When Real Life Intercedes

Sometimes it is easy to forget that the NFL players are real and not just fantasy was never more evident then this weekend.

By Guest Blogger, Ron Bishow

As fun as fantasy football is, and how much popularity it has brought to the NFL, its critics complain that it turns the game into just statistics. Quarterbacks that manage a game, or fullbacks that lead the way for running backs, are rendered useless. Sure the team knows they’re useful but the fans often start to forget they exist.

Well, this Sunday proved just how the actual game of football could destroy a fantasy player’s season by just being what it is, and unpredictable game with unpredictable weather conditions. And it couldn’t have come at a worst time. Playoff time.

For many parts of the country snow and high winds were a fact of life last weekend, and it played havoc with the NFL schedule. It did not snow as much as it was first suspected in New England but the freezing rain and wind did enough to destroy every player’s season that had Tom Brady.

You could almost see it as an incident of life balancing itself out since everyone who drafted Brady made the playoffs on his stats alone. His no touchdown three-fantasy point game (in regular fantasy leagues) destroyed every one of those teams, including the one I was playing in the first round of the playoffs. We are talking about a guy who was putting up 30 points regularly scoring less then some fullbacks.

This also hurt anyone who had the Patriot receivers like Randy Moss and Wes Welker, in fact the only player it helped was Laurence Maroney who had done nothing all season.

The snow was much worse in Cleveland, a blizzard so bad that the final score of the Browns game against the Bills was 8-0, rendering Derek Anderson, Braylon Edwards, Kellen Winslow and everyone else in the game useless. Again the running backs, namely Jamal Lewis, were the only person to be worth a damn in that game.

The biggest culprit to the crushing of the spirit of fantasy owners was not the weather, but Brian Westbrook of the Eagles. You could almost hear the collective screams of horror as Westbrook took a dive at the one-yard line at the end of the Cowboys game instead of crossing the goal line. It was a brilliant move that allowed Philly to run out the clock and win the game, and six points that cost tons of fantasy owners a chance to advance.

I was affected personally by Westbrook’s selfless act as I won my week by five points, so I would have lost if he had scored. Just another example of what I mentioned in a previous article, fantasy is just as much about luck as skill.

So as I sit in the finals of both my leagues I look forward and think what crazy events will effect this week, which players will be sat, and who will come out of nowhere. Even if I lose both games I can at least take consolation in the fact that I should have lost in both last week.

Ron Bishow has been reporting on the sports world for the past seven years for AOL, Tribune interactive and CO-ED Magazine among others. He is such a fantasy sports fanatic he plays fantasy NASCAR. He is currently a contributing writer and video producer at www.newyork.metromix.com.