks earlier, and the waivers are a deserted barren wasteland that makes Mad Max’s Universe look like an island paradise. This is a league of killers, gentlemen. Don’t let our innocuous league name distract you from this fact, or you may very well discover yourself in dead fucking last by Week 6, firmly attached by the mouth to the ass end of the league power rankings, human centipede style, just like our old friend, Kam (peace be with him). Let his story be a stark reminder of the dangers of coming into the draft woefully unprepared, naively riding blind homerism, and ignorantly punting on adding any depth via waiver additions. I only bring up his unsettling tale of terribleness to really hammer home the overarching motif of every preseason write up I’ve done, or ever will do for that matter. Y’ALL BETTER BE READY. Rather than take this message as a patronizing lecture on how to run your team, think of it as one last little gesture of good will and a friendly reminder prior to us waging outright fantasy war on each other once kickoff comes this Sunday. Anyway, since my gracious welcomings and warnings on preparedness have evidently begun smashing into the lifeless corpse of Seabiscut, crunching his bones like a frail vase and spraying his oddly colored blood all over the brand new all white plush sofa, since this is a season preview, let’s dispense with the pleasantries and platitudes, shall we?
Obviously, question marks a plenty surround our league members and their fleeting chances to reach glory this season. I say fleeting of course because I make my most triumphant return for the 2021 campaign like a phoenix rising from the ashes. That’s right folks! You best believe I am out for blood. After back-to-back underwhelming playoff finishes as the #1 seed in 2018 and 2019, my 2020 chances shattered away with Dak’s ankle figuratively and… quite literally, actually. Now I am a renewed man set on vengeance after you all failed to give even one measly little modicum of effort to manage my roster while I went off to defend your freedoms. Disgraceful. Karma is a real Bitch. Any who… just a little something to keep in mind. Moving right along, the staff and I thought it might be a dash of good ole’ fashioned fun to dive deeper into some of those aforementioned questions, as we gear up for a brand spanking new season of Fantasy, in an official Season Preview type of thingy for a little Passionate Playback action. How about it then, guys? I don’t know ‘bout you, but fantasy got us feelin’ 22. So, calmly place the headphones on the table, make sure the Sonos surround sound is on full blast, pound that play button on the T Sizzle playlist, and start dancing around the house in a daze of utter delirium while you wake up all the neighbors! Fantasy Football is back baby!!! Let’s Go!!!
Passionate Playback: Biggest Question Marks for 2021
Can Grant be the first back-to-back champion?
A simple question really, with a simple answer if you ask me. That would be a resounding… N to the O. Listen, it really is no disrespect to last year’s wonder boy. After gaining his certified acceptance, confidently removing the interim tag like Clark Kent in a back alley, then promptly wrecking shop on the entire league en route to a ship, all in his official year one, was impressive stuff to say the least. That being said, in full re-draft leagues, the level of difficulty in completing the repeat goes up ten-fold for many apparent reasons. Who knows if his draft will be as good. Will he get as many injury breaks? Will he get lucky that my team nosedived into a grisly demise last season (which undoubtedly won’t happen this year)? It’s all the obvious items, plus many more I haven’t even mentioned (because I am too lazy, and you get the point). Big Kev was our latest contender for this elusive honor, and he only went out last year and lost his first seven games, bottoming out with a loss to DW and maybe the worst Fantasy team of all time in terms of per game point production. While Kevin wilted like a music critic who dares write a negative review of a Taylor Swift album, maybe Grant, who already ventured into uncharted waters for this league with last season’s heralded championship run, can buck the odds once again and accomplish this remarkable feat. We for one are certainly not buying it though. Hence the quick move to call our trusty bookie and double down heavy on the action that Grant’s industrial size container of laundry detergent stays packed away for the entirety of 2021 as his famed Sunday Sploogefests will become a distant memory when he misses the playoffs with cleaner shorts than a meth addicted, OCD riddled janitor’s apartment. Anyway, speaking of embattled former league champions…
Can Kevin return to prominence after maybe the most embarrassing repeat attempt in league history?
To say it was a season from hell for the reigning champion, is essentially the same as saying T Sizzle’s 1989 album was “pretty good”. Yup, you guessed it: understatement of the year. Luck defined Kev’s 2019 and then like a cruel, Christopher Nolan-esque plot twist, similar to thinking you woke up to make it to the bathroom on time the morning after downing a double wrapped Chipotle burrito with extra guac, only to realize it was all just a dream, Kevin shit the bed badly in 2020. We could rattle off historically abysmal bad luck statistics, trying to frame his 2020 as something other than what it actually was, which was a fermented turd mixed with a three-week-old protein shake left under the passenger seat of your car in the Arizona Summer. All this was to say, after being the unwary victim of Chipotle-ception, he has to better in 2021… right? He has always been a respectable fantasy manager. Still, one might ponder if he truly has the chops to remain relevant in our ever-evolving league as it continues to improve and add quality managers year after year. Does Kev have more in the tank? Or will he descend into the depths of perennial losership, still clinging desperately to a time when he could proudly call himself a champion? This season, we believe, will be our first glimpse at answering this question.
What will the impact of no longer having Trevor (a.k.a. master of the dark arts) mean for our league?
The way I look at, we can go multiple ways with this. My initial hunch was his powers will magically be transferred to someone else in our league, unbeknownst to anyone. In this scenario, the obvious person to take over as controller of the mythical realm is Carl, who fills into Trevor’s former team slot within the Sleeper App. The theory is that it would work comparable to a haunted house of sorts, where no matter who the owner of the house is, the spirit always stays regardless of which unlucky soul inhabits the spine tingling abode. So, this whole time it wasn’t connected to Trevor at all, but rather his team. (Mind. Exploded.). It’s only a theory at this point, and I’m just asking questions here. Therefore, we don’t expect fully fleshed out answers, but this ultimately leads me to the next scenario… Maybe, since Trevor is gone, we will never have to worry again about his crazy and unexplainable penchant for winning games and making the playoffs? Every. Fucking. Year. All while he demonstrably sucked at optimizing his roster and making good start/sit decisions while consistently ending near the bottom in points scored season after season. Even as I type this, the anger in my blood begins to boil to the surface knowing the countless heart wrenching defeats I have suffered at the hands of Lady Luck and her trusty partner in crime, Madame Inconsistency. I’m just gonna say it: I hope Trevor has sons. I hope he has beautiful, articulate, athletic sons who play fantasy football, and they constantly lose at fantasy in the most bitter ways possible. I pray they know that pain. Anyway, with Trev now gone, maybe, juuuuuuussssst maybe, we might be getting a more normal season where the bad teams are bad and the good teams are good, with no crazy tomfoolery that leaves us questioning the very nature of our existence. On second thought… That never happens. *Long Sigh* Oh, well.
Can Daniel build off his 2020 and actually start to gain back some respectability?
Death, Taxes, and Daniel’s shittiness in this league. These were all things we could count on. But for the first time since we can remember, Dan the Man vehemently stuck both middle fingers out to the rest of the league in 2020 and ran off an improbable win streak to start the season and made the playoffs since…. Like I said, we can’t remember. With an actual playoff appearance under his belt, 2021 will be the real test to see if he has what it takes earn our respect, or if it was just a tiny blip of good fortune, only for Daniel-San to make his annual free fall down the standings to make home in his all so familiar spot squarely in the league cellar. For more inside information on Daniel’s team, let’s go out to who the staff landed for the 4th season in a row, the ultimate baller bombshell, the sideline smoke show extraordinaire, the sexy mamacita that puts the hot in “hot take”, ladies and gentlemen it’s the Fantasy Fox herself, it is the one and only, Erin Andrews! She is standing by now with inside scoop on Daniel’s team.
Erin, after all the success Daniel had in 2020, just talk to us a little about his prospects for 2021 and what his team needs to do if they are to compete again this season.
“He still sucks.”
Wow. Just wow. You never cease to stop providing the hard hitting insights that no other reporter in the game can put out. Erin, your exceedingly exceptional talents are bested by nothing other than maybe your unrivaled beauty. Until next, time. That was Erin Andrews.
How will our two newbies perform?
If you haven’t noticed, we have two new members joining the ranks of the world’s greatest Fantasy Football League this season. One, we have a bit of history with in KP, the other… not so much (for most of us anyway). In a matter of just two seasons, we have now axed three managers, and if I didn’t know any better, this unprecedented turn over could be viewed as a cause for concern. However, sometimes in life we go through rough patches and we have to kiss a few frogs. I once kissed a frog while on a spiritual revival journey of sorts through the jungles of Peru. It was a big ole sucker with a crazy bluish pattern on his back. Well, as you can imagine, I proceeded to go on the gnarliest psychedelic trip known to man, and I was tripping straight balls for 36 hours straight. I entered like 12 different dimensions and was flying warp speed through the multiverse and the quantum realm simultaneously. It was crazy man. When I came out the other side it was like waking from an exorcism. I blew chunks for hours, my insides burned, and my head throbbed like the Hulk was trying to squeeze it until it popped like the Mountain did to the Viper. I literally thought I was going to die. Shit was crazy. So my point is… Wait… what was my point again? I swear I had- Nope. I forgot…
At any rate, there’s not a whole lot to write about with the new guys other than they are true enigmas, like the stain that mysteriously won’t wash away from the crotchal region of your bed sheets. Most likely it isn’t anything you should worry about. Yet, deep down, when you are lying in bed awake at night, you begin to wonder if in fact that pesky little stain is something a little more disconcerting than originally assumed to be. Should you pay it any thought? What could it be? Do you even want to know the answer to that question? Just roll over, my sweet butterfly, and not mind it any more thought. There, there, friend. You can sleep easy tonight, ideally forgetting its very presence, resting but inches away from your oh-so-tender nether region. Hopefully, it stays like that, night after night, week after week. We have an entire season to take care of this “problem”. Just don’t completely brush it off though. Because when it comes time to finally get lucky, and you bring home the pretty lady you spent a romantic evening of courtship wooing into your bed, it’s going to be a real mood killer trying to explain away that troubling tinge of a worrying color she spots upon your sheets. And that, gentlemen, is how Grant won the league in his first official season. We may not know, or even want to know, much about the new fellas, but you better damn well have taken care of them when it comes time to seal the deal.
Welp, that’ll do it. Another off season in the books. As is the always the case, we thank you for joining us for another exquisite edition of the Passionate Playback. Whether you liked it, loved it, hated it, or none of the above, we don’t really care. No one is stopping you from meticulously spending an ungodly amount of hours creating an entire website dedicated to the league and covering all the teams with weekly recaps. I can’t guarantee you I will read it, or even acknowledge it’s existence, but hey, the opportunity is always there. Also, for those of you still scoring at home, we hit just a skosh over 2,700 words this week; not too shabby. As for the upcoming season, we wish everyone good luck and god speed. Until next time, my highly trained staff (of just me) and I are signing off. Peace out!
I know what you all are thinking: Yes, we have eloquently outlined for you all, in a very special video essay, a 2021 season welcoming already. However, that was only because we just couldn’t resist showing off the full array of our artistic capabilities by extending ourselves out to the video format… No big deal. So, gents, let this formally mark me and the staff’s first official welcome to you for the 2021 Fantasy Season. I hope what you all internalized from our video portraying such a powerful, prevailing message was the inimitable importance of complete and total focus this league demands of its participants each and every week of the season. So often is the case, year after year, once the draft is over, we inevitably hit the after boosters on the calendar and fly Mach 5 straight through first few weeks of the year. Before you even have a chance to blink, you will abruptly be tossed into the vicious blood sucking snake pit that is the Emotional Friends FFL mid-season waiver wire battle. It’s approximately Week 5 when it dawns on most of you that the majority of the breakout players have all been rostered weeks earlier, and the waivers are a deserted barren wasteland that makes Mad Max’s Universe look like an island paradise. This is a league of killers, gentlemen. Don’t let our innocuous league name distract you from this fact, or you may very well discover yourself in dead fucking last by Week 6, firmly attached by the mouth to the ass end of the league power rankings, human centipede style, just like our old friend, Kam (peace be with him). Let his story be a stark reminder of the dangers of coming into the draft woefully unprepared, naively riding blind homerism, and ignorantly punting on adding any depth via waiver additions. I only bring up his unsettling tale of terribleness to really hammer home the overarching motif of every preseason write up I’ve done, or ever will do for that matter. Y’ALL BETTER BE READY. Rather than take this message as a patronizing lecture on how to run your team, think of it as one last little gesture of good will and a friendly reminder prior to us waging outright fantasy war on each other once kickoff comes this Sunday. Anyway, since my gracious welcomings and warnings on preparedness have evidently begun smashing into the lifeless corpse of Seabiscut, crunching his bones like a frail vase and spraying his oddly colored blood all over the brand new all white plush sofa, since this is a season preview, let’s dispense with the pleasantries and platitudes, shall we?
Obviously, question marks a plenty surround our league members and their fleeting chances to reach glory this season. I say fleeting of course because I make my most triumphant return for the 2021 campaign like a phoenix rising from the ashes. That’s right folks! You best believe I am out for blood. After back-to-back underwhelming playoff finishes as the #1 seed in 2018 and 2019, my 2020 chances shattered away with Dak’s ankle figuratively and… quite literally, actually. Now I am a renewed man set on vengeance after you all failed to give even one measly little modicum of effort to manage my roster while I went off to defend your freedoms. Disgraceful. Karma is a real Bitch. Any who… just a little something to keep in mind. Moving right along, the staff and I thought it might be a dash of good ole’ fashioned fun to dive deeper into some of those aforementioned questions, as we gear up for a brand spanking new season of Fantasy, in an official Season Preview type of thingy for a little Passionate Playback action. How about it then, guys? I don’t know ‘bout you, but fantasy got us feelin’ 22. So, calmly place the headphones on the table, make sure the Sonos surround sound is on full blast, pound that play button on the T Sizzle playlist, and start dancing around the house in a daze of utter delirium while you wake up all the neighbors! Fantasy Football is back baby!!! Let’s Go!!!
Passionate Playback: Biggest Question Marks for 2021
Can Grant be the first back-to-back champion?
A simple question really, with a simple answer if you ask me. That would be a resounding… N to the O. Listen, it really is no disrespect to last year’s wonder boy. After gaining his certified acceptance, confidently removing the interim tag like Clark Kent in a back alley, then promptly wrecking shop on the entire league en route to a ship, all in his official year one, was impressive stuff to say the least. That being said, in full re-draft leagues, the level of difficulty in completing the repeat goes up ten-fold for many apparent reasons. Who knows if his draft will be as good. Will he get as many injury breaks? Will he get lucky that my team nosedived into a grisly demise last season (which undoubtedly won’t happen this year)? It’s all the obvious items, plus many more I haven’t even mentioned (because I am too lazy, and you get the point). Big Kev was our latest contender for this elusive honor, and he only went out last year and lost his first seven games, bottoming out with a loss to DW and maybe the worst Fantasy team of all time in terms of per game point production. While Kevin wilted like a music critic who dares write a negative review of a Taylor Swift album, maybe Grant, who already ventured into uncharted waters for this league with last season’s heralded championship run, can buck the odds once again and accomplish this remarkable feat. We for one are certainly not buying it though. Hence the quick move to call our trusty bookie and double down heavy on the action that Grant’s industrial size container of laundry detergent stays packed away for the entirety of 2021 as his famed Sunday Sploogefests will become a distant memory when he misses the playoffs with cleaner shorts than a meth addicted, OCD riddled janitor’s apartment. Anyway, speaking of embattled former league champions…
Can Kevin return to prominence after maybe the most embarrassing repeat attempt in league history?
To say it was a season from hell for the reigning champion, is essentially the same as saying T Sizzle’s 1989 album was “pretty good”. Yup, you guessed it: understatement of the year. Luck defined Kev’s 2019 and then like a cruel, Christopher Nolan-esque plot twist, similar to thinking you woke up to make it to the bathroom on time the morning after downing a double wrapped Chipotle burrito with extra guac, only to realize it was all just a dream, Kevin shit the bed badly in 2020. We could rattle off historically abysmal bad luck statistics, trying to frame his 2020 as something other than what it actually was, which was a fermented turd mixed with a three-week-old protein shake left under the passenger seat of your car in the Arizona Summer. All this was to say, after being the unwary victim of Chipotle-ception, he has to better in 2021… right? He has always been a respectable fantasy manager. Still, one might ponder if he truly has the chops to remain relevant in our ever-evolving league as it continues to improve and add quality managers year after year. Does Kev have more in the tank? Or will he descend into the depths of perennial losership, still clinging desperately to a time when he could proudly call himself a champion? This season, we believe, will be our first glimpse at answering this question.
What will the impact of no longer having Trevor (a.k.a. master of the dark arts) mean for our league?
The way I look at, we can go multiple ways with this. My initial hunch was his powers will magically be transferred to someone else in our league, unbeknownst to anyone. In this scenario, the obvious person to take over as controller of the mythical realm is Carl, who fills into Trevor’s former team slot within the Sleeper App. The theory is that it would work comparable to a haunted house of sorts, where no matter who the owner of the house is, the spirit always stays regardless of which unlucky soul inhabits the spine tingling abode. So, this whole time it wasn’t connected to Trevor at all, but rather his team. (Mind. Exploded.). It’s only a theory at this point, and I’m just asking questions here. Therefore, we don’t expect fully fleshed out answers, but this ultimately leads me to the next scenario… Maybe, since Trevor is gone, we will never have to worry again about his crazy and unexplainable penchant for winning games and making the playoffs? Every. Fucking. Year. All while he demonstrably sucked at optimizing his roster and making good start/sit decisions while consistently ending near the bottom in points scored season after season. Even as I type this, the anger in my blood begins to boil to the surface knowing the countless heart wrenching defeats I have suffered at the hands of Lady Luck and her trusty partner in crime, Madame Inconsistency. I’m just gonna say it: I hope Trevor has sons. I hope he has beautiful, articulate, athletic sons who play fantasy football, and they constantly lose at fantasy in the most bitter ways possible. I pray they know that pain. Anyway, with Trev now gone, maybe, juuuuuuussssst maybe, we might be getting a more normal season where the bad teams are bad and the good teams are good, with no crazy tomfoolery that leaves us questioning the very nature of our existence. On second thought… That never happens. *Long Sigh* Oh, well.
Can Daniel build off his 2020 and actually start to gain back some respectability?
Death, Taxes, and Daniel’s shittiness in this league. These were all things we could count on. But for the first time since we can remember, Dan the Man vehemently stuck both middle fingers out to the rest of the league in 2020 and ran off an improbable win streak to start the season and made the playoffs since…. Like I said, we can’t remember. With an actual playoff appearance under his belt, 2021 will be the real test to see if he has what it takes earn our respect, or if it was just a tiny blip of good fortune, only for Daniel-San to make his annual free fall down the standings to make home in his all so familiar spot squarely in the league cellar. For more inside information on Daniel’s team, let’s go out to who the staff landed for the 4th season in a row, the ultimate baller bombshell, the sideline smoke show extraordinaire, the sexy mamacita that puts the hot in “hot take”, ladies and gentlemen it’s the Fantasy Fox herself, it is the one and only, Erin Andrews! She is standing by now with inside scoop on Daniel’s team.
Erin, after all the success Daniel had in 2020, just talk to us a little about his prospects for 2021 and what his team needs to do if they are to compete again this season.
“He still sucks.”
Wow. Just wow. You never cease to stop providing the hard hitting insights that no other reporter in the game can put out. Erin, your exceedingly exceptional talents are bested by nothing other than maybe your unrivaled beauty. Until next, time. That was Erin Andrews.
How will our two newbies perform?
If you haven’t noticed, we have two new members joining the ranks of the world’s greatest Fantasy Football League this season. One, we have a bit of history with in KP, the other… not so much (for most of us anyway). In a matter of just two seasons, we have now axed three managers, and if I didn’t know any better, this unprecedented turn over could be viewed as a cause for concern. However, sometimes in life we go through rough patches and we have to kiss a few frogs. I once kissed a frog while on a spiritual revival journey of sorts through the jungles of Peru. It was a big ole sucker with a crazy bluish pattern on his back. Well, as you can imagine, I proceeded to go on the gnarliest psychedelic trip known to man, and I was tripping straight balls for 36 hours straight. I entered like 12 different dimensions and was flying warp speed through the multiverse and the quantum realm simultaneously. It was crazy man. When I came out the other side it was like waking from an exorcism. I blew chunks for hours, my insides burned, and my head throbbed like the Hulk was trying to squeeze it until it popped like the Mountain did to the Viper. I literally thought I was going to die. Shit was crazy. So my point is… Wait… what was my point again? I swear I had- Nope. I forgot…
At any rate, there’s not a whole lot to write about with the new guys other than they are true enigmas, like the stain that mysteriously won’t wash away from the crotchal region of your bed sheets. Most likely it isn’t anything you should worry about. Yet, deep down, when you are lying in bed awake at night, you begin to wonder if in fact that pesky little stain is something a little more disconcerting than originally assumed to be. Should you pay it any thought? What could it be? Do you even want to know the answer to that question? Just roll over, my sweet butterfly, and not mind it any more thought. There, there, friend. You can sleep easy tonight, ideally forgetting its very presence, resting but inches away from your oh-so-tender nether region. Hopefully, it stays like that, night after night, week after week. We have an entire season to take care of this “problem”. Just don’t completely brush it off though. Because when it comes time to finally get lucky, and you bring home the pretty lady you spent a romantic evening of courtship wooing into your bed, it’s going to be a real mood killer trying to explain away that troubling tinge of a worrying color she spots upon your sheets. And that, gentlemen, is how Grant won the league in his first official season. We may not know, or even want to know, much about the new fellas, but you better damn well have taken care of them when it comes time to seal the deal.
Welp, that’ll do it. Another off season in the books. As is the always the case, we thank you for joining us for another exquisite edition of the Passionate Playback. Whether you liked it, loved it, hated it, or none of the above, we don’t really care. No one is stopping you from meticulously spending an ungodly amount of hours creating an entire website dedicated to the league and covering all the teams with weekly recaps. I can’t guarantee you I will read it, or even acknowledge it’s existence, but hey, the opportunity is always there. Also, for those of you still scoring at home, we hit just a skosh over 2,700 words this week; not too shabby. As for the upcoming season, we wish everyone good luck and god speed. Until next time, my highly trained staff (of just me) and I are signing off. Peace out!
