BroBible
One of my favorite cliches in sports is referring to the buildup to opening night as the calm before the storm. Sometimes they say we’ve reached the top of the rollercoaster after the slow, steady buildup of the offseason and preseason, and now it’s time for the big drop as the season kicks off. As the Eagles and Cowboys officially launch the 2025 NFL season, there’s a different image in my mind.
For fantasy football players, we’ve taken our stands, planted flags, and drafted all of our teams. Now is the time when that little voice in the back of your head starts whispering, What if Saquon really can wreck the league two years in a row? What if the Dolphins really are a walking time bomb? What if everything I thought is horrifically, hilariously wrong?
This stretch, this calm before the storm, makes me think about Independence Day. I’m not talking about any of the cool parts. We’re like the people on top of the buildings with their signs, welcoming the aliens. Putting a friendly face on humanity, cheering like fools before the inevitable happens.
Better yet we are the pilots in that first helicopter that goes to make contact with the spaceship. We are the Welcome Wagon, floating in the face of annihilation, and we don’t even know it.
Lucky for us, we get a chance to react to whatever is coming our way. But the waves of info we get Thursday night, Friday night, all day Sunday, and Monday night? It always feels like we’re getting blasted by the giant blue beams. All spring and summer information flows one way. It comes from training camp and preseason, we read the reports and follow beat writers, and we digest the information and form our stands for fantasy.
Then, we wait. We wait long enough that we forget that the work is just starting after the draft. Sometimes it’s hard to remember that the game is supposed to be fun.
During opening week, there’s only relief for the calls you get right and bitter despair for the misses. The most important thing to remember is that after the dust settles, we get the chance to lift ourselves from the wreckage.
Waivers, add/drops, trades, they’re all waiting for us.
Those things can be a pain, but they can help us change our team’s fortunes for the season. Most importantly, going through the weekly routine of the season helps shake off the shell shock that comes with Week 1 of the NFL season. If we want to get to the Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum part, walking through the desert with victory cigars and patting ourselves on the back, we’re going to have to stare into the blue beam every week of the season.
To get there, we have to remember who we have unwavering faith in. Here are the candidates I’ve drafted dozens of times in the...
