I’m sure this has been talked about somewhere at length, but I’m hoping us getting together to discuss it means my brain can finally feel like it’s being listened to and stop bothering me about it. Let’s go back to 2015, when Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars ruled the airwaves with “Uptown Funk,” Game of Thrones, Better Caul Saul, Bojack Horseman, and Mr. Robot were still on TV, and multiplexes gave us a new (and pretty good!) Star Wars movie, Furious 7 (the best of the Fasts and/or Furiouses), The Martian, Leo’s Oscar vehicle The Revenant, Inside Out (rest in power, Bing Bong), and Fifty Shades of Grey (had to put Scotchgard on the theater seats).

Specifically, let’s look at the number two movie in the world that year by box office gross ($1.67 billion). MORE specifically, let’s look at a single character in that movie. MOST specifically, let’s talk about how they died.

I speak, of course, about the death of Zara in the global smash-hit reboot (and third-best in the anthology): Jurassic World.

THAT ONE WEIRD THING

Wait, who?

This lady:

That character is Zara Young, who is the aggressively British and demure assistant to Bryce Dallas Howard’s character, Claire Dearing. She is played by Katie McGrath, who is Irish.

I don’t remember her.

You do, you just don’t remember anything about her.

Oh. Ok what should we know about her?

Zara remains largely a mystery, since she’s just there to be the “oh shucks these youngsters sure are a handful!” character who makes the kids seem more precocious and likable. It doesn’t work, but that’s what she’s there for.

We DO know a couple things, though:

1. We know she is engaged, and the wedding is getting close. We know this because one of her very few lines is a phone conversation where we overhear her saying, “Because it's my wedding. No, Alec's not having a bachelor party [long pause] Because all his friends are animals.”

I think this is supposed to make her look stuck up, or controlling, or just a stick-in-the-mud type fiancé. But honestly? Examine her reasoning. She didn’t say anything about her fiancé; it was about his friends. It wasn’t “I don’t want him around other women,” or “he should be focused on me, not having fun,” or whatever. Her reason was that his friends are animals.

Imagine what this group of dudes has done to get that reputation. What has she seen?! More importantly, it doesn’t seem like the person on the phone asks for more info. They get it. Alec’s friends are so fucking nuts that any event which could draw them all to one location gets immediately canceled for public safety.

BUT, Zara is marrying him anyway. That says something about her. She’s met Alec’s degenerate ass crew, seen them be so out of pocket that they got a blanket designation of “animals,” knows he is the type of guy who, at the very least, was once an animal himself, and still loves him enough to push through that.

2. We know watching these two kids was thrust upon her at the last moment by an irresponsible boss. We know this because she is charged with picking them up from the dock, and this is her sign:

That’s not the sign someone like her makes unless they had no warning about this. Look how put-together she is! Look how professional she is in every other aspect of her job. She would only make that shit-ass sign if she had no other option because she was out of time.

We also know this because later Claire tells the kids Zara will be watching them until the well past dinner, and that is also news to Zara. She told the kids their aunt Claire would meet them at 1, and that “meeting” was just Claire foisting them on her for longer. This his how she reacts:

Not the face of someone privy to this plan.

Anyway, that’s what we know. The kids eventually “scatter” while she’s on that phone call, leading them to end up on their own in the park, thus pushing the plot forward. Keep in mind, all Zara has done wrong here is seem a bit annoyed that she has to watch these kids. None of them wants to be stuck together, but EVERYONE is aware it’s Aunt Claire who created this problem. Zara has taken the kids to their sick ass hotel room, given them wristbands that allow them to cut the line for every attraction, and then accompanied them around the park. The kids have repaid her by constantly running way ahead of her despite being repeatedly asked to slow down, being snarky and eye-rolly and dismissive as fuck, and eventually ditching her to run off alone, putting her job in very real jeopardy.

Oh, ok. Seems like perhaps too much thought went into that from you.

Well, it’s important context to have because she is going to die now, and it’s gonna be truly something.

Oh! Proceed.

There are some cool deaths in Jurassic World. One big oaf gets full-body chomped and swallowed (he let the dinosaur out, so it’s his fault), a military guy gets flattened into the mud by a foot, another military guy gets impaled by a beak when a birdasauras flies face-first into a helicopter, and some OTHER military guys get smoked on night vision by raptors. Those are all pretty quick-hitting. Also, apart from the oaf, all those people were either acting nefariously or taking needless risks. The main human villain gets bitten and eaten OFF SCREEN, for fucks sake. Why, then, did they do Zara like this?

Let’s break it down

(the video should begin at 1:40)

1:50: IMPORTANT- notice that Zara is still running with these kids. It’s pure chaos; people and murder birds are everywhere. She could easily duck into a building for safety and say she lost them in the bedlam. But she’s sticking right with them to take care of them.

The children do not look back or check on her ONCE.

2:05: Zara yells to the kids: “Don’t just STAND there!,” which is 100 percent the right thing to do. The sky is awash in dive-bombing birds trying to grab humans. Being the only stationary targets- especially when you are perfect snatchin’ size- is a terrible plan.

2:08:

This is the first horrible thing that happens to Zara. Because of these dipshit kids, she is now the only human out of about 10,00 present who was grabbed and carried into the air. I’ve watched the scene a lot, and nobody actually gets snatched but her.

2:11 :

This is the second horrible thing that happens to Zara. A second bird creature, despite having its pick of any other human in sight, decides to fly over and turn this into a tag team match. The ensuing collision forces the first bird to drop her from a life-ending height.

2:13:

Lol jk! Bird let her fall for a second, then caught her by the ankles and flew off. This is the third horrible thing that happens to Zara.

2:16:

lol jk again! Bird decides he, too, hates this woman and drops her to her certain (and messy) death on some pavement. Fourth horrible thing.

2:17:

Camera trick! Zara is actually gonna land in some water! I guess this isn’t technically horrible compared to what nearly happened, but she definitely thinks she’s about to die the entire way down, and it’s still gonna hurt a lot.

2:20:

Zara is finally alone. She is safely underwater, and the birds are gon-oh what the fuck?!

2:23:

Again, there are THOUSANDS of people who are not in the water. All of them have to be less work to catch than this. Worse, watch that part closely and you’ll notice THREE birds dive into the water after her. All the humans a bird could want and not only were two birds fighting over her in the air, now Player 3 is in the mix once she’s in the water. Fifth horrible thing.

2:24: I am not gonna do screenshots for this. Just watch this series of things:

That bird hits her with FORCE. Terry Tate: Office Linebacker-type hit. Then it chomps her, and drops her in the water again. Zara is now drowning AND being eaten. He picks her out of the water, chomps her a couple more times. Horrible things 6-10.

2:30:

Bird gets Zara out of the water, then, in front of the two people with any connection to her whatsoever, drops her ass again before lifting her halfway out and just waterboarding the shit out of her. Horrible thing number 11.
2:38:

Zara and the bird both get chomped by the big Mosasaurus. Presumably, because she was not in the teeth part of the mouth, Zara got swallowed alive here. This means she eventually died from suffocation or being digested slowly. The realization that she’s not done with this is horrible thing 12, the means and duration of her death is horrible thing 13.

WHY DID THEY DO ALL THAT TO HER? That was so fucking much! The movie is one hour and 57 minutes and Zara’s death is a full minute of that runtime. From the first time she’s grabbed until she dies, about a full minute. Vincent D'Onofrio, who was third-billed and is the main bad guy, dies in six seconds. The raptor bites his arm, he falls back, they cut away to some glass, and then blood splatters on the glass. That’s it.

Did Katie McGrath cheat on the screenwriter or something? Did the producers have childhood trauma because of her? What in the fuck necessitated such an elaborate and multi-step bird murder for a nothing character? Zara did absolutely nothing to warrant that from a plot perspective!

If you’re thinking I am trying too hard to see ill intent in all this, let’s go back to when Zara is first snatched. Look here:

That’s a little blurry because it’s a screenshot, but on the left is a bird about to chomp the fuck out of Zara’s arm. It misses because a bigger bird pulls her into the sky, but the small one definitely takes a big snap at her.

We know how much time and money it takes to computer-animate ANYTHING. This was made in like 2013-2014, and was planned to be THE summer blockbuster of 2015. A ton of shit was riding on it. So why in the world would you spend the time and cash to animate a FOURTH bird that hates this woman when you know all the other stuff that’s about to happen to her? Almost nobody is gonna notice it or remember! That is purely spite. Like $640,000 of spite via digital bird. And people had to sign off on it! They had to greenlight the choice, and then other people had to watch the edits where Zara's death is nearly one percent of the movie’s entire runtime and say: “Love it. no notes.”

I have to know what led to this. Trying to guess what she did to make the Jurassic people so angry has become a weekly ritual of mine.

Power Rankings

HTML Table

Team	Rank	Change
Kyle	#1	↑1
Steve	#2	↓-1
JJ	#3	---
Will	#4	↑7
DeWitt	#5	↑2
Munson	#6	↑2
Dan	#7	↑3
Micah	#8	↓-4
Justin	#9	↓-3
Andres	#10	↓-5
Lee	#11	↓-2
Jimmy	#12	---

Strength of Schedule

HTML Table

Team	Rank	Change
Steve	#1	↑4
Andres	#2	---
Micah	#3	↓-2
Munson	#4	↑5
Will	#5	↑1
Justin	#6	↑1
DeWitt	#7	↓-4
Jimmy	#8	↓-4
Kyle	#9	↑2
JJ	#10	↑2
Jimmy	#11	↓-3
Dan	#12	↓-2

Playoff Odds

Editor’s Note: The availability of extra wins and losses fucked with my playoff model, and I have not been able to sit down with it and rebuild it correctly. Please bear with us, are technicians are working hard on the problem!

THE

GAMES

THE GAMES

Jimmy Vs. Andres (117.8-94.6)

On the one hand, Jimmy won this week and did so thanks to AJ Brown returning from the wilderness to carry the Eagles in the second half. Did you know that a minute into the third quarter, Brown had one target (incomplete) and Jalen Hurts had an EPA-per-dropback of -1.1? This was as bad as it could have been through 31 minutes.

Hurts was strip-sacked, and the Birds were down 26-7. From that point on? Brown had nine targets, caught six of them, and finished with 109 yards and a TD. He was simply too much MAN for every person on the Rams. Those poor little corners kept finding themselves in 1-on-1 coverage with a member of the Justice League and the results were predictably bleak.

Not only did Brown absolutely smoke Cobie Durant on that double move, look at how he just nudged him away with his elbow so he could make a leisurely basket catch with one hand. That should have been so much harder. For anyone else, that’s a brutally difficult contested catch, but Brown is so athletically superior that Durant couldn’t even bother him, much less change the outcome.

While this aspect turned out great for James, elsewhere, things went from bad to worse. James Conner is done for the year, and the only other back on Jimmy’s roster is Ray Davis. Ja’Marr Chase is now trapped in hell, as the Bengals’ first full game with Jake Browning was so bad that if they were a body, the coroner would list their cause of death as: “everything.”

In the last calendar year, CJ Stroud has two Top 10 fantasy QB finishes. In that same amount of time, Marcus Mariota has three, and he only started one game. The Falcons are now in the “time to go back to Kirk Cousins” phase of the season, and Bucky Irving is barely averaging three yards per carry. He has the sixth-worst Rushing Yards Over Expected (-37), and all five guys who are worse than him have at least one rushing TD.

I’d say it’s about time to start calling the next of kin. This team is circling the drain.

Andres lost primarily because his best players weren’t needed at all. His receivers’ teams outscored their opponents 61-21, so not a whole lot of passing was warranted. The Vikings dismantled the very notion of Bengals football, so a running back wasn’t gonna help much, which is why Chase Brown got three carries in the second half (finishing last among qualified rushers with three yards!). Nick Chubb has the same problem Stroud does.

He’s now 2-4, but somehow still has one of the more stable-looking teams in the league, even with Brown’s disappointing year. Perhaps he can trade sixth-year-breakout candidate Michael Pittman for a running back? I hear he’s a lock to finish at WR1 this year.

Dan Vs. Steve (142-108.5)

Look at Daniel go! Back-to-back victories against the two most storied players in the league! Think of the tales his village will tell! Think of the songs they’ll sing!

Steve also had a share of that electric Bengals offense in the form of Tee Higgins, so that’s a lost roster spot right out the gate. He also, problematically, has the primary receiver in Atlanta, which is like being the best swimmer on a basketball team. Good for you, but not really applicable to what they’re doing.

You know how in movies, imaginary friends start to disappear once kids begin to forget them? Drake London is barely an outline at this point. Among qualified receivers, he’s 18th in routes (102), 39th in yards (159), and has run one (1) deep route all season. Let’s take a peek at how that one play went:

Lookin’ good! Also, how about that Academy Award-level play action from Penix? Jesus, dude, why even bother?

Let’s pause briefly here to discuss Penix, because outside of London, Steve’s team is pretty great. Higgins can be swapped for Bhayshul Tuten who, as a Jags RB, is Steve’s drug of choice anyway. But Steve needs London to be viable, or things get hairy in a hurry. He also has (though by the time you read this, I’m guessing “had”) Penix as his backup QB. And brother? This guy stinks.

Let’s do numbers first. He’s 28th in passer rating (71.3), 29th in completion percentage (58.6%), 28th in EPA per dropback (-.23), and 28th in deep pass percentage (5.1%). Now, let’s look for ourselves. This is just from last game. First, here he is missing a hot receiver against the blitz:

He actually had a couple options he could have gone to there, but he missed all of them.

Here he is missing a wide open receiver after panicking out of a checkdown while facing no pressure whatsoever:

Finally, here’s the interception he threw, in which he passes up an impossibly wide-open McCloud to throw the world’s most-telegraphed checkdown:

Steve NEEDS the Falcons to go with Kirk Cousins, but Atlanta absolutely cannot do that given the amount of capital invested in Penix. Once Nacua gets one of his trademark life-altering injuries in Week 7, Steve will be in a real pickle.

But while we are on the subject of dumbshit quarterbacking, Daniel how you feeling about Jordan Love? Mr. Love was once again outscored by Brock Purdy’s backup Mac Jones, and was his absolute worst self Sunday.

This is Love’s alter ego, and he shows up about five times per year. He posted the lowest air yards per attempt in the entire league (1.6), and he threw SO short that the next closest passer had DOUBLE the AY/A (Josh Allen at 3.2). And it wouldn’t be Evil Jordan Love without a colossally stupid interception, so….

Just in case you were holding out hope that the angle made it look worse than it was, I can assure you that camera might actually have been the kindest.

Gotta love Evil Jordan Love.

Anyway, Daniel still has Jonathan Taylor, who is good for roughly infinite points a game. The Vikings needed nothing from the offense but to occupy time, so Jordan Mason was the perfect answer to that problem. The result was a win in hand before the Sunday night game, and a 4-2 record for this young upstart of a coach.

Lee Vs. Micah (108.3-99.6)

Next time, just bench everyone but those two. Don’t waste our time with the rest of that roster dreck. Your final totals are a lie.

DeWitt vs. Justin (113.1-99.7)

Bullying works! I’m not saying Ben Johnson reads our fantasy dispatches, but I’m not not saying that either. The Bears finally looked interesting, they used at least one of their new toys, and Caleb Williams was the number 2 fantasy quarterback on the week (lot of good that did me). Justin got a perfectly servicable 13.7 from Rome Odunze, and all would be right with the world were it not for D’Andre Swift, running back for the Chicago Bears.

Did you know the Bears had had a 19-play scoring drive Sunday? It took up the last 10 minutes of the third quarter, and was the team’s longest TD drive this century by time and number of plays. At one point during that stretch, they ran 11 straight times. D’Andre Swift, running back for the Chicago Bears, picked up a whopping 21 yards during that stretch, which was 63.6 percent of his ground total for the day (33 yards). He DID have three catches for 45 yards, but that sounds a lot better before you learn that 41 of those yards were on one catch, and most of those were made possible by Damone Clark being wholly disinterested:

Buddy didn’t even phone in that effort; he sent that shit by telegram. That looked like it might have been the first time he’d ever seen a human being change direction. Anyway, that play right there is responsible for the lion’s share of the day’s fantasy points for D’Andre Swift, running back for the Chicago Bears.

He is the primary weak link on Justin’s team, since Patrick Mahomes’s return to his usual fantasy output can be offset by subbing in Baker Mayfield. Also starting two tight ends is very silly, but Justin has another Bear for that problem, assuming Chicago plays Dallas every week. They do, right? They don’t have any other defenses they have to play?

Eh, seems fine.

But RB remains somewhat of an issue, since D’Andre Swift, running back for the Chicago Bears is just not all that good. Justin drafted both Kaleb Johnson and Cam Skattebo, but neither of them are a possibilty to replace D’Andre Swift, running back for the Chicago Bears. Johnson has been sent to a farm upstate where he can run and play with all the other rookie running backs who don’t know how kickoffs work, and Justin dropped Skattebo so he could roster…..**checks notes**….. a second defense. Yes, it was the Packers defense, but one wonders why he dropped Skattebo instead of the Steelers defense, which had just given up 32 points to the Jets at the time and would go on to give up 31 to Seattle the next week.

Mysteries abound!

But Justin’s loss is DeWitt’s gain. He picked up Skattebo for even less than Justin drafted him for, because DeWitt only employs Christian McCaffrey or players who vaguely resemble him. The angry little Sun Devil served DeWitt well, outperforming his source material by two whole fantasy points! It was badly needed, since CeeDee Lamb left with an ankle injury, and Troy Franklin has Bo Nix as a quarterback.

DeWitt better hope Lamb isn’t out multiple weeks, because that bench of his is a fucking leper colony. The highest projection out of the five who have functioning bodies was 7.4 points from Dyami Brown. The highest actual total was 4.1 from Woody Marks. In case you’re wondering, no, we are not in a 16-team fantasy league. They’re just on DeWitt’s team for some reason.

Kyle vs. Munson (171.2-129.3)

This was another titanic defensive clash, but the best matchup here was between two extremely boring tight ends. Jake Ferguson and Hunter Henry combined for 50.2 fantasy points, you guys. That’s so many points. I was going to do a bit based on their combined age, but I was shocked to learn that Jake Ferguson is 26 years old. Am I the only one who assumed he was in his 30s? I feel like I’ve heard his name since before my son was born. Realizing I knew very little about Jake Ferguson, I decided to do a little research. Here’s what I learned:

He went to high school in Madison, Wisconsin, then committed to Wisconsin to play college ball. So not an adventurer.
Oh nevermind, his grandfather is Barry Alvarez, which explains the Wisconsin thing.
At Wisconsin, he broke Lee Evans’ record for most consecutive games with a catch (39! Pretty impressive!)(Also, never knew Lee Evans was a Badger. Bonus fact).
His first name is actually Jonathan.
He is engaged to Hailey Cavinder, who is currently the point guard for the Miami Hurricanes. This one is a puzzler, because Cavinder was born in Indiana, went to high school in Arizona, started college at Fresno State, then is finishing at Miami. I have no idea how these two met or even heard of one another, but I bet it’s interesting!
In this picture, he looks like Oscar Isaac in Ex Machina:

Jake-Ferguson-072725-Dallas-Cowboys-@dallascowboysX-1000x600.jpg

End of research.

Kyle cruised to victory thanks to Fergy Ferg, but also the fact he had the best part of just about every offense. Did you know the Texans are DFL in offensive success rate? They fucking suck at EVERYTHING. They went 2-for-3 for five yards on SCREEN passes. Their line would be more imposing if they sat cross-legged every play. At least then they might slow someone down. But Kyle had Nico Collins, who accounted for half of the team’s yards and their only TD. He had Kyren Williams, who was half of the Rams’ fantasy point total, and the Seahawks defense, which was the star of that game.

That was enough to beat Munson, whose best player was Hunter Henry and whose second-best was Luther Burden III. It’s dark over there, and the problems begin with the star of this season’s first new segment:

🤡Bo Nix’s Blunder Bonanza🤡

Did Bo Nix do something good this week?

He sure did! He completed a deep pass for a touchdown! It traveled almost 35 yards in the air before it reached Courtland Sutton, who ran the rest of the way.

Is there a “but”?

You know it! While that deep pass was successful, Mr. Nix attempted three others that were less so. Including this little doozy:

Here the Broncos design a play to create just about the easiest deep ball opportunity that can exist on an NFL field, and our little buddy flubbed it SPECTACULARLY. Look!

That was the state of the field when Nix let go of the ball. BOTH of those WRs are TD-level open. You literally cannot go wrong no matter where you throw it, unless you miss both of them, which is what he did. He should have gotten two incompletions on that play.

OK, sure. Missed a TD on that one, but it’s just one pass.

…..was it?

OK, OK. Two easy TDs.

You sure about that?

Ahem. Well look. Nix might not be a deep ball guy, but he makes up for it with his legs! The dude is a great runner!

…………..is he, though.

I mean…

Would you like a closer look?

Not really, no.

Too bad. You look. You look at the Increasingly Poor Decisions of Bo Nix:

Click on any of those pictures, and you will see that Mr. Nix did not have to run face-first into a pile of sweaty asses. He could have definitely gone left, and maybe even right! He chose the asses.

Will vs. JJ (158-114.2)

Ah yes. Another in a long line of games in which I lose to Will. I did beat him last year, but it was barely, and thanks to a kicker, and als, I average three full years between victories against him, so this was definitely going to happen. But how was still a mystery, and boy did this latest installment deliver!

Will and I chatted at length over the phone about the annoying position our fantasy teams were in. Like Lee said in the discord, 40 percent of many of our rosters is just the same 6-13 point guy in a different costume. Will was debating his flex, with Tony Pollard, Deebo Samuel, and Pacheco all eligible. For the record, I told him truthfully that I believed Pollard was probably the right choice, and he was!

I, of course, had my own rogues gallery to sort through, but neither of us could have guessed how little that all would matter.

Will’s ability to acquire players at precisely the correct moment has been a headache for a lot of us. But THIS time, he not only had the Vikings defense to deploy against Jake Browning, he had them because I dropped them. Only Will could have acquired them right in that moment, and only Will could have rostered them for the highest fantasy point total ever put up by a defense in our league.

They accounted for nearly 30% of his 158 points, which seems like a trend he should definitely bet on. He jokingly pointed out that my having Malik Nabers and Jameson Williams could result in a crazy finish, and even tossed out a 35-point evening as a possibility from Nabers. I did not watch SNF, because there has never been a game more destined to be unwatchable slop, but I did check in on my would-be savior:

…………so a little less than 35 fantasy points, then.

In all, it was a pretty great day for yours truly, even in a loss. 23 from Hampton, so I know he’s alive, George Pickens stayed mentally stable enough to score, and I even started Caleb Williams in one of the three games this season where doing so is the correct choice. Can’t be all that upset. However, it is time for me to consider the fact the Texans offense might be so bad that even their kicker isn’t a viable fantasy option. A sad day for my relationship with John Christian Kaʻiminoeauloamekaʻikeokekumupaʻa Fairbairn.

Will, as of this writing, has seven players in the top 10 at the position for fantasy points! That’s pretty good! Let’s break them down:

QB #4 Jalen Hurts
RB #7 Travis Etienne
WR #10 Deebo Samuel
TE #5 Trey McBride
TE #7 Zach Ertz
K #2 Spencer Shrader
P #1 Jeremy Crenshaw

Apart from Hurts, who is getting celebrated for managing to throw like a real boy for almost one whole half, have you ever believed in a group of players less? Etienne’s redemption tour is coming apart like a tractor-trailer tire on the highway while Rootin’ Scootin’ Tuten steals his job in real time. The Commanders just put up 41 points without Jayden Daniels and targeted Samuel three times. Trey McBride’s annual touchdown has come and gone, so his best days are now behind him. Zach Ertz did his own research and doesn’t believe in the efficacy of yards after the catch.

The best long-term outlook belongs to Crenshaw, since he’s a punter on a team with an undersized toe for a quarterback, and thus will get plenty of work.

I look forward to seeing how Will gets out of this one! If only he could play me every week.

2025 Week 3: Don’t just stand there