Good morning, friends and readers, and welcome to another week of football, which is seemingly the only thing keeping this blog alive at the moment. (I will write more. At some point. I have sooooooo much to write about. But I have been preoccupied with distressing matters here in the Shire.)

Well, it took until Week 13 (might have happened when we were in China or displaced by the Storm of the Millenium also – not sure) but we finally hit one of those weeks where the Patriots and Jets are both playing at the same time, and since Connecticut is not considered a natural market for Gang Green, Tracy and I must do the Nomad Jet Fan thang and shuffle off to a sports bar to see Nacho and company take on the Racist Mascots of Washington, D.C.* We will be heading over to Damon’s Tavern in Hartford around 11:45 AM this morning. Damon’s won Hartford Magazine’s “Best Sports Bar” this year, and is described as having “an upscale sportsbar-like atmosphere with a modern fine dining flair” which is pretty much exactly what Tracy requested. We love you, Buffalo Wild Wings, but you’re a little too loud and crazy on football Sundays for our tastes. I like to be able to converse with people sitting within a four-foot radius without shouting. And I don’t care for middle-aged dudes pissing in the parking lot. Call me crazy.

Here’s what’s on tap for today in the Nutmeg State:

CBS Early: Colts @ Douchebags
FOX Early: Broncos @ Vikings
FOX Late: Packers @ Giants

I can scarcely imagine how bad the final score of that first game is going to be. The line was 20 points, something I have never seen before in my professional-football-watching life. And that’s not high enough. Unless Belichick instructs Brady to simply kneel out the entire second half I could see this game finishing 73 to 13. I’m going to request a table at Damon’s with a view of the Jets game and an obstructed view of the Pats game.

Packers at Giants should be interesting because, frankly, every Packers game is going to be interesting from here on out. This Green Bay team is a legitimate threat to do what the 2007 Patriots could not do (thanks to the magical efforts of this self-same Giants team in what I consider, no hyperbole, the Greatest Thing to Ever Happen in the History of Sports): Finish 19-0 with a Superbowl trophy. What Rodgers and the Pack are doing this year is truly amazing to behold. Every game is like watching football perfection. And since, unlike the Patriots, the Packers aren’t Evil Incarnate, I’m allowing myself to enjoy every moment of it. Hell, I really hope they pull it off.

Tonight gives us Lions @ Saints. Stafford is supposedly healthy this week, so it’s possible that Detroit could give our man ‘Shift a little heartburn. And Monday Night Football this week features Chargers @ Jaguars or, as I like to call it, “Hey, Honey, let’s watch The Sing Off‘s first annual Holiday Special!”

It’s December now, in case you missed it, and that means that fantasy leagues are wrapping up their regular seasons. It’s been a weird one, if you ask me. Seemed like the talent pool was unusually shallow this year. Bye weeks were a crazy bitch because there were just no appetizing free agents out there to pick up and plug in. Really, aside from DeMarco Murray, did any game-changing players bust out this year and give fantasy owners something to salivate over on the waiver wire? I can’t think of any.

In defiance of the “Nobody Cares About Your Fantasy Team” dictum, a quick summary:

Guns For Hire (Frat League): 11-1 and looking damned-near unstoppable. Aaron Rodgers, LeSean McCoy, Wes Welkuh, and the aforementioned DeMarco Murray (score!) have me thinking about back-to-back Superbowl wins.

Ballbreakers (Work League): 5-7 but, remarkably, still in the mix. A whopping five out of ten teams stand at 5-7 with two more at 6-6 (one of whom I play this week). I actually feel bad for our commissioner, who’s going to have to figure out the tiebreaker cluster. It should never have come to this, of course. After the third round of the draft I had Phillip Rivers, Chris Johnson, and Jamaal Charles. Which, in September, looked like a free pass to the playoffs, bye week included. But the Fantasy Football Gods doth laugh at the best laid plans of we mortals, don’t they?

Meanstreak (Angelos’ League): 2-10. And, seriously, I hate this fucking league and I’m out next year. The scoring system is retarded. Week in and week out, year after year, roughly the same players that take me to the playoffs in other leagues leave me at the bottom of the pack in this one. Too many dipshit bonuses, individual return yards, and a ludicrous array of team defense points. Fuck that noise. Change the scoring system to make it closer to standard leagues or kiss my fantasy genius ass goodbye.

Problem Child (TwoGlasses League): 9-3 and tied atop my division with Chris. Locked up a playoff spot, but the first-round bye hangs in the balance. I’ve got an odd crew in this one. Cam Newton at QB, Fragile Frank Gore, Welkuh, and Megatron. On a good week, they’re unbeatable, but as those three losses show, they’re not all good weeks. Hope they hang together, because I’d love to take home the title in my own blog’s fantasy league. Just once. Seems appropriate, you know?

And on that note, time to shower, don my Jets garb, and head out to Damon’s. As always, hope to see you in the comments.

(*I finally looked this up. Turns out that “when the period ending the abbreviation comes at the end of a sentence, it will also suffice to end the sentence.” I’ve been wasting extra periods for years.)