Welcome welcome welcome! It's time to kick off the 2024 Fantasy Football Season and boy oh boy is this year going to be fucking full of exhausting surprises both on and off the football field.

We've got a new kickoff rule that I don't fuckin know dick about, and fuck if I was going to watch any preseason games to better understand it.

Rookie Quarterbackery

There's a slew of new, young QBs that came in during the draft for teams that genuinely sucked wet baby shit, so it'll be exciting to see if any actually pan out in any sort of positive way - with special attention paid to:

1. The Chicago Bears who have traditionally had absolutely fucking pathetic quarterback play: No Bears QB has ever thrown for 4,000+ yards or passed for 30 or more Touchdowns in a season (which should be fuckin cake now with the idiotic 17-game season). Fuckin sad as fuck.

2. The Greatriots have themselves a new Head Coach (first to win their opening game since Pete Carroll!!) and Quarterback - something that hasn't been said going into a new season since .. I don't fucking know. Maybe 1993 when Parcells and Bledsoe took the reigns and began the ushering in of a new era of New England footballdom.

3. Jayden Daniels blah blah blah who cares

Kansas City Swifts

Then you have that asshole Patrick Mahomes who has solidified himself as the current top player (yeah, fuck that top-100 ranking that had him at number 4 and The Sperminator Tyreek Hill at number 1). Pundits are absolutely rock hard thinking about annointing him as the greatest winner of all-time, pushing aside actual winners who had done it for longer in order to sell targeted ads to their flaccid and bald readers.

We also have year 2 of the royal relationship in Kansas City - no, not Harrison Butker and his wife, Ofharrison, I meant Kelce and Swift: what kind of wild private jet storylines are we going to get going into 2024?

Will they tie the knot and bring upon us a new age of Taylor Swift lyrical mediocrity? Are Swifties going to discover my address and hunt me down for sport for slandering their queen? Will we see them swarm and assimilate Donald Trump because his old-as-fuck ass fell for AI images like all of our elderly parents and grandparents reposting Facebook photos of African children building just about anything you can imagine with plastic bottles?

I think I speak for everyone: I can't wait to see what Taylor Swift brings to this 2024 NFL season.

The slippery slope of streaming

The first South American ballgame in Brazil that no one probably watched because it was on the (pea)Cock between the Philly Squatracks (Jalen and the Quadfather? Holy fuck that's a lot of weight to move) and Green Bay's third straight fucking hall of fame QB.

As I watch the Packers/Eagles Brazil game, I'm coming to terms with the fact that there will probably be with more streaming-exclusive games, which fucking sucks. Not only because it's just a god damn garbage fire trying to keep track of all of the services to subscribe to, but gone are the days of "last channel" button supremacy on your remote. There a commercial during the Disney+ stream? Fuck you. What are you going to do about it? Exit the app and have to cold-boot another one? Disconnect that shit from your Chromecast and stream some youtube shit?

Technology fucking blows. That isn't the malarkey Jesus died for, damn it.

And the rest

On the bright side, the number of Harbaughs in the NFL increased by one.

Oh christ, what the fuck else is there?

You know what. I know what I can dive into next:

I am a father of one

I have entered the fray of parenthood, and can now begin sentences with, "as a parent I think insert stupid as fuck opinion here."

That whole birth thing sure was quite the event, and I was there for all of it - all of it. The miracle of life being a life-changing moment is no understatement. When that baby first started coming out and you finally realize that you're watching your child come into the World - I honestly thought it was a complete alien until the second shoulder came out and my brain could piece together that this goo-covered object was in fact, a fucking baby - it's impossible to not get caught up in the moment. My wife Rachel, literally created and fostered life inside of her, gave birth to this new life, and will sustain the baby with herself. I'm so tremendously proud of all the trials and tribulations she had to go through and overcome.

Childbirth is absolutely one of those moments where one has to wonder how the fuck did we become such a patriarchal society.

Anyway, I realize the moment of delivery as a whole is just a small fraction of the process of raising a child. Shit, most of the relationship between a parent and their kid is spent with them both being adults. But that first step, like life's opening kickoff, is something that will only happen once in that child's life. And as a parent, you have the entirety of all of life's possibilities in front of you as a completely blank slate.

All I want to do, is return that baby to the fucking house and ensure she lives a happy and healthy life, full of love, meaning, and accomplishments.

So now the babby mama and I are working tirelessly to ensure our little girl survives each day despite her best attempts at literally throwing herself head-first off anything she happens to be lying on.

And I do mean tirelessly .. like, really tired. Just absolutely fucking ragged. My parental leave ended Sept. 9th and I have no fucking clue how the hell I'm going to also pack full work days into an already shortened amount of time in my day.

With any luck our little daughter will be able to consistently sleep 5 hours a night before her first overnight feeding and us parents will get enough sleep to sustain the absolute bare minimum of brain activity.

And then we can start celebrating all of her notable achievements:

1. When she works out of her "truffle pig" phase
2. When her poop finally turns into a different color
3. Every single blow out (4 5 and counting)
4. Every new brewery and vineyard she's visited (7 of the Nashoba Valley's finest!)

Can we move on from non-football content?

Welp. I should probably stop beating around the bush: I need a break. A paternity leave from this column, you could say.

It's not for forever - I get way too much fun absolutely shitting down the throats of you people in the recaps in order to help me feel like a big man because for whatever reason I can't seem to string together more than one win in a row and get myself into the fucking playoffs - but it will be for a handful of weeks.

And even when I make my triumphant return, the column will have to take a new shape at least for this season. I've been doing some form of this for the better part of 10+ years. Shit, at one point I even had the time to do a matchup column as well. At my peak, I probably spent 10-16 hours on this shit. Hell, over the last couple of years I was easily spending up to 6-8 hours per week (just ask my wife, she was super thrilled that I'd be busy writing instead of taking care of our lawn most autumn days amongst many, many, many other chores).

So yeah, in order to actually be present in the early days of my daughter's life, and to maintain a job for the near future, I'm going to need to figure out how I can be a good father and money maker (with a dabble of satisfactory homeowner). Once that shit makes a little more sense, I'll be back to write more recaps about how much you all fucking suck compared to myself.

That said, anything could happen, if I hit it big and my investments in gritcoin work out, maybe I can pivot and spend all my workdays just writing this shit and move my family into a van down by the river.

In conclusion,

I need a fucking break from something, anything. BECAUSE THIS BABY DOESN'T FUCKING SLEEP. IT JUST SCREAMS, SHITS, AND SCREAMS SOME MORE.

It'll be tough. So many things to talk about from the collective agony and pain that just about every single person who held the number one draft pick watching CMC sit out week 1, to the absolute juggernaut that is Jake Moody, to god damn Tyreek Hill getting his ass detained right outside the stadium.

Of course, I'd be remiss to not mention the Deshaun Watson's situation. What a classic case of he said she said she said she said she said she said she said she said she said she said she said she said she said she said she said she said she said she said she said she said she said she said she said she said she said she said.

So yeah. No recap this week, or really for a while. Unless you want to write one yourself (let me know if you want to be an author - would love to share the honor of shitting on league members).

Love you guys, from the deepest cockles of my heart. Truly. It's because of y'all that I have so much motivation, hate, and ire to write these from week to week. Don't ever stop being you, because like I've repeated: I'll be back.

And please, if you have any complaints or problems with this, you can direct all your messages to this angel:

Thanks for all your support and see everyone in week 5 (or 6, I dunno)!