Week 15: You're Never as Smart as You Think You Are

by 2010 HBFFL Champion Renal Failure





Some things seem like a good idea at the time... like benching LeSean McCoy...

Renal Failure once again defies all odds, and reason, and laws of physics by becoming the first HBFFL team to make the playoffs the year after winning a championship, breaking the defending champion curse by way of a nail-biting 94-92 victory over Unfinished Person. Going into Monday night, UP was up 92-64, but we still had Marshawn Lynch and Brandon Lloyd left to play. Beast Mode scored 22, Brandon Lloyd got 8, sealing the win for your People's Champion in what has to be the grandest comeback in HBFFL history.

WILD CARD, BITCHES! 4-2-1 in the 2nd half of the season! Another strong finish for Renal Failure. Only the Bourbon Blasters had a better 2nd half record than your People's Champ.

But in all honesty there's not much to feel good about with this win. UP lost DeMarco Murray early in the Dallas/New York game and Greg Jennings got injured in his game vs. Oakland in the third. You might say they left their games "unfinished." However, UP got huge days from MJD (37 points) and Marques Colston (27 points) so it's not like UP was starving for points, though he wished Michael Vick put up more of a fight than 12 points.


Nonamedufus sees that his Week 14 win over Multiple Scorgasms was for naught...

Your People's Champ almost pulled what Chris did last week: The Self-Inflicted Lineup Screw Job. See, we looked at the matchups for Week 14 and saw that Marshawn Lynch was playing against the weakest run defense in the NFL and thought "Hey, this might be a good week to start this guy. And he's been throwing up big bear-in-space points lately." That meant making a choice between benching Shady McCoy or Chris Johnson. Shady was up against a tough Dolphins run defense, CJ2K was at home vs. a Saints defense that doesn't scare anyone. CJ2K was projected for 16 and had been on a roll lately, McCoy was only projected for 12 and the Eagles were getting back Vick who can run the ball into the end zone himself with ease, so we trusted the numbers and benched McCoy. And it was true that McCoy had trouble gaining yards vs. the Dolphins, but he also got two touchdowns. CJ2K had just as much trouble vs. the Saints and had no scores.

Hey, we started the season with CJ2K screwing us over, that's how we were going out!

So yes, in retrospect we can clearly see how placing our entire season's hopes and dreams on a Rams/Seahawks game wasn't really the intelligent play we originally thought it would be. And as we went into Monday night your People's Champ had just about resigned ourselves to the notion that we had hara-kiried our season by trying to be oh so fucking clever. Not that the rest of the Renal regulars did much of anything to help. Mighty Megatron (3pts) and Jason Witten (1pts) were outscored by Billy Fucking Cundiff (6pts). Only Tony Romo's ridiculous 39-point day was keeping things competitive. But our gut feeling paid off, and Beast Mode and Brandon Lloyd came through for the People, returning Renal Failure to the playoffs with a marginally better record than last year (8-5-1 in 2011, 8-6 in 2010). And we're super glad we got that tie vs. Multiple Scorgasms because we would have lost the tiebreaker with NoNames.


Just when you think you have Renal Failure beat, they get 30 points on Monday night and hit you with a mid-air RKO/Diamond Cutter...

So... opening round of the playoffs... and look who's waiting for us: Chris and his Purple Drank. What do we know about Purple Drank? We know we've beaten them twice this season. We know he's solid at RB with Ray Rice and Michael Turner. We know he's got the top TE in the league with Rob Gronkowski. But we also know his QB situation is dire with Andy Dalton and Ryan Fitzpatrick being 13th and 14th in QB scoring.

But what do you know about Renal Failure? Did you know LeSean McCoy was the highest-scoring RB in the HBFFL? Did you know that Marshawn Lynch is 6th and has been sitting on the Renal bench for most of the season alongside the 10th-leading rusher Ryan Mathews (hey, we wanted to make some deals but no one wanted to play Let's Make a Deal with Renal Failure)? Did you know Megatron was 2nd in the league in WR points, or that Tony Romo is 8th in QB points, or that Jason Witten was one of only four tight ends this season to break 100 points? Did you know that CJ2K sucked ass for most of the season, only getting double digit points in six out of 14 games and still is the 12th-highest scoring RB in the HBFFL?

Well, now you know and knowing is half the battle!


The other half of the battle? Not losing your goddamn mind...

Yahoo! is projecting a 103-92 victory for... RENAL FAILURE? Against the 10-4 Purple Drank? How can this be? Well, CJ2K is running against the winless-for-a-reason Colts, Shady McCoy will be running on a Jets defense that is weak on the ground, Megatron will be snagging down touchdowns vs. the Raiders, and Tony Romo will be throwing all day vs. the Buccaneers because that makes more sense than handing the ball to Felix Jones. Sure, Chris has a good matchup with Ray Rice running roughshod over the Chargers and Rob Gronkowski going up against the inexplicable Broncos, but as stated before he still has Andy Dalton and Ryan Fitzpatrick as his QB's. That has to make Chris feel a bit queasy, pinning his playoff hopes on them.

The only trend Chris has going for him is that he's 1-0 in playoff games vs. Renal Failure. But as Week 14 showed, Renal Failure breaks trends. And wins games.

Renal Failure is the defending 2010 HBFFL champion, the defending 2010 FTWL champion, and The People's Champion. We finished dead last in the FTWL and lost our opening playoff game this week in our third league. Playoffs in our fourth league don't start until Week 16 but we've already clinched a spot. Three playoff berths in four leagues... not too shabby.