(Editor’s note: Every Sunday, we’ll wrap up the week on PFF Fantasy with some topic one of our writers has been thinking about of late, and recap the features, columns, and podcasts you could find on the site that week.)
This story sounds more emotional than I think it really is, but then again, I lived it, so maybe from outside it will resonate more.
My wife gave birth to twins back on October 20. Though we live in Lexington, she did it in Cincinnati, because one of the twins had a congenital heart defect that required surgery. In fact, he had several — coarctation of the aorta, atrial septal defect, multiple ventricular septal defects, persistent left superior vena cava, parachuting mitral valve. I’ve learned a lot of words in the last year.
As it stands today, he’s mostly okay. There will be another surgery in the next month or so, and assuming that goes as expected, he’ll be a fully normal and ready-to-go little dude after that. But on October 24, I wasn’t so sure. Because October 24, that twin — Lucas — spent the entirety of the time from just before 9 a.m. until just after midnight in the operating room, and my wife and I spent it in the waiting room.
That’s a tense time, as I’m sure you would guess. Most people didn’t bother us much, because the only thing that makes interminable waiting worse is having to answer infinite “how’s it going?” texts that you don’t know the answer to.
One person didn’t hold to that, though. J.R.
J.R. is in my primary fantasy league. We’ve never been close as friends, really, just leaguemates — it was an old work league, and we barely overlapped there, so we don’t even know each other that well. But as fate would have it, J.R. and his wife had a baby a week before we did, and his baby had a heart defect as well, and … well, long story short, he and I ended up spending a lot of time in rooms about 20 feet apart in the Cardiac ICU of Cincinnati Children’s Hospital. (His little girl is doing well also, for now.)
So, “I've been there” in full effect, J.R. was and is in a special place when it comes to “bugging” us in the waiting room. So when he asked how it was going, I didn’t mind keeping him updated, even if it was 6 p.m. and the surgery was supposed to be over by then but they had found another defect and were keeping him on bypass and who knows how much longer it’ll take and …
“And hey,” J.R. followed up, “if you need the distraction, how about that trade offer I sent?”
I lived out of the hospital for two months. Obviously, most of that time was spent on Lucas. But man, J.R. timed that fantasy trade talk perfectly. This game isn’t as important as we sometimes make it out to be, but it’s one hell of a good distraction sometimes.
(And I traded Julio Jones, Mike Evans, Philip Rivers, and Duke Johnson for Chris Hogan, Will Fuller, Drew Brees, and LeSean McCoy. And I made the finals.)
- The latest PFF mock draft from Steve Palazzolo is out! Along with that, Jeff Ratcliffe reacted to the mock, looking at the fantasy fallout from all the potential landing spots.
- Free agency is set to start really soon, so Tyler Loechner previewed every position from a fantasy standpoint, identifying the teams that could see big impact, medium impact, and small impact.
- With the combine in the rearview mirror, Tyler Buecher looked at 25 fantasy lessons we learned from the event, while Scott Spratt used the notable running backs’ performances to create similarity scores between the draft candidates and professional counterparts.
- Daniel Kelley compared average draft positions in recent years to final fantasy standings to see if there were any lessons to learn about player types and public perception. It came out in two pieces: QBs/RBs and WRs/TEs.
- Walton Spurlin turned our eyes toward the season to come with a look at sleeper and bust candidates at the quarterback position.
- Welcome to Selection Sunday! With brackets on everybody brain, Tyler Loechner picked out the best potential fantasy rosters for each of the NFL divisions and created his own mini-bracket. The game broke down to three pieces: The bracket, the first round, and the finals.
- Mike Castiglione is putting some recent performances into historical context by counting down the top fantasy seasons at each position in the PFF era. He started with wide receivers, in two parts (11-20 and 1-10).
- Scott Barrett’s Metrics that Matter series took on three topics: The Rams’ offensive line providing a boon to Jared Goff, potential consequences if the rules of defensive pass interference are changed, and the built-in advantage of Lamar Jackson’s running ability.
Podcasts
- Combine Winners and Losers
- Mock Draft Madness
- Rookie QB Tiers, Free Agency Moves, and Jarvis Landry Trade Reaction
- Fantasy specialty podcasts
