By Eric Emery

Here’s something we all can agree on: everybody loves a vacation. It’s a good time to kick back and separate from the stress and pressure of everyday life. Sometimes, however, duty calls, tearing you away from your dreamy existence. Now that Rex Grossman’s vacation is over, we got to wondering: what did Sexy Rexy do with his time off?
* Played a tape of Lovie saying “Rex is our quarterback” over and over and over again.
* Totally didn’t read those memos from Ron Turner regarding the game plan.
* Continued to visualize what it took to throw the ball to the opposing team.

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Posted on November 6, 2008

By Eric Emery

As I write this, I have one eye on my writing, and one eye on history. It’s clich to talk about how important the civic duty of voting is in comparison to the simple game of football. Most media coverage I listened to emphasized the greatness of the American democratic process, and glossed over all of its idiosyncrasies. Good thing these idiosyncrasies are not part of the NFL, or fans would riot.
* Large market teams wear shiny new safety equipment; small market teams wear wool sweaters with leather helmets.
* Some fans stand in line for three hours to watch the game, others walk move directly to their seats.
* When scoreboard goes down, 12,242 fans file lawsuits instantly.

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Posted on November 6, 2008

By Dan O’Shea

This is one of those crazy times of year when we’re all suffering from information overload. No, I don’t mean election time, though in your real life, you certainly may be suffering from election info overload, too. What I’m talking about is fantasy info overload. This condition becomes especially acute at times when different sports seasons overlap. Drafting your fantasy basketball team can be difficult even if it’s the only thing you have to worry about, but when your middling fantasy football team at the same time is facing a big Week 9 test and requiring waiver wire help to reach the playoffs, well, who can blame you for not having time to take out the trash?
We’re contributing to the info overload with this column, of course, which is just one of dozens – dare I say hundreds? – of fantasy sports advice columns, research dispensers and informational resources you can turn to for different takes on who to draft, who to sit or start, who to pick up from the waiver wire, or who to trade for. And a lot of us may feel like we need to check out every single one of them. Some might say it borders on obsession, but it doesn’t just border on obsession; it crosses the border and heads straight for the next state: insanity.
Managing a fantasy sports team is one of those things where most of us feel we are better off the more information we seek out, but the more information we seek out, the more directions we get pulled in. It’s best to pick a few sources of information that prove trustworthy and effective over the course of a pre-season or the first couple weeks of the regular season. Or, you could find someone who has more time than you do to organize that information for you.
So, here at Fantasy Fix, we’ll now make that part of our weekly mission. Let’s start with a couple of “kitchen sink” sites, ones that cover all sports:

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Posted on November 5, 2008

I don’t really remember how much it hurt when I broke my foot a couple times before I was 10 years old. When I messed up my elbow playing high school baseball and had to have surgery, the initial popping sound was the worst part. There was discomfort but it was far from agonizing. It wasn’t until I was in college and playing rugby that I first experienced significant, sports-related pain. And that was in addition to suffering the worst break of all: I didn’t have even the beginnings of a decent story to go with the injury. I took a bad step during practice one day and twisted my ankle. And it hurt so much I was sure I was going to puke. The next season I banged heads with a teammate and eventually had to get a half-dozen stitches but that was also a ways down on the pain scale.
Kyle Orton’s second quarter injury didn’t happen the way most sprains happen – in fact it was downright weird. Most of the time people turn their feet on the way back down to the ground (and the end of a stride or a jump) and the combination of gravity and body weight do the damage. You could see a 300-pound lineman falling on a quarterback and making it difficult for him to breath for a while, but twisting his ankle? Athletes have always been encouraged to hide how badly they’ve been injured, at least from the other team. And surely Orton would rather have kept his pain to himself on this occasion. But it wasn’t surprising that he couldn’t do it. A field microphone picked up Orton yelling, if not quite screaming, in pain. His attempt to walk off the field ended quickly and after a short delay he was carted off.

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Posted on November 3, 2008

By Eric Emery

Since the Bears had a much deserved bye week, the players caught up on some TV. During the season, most players record their favorite shows, then watch all the episodes during the bye week. Here are everybody’s favorite shows:
Bear: Brian Urlacher
Favorite Show: Jon and Kate Plus Eight
*
Bear: Lovie Smith
Favorite Show: Lost
*
Bear: Tommie Harris
Favorite Show: My Own Worst Enemy

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Posted on October 31, 2008

By Eric Emery

Last Sunday was a complete wreck. And you know who’s to blame? My friend, Dirty Andy, and his wedding.
You know how people have a weakness for weddings? I have a weakness for getting too drunk at wedding receptions.
So I spent Sunday on the couch mostly asleep, though I did manage to wake up in time to see the Steelers snap that ball over the punter’s head.
If only the NFL could be more like weddings . . .
* Both teams meet the night before to practice the game. Gives each side a chance to decide who they will hit on the next day.
* Go into uniform shop 15 minutes before closing. Give call to the other team’s head coach about the 5XL jersey that was erroneously ordered for the kicker.
* Get to stadium four hours early to talk the best player into not playing today, or for that matter, ever again.

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Posted on October 30, 2008

Week 8 is the halfway point of the football season, so a good time to take a look at who should be potential second-half stars. But, first a quick look at how our predictions for great plays in Week 8 turned out.
We predicted:
* Jason Campbell, QB: 220 Pass YDs, 2 TDs vs. Detroit
* Thomas Jones, 100 Rush YDs, 2 TDs vs. K.C.
* Steve Smith, WR: 120 Rec. YDs, 2 TDs vs Ariz.
Actual performances:
* Campbell: 328 Pass YDs, 1 TD
* Jones: 54 Rush YDs, 1 TD
* Smith: 117 Rec. YDs, 2 TDs
Okay, we were at least on the right track with Campbell. We were off the mark with Jones, and the Jets’ play selection in general is a mess. Brett Favre started the season strong, but his inconsistency means Jones should get more touches than the 14 he got Sunday against Kansas City. The Jets missed a huge opportunity, but I think you can look for Jones to get the ball more for the rest of the season. Smith was a bulls-eye.
Now, who will be our second-half stars? A look at some of the second-half match-ups, team news and performance trends gives us these potentially big second-half players:

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Posted on October 29, 2008

By Jim Coffman

Happy Bye Day Bears! It was a much better pre-bye season than anyone anticipated after all. Sure, it could have been better . . . three beautiful fourth quarter leads . . . blown . . . argh. But this team is more than a little intriguing and has more than a little potential to make some noise in the next two months. I’ll take it. I’ll also take a Sunday of looking around the league a little bit, at least at the late afternoon games.
Since this year’s Bears clearly aren’t the “get off the bus running and play mean-streak defense ’til the cows come home” type team we’re supposed to prefer around here, I thought I’d check out the two teams who best answer that description so far this season. And they just so happened to be facing each other. One-loss Pittsburgh (going in) hosted the one-loss New York Football Giants on Sunday and while it would be wacky in this topsy-turvy NFL to dub any contest a “Super Bowl Preview,” this game is as likely as any other this season to eventually fit that bill.

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Posted on October 27, 2008

By Eric Emery

Chicago scratched out a victory last week largely due to the efforts of the special teams. In a game where a previously inept Minnesota offense scored 41 points, Chicago showed a weakness: They don’t play defense well when they don’t know what the offense will do. This shows that skill alone won’t get the job done. Here are some ways the Bears can get up-to-date information on the opposing team’s game plan.
* Intercept game plan in old school way: Rob train carrying the mail.
* Intercept game plan in new school way: Hire Bill Belichick as Director of New Media.
* Call Brett Favre.

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Posted on October 24, 2008

By Eric Emery

Somehow in American society, polls now represent and measure every possible thought and belief within our society. Concerned about fishing in California? What about the preferred gift for Father’s Day? Ever wonder about the size of people’s iPods? I didn’t, until I found this. Polls express and solve everything. In this spirit, I propose that the NFL cancels the regular season, and allow polls to decide the winners of each division. In fact, we already have some exit results.

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Posted on October 23, 2008