Congratulations to all you bros who toughed out a long season full of shitty calls by refs and depressing injuries to make the postseason of your fantasy football league. It takes some skill and a lot of luck to compete for the league title, so pat yourself on the back and, hopefully, your team doesn’t shit the bed these next couple weeks.
As someone whose played fantasy football since I was a sophomore in high school, I’ve seen plenty of terrible ways to lose—but the one I had to live through a couple of seasons ago was, without a doubt, the one that still has me butthurt.
It was in the first-round of the playoffs, and my opposition had a decent lead heading into the Monday Night game—it was about 18 points—with the primetime game having my quarterback, Drew Brees, and his tight end, Charles Clay, still left to determine who would advance.
Brees came out firing, tossing for a bunch of yards and finishing the first half with one touchdown and no picks, as Clay had nothing going but, maybe, one catch for a few yards, so I was feeling pretty good that the New Orleans QB could put me over the top in the second half.
The third and fourth quarters were fucking edge of your seat type of shit, with Brees getting me 2 TDs in the third quarter, and Clay picking up a bunch of dink-and-dunk catches and yards for my opposition, leaving it to come down to the final few minutes to determine who would march on to the title game.
That’s when the fantasy football gods nearly gave me a full-blown heart attack.
With the Saints scoring another touchdown on a screen pass from Brees to give him four on the night, I took my first lead and thought I had it in the bag—oh, but those tricky bastards from above weren’t going to have it happen.
Clay ended up scoring a touchdown on his team’s next drive, giving the lead back to my opposition. This is where plenty of vulgarities and pillow punching began, with me sweating it out on the couch and wondering how this thing was going to end.
Turns out, I took the lead by .24 points as Brees led his team to a go-ahead field goal, but there was still about two minutes left for Clay and his offense to take the field.
While the tight end didn’t make a catch during the frantic drive, the turning point came when Clay’s quarterback tossed an interception that a Saints defender picked-off with a few seconds left, leading me to jump up and down and start texting my buddy to talk some mad shit—and that’s when it happened, the kneel down.
That’s right, with the interception giving New Orleans the ball back with some time left, Brees was told to run out the clock by taking a knee—THREE STRAIGHT TIMES!
As I helplessly held my phone in my hand and pulled down to refresh the fantasy score, each time Brees marched backwards resulted in negative points—since, technically, he was losing yards on a rush.
With nothing I could do, I watched my slimmest of leads turn into the most depressing loss that I’ve ever had in fantasy sports in my life, watching the final result become a loss by .01 points.
It’s just a reminder that, when it comes to fantasy football, nothing is over until it truly is—so save the shit-talking and boasting till every single NFL game of the week has triple zeroes on the game clock.
I’ll tell you something else, my blood alcohol level definitely wasn’t a measly .01 that night after slamming shots to try and ease the pain—so it’s a good thing I was watching the sinking ship from my couch and not at a bar.
So, with that, good luck this weekend, bros—hopefully your fate isn’t decided on a fucking kneel down.