In many ways, this was a fitting end to a highly-disappointing fantasy season. My dream team went into Monday night with an eight-point lead with Michael Turner and Lance Moore going up against Jimmy Graham and Roddy White. I felt a slight confidence, and by confidence, I mean I knew that I was screwed.

One of the John Madden‘s credos was to never take points off the board. But 49ers coach Jim Harbaugh did just, and it had a big impact on fantasy football owners’ seasons.

Congratulations to those of you who lived to fight another day in fantasy football, thanks to some strong performances from Marshawn Lynch, Steven Jackson, and even Brandon Lloyd, who had a decent outing. But for some of you, it just wasn’t enough.

I got a tweet from William B. on Monday night: “Why is the one day I bench Rivers, his best day of the season?” Because that’s fantasy football. And I should know, because I spent most of my time on Thursday’s edition of NFL Fantasy Live breaking up with Philip Rivers, ending our association for the season.

Apparently, that was the kick-start he needed to get things going.

If you’re familiar with my work at all, you know two things about me: I love to make “Top Gun” references, and the second is that I live and die with my fantasy studs. And I bring this up because there is a rumor floating out there that one of our producers for “NFL Fantasy Live” (and a former producer on the “Dave Dameshek Football Program“) sat Drew Brees this week.

If anybody has seen Wes Welker lately, can you let him know that we miss him? Especially those who were counting on him to get a big performance from him on Monday night. Actually, some were not even waiting for a big performance from Welker.

There’s going to be a long conversation during the offseason about whether Aaron Rodgers deserves to be the No. 1 pick in fantasy drafts. But we will save that for another day. This is what we can say about him right now: Nobody offers more hope or causes for discomfort for fantasy owners than Rodgers playing on Monday night.

Regular readers of this space know that Monday night was not going to be a good one for me. I had scored the second-most points in our NFL Network league and was looking pretty good until I noticed that Lindsay Soto was rolling out Matt Forte, LeSean McCoy and DeSean Jackson. We know how this one was going to end, right?

Long-time readers of this space know that every Monday night game seems like Halloween to me. Although, I have to give some discredit to the Sunday night game for ruining my fantasy weeks, too including LeSean McCoy erasing my 29-point lead this week. But a funny thing happened to me this Monday — I actually won.

Thank you for nothing, Ray Rice. Literally.

Well that was terrible. Both the game and the ending of my fantasy week. Although it is hard to put this all on Brandon Marshall who had an impressive stat line against Darrelle Revis — 10 receptions for 109 yards. I mean, even desiring anything more than that production against Revis is asking a lot.

One of the bummers about playing in five leagues (three mandated by my employment) is that seemingly every touchdown scored on your typical Sunday and Monday either crushes you, or helps you. I feel like I have every player on every team on at least one of my squads.

One of the worst things that can happen to you in fantasy football is hope. That glimmer of hope that makes you believe that your team can pull off the impossible. And trailing my buddy Scotty J. by 51 points after his team (with Wes Welker and Beanie Wells) went nuts, I had resigned myself to the loss despite having LeGarrette Blount and Pierre Garcon going on Monday.

No matter what I do with Eli Manning, he is going to ruin my fantasy team. Start him like I did last week, and he kills me. Bench him in favor of Rex Grossman this week, and he kills me. Although the biggest failure is in my own hands for starting Grossman.

Of course Tom Brady was out to ruin my fantasy week. Some things never change.