Back on Sept. 1, Green Bay Packers tight end Martellus Bennett tweeted out a shot at fantasy football.
In the end, everyone pretty much agreed to disagree. But now it seems as if a number of players are following Bennett’s lead.
Going into Monday night’s game between the Lions and the Giants, a Twitter user named Jameson Kendall needed nine fantasy points from Detroit wideout Golden Tate to win his weekly matchup. But Tate could only manage four receptions for 25 yards, a four-point outing in PPR scoring, and Kendall let Tate know about it on Twitter.
Tate was having none of it. His team won, and that’s all that mattered in his world, otherwise known as the real world.
Tate wasn’t alone in Monday night’s game. Giants wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr. was a game-time decision after missing Week 1 with an ankle injury, leaving his fantasy owners with something of a dilemma as they finalized their lineups on Sunday: They could roll the dice and start Beckham, despite the chance that he might not play, or leave him on the bench and hope he doesn’t have a big game (he didn’t, finishing with four catches for 36 yards in limited action).
On Sunday, Beckham tweeted out a reminder that your fantasy football dilemmas are not what he’s thinking about when he’s deciding whether to take the field after an injury.
No offense. I could care less about ur fantasy teams. This is my Real Life. Focusing on gettin healthy and gettin better. 1 day at a time.🙏🏽
— Odell Beckham Jr (@obj) September 16, 2017
Eagles running back LeGarrette Blount also had something blunt to say about fantasy football owners on Sunday night after he had zero carries in Philadelphia’s loss to the Chiefs (the terrible MS Paint job covers up a profanity in the tweet):
There are probably a number of reasons for the Great Fantasy Football Schism of 2017. Increased use of social media seemingly has emboldened fans to take their gripes directly to the source, and emboldened the players to snap right back. And there’s a lot of money involved, more than $7 billion annually, according to the Fantasy Sports Trade Association.
There also has to be a bit of frustration among fantasy owners about the way things have shaken out offensively over the first two weeks of the season. Fewer points scored in real life means fewer points scored on the fantasy side of things.
Last year NFL teams averaged 22.8 points per game. This year the average is 20.1.
— Michael David Smith (@MichaelDavSmith) September 19, 2017
But tweeting at NFL athletes probably isn’t going to solve any of that.
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