briantw

They basically wasted his entire rookie season playing him out of position like that.

WE'RE KIND OF GOOD!

Only took us 25 years to find another franchise QB.

He's been a solid red zone threat all season, but the main issue is that there are just a ton of mouths to feed in San Diego Los Angeles. Williams is a second year player, so naturally he's being veterans like Melvin Gordon (a top five RB in the NFL this year) and Keenan Allen (a top ten WR), and they've also got quality role-players like Austin Ekeler and Tyrell Williams taking targets. Just tough to be the WR2 in an offense that has a target hog WR1 and an elite pass-catching back like Gordon. I assume Tyrell Williams will move on this spring, which should open up Mike to more targets next year, as it'll be more of a two-man show with him and Allen. Although Hunter Henry will presumably be back as well, so who knows? This is a dynasty league, so acquiring Mike Williams as Keenan Allen insurance made sense to me given that the top WR is absolutely going to produce at a WR2 clip or better in that offense. Also, this DeAndre Hopkins game is helping make up for Keenan Allen's goose egg. It's been six weeks since Hopkins had a 20+ point game, but I'll sure as hell take this week as the bounce back. Oh, and I'm starting Baker Mayfield over Aaron Rodgers and Cam Newton in a money league. Fuck it. I'm all in.

Really wish they would have flexed a more interesting game into this time slot. This game belongs on Sunday at 1pm.

So does Baker Mayfield, but all three guys play a little differently. I just feel like, from what I've seen of both guys, Wentz tends to take hits downfield more often than Mahomes. Mahomes does seem to get hit a lot behind the line of scrimmage as he throws the ball, but those hits are usually a little lighter than full-speed downfield ones.

Man, that Keenan Allen injury hurt. Had him in the playoffs in one of my money leagues and that goose egg does me no favors. Had Mike Williams on my bench too. Whoo! But to be fair, Mike Williams was not starting over Hopkins, Thielen, or Allen, so whatever.

Wentz is especially bad about it because he's a lot more of a rushing threat than Mahomes. Most of the hits Mahomes takes are still behind the line of scrimmage, whereas I feel like Wentz is always getting murdered because he refuses to slide ten yards downfield. Not a great way to play if you want a long career.

No doubt. Probably should have shut him down weeks ago, to be honest. Can't fuck around with your franchise QB, especially when he tends to expose himself to a lot of hits downfield with his style of play.

Looks like Wentz is done for the year with a stress fracture in his back. Not that it matters much since Philly sucks this year anyway.

The Cavs were bad with Love, to be sure, but they also fired the coach who coached those games, and their team has clearly improved since. They're still not good, but they're not embarrassing any more. The trades have helped as well, getting rid of some guys who didn't want to be there and also clearing the way for Sexton to start, which needed to happen. And Love only played in four games and was playing hurt, so it's really hard to derive much from those.

Yeah, that's the main reason I don't think the Chiefs are winning the title this year. You don't need an elite defense to win one, but you can't be dog shit defensively either. It's going to be tough to win three straight games (or four if Chargers win the division) against good teams when your defense is a sieve.

I meant it the way I said it.

Finished up Shadow of the Tomb Raider last night. Such a weird game. You have this vast upgrade tree with so many skills you can unlock, but the bulk of them have to do with combat or stealth, and there's just so little of that in the game that it makes the whole endeavor feel a little pointless. Whereas in the past two games, Lara would go on regular killing sprees, decimating foreigners at a rate that only Nathan Drake would scoff at, in Shadow, there are only a handful of combat sequences in the entire game. And while I found this to generally be an improvement, as by far the best part of these games has been the puzzles, platforming, exploration, and occasional ridiculous set-pieces, the problem is that I found myself staring at the upgrade screen wondering what the hell the point of it all was. Similarly, the lack of combat makes the sheer amount of guns you gain access to a bit ridiculous as well. I only ended up using two assault rifles the entire game, starting out with a silenced one before realizing there wasn't enough stealth in the game to bother when you always have a bow and arrow anyway and then switching to a louder, more powerful option for the end-game. I think I used a pistol like once in the entire damn game. The shotgun was more useful, although really only when you fight a certain group of enemies that largely just rush mindlessly at you. Against enemy soldiers a rifle is just far more efficient. The puzzles were a lot of fun, though, as I believe I mentioned here previously. I was disappointed by the end-game segment primarily because I was hoping it would involve another of the game's fun tombs, which were a blast to work my way through. Instead, it was a pretty generic linear action set-piece, of which the game has several better earlier on, including an awesome one to cap off the prologue followed by similarly generic combat and a lame "boss" fight that mostly just involves shooting a guy a shitload of times. The story was dumb as hell. It begins with Lara doing her thing, desecrating a tomb and taking a knife from an altar, which inadvertently begins the Mayan apocalypse or something. Naturally, the knife is stolen from her minutes later, as once again she does exactly what the bad guys want by finding something for them and then getting caught (which I think happens around five times in each of these three games). The only way Lara can save the world is to travel into the Amazon to track down the knife and the box it can be inserted into, which can restore the sun or, in the wrong hands, give the holder a godlike power to remake the world. You can pretty much figure out how things go from there. None of it is even remotely surprising or unpredictable. The writing isn't great, the acting is pretty poor across the board, and the character models don't emote particularly well. Overall, I'd give it a 7. It's a fun action/adventure/platformer that seems to have finally figured out the proper balance among those three things. The puzzles were creative and occasionally a bit difficult despite there only being a handful of game mechanics involved, and the platforming is mostly fun as well outside of occasionally dying because Lara decides she'd rather not grab that ledge right now, thank you very much. Also, it can sometimes be confusing as to where you're supposed to go next, which is an example of occasional poor design. If you liked the first two but thought they could have used more puzzles and platforming and less shooting dudes in the face, this one's gonna be for you.