9/9/19 – Ben Ulrich, Senior Fantasy Sports Correspondent - The long summer of discontent is finally over. Football is back! And with it the 2019 BSL season, which is the CDL’s 21st, the 16th for the FSDL and 14th for the junior circuit TLSL. There were all new faces (relatively) last season coming up to take the Championship title mantle with the California Eclipse taking their 2nd ever CDL title and the FSDL and TLSL seeing 1st time winners in the Hebrew Hammers and Evil Empire respectively. It was actually the 2nd year in a row both the FSDL and TLSL had 1st time winners. So new blood is the story of our recent times and the BSL has several new owners of the last couple of years to see if they can break the mold as well. This most recently completed off-season is one that has a slew of crazy surprises in player movement. Most notably the sudden retirement of the 2018 BSL runner-up Offensive Player of the Year (2nd highest total scorer in all 3 leagues) QB Andrew Luck. The loss of such a big time scoring force in the BSL has never been seen before. It was a big hit to the teams that had signed Luck this offseason, and such a shock that Luck is still on rosters in the FSDL and TLSL… their owner still apparently in denial that this isn’t all a Who Shot JR fever dream! (just our assumption there, we have no firm reporting to back that statement up). The other amaze-balls movement of the off-season is the lyin’ cheatin’ Patriots using some David Copperfield level skullduggery to get WR Antonio Brown released from the Raiders and over the obviously tampering Pats. (again, this is just an assumption, we have no firm reporting to confirm this hypothesis… although we also have no evidence to say it ISN’T true, soooo….) All we know is something smells surprisingly like a Boston harbor fish market in the AB saga!
As for the 3 BSL leagues for this year, the off-season is now behind us, all the posturing is now done and the real thing is here. Later tonight, half of each league will be ONLY 1 game back of 1st place… meaning everyone is still in the game. The injuries are already starting to affect teams just 1 week in while there is a long way to go to the finish line. Can Pat Mahomes prove last year wasn’t a fluke? In an exclusive you can only get here in the Occasionally Intermittent Bugle, his week 1 performance leads us to say… Yes. Yes, he will be just fine in his 2nd full season although he was one of those many players to pick up an injury tag coming of the 1st game. Possibly more important than Mahomes (seemingly) minor ankle injury is the loss for several weeks of this #1 or #1A target in WR Tyreek Hill. Sammy Watkins and Travis Kelce get bumps but it will be interesting to see how this affects the reigning BSL MVP in Mahomes.
Staying on the injury news after just 1 week, in addition to Mahomes and Hill’s injuries the list of players that appear to possibly be poised to miss some time include stars and potential stars alike. Players like QBs Nick Foles and Baker Mayfield, RBs Tevin Coleman, Derrius Guice and Joe Mixon, WRs Devin Funchess, Julio Jones, Ju-Ju Smith-Schuster and Mike Williams, and various defensive players. So, like we started with… Summer fun-time is over. Back to the grind and the 2019 BSL Game of Attrition. Let the team with the lowest number of big injuries climb to the top of the mountain at the end of the year. If week 1 is a sign of things to come… we may need a Costco size vat of cortisone to get thru 2019. Good luck!