Chances are that as you read this you’re either setting your fantasy football lineup for your league’s championship game, or you’re curled up in the fetal position in a puddle of your own filth, wondering how it all went wrong. Out of five leagues, I’m prepping for two championship matches, so I ask not for any sympathy today, but instead, as always, offer my broad, hulking shoulders as a temple for which you can lean on. After all, I might be one of the few human beings on this planet who enjoys listening to people talk about their fantasy teams.

As far as the MVPs and LVPs this week, there were plenty of pleasant surprises, as well as dependable performances from those players that we depend on the most. Oh, and there were plenty of guys who let us down as well, including Eli Manning, who may have two Super Bowl rings, but after the season he’s having, I wouldn’t be surprised if Archie and Peyton make him sit at the kids’ table for Christmas this year.

So what the hell have the rest of you done for us lately, professional athlete millionaires?

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Chances are that this week was either your last shot at making your fantasy football league’s playoffs or it may have even been the first round for some of us, but either way it’s safe to say that the dependables did their thing and the risky guys probably didn’t. It was a relatively normal week across the board for the Big 3 positions, with the exception of a handful of “elite” or “bordering-on-elite” wide receivers who really crapped the bed.

But the most fascinating game of the week from both a train wreck and/or fantasy standpoint was the Seattle Seahawks’ 58-0 absolute-clobbering of the Arizona Cardinals. Unless you had the Seahawks defense or Marshawn Lynch in this game, chances are you walked away scratching your head and wondering what the hell just happened. Obviously, there wasn’t a single Arizona player worth a damn (except maybe Rob Housler as a desperation TE *points to self*), but people counting on Russell Wilson, Sidney Rice or Golden Tate must have been PISSED.

What a strange, strange game that was. And if you’re interested, you can watch the entire game in one quick video recap…

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I’ve had a joke going with several friends over the past few weeks that Calvin Johnson has helped put the Madden Curse to rest, while we’re starting to see the emergence of an all new and much more powerful NFL demon – the Thursday Night Football QB Curse. Take this last TNF game, for instance. Atlanta Falcons QB Matt Ryan was just not-sh*tty enough with 165 yards and a TD to defeat the New Orleans Saints, who were led by Drew Brees’ 341 yards (good) and 5 INT (horrendous). Needless to say, by Friday morning, I already had several readers asking for this post.

Excluding the Thanksgiving Thursday games, which featured strong performances from Matt Schaub, Tom Brady, Matt Stafford, Tony Romo and Robert Griffin III – hell, even Mark Sanchez wasn’t terrible – you had a double-decker turdburger from Ryan Tannehill and Ryan Fitzpatrick in Week 11, a Blaine Gabbert-esque performance from Blaine Gabbert and Andrew Luck (he did rush for 2 TD in his defense) in Week 10, and Matt Cassel and Philip Rivers derping it up in Week 9. In fact, aside from Josh Freeman in Week 8, Ben Roethlisberger in Week 6 and Joe Flacco in Week 4, Thursday night games have been mediocre-to-awful at best for fantasy QBs.

I bring this up for two reasons – 1) Because Brees’ career low performance in Atlanta is almost definitely the fantasy performance that killed the most people’s chances this week; and 2) Because as someone who has Peyton Manning leading his team into the first round of the playoffs this week, I am terrified. But let’s go ahead and check out who we love and who we especially loathe this week, and share your own awful stories in the comments.

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This is how he threw all game.

The toughest part of the Thanksgiving week of NFL action for us fantasy football addicts has to be the three days off between games. Sure, we have Thursday games every week, but that typically means that we have one or maybe two guys playing at most. When you have six of the NFL’s best teams playing on Thanksgiving, though, you’re talking half of an entire fantasy roster in some cases. That means if your players have bad games, you’re stuck staring at those piss poor stats for the next several days and wondering what the hell went wrong.

Even worse, you’re left breaking down the stats and scenarios for what you still need to win, and that blows, because your opponent probably still has seven or eight players left against you, and by Sunday morning you’re curled up in a ball next to your toilet, mumbling, “Please don’t kill me, Doug Martin… oh God, please don’t kill me.” And then, of course, he f*cking kills you.

Once again, pull up your chair, because we have plenty of fantasy football issues to work out in this week’s group therapy.

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My favorite part of this past fantasy football Sunday was a Tweet from ESPN’s resident guy who points out the obvious, Darren Rovell, about Jacksonville Jaguars QB Chad Henne only being owned in .5% of ESPN fantasy leagues. Well, no sh*t, Sherlock. If you were in my league and you had Henne on your bench, you’d either have to be the biggest Jags homer on the planet or every QB that you had on your roster has died this season. And if you started him, I’d tie you to a wooden pole and burn you for witchcraft.

But as always, that’s the fun of fantasy football hindsight. It’s easy for Rovell and Co. to wag their fingers and shout, “I can’t believe nobody had the fortitude to pick this guy up!” Now they get to snort and chortle while their colleagues in the fantasy expert division bang their computers with rocks and try to figure out what went wrong.

This is where we join them, in the With Leather Fantasy Football Support Group, to complain about the guys who either unexpectedly spanked us or those who let us down beyond belief.

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Shut up, Greg Olsen.

Last week, we kicked off the first installment of the With Leather Fantasy Football Support Group, because Week 9 made perfect sense. Whatever, jerks. But Doug Martin was the seemingly overwhelming choice for the “I hate that guy so much” sudden point outburst, after he had cost me and so many other fantasy football owners victories. This week, the task of narrowing down one specific player performance that may have caused self-induced vomiting and hair loss, because it was a pretty standard week with the usual suspects leading the way.

Based on the most probably standard scoring, here are the Top 3 scoring performances at each offensive position this week…

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