Football
Eric Karabell, ESPN Senior Writer 16y

The (rainy) night fantasy didn't exist

I think it was at some point in the second quarter of Monday night's ridiculous quagmire when I realized my leads in two leagues were safe. I'm guessing that a lot of leads were safe because, well, nobody was scoring! Nobody was moving the ball, nobody was accruing fantasy points, the two biggest stories were the weather and a past-his-prime running back returning to the field, in this case a really soggy one. Basically, the Steelers-Dolphins snoozefest was akin to just about nothing happening to affect fantasy football.

If you had a lead, you likely kept it. If you trailed by a point or two, unless you owned one of the few players to get any points at all, you probably lost. I've heard so many stories already on Tuesday morning about what teams needed to win or needed to avoid, it's about the same as when the Monday night game is 41-38. For me, personally, I was watching Heath Miller and Ben Roethlisberger closely, and what I thought would end up as two losses didn't happen. I won. We can debate whether I deserved it until the cows come home, but you know luck always plays a part in fantasy football, so let's just say I'm not giving those wins back and the cows can keep mooing.

There have been other low-scoring games in the NFL this season, but I can't recall one in which so little actually occurred. Roethlisberger was active, throwing only three incomplete passes and setting a franchise record for accuracy, but from a fantasy standpoint, those four points didn't help much. It was Big Ben's lowest point total of the season, by quite a bit. I have him on a few teams, but for each the game result was already decided. If I needed five points from him, and didn't get it against the worst team in football, well, I wouldn't have been pleased. By the way, that field was kind of a joke, no?

^ Back to Top ^