Displaced Aggression League Report — Weeks 4 and 5

Week 4 came and went like an unclean prostitute in the night, leaving many team owners awash in self-loathing and regret; Few made it through untainted.  And although ESPN’s projections would have us believe otherwise, several Week 4 matchups turned out to be close and competitive; two-peat former champion Dingobros edged out The Team Formerly Known As Dayment by just two points, Mental Garbage bested Hellfire Club by six, and the Turduckens, who came into Week 4 as an 0-3 pariah, managed to transfer some of their shameful stink onto the Mario Brawlers – also to the tune of six points.

Meanwhile, the Wackers continued to astonish fellow League members with its unexpected transformation from runt to powerhouse, moving to 4-0 at the expense of Token Female and continuing its trend of posting the week’s highest score while still leaving enough points on the bench to be competitive with the kind of starting scores typically posted by the League’s lower tier – this time scoring 174 with another 73 benched points.  Rounding out the action, Gonk’s Revenge racked up an impressive 160 points when it routed the Itasca Salukis, and Fleur de Lis trounced the hapless Duestakers 163 to 110.  It was bad enough that the Duestakers bench came within four points of outscoring its starting lineup, but being able to attribute 78 of those 103 benched points to just three players reportedly led to a complete emotional breakdown on the part of its owner, who was seen running shirtless and screaming through the wine section at Costco.

In Week 5 it became crystal-clear that we had entered the bye-week period, as we watched some of our best teams blunder in a panicked and disoriented state, like winos trying to walk the wrong way down a moving escalator.  A notable exception was the undefeated Wackers, whose merciless blitzkrieg continued unabated –once again producing the highest score of the week, but with an uncharacteristically-low benched points total.   It’s worth taking a moment to let the implications of this sink in: The Wackers are so dominant at this point that they can still score 145 points while missing five of their starting players, while many of our teams have little hope of posting that kind of total even when firing on all cylinders.

Some League members take the view that—like the Detroit Lions—the Wackers suffered in the Wilderness for many long seasons, and the Gridiron Goddess has chosen this as Her year to shower them with more fantasy points than they could possibly know what to do with.  Others among us take a less charitable view, suspecting that the fix is in, and turning to dark juju and other strategems in hopes of bringing the Wackers down to earth.

Elsewhere in Week 5 action, the Turduckens clawed their way out of last place by besting Token Female, joining the League’s large middle-tier at 2-3.  Keep in mind that the Growlin’ Turds are still in last place when total scoring is taken into account – tailing behind the next-lowest scoring team by a full 82 points.  Hellfire Club shamed The Team Formerly Known As Dayment by a 33 point margin in a matchup that ESPN had projected to be extremely close; Witnesses reported watching TTFKAD’s offense implode, with LT scoring only one point, and a low-scoring Brandon Lloyd starting in the place of Devon Branch, who posted 20 points on the bench.

Dingo Bros squeaked by the Duestakers with a two-point win, moving up to 3-2, where they were joined by Gonk’s Revenge after its win over a demoralized Mario Brawlers, who dropped to 1-4.  And finally, Fleurs de Lis moved to 4-1 by virtually annihilating Mental Garbage, whose shameful 64 points was the lowest score of the week, and the second lowest of the season to date – an ominous development, even if it’s still too soon to write Garbage off as a cautionary tale for the rest of us.  Good luck to All as this donkey ride continues in Week 6!

Faithfully Submitted,

Your League Manager

(Cross-Posted at Skundered!)

About the Author

TomT

TomT will be posting under his real name here (at least part of it), in spite of the fact that this site already seems to be crammed-full of Toms. He is a suburban husband and dad doing Union work within public education in the Chicago area. Once in a great while he also posts diaries under the name “Skitters” on Daily Kos, and—during football season—he does his best to chronicle the dark history of a fairly-vicious fantasy league.

View All Articles