We Will Watch O'er Ramparts When They Come On Netflix

LOBO -Predator Press

Statistically eliminated from the playoffs, our beloved Preds have only two weeks left in our season. 

Nonetheless, we suit up.  We fire up.  Week 13 [Future Ex-Cons] and 14 [Renal Failure] will find the mighty Preds undefeated in spirit.

-Undefeated!

We, the Preds, have something rare and precious on our side, something that makes us impervious to doubt.  Something special, that makes us play harder when there is nothing to gain.  Something that chases away the creeping, cloying darkness of surrendered hearts.  Something that transcends the statistics and scorecards, innate and priceless, burned into our very souls, that cannot be stolen, bought, found, or taught.  Something that drives us to stand and deliver against all odds, and play the best damn football we ever have.  Something that could potentially send either or both of two 2014 playoff hopefuls sprawling to obscurity.

And that something is spite.

(Plus I'll bench my starters for 2015 draft picks)

Week 12: Oh now you want to play fantasy football!

by Renal Failure



Yeah, really Meaty Clackers...


In past HBFFL seasons there's been the issue of absentee owners, those who have bailed on their teams in the last half of the season when competing for a playoff spot has been rendered a bitter memory. And Meaty Clackers qualified as one through Weeks 10 and 11 keeping Nick Foles in as QB and not swapping out injured or bye week players. So when the Clackers appeared on the schedule for a Week 12 game with the People's Champion Renal Failure we thought we'd have as easy a time as Future Ex-Cons did winning 45-32 in Week 11.

Why would you start playing for real now???

BUT NO!  For reasons unknown, the Clackers decided this was week to field an actual competitive team.  And compete they did, putting up a season high 133 points in Week 13 against Renal Failure.  If they had done something similar in Week 10 we'd be in 4th place instead of one game out of the playoffs.

Luckily the People's Champion put up 144. Drew Brees came through with 37 points on Monday night to clinch our victory.  Alfred Morris put up 23.  Demaryius Thomas excelled in the absence of the other Thomas and Emmanuel Sanders with 26 points. The Eagles D bailed us out with 18 points. And Billy Cundiff showed why is he the HBFFL's kicker of legend with a 14 point day.

So Renal Failure finds themselves at 7-5, still in 5th place behind the Patriots who managed to beat Cranberry Sauce 102-83.  Future Ex-Cons stayed ahead with a victory over The DreamCrushers and Mile High Club blew out Bald Spots.  But Renal Failure is 3rd in Points For in the HBFFL, so if we can force a tiebreaker situation we're almost guaranteed to win.

All the other teams in the lower half of the league (Predator Press, Cranberry Sauce, Bald Spots, Meaty Clackers, Bourbon Blasters) have been eliminated, but it does not mean that any of the Top Four have clinched a spot.  The 9-3 teams (DreamCrushers!, Mile High, and Ex-Cons) need one more win to clinch a spot because if any of them lose their remaining two games and Renal Failure wins their remaining two then it would force a tiebreaker which would likely favor the People's Champ.


Happy Thanksgiving to those who had Calvin Johnson in their lineups in Week 13... like we did in the FTWL.

The Patriots at 8-4 are the closest target for Renal Failure and with Mile High Club (the #1 scoring team in the league) and a recently awakened Meaty Clacker squad left on their schedule they could be the most vulnerable for collapse.

But Renal Failure needs to get through The DreamCrushers! in Week 13, but your People's Champ is projected as a 117-100 winner in this matchup so that's good.  That gives us a bit of wiggle room in a league where it is severely lacking. 

We're getting down to the wire here, and one out of five teams is going to get fucked out of playoff spot.  We're hoping it's not Renal Failure.

Renal Failure is the People's Champion and is 6-5 in the FTWL but is in 4th place where we have the 2nd highest points scored total. We're making the playoffs in at least one of these damn leagues.

Week 11: Every Steeler Except Ours Scored Big

slapped together by Renal Failure

We don't even have time this week for videos.

Our three-game win streak came to an end at the hands of Mile High Club 115-89.  Antonio Brown and Le'Veon Bell had huge games on Monday night, and our Steeler Martavius Bryant (who had been lighting it up) didn't show up.  Drew Brees had such a bad day that Jay Cutler doubled him up on points.  Even Billy Cundiff soiled the sheets with a 1-point day after weeks of steady kicking.

So the bad news is we remain in 5th and Future Ex-Cons won to jump ahead in the standings. The good news is that the Patriots lost and we're only a game behind them and we have a 60-point advantage in the tie-breaker. Even better news, this week we face Meaty Clackers and they've barely been putting a team on the field the past couple weeks (just ask the Ex-Cons who won 45-32 over the Clackers because the Clackers had three empty spots in their starting lineup).

Playoff implication talk
DreamCrushers! at 9-2 are in with one more win, but they have the toughest schedule out of the remaining relevant teams with Ex-Cons, Renal Failure, and Bald Spots (who beat the Patriots this past week) left on the docket.

Mile High Club at 8-3 needs two wins to clinch or one and some help to clinch.  Their remaining games aren't too scary with Bald Spots, Patriots, and Cranberry Sauce left to play.  Two wins seems pretty likely on their end.

Same deal for 8-3 Future Ex-Cons but their path to the playoffs may be more treacherous.  After the DreamCrushers! this week they play the Predator Press and Bourbon Blasters who, while at the bottom of the standings, have never been easy wins. Ex-Cons could only get one win out of their next three, but that might be enough to get them in.

If you're going to win at fantasy football,
you gotta throw a few bears into deep orbit

Patriots at 7-4 are currently on a three game losing streak, but they have an easy schedule with Cranberry Sauce this week, Mile High in Week 13, then a gimmie game against Meaty Clackers to end the season.  If they can get to 9 wins, they'll probably get in.

Renal Failure at 6-5 needs to take care of business this week with the Clackers, score an upset over DreamCrushers! then finish strong vs. Predator Press to get to 9 wins and have a chance at the playoffs because no one above them, not even the Patriots, are likely to crash and burn in all their remaining games. 

Technically Cranberry Sauce and Bald Spots have an outside chance of getting in, which would require Renal Failure and the Patriots to go 0-3 in these remaining weeks and Sauce and Spots to win all of their remaining games to force a tie-breaker between themselves and the Patriots, which would probably go to Cranberry Sauce because they have 83 more points than the Bald Spots. 

Bye weeks are over for the Renal roster, so we're coming full strength for the rest of the season. We have no injury issues, but we've got the depth to deal with it if necessary.  We're looking forward to being in the hunt till the very last week, and the People have faith that their champion will be playoff bound in 2014.

Renal Failure is the People's Champion of fantasy football. We are also 6-5 in the FTWL with two other teams. That playoff race is much more interesting.

The People's Week 10: The Beast That Throws Bears Into Comets

written hastily by Renal Failure


Marshawn 3:16 says I just scored 4 TD's! 
 
The Patriots learned two things in this week's HBFFL matchup against the People's Champion Renal Failure: 1) Renal Failure lives for revenge, and 2) it's hard to win when your opponent's starting RB scores 45 points, which is what Marshawn Lynch did for the People in Week 10 to give Renal Failure a big 131-108 victory to bring our current win streak to three games.

Other notable performances on the Renal Roster - Denard Robinson with 18 big points, Demaryius Thomas with 15, and Drew Brees was a bullshit offensive pass interference penalty away from getting at least 30 points but alas had to settle for 21.  Jeremy Maclin and Billy Cundiff had off-weeks of 5 and 6 points respectively.  Bobby Rainey's 5-points earned him a ticket to the waiver wire. You're behind Bishop Sankey on our RB depth chart, that's how bad you are!

The Patriots had a solid week from most of their starters. Vernon Davis probably shouldn't have even bothered showing up (Goose Egg!).  Patrioits goofed with starting Matt Ryan (16pts) instead of Ben Roethlisberger (24pts) but that wouldn't have made much of a difference. Losing by 15 ain't much better than losing by 23. But it does illustrate the dilemma of playing the matchup vs. playing the hot player.


It ain't fun when you get Beasted... so you'd better be the Beast!

Renal Failure (6-4) needed that Week 10 win to keep pace with the top four teams. Patriots drop to 7-3, as did Mile High Club. Future Ex-Cons won to get to 7-3, so now there's three teams within a game's reach of Renal Failure (DretamCrushers! have advanced to 8-2).  Renal Failure remains third in scoring: 56 points ahead of the Patriots, 7 points in front of Future Ex-Cons, 9 points behind Mile High Club, and 29 points behind the DreamCrushers! This should make for some interesting tie-breaker mayhem down the stretch should Renal Failure keep the pressure on the 7-3 teams.

Speaking of 7-3 teams, Mile High Club draws Renal Failure this week, which makes this the HBFFL game of the week because of the direct playoff implications. Renal Failure can catapult to 4th (points for tiebreaker) with a victory and would keep pace with the other 7-3 teams Convicts and Patriots who have favorable matchups against 3-7 teams (Dreamcrushers! look to go to 9-2 with a victory over 3-7 Bourbon Blasters who need to pray for another 50 point Aaron Rodgers game to have a chance of victory).


What does a team averaging 149 points over three games look like? Looks like Classic Renal Failure to us...

We're without Flavor of the Waiver Wire Denard Robinson and Jason Witten this week because of bye weeks, but Alfred Morris is back and will run wild on the Buccaneers. Drew Brees is projected for a ridiculous 29 points vs. the Bengals but if Bryan Hoyer can rampage on Cincy than so can the legendary Brees.  Our FLEX dilemma this week is whether we trust a returning Ryan Mathews or if we go with rookie WR sensation Martavis Bryant who has been lighting it up since Week 7 for the Steelers.  We might have to take our own advice and go with the hot hand on the Steelers.

Mile High is putting their trust in Andy Dalton (or RGIII who they just picked up because Tony Romo is on a bye). Delaine Walker who lit us up in Week 2 is out with a concussion so Mile High picked up Kyle Rudolph who is returning from a sports hernia injury in September.  Not sure how that will shake out because it's the Vikings.  Shady McCoy is no longer a lock for big numbers but he had a light week vs. Carolina so he may get more work vs. Green Bay. Arian Foster is still Arian Foster, but the Browns have actually been pretty good defensively this year. Le'Veon Bell will have fun running against the Titans. Antonio Brown and Emmanuel Sanders will get their points in but will it be enough?

Yahoo!'s throwing up their arms and saying flip a coin on this matchup, projecting a 108-108 tie, and historically speaking in the HBFFL ties send the playoff race into absolute chaos. We're hoping Mile High's Steelers investment goes south this week so we can keep things interesting in the HBFFL playoff race.

Renal Failure is the People's Champion of Fantasy Football.  This week we learned that the only thing that can beat having Marshawn Lynch and his 45 point-day vs. NY is a team with Aaron Rodgers and his 50-point bear into deep space day vs. Chicago.  That was a rough loss for us in the FTWL (174 to 137) but we're still in a good spot to make a run for the playoffs at 5-5 and 5th place. And we we still got an A+ from the Yahoo! recap bots in the loss.

The People's Week 9: High Score!

by Renal Failure


Everything is better when you score 153 points... and have Jim Ross doing commentary...

Renal Failure, your People's Champion, is kicking things into high gear in the 2nd half of the season, racking up an authoritative 153-96 win over Bald Spots this past week (and our second A+ rating from the Yahoo! recap bots).  Jeremy Maclin's throwing bears into orbit like they're going to outlaw the practice soon (34pts this week, 37pts last week).  Alfred Morris and Marshawn Lynch each put up two TD's en route to their big 22 and 25-point days respectively. Denard Robinson is paying off as our new FLEX with 16 points.  Drew Brees was projected for 21 and got 21, Jason Witten was projected for 6 and got 6, so OK on both of those.  Billy Cundiff continues to be Billy Cundiff with a 10 point day.  Our only mistake was letting go the Miami Defense because we thought they'd have trouble with San Diego's offense, but you can't make all the right choice all the time (we grabbed them back for this week's game though).

Bald Spots had Gronk (22pts), Carson Palmer (22pts) and Andre Ellington (18pts), and that was about it, not that it would have made a difference which makes leaving Reggie Wayne's 15pts and Joe Flacco's 26pts on the bench tolerable. Bald Spots were missing Brandon Marshall and Megatron on bye weeks, though Bald Spots has been missing Megatron for way longer than that.  Both will be back in action next week but it may be too late for Bald Spots, and a number of other HBFFL, to turn things around — if indeed Points For is an indicator of team success.


3rd in the HBFFL in scoring... you can't run from Renal Failure! BURN BABY BURN!

Bourbon Blasters and Cranberry Sauce are at 2-7 and pretty much dead in the water, especially since Cranberry Sauce's owner seems to have bailed (not that it would have mattered against The DreamCrushers! this week - 142-52).  Predator Press, Bald Spots, and Meaty Clackers are at 3-6 and the highest scoring team out of those three is PredPress with 829 points.  They're a full two games behind 5th place Renal Failure (5-4) who has 1010 points for (112.22 pts per week, and we've only scored less than 90pts once) — and if we didn't have the 3rd highest points against our record would be much better. Looking at that points disparity between the three 3-6 teams and 5-4 Renal Failure does not inspire much confidence that they'll be able to go on a long winning streak or that Renal Failure will suffer a catastrophic collapse — barring injuries of course.

The Traveler's form has been chosen!
And it doesn't matter that Mark Sanchez
is throwing him the ball.

Regarding your current playoff ranked teams - 4th place Future Ex-Cons (6-3) have 987 points for - the same as the 7-2 3rd place Patriots.  Fellow 7-2 teams, the 2nd place DreamCrushers! (1044pts for) and 7-2 1st place Mile High Club (1099) are the only squads that have more points than Renal Failure, thus making them the least likely of these four teams to falter. Patriots don't seem to have a lot of depth and Ben Roethlisberger is not going to keep throwing up 50 point games, so they might be the ones most likely to stumble.

Ex-Cons are humming along with a 6-game winning streak and have made out very well from their trade with us. Sammy Watkins and Chris Ivory have produced but Tom Brady's stuck on the Ex-Con bench with 40+ point games.  Ex-Cons are deep at WR but if anything happens to his RB threesome of Forsett/Bradshaw/Ivory he's pretty much screwed.  Troi may need to engineer another trade to bolster his RB ranks some more, but who has an RB to spare worth the newly-revived Tom Brady? The only team with that much RB depth is Renal Failure and we've already got Drew Brees.  Maybe DreamCrushers! in a pinch but they already have 2014 God of QB's Andrew Luck. Anything to keep Renal Failure off their backs, because the People's Champ is infamously dangerous in the 2nd half of the season.


Kill all the bad guys, get to the playoffs, then you can live on the planet with the teddy bears...


So Week 10.  We're facing the Patriots again and this time they don't have the element of surprise on their side from being new to HBFFL. They still have DeMarco Murray leading the league in RB scoring, and he'll probably be running for miles vs. the Jags. Randall Cobb and Mike Wallace hold down the fort at WR.  Eddie Lacy will be fresh from the bye week.  The question is: do the Patriots go with Matt Ryan or Big Ben?  Mattie Ice is against the Suckaneers and he already lit them up earlier this season, but Big Ben is suddenly Bear NASA over the past two weeks. Do the Patriots play the matchup or play the hot hand?

Renal Failure is without Alfred Morris (bye week) but Denard Robinson's been running up some decent pointage. We're conflicted about our FLEX option. Will Fred Jackson be back? Do we go with Bobby Rainey and hope the Bucs don't decide to tank the season and run rookie Charles Sims all game? Bishop Sankey... uh, no.  Do we plug in Larry Fitzgerald for a spark? We're hoping we get enough out of our killer WR tandem of Maclin and D. Thomas, and that Brees goes wild at home even if he is playing against the Niners because Drew Brees at home is always a bear-into-deep-space threat.  Marshawn, you keep scoring TD's, okay?

Yahoo! says we're losing this one hard 108-102, but then again Yahoo! failed to predict we'd score 316 points in our last two games too.

Renal Failure is the People's Champion and the only team to win the HBFFL and FTWL championships in the same year. We also won big in Week 10 in the FTWL - 162-69. We're in 3rd place, winning the 4-way tie at 5-4 because we have 319 points in our last two FTWL games - just like in the HBFFL. Coincidence?  We think not!