Even more predictable than the post-game hyperbole proclaiming the 2018 Los Angeles Rams to be The Greatest X of All-Time or the Greatest Team Since Y were the pitiable lamentations of fantasy football “team” “owners” over the missing pointage Todd Gurley cost them in the final minute.
What was different about this perceived slight was the insistence by mainstream media that Gurley’s brilliant time-expending play that gamblers would be outraged. Within 30 minutes of the final gun, those well-known sports betting experts at the Business Insider had posted an internationally-distributed piece entitled “Todd Gurley stops short of the end zone on final play to swing millions for sports bettors.”
Naturally, this story was devoid of concrete statistics and completely ignored the reality that the Green Bay Packers are consistently a top draw for NFL bettors and Wisconsin homers. NFLbets would guess with littler fear of contradiction that a lot more money was wagered on Green Bay +7½ than the favored L.A. minus the points. Equally as naturally, scads more like stories followed this one, and literally none have a firm grip on current U.S. gambling law.
But NFLbets isn’t here to criticize uninformed journalists. We’re here to rant. Specifically about those small-minded complainers. To those bitching about Todd Gurley for fantasy reasons, grow up and realize that you’re gambling. Quit stroking your ego about when you guessed correctly – that’s right: *guessed*, f^^#%^@ers – and realize that you sound like a slots player bragging about a system. Just for starters, we suppose you knew that James Connor would “outscore” Gurley or that Marvin Jones would have a “better” game than Antonio Brown or that the Rams’ top receiver would be Josh Reynolds. Yeah, surrrrrrrrrre.
That’s the thing, though, isn’t it? Any game in which a poor man’s LeVeon Beall is more highly rewarded than the league’s MVP who demonstrated football intelligence above and beyond is straight-up bunk. Any football-based game in which one may have to “play” without a quarterback due to some random injury is absurd. And football wherein the offensive line has absolutely zero impact on the final outcome is already called f^&@+&@ing flag football.
But we suppose if you didn’t again take note that some dude with an algorithm cruncher and perhaps a passing knowledge of football won your DFS contest again, you probably never will.
Incidentally, none of this is to say that daily fantasy or traditional fantasy football isn’t fun or even worth throwing a few bucks at. But the proper fantasy football player must realize that DFS is straight-up mostly-unskilled gambling. Blaming Todd Gurley, who’s surely saved thousands of players’ bacon every week this season, for your fantasy team’s loss sounds trivial at best and insulting to the intelligence at worst.
As for those who took the Rams -7½ points – a wager that NFLbets emphatically did not prescribe – and might today be whining about Gurley passing up the touchdown, you sound even weaker than the bellyaching DFS losers. First off, you should know that nobody likes “bad beat” stories anyway, and this one would rank pretty damn low on the list regardless.
Secondly, you presumedly took the Rams minus more than a touchdown against a plucky Packers side based at least in part on the game smarts that Sean McVeigh has instilled in his players, a hallmark of all great NFL teams. By taking the uncommonly clever option over the selfish stat-padding choice preferred by fantasy football players, Todd Gurley “screwed” you all for the exact reason you bet on his Rams.
Finally, imagine the alternative: Say Gurley runs in the touchdown and Greg Zuerlein connects on the extra point for a 9-point Rams lead with over one minute to play. At this point, who doesn’t believe that Aaron Rodgers can work the magic again and at least heave-ho for a touchdown? Bam, suddenly it’s a 2-point game again and you lose on Rams -7½ anyway. Plus then you get to hear all the stories from the DFS players about how even though they had Gurley, the team they were playing had Rodgers and/or Davante Adams.
Look, even if you’re purely an NFL bettor with no loyalties to anything but the win ATS, you simply have to appreciate what Gurley and the Rams are doing in 2018. If he cost you a bet at the sportsbook, sorry. If you finished out of the money in DFS, boo hoo. Or as the man himself put it, “Man, forget fantasy and forget Vegas.”
(And you know he wanted to use another f-word in there…)
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