Fantasy Football Week 5: Pursuit of Perfection or Mediocrity, Your Call

Week 5 is an ugly week for depraved fantasy football lunatics like me. It manifests this pain in my gut so searing that, if not for having my appendix removed at 15, I would be willing to bet I was experiencing full-blown appendicitis. 

Scouring through Start 'Em, Sit 'Em Week 5 advice from too many sources has left me with what I’m thinking are now a bleeding ulcer, bloody stools and guaranteed lineup miscues right around the corner.

While we only have four weeks of the NFL in the books, we are almost halfway through the regular season of most fantasy football leagues.

NFL Power Rankings (Week 5) shed a glimpse of hope for my struggling 0-4 team. Very few of my top players—like Ray Rice, Jeremy Maclin and Eli Manning—are on top 10 teams.

I know this seems counterintuitive to think that having the majority of your fantasy players on teams in the bottom half of weekly power rankings is somehow beneficial, but let me explain. Never have my fantasy football teams that end up doing well had roster players that are on the overall best NFL teams.

It has never failed that when I have a team full of “Winners,” they end up laying down like a 1975 Ford Pinto. As I sit here making roster changes, scouring the waiver wire and swigging away at my bottle of Pepto-Bismol, I hope this year will be no different.

And that brings us, fantasy football degenerates, to the realization that our NFL Week 5 picks will have to be made earlier than in years past—as they have been this entire season—because of the emergence of Thursday night games.

It’s gut-wrenching enough on Sunday to watch your week's worth of iron-clad research get torched like a living room couch after a University of Kentucky National Championship basketball game, but having to witness a Thursday night decimation of your troops is almost unbearable.

As for my Week 5 fantasy football lineup, I have pored over the stats, data and available information for long enough this week, yet for some sick reason, I haven’t been able to click submit on my roster and move on—even though the longer I let it fester, the greater my chances of screwing it up.

The Thursday night matchup between the undefeated Arizona Cardinals and the 2-2 St. Louis Rams will surely get my blood pressure high enough that my wife and kids will be in the other room laughing like a gang of hyenas at my loud ranting and raving at the TV.

Being forced to start Kevin Kolb at QB this week for my regular QB Matt Stafford—the Detroit Lions have a bye—will most certainly provide enough angst that ensures I put in another six to seven hours worth of painful study Thursday before kickoff. 

I will never figure this stuff out—I’m fairly certain that my brain will be so far gone soon that I am unable to concentrate long enough to sit through a single NFL game, let alone an entire week's worth of games without being heavily medicated.

Hot damn! I can hardly wait to rid myself of this burden once and for all…Wait, I just got tip on a hot pickup from a Twitter follower. Gotta go.