2025 Week 9: The Sun Does Not Set
The internet is the most significant invention in human history, and although we have mostly squandered it, its inherent value as a tool of discovery and enrichment is wholly unmatched. If you don’t know how to do something, you can sit down to take a dump, pull out your phone, and by the time you flush, you’ll have the knowledge of every expert on the planet at your disposal. I learned how to do flooring transitions this way. Andres has repaired every part of a car using YouTube as a guide. Micah has cataloged the location of every Chipotle in western America using this method (often it’s the Chipotle that facilitated the toilet research time, so it’s a vicious cycle).
An often less-heralded application of the internet is what I like to call the “fucked around and learned something” use case. That’s when you start out in a completely logical place, reading about a completely logical thing. Then, through a series of link cliks and spiraling curiosity, you drift away from that shore until you are so far asea that the original topic seems like a distant memory. It may have mattered to you once, but it’s been replaced by something else- something you didn’t care about at all an hour ago but now may be the most interesting thing you’ve ever learned.
“Holy shit, army ants connect to form a giant ball with their bodies during floods and then synchronize their kicks to keep the ball rotating in the water so every ant gets a chance to breathe?! I gotta fucking tell someone. That’s sick as hell.”
The problem, of course, is finding someone with whom to share that new information. You can’t just start a conversation with your new fun facts, captivating as they may be. You’re miles away from any logical opening remarks. You were probably looking up something that was already kind of niche, and look how far you’ve gotten from that place. You’ve been on a journey, man. Whoever you pick to talk to about this with is probably eating a sandwich or making a dentist appointment. They aren’t in a place to hear your ramblings about the fish whose bones are used to make poker chips or whatever. The last time you talked to them, you discussed the new Mission: Impossible movie. You can’t resurface with this energy and that subject matter.
That’s where I found myself the other day, when I caught my wife in the kitchen and unleashed an absolutely insane sentence that made total sense to me.
“I think Morgan Kibby might be a generational musical genius. Like Beethoven-level stuff,” I said, as though I expected either a debate or an invitation to present my case.
What I got was, “Who the fuck is that? What are you talking about?”
I had come in way too hot. I walked right out of the woods, having finished my journey, and just started talking. Can’t do that. Especially since I didn’t know who Morgan Kibby was 45 minutes prior to that announcement, and there was absolutely no reason she would know her either.
Now I was in the worst spot of all. Had to dial back the enthusiasm and explain how I got there. There is no way to do this without sounding like you’re describing a dream you had. These details are only interesting to you, and the longer you take to dole them out, the more your audience’s patience and enthusiasm wane. But you need those details! They’re what make the end result so interesting! So you begin your tale and hope your showmanship carries the story.
I began with, “So I was looking up high school football fields…”
Now THAT’S a hook. What a mystery! From football fields to the greatest musical talent of a generation? Hop in, loser, we’re going learnin’"!
That’s the truth, too. I was reading a debate online about the coolest high school football stadiums, and stumbled across this one in Utqiagvik, Alaska:
That is right on the shore of the Arctic Ocean, and it is undeniably sick as hell. So, like any rational person, I thought to myself, “How does one attend a game at this field?”
One does not, it turns out.
Utqiagvik, also (formerly, but sometimes currently) known as Barrow, is so far north it’s barely on a map. It is fucking NOWHERE.
That town is a prank. It exists on a dare. Unless you are wanted by Interpol or something, there is no reason at all to fucking live there. But people do. Enough to have a high school football team. So, like a completely normal person, I wanted to know how many.
Nearly 5,000 as of 2020! That’s so many! Rosemont, Illinois has fewer residents and that’s where All State Arena is, just outside Chicago. And the population went UP from the 2010 census? I had to know more, obviously.
I’ll skip most of the history, but Utqiagvik is one of the oldest permanent settlements in the United States, and predates any non-North American explorers. So it wasn’t a military base that people built a town around. It’s just been there as long people have. Also Will Rogers died there in a plane crash. Neat.
But how do people live there? It seems like it would… suck? So I dove a little deeper.
It does suck! It sucks so hard!
“Temperatures remain below freezing (32 °F or 0 °C) from early October through late May, and below 0 °F (−18 °C) from December through March.
The high temperature reaches or tops the freezing point on an average of only 136 days per year, and 92 days have a maximum at or below 0 °F (−18 °C). Freezing temperatures and snowfall can occur during any month of the year.”
Oh, and this:
“When the sun sets on November 18, it stays below the horizon until January 23, resulting in a polar night that lasts about 66 days.
...
April brings less extreme temperatures, with an average of 4.0 °F (−15.6 °C), and on April 1, the sun is up for more than 14 hours. By May 1, the sun is up for 19 hours, and by May 10 or 11 (depending on the year’s relationship to the nearest leap year), the sun stays above the horizon for the entire day. This phenomenon is known as the midnight sun. The sun does not set for 83 days,.”
Jesus Christ. Anything else?
“In addition to its low temperatures and polar night, Utqiagvik is one of the cloudiest places on Earth. Owing to the prevailing easterly winds off the Arctic Ocean, it is completely overcast slightly more than 50% of the year. It is at least 70% overcast around 62% of the time.”
Starting to think that sunny picture of the football field was false advertising. This town is a trap from a Saw movie.
Oh, and you can’t drive there. No roads connect the city to the rest of Alaska. You go by plane or by boat, or you do not leave town.
So you have a city that exists at the edge of reality, that’s freezing nearly every minute save for a month or so in summer, spends much of the year in either perpetual night or unending day, is always cloudy, and is not reachable by car.
Naturally, I wondered if anyone I’d heard of had ever grown up there.
Nope not at all. Some Alaska government people, a whaling captain, and one kid who played basketball at Texas, and then transferred to Hawaii (what a fucking move by that dude. Good for you, man).
But then I stumbled across the name Morgan Kibby. Listed as an actress and a musician, I figured she was there to fill out the roster. Like she was a “musician” in the sense that she had something recorded, therefore she made the cut of “notable people.”
“She is best known as a member and collaborator of the French electronic group M83 between 2008 and 2015”
Now that name might not jump off the page to all of you, but this song will:
That’s the main single off the 2011 album ‘Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming,” and that song was a SMASH. A worldwide banger. It was in GTA V, for god’s sake. It’s been streamed nearly 1.3 billion times on Spotify alone. The official video posted by M83 has another 500 million, and that’s just the one on their page. It’s still on the radio, and it was used in both the opening AND closing ceremonies of the Paris Olympics. If you haven’t heard that song, that’s a you thing, is what I’m saying. They also had two other very famous songs off that album that have been used in endless movies and TV shows.
This one above was used so much in soundtracks that Huffington Post (remember them?) wrote something in 2014 that it was “time to retire M*3’s ‘Outro.’”
It was used as recently as THIS YEAR at the end of Den of Thieves 2.
That one there was used in a shit load of endings of TV shows, and was the theme music for The Fault In Our Stars, which did a cool $300 million worldwide.
So this is all to say: if you are unfamiliar with M83 the band, they were a global, capital-T Thing for a few years there and for that album in particular.
Which brings us back to Mz. Kibby. Because Morgan Kibby, who grew up in a town unreachable by road, shrouded in clouds and permanently cold, with months-long days and nights, wrote the lyrics, sang, and did arrangements for that album.
She WROTE “Midnight City.”
Someone from Utqiagvik, Alaska wrote that fucking song. There ain’t record shops in that town. You aren’t listening to a wide range of artists from all over the spectrum. The place didn’t even have reliable, widespread internet until 2012. I got that info from the internet company themselves. They had internet, but not like we have. It was usable for function, not for entertainment. They got the good internet in 2017.
Now, obviously, she wasn’t living there in 2010 when that song was written. She had moved down to civilization by that point. But Morgan Kibby was born in 1984. In Utqiagvik. Which means she wasn’t exposed to even 5 percent of the music an average kid gets exposed to. I don’t care how quickly she dove in once she got to the west coast, she was still playing from way behind everyone else writing music. But she had THAT song in her (and the others on the album, to a degree).
You grow up in that level of isolation and still are able to put together a song so dope the whole world rides with it for a decade? I think that makes you a bonafide musical genius. Possibly a generational one.
I definitely thought that when I first read about her. Which is why my poor wife got hit by that truly bonkers word goulash in the kitchen. I was able to explain it, eventually, but it never hits quite as hard for the person you tell about it as it hit for you. That didn’t stop me from doing it again, though. Hope you enjoyed it.
Season Power Rankings
| Team | Rank | Change |
|---|---|---|
| Steve Keers | #1 | --- |
| Justin Childs | #2 | ↑1 |
| Micah Thoman | #3 | ↑2 |
| Kyle Luke | #4 | ↓-2 |
| Andrew DeWitt | #5 | ↓-1 |
| JJ Bailey | #6 | --- |
| Will Armistead | #7 | --- |
| Ryan Munson | #8 | --- |
| Andres Santana | #9 | --- |
| Dan Resnick | #10 | --- |
| Jimmy Slater | #11 | --- |
| Lee Morehouse | #12 | --- |
Strength Of Schedule
| Team | Rank | Change |
|---|---|---|
| Ryan Munson | #1 | --- |
| Steve Keers | #2 | --- |
| JJ Bailey | #3 | --- |
| Jimmy Slater | #4 | ↑1 |
| Micah Thoman | #5 | ↑2 |
| Will Armistead | #6 | ↑3 |
| Andrew DeWitt | #7 | ↓-3 |
| Lee Morehouse | #8 | --- |
| Andres Santana | #9 | ↓-3 |
| Dan Resnick | #10 | ↑1 |
| Justin Childs | #11 | ↓-1 |
| Kyle Luke | #12 | --- |
Playoff Odds
| Team | Odds |
|---|---|
| Steve Keers | 99% |
| JJ Bailey | 91% |
| Micah Thoman | 91% |
| Andrew DeWitt | 88% |
| Justin Childs | 86% |
| Kyle Luke | 69% |
| Will Armistead | 63% |
| Andres Santana | 5% |
| Dan Resnick | 4% |
| Ryan Munson | 2% |
| Jimmy Slater | 1% |
| Lee Morehouse | 1% |
THE
GAMES
THE GAMES
ANDRES Vs. KYLE 109.1-97.8
No bye weeks this time! Kyle, how does it feel to be beaten by Cam Ward? And Cam Ward when it was a choice. This wasn’t a bye week fill-in. Andres, knowing Murray would not play, could have swapped out just about any quarterback available and gotten more points. Instead he doubled down on a quarterback who’s putting up below-average tight end numbers, and since no one on earth wants Kyler Murray’s goofily-proportioned body back on the field, looks like Ward is his starter from here on out.
*checks rosters*
Well, not this week. With Ward on bye, Andres will have to turn to… oh! literally anybody. Every available quarterback is projected higher than Ward every week. Since his two QBs are not going to play, Andres cannot be wrong in who he chooses. Excited to see where this goes!
In two weeks, Kyle has gone from 11-3 to 11-7, which must be a real kick in the dick. I’m sure Kyle’s dick is pretty great, though, so maybe it at least scuffed up the boots what did the kicking. Seattle’s running game is getting worse, and worse in a way that makes you consider euthanizing the patient rather than trying to fix them. You know how algebra builds on the lessons from each week, so if you miss a whole week of class, whenever you come back, all the equations use shit that you never learned? The Seahawks look like they missed an entire month and are trying to take tests anyway.
Also Davis Mills is quarterbacking way too much in Houston, and it’s a super bad time for that for Nico owners. Mills is like that blowfish you have to cut just right, or it’s fatal to eat. Any amount of him is a risk, but this amount guarantees you’re gonna get poisoned. Jake Ferguson came back to Earth, but luckily for him, he was a faux star long enough to bag Hailey Cavinder. Remember a couple weeks ago when I wondered how those two ever crossed paths? Well, silly me, I never looked her up beyond Wikipedia. Turns out, her Instagram is a big ol’ thirst trap exhibit, which removes any mystery as to how they got in contact. Jake was giving Lil’ Fergie a tugaroo one night, and fired off a DM, likely at the height of his excitement. Once he had some post-coital clarity, he probably sent a follow-up explaining he was a Cowboys player, and that led us to this moment. Congrats to the two lovebirds!
But that romantic bliss has made Jake a little too complacent for Kyle’s needs, so maybe it’s time to throw some strife into their relationship. Kyle, send her a selfie and tell her you’re Tyler Sklenar. I think she’d buy it. Let’s see if we can’t get Jake worried about why she’s on the phone so much. Get him back out there trying to earn her love on the gridiron.
Good news is Emeka Egbuka is back after the bye, and I have nothing to add about that other than here is Rob Gronkowski trying to say Egbuka’s name:
He could have just stopped at “rookie receiver out of Ohio State.” You could see him think about it. But Gronk is a champion, so he’s always gonna try to make the big play.
Anyway, Eggbegboo is back for Kyle, so things aren’t as dire as they seem.
DeWitt vs. Munson 137.2-121.9
Man, I love a good dead cat bounce. Munson took Caleb Williams under his wing and immediately got 37 out of him, thanks primarily to the Bengals deciding to play defense without using their arms. There was some hullabaloo in the league about how he got Williams from me, and now Williams is good since he left my team, but I need to set the record straight here.
I had Williams for eight weeks, and started him twice. Once was a disaster, because the Bears beat the Saints without him. The other time, he got 28.5. So it wasn’t like he sucked for me all year and then came alive. He’s been startable most of the season in a pinch, and occasionally great. Now, if Munson does that with Cam Ward, then we have something.
DeWitt made it to 12-6, but at what cost? I’ve never seen a team get bleaker the more it wins. He’s now down Tucker Kraft and Jayden Daniels for the season, and his backup option at quarterback is Brock Purdy, who is going to be questionable-trending-toward-doubtful every single week. Shanahan basically said as much.
This is a fantasy team built entirely out of CMC and JSN, with Gadsden chipping in every other week. Now the Chargers are without both of their all-world offensive tackles for the year, so Gadsden might be every other never since they need the TE to block. Kimani Vidal, who DeWitt also has, is the unlucky soul who has to try to run the ball with that pile of folding chairs as his line.
I look forward to a 16-6 DeWitt starting all Jets and Browns by week 12.
Micah vs. Will (163.8-153.4)
Micah Weekly High Score
I don’t care enough to look this up, but for some reason, I always associate Dalton Kincaid with Will. I’m not sure if he had him once and that just stuck with me, or if he drafted him for a lot one year, or if it was something he said about him, but in my head, Will is a big Dalton Kincaid guy. Loves him. Would always want Kincaid in the foxhole with him.
I bring that up because Micah got 24 out of Kincaid, which might be a career high, and I thought it tragic that it happened against Will, since Will fought so hard and came up just short. But I have no idea if Will even cares if Kincaid lives or dies. That’s just a thing my brain did. It’s not just Will, either. I have players attached to all of you in my brain. Some of these I know are true, some I know are false but I can’t shake them, and some are there for reasons unexplained (active players only):
Munson: Bijan Robinson, despite him never having him in fantasy.
Jimmy: Joe Burrow.
Kyle: Kenneth Walker III, obviously, but also Ray Davis for some reason.
Micah: Kyler Murray.
Steve: Any Jaguar. I know it’s just because he got lucky with Jags running backs, but my brain has turned that into him being a Jacksonville fan. He’s always harboring a belief that they are about to be great, and wants as many Jaguars as he can get when they’re good.
Will: Dalton Kincaid. Also, any white possession receiver.
DeWitt: Number 1 Niners fan. I know that’s probably just CMC, but DeWitt is a Shannahead in my mind.
Justin: Hunter Henry and Hayden Hurst. Maybe it’s an H thing, but I think it has to do with underappreciated, kinda-fast TEs.
Andres: Aaron Rodgers
Lee: Saints wide receivers. Doesn’t matter who, just that they play for the Saints.
Dan: Too early, but for now it’s just NFC North.
I’m aware how little of that is accurate, but don’t tell my brain. It doesn’t care. Steve is one Christmas away from having a Jags jersey.
Anyway, Micah managed to outlast Will despite Will getting more than 60 points from two TEs. I know Will has been shopping Brock Bowers, and it’s truly something that he hasn’t found a buyer yet, but maybe he should put a hold on that. The Raiders went and traded away their only other receiver, which is the most transparent any team has ever been in only caring about one player. If Las Vegas could ship off everyone but Bowers and Crosby, they would. They’d be the Vegas White Beefs, and they’d win exactly as much as they do now.
Micah is riding high thanks to lucking into Rico Dowdle being Walter Payton, which is not an indictment of Micah so much as an observation about how fantasy football works. The Panthers paid Chuba Hubbard a bunch of money, then got Dowdle as a discount backup version of the same guy. Then, Dowdle stole Hubbard’s whole career out from under him and may never rush for less than 150 yards again. Sometimes you’re the guy that drafts Hubbard (Lee), sometimes you’re the guy that picks up Dowdle on a whim (Micah). You gotta ride the lucky ones when they come, since the unlucky ones happen much more frequently.
Also helping Micah’s case is the fact Jacoby Brissett is apparently a much better quarterback for the Cardinal offense than Kyler Murray ever was. While this hurts Micah because (in my mind) Kyler Murray is his favorite player, it’s great for Marvin Harrison Jr. Jonathon Gannon, who should have been fired forever ago and should still be fired even as I type this, is pretending like they aren’t making the switch full-time. He keeps saying Kyler is the guy, and they just want his foot to get to 100 percent. Let me tell you: That foot is never getting to 100 percent. He’s week-to-week until Brissett sucks or gets hurt. Trey Benson may someday play football again, and if he comes back looking good, they might cut Murray’s foot off just to keep up the lie. As long as Brissett is under center, Harrison is a real receiver, and Micah is a happy man.
JJ Vs. Dan (146.4-95.4)
Welcome back, Evil Jordan Love! Seven possessions, five trips to the red zone, four of them resulting in six total points. God, the Packers are weird, fraudulent dipshits. How are we throwing arm-punt interceptions to the fucking Panthers? Why are we calling slow-developing screens on third and 10? Just play normal ass football, Green Bay.
Dan also managed to get absolutely nothing from the Colts/Steelers game, despite the final score being 27-20 and him having Jonathan Taylor and DK Metcalf. That seems impossible, but it worked out for me so I’ll take it. He did get 16 points from Mark Andrews, whom I completely forgot about. It’s like that period of Nic Cage’s career before his mini comeback with Pig and The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent. You’d be flipping through Netflix and his face would be on a thumbnail poster for something called HVAC Man or Soul Muncher 2: Aftertaste and you’d think to yourself, “oh yeah, I guess he’s still around.” That’s how I feel when I see Mark Andrews on a fantasy team now. Glad he’s getting checks, but I didn’t think there were any roles left for him.
That little Andrenaissance didn’t help much, since Daniel was facing the QB with the most rushing yards in the NFL. That’s right, the number one running quarterback in 2025 is not Lamar, or Josh Allen, or Jayden Daniels. It’s Justin Motherfucking Herbert. Herbs and Spices himself. The exciting thing about that is since he now has no offensive line or running backs, he will have to run even more lest he die. The depressing thing about that is he is Justin Herbert, and he is running, so he will be injured within the hour.
But I’m not worried. Why? Glad you asked.
🎆Welcome to the Bo Show!🎆
As we’ve covered, Bo Nix is one of the most exciting young quarterbacks in the NFL. A truly game-changing talent, there is nothing that he cannot do.
Running? You know it!
Throwing? Hell yeah, brother!
Throwing deep? Easy for Big Bo.
But what truly separates Bo Nix (contender) from his peers (pretenders) is something I have dubbed: The Disasterpiece.
Bo Nix has mastered the art of turning truly horseshit games into amazing weeks thanks to fourth quarter rallies that strain credulity. Did you know that more than 40 percent of his fantasy points this season have come in the final 15 minutes of games? Roughly 73 points out of his 177 on the year. His passer rating is 24 points higher in the fourth quarter! God damn, he’s good.
He takes abject failure and, through sheer force of will, reshapes it into triumph. He creates Disasterpieces.
It’s why I have loved Bo Nix since he first came into the league, and why I will love him as long as he draws breath.
Steve vs. Jimmy 150.7-86.5
Let me tell you what’s really getting on my nerves. I am having one of the better fantasy seasons of my life, and it’s going absolutely nowhere. I drafted pretty well, and when injuries came calling, I’ve managed to keep this ship afloat; winning games and scoring high enough to avoid dreaded double-losses. This is going as well as it could for me, but Steve is fucking it all up.
The guy won’t fucking lose! Even when he benches Tee Higgins for Bam Knight, and Higgins has a career week on the pine, he puts up 150 and wins by 70 goddamn points. It’s exhausting.
Can one of these pricks get injured? Or hold out for a trade? Get arrested for treason? It’s been a while since we had someone be a sex pest- can one of his players whip it out at a Macy’s makeup counter or something? Gimme anything.
He’s never gonna lose again, and I’m gonna end up missing the playoffs somehow because I’ll win 18 games and still not win the division. How have the Bills and Rams had their bye already? Puka Nacua has played every week, sometimes twice. Josh Allen has scored 25 points every day since September, and you cannot tell me different. God damn it.
At least Steve has Tory Horton again. It’s been a real will they, won’t they with those two, and I’m excited to see how it all ends.
It’s like we have our own little production of The Notebook.
Justin Vs. Lee (123.2-112.7)
This is the loss that finally broke Lee. After losing to Justin, he posted a missive in the Discord that amounted to, “I don’t care and you can’t make me,” which is the battle cry of every fantasy player who made a bunch of wrong moves in a season and then lost to a ridiculous collection of players.
Lee’s collection of draft day running backs ended up totaling $106 of his budget and not one of them is in the top 25 for points in their position. The two guys he traded for (Pollard and Dobbins) fell off a cliff the second he got them, and now Pollard at RB 25 represents the biggest success of the bunch. It went poorly, is what I’m saying. Then Justin, starting Kyle Monangai, Rome Odunze, and two tight ends, beat him by 11 and closed the book for good. As someone who has lived that exact season, I get it. Rest in peace, 2025 Lee. I promise we will not tell the newspaper you were mad.
Justin’s weird bullshit worked yet again, thanks to the fact Chicago got to play Cincinnati, and Cincinnati is on pace to have the worst defense in the last 30 years.
If things keep going this way, they will allow the most yards of any team in NFL history, which is pretty exciting. But even with this inflated week, Chicago has been markedly improved over last season. Here’s where each team was through nine games:
2024:
283 yards per game (last in the NFL)
18 points per game (28th in the NFL)
2025:
378 yards per game (3rd in the NFL)
27 points per game (6th in the NFL)
Yes, playing the dipshit Bengals certainly helped those totals, but nine other teams played the Bengals, too. It’s not like Chicago has an exclusive contract with them.
The result has been that Justin has gotten enough from his 50 Bears players to survive to this point, and the Sam LaPorta/Travis Kelce tandem has been surprisingly effective because the Chiefs about-faced their entire offense this season. Also, Taylor Swift wrote a whole song about Kelce’s hog, so it would be a bad look if he had a lackluster year after that.
But Justin has a real doozy of a problem on the horizon, since the Bears are no longer playing the Commanders, Saints, Bengals, Raiders, and Cowboys. Those are in the rearview. After this week against the Giants, here’s how the Bears finish the fantasy schedule:
@ Minnesota
Vs. Pittsburgh
@ Philadelphia
@ Green Bay
Vs. Cleveland
Vs. Green Bay
@ San Francisco
Put another way, the Steelers are the worst defense for fantasy players they are going to play during that entire stretch, and they just fucked Daniel Jones and Jonathan Taylor all the way up. I guess the Niners are one slot lower, but that would be in the Championship Game. Something tells me starting three Bears per week won’t go nearly as well against those defenses, so let’s worry about San Fran if that time comes, shall we?
