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Tuesday, September 15, 2020

Petals for Armor

 First of all, as always, please check out (and perhaps purchase) my photos from the past couple weeks here. 

 Second, NFL football started week one... and finished it. I can't believe it. As for my fantasy prospects. I had essentially given up on this year in dynasty pre-season. I am in full tank mode, and that couldn't have been clearer in my 65-point first week. 

However, I am involved in four re-draft leagues, and I was 1-3 in week one, despite strong weeks in 3-of-the-4 leagues. One league was dismal, we won't reflect on that, however, I had solid weeks in the other three, but lost in two of them due to an unlucky matchup. I was the top scorer of the losers in both of those leagues, and had more points than some of the winners as well, so all is certainly not lost. In my main re-draft league, I made a rostering error, starting the rookie WR Jerry Jeudy over Darius Slayton, or I would've easily won. As it turned out, I lost by only a few points, as Jeudy failed to deliver for me late, though he wasn't awful, and my prospects moving forward for him are still positive. 

I do not have time for a full fledged music review for this week, but I have been listening to some albums over the COVID-19 postponement of this blog, and I will just say this about a couple of them: Taylor Swift's surprise indie-alternative record "folklore" was boring and pedestrian. However, another female star, Hayley Williams from the band Paramore, released a solo record, "Petals for Armor," which was fantastic. Several of the tracks were absolute bangers. I can't get enough. I listened to it for a week straight, and have since been coming back. It is a front-runner for my Album of the Year, if I do decide to have that this year, I may scrap it, since I didn't review many albums so far in 2020. 

Thanks for visiting. Enjoy. 



Tuesday, September 8, 2020

Annual cruddy NFL predictions

First off: Check out my photos of recent Morrison County area sports here!  


 

Next, let us check out how I did a year ago: 

Round 1: 
NFC
  Philadelphia (WC) at Green Bay
  Atlanta  (WC) at Seattle
 AFC
  Baltimore (WC) at Cleveland
  LA Chargers (WC) at Houston
 Divisional Round: 
AFC
 LA Chargers at New England 
  Cleveland at Kansas City 
NFC
  Philadelphia at New Orleans
  Seattle at Dallas
Conference Championships: 
NFC
  Dallas at New Orleans
AFC 
  LA Chargers at Kansas City
Super Bowl: 
  Kansas City vs. New Orleans

Champ: Kansas City (40-33) MVP: Patrick Mahomes

Holy Baloney Batman!!! I not only predicted the correct champ, but the MVP as well (undeserved, but that's another issue). I also had 5-out of-6 NFC teams correct (Vikings, Packers, Eagles, Seattle and Saints), though not quite in the right order. The AFC was less solid with 3-out-of-6 (Ravens, Pats, Chiefs).  I overhyped Dallas and Cleveland a bit last year, but man, what a great year. I had 8-out-of-12 playoff teams right, that's 2/3! And that Championship team to boot. I still can't believe it. 

Riding off that 2019-20 performance, I'll share my 2020 picks: 

Wild Card: 
AFC: 7. Miami at 2. Chiefs
6. Browns at 3. Tennessee
5. Broncos at 4. Buffalo 
NFC: 7. Tampa Bay at 2. Seattle
6. 49ers at 3. Saints 
5. Cardinals at 4. Vikings 
Division Round: 
AFC: 6. Browns at 1. Ravens 
5. Broncos at 2. Chiefs 
NFC: 6. 49ers at 1. Cowboys 
4. Vikings at 2. Seattle  
Conference Championships: 
AFC: 2. Chiefs over 1. Ravens 
NFC: 2. Seattle over 1. Dallas 
Superbowl 55: KC Chiefs over Seattle 
MVP: Mahomes  
 
Interesting notes from my predictions include: Tampa Bay goes 11-5 with Tom Brady in his first year after leaving the Patriots. Two 12-4 teams are wild cards. The New England Patriots (12-4 in 2019) go 3-13 in 2020. Also of note, Joe Burrow leads Bengals to 7-9 record, an improvement of five games.