Maurice Jones-Drew says teammate almost didn’t block for him to beat him in fantasy
If you think you and your friends take fantasy football too seriously, just wait until you hear this story.
During an interview with Evan Cohen and Steve Phillips on “Evan and Phillips in the Morning” on Mad Dog Radio SiriusXM 86 on Wednesday, Jacksonville Jaguars running back Maurice Jones-Drew shared a story about how one of his teammates nearly didn’t block for him on a play because the two were competing in fantasy football that week. Seriously.
“Greg Jones — see he’s not on the team anymore — perfect example: I was playing against him [in fantasy]. And we have our equipment guys keep us up on [the fantasy scores] during games. You know who you have and you see when you’re not on the field obviously but … I think if I scored, I was going to [beat Jones].
“We got onto the 1-yard line, and they were like, ‘We better call this run play.’ I’m like, ‘Greg, don’t do it.’ And he looked at me and he winked. And I was like ‘Greg.’ It’s not time to play. This is bigger than [winning in fantasy]. Let’s not do this.”
Asked what the wink meant, MJD answered, “[Jones] wasn’t going to block the guy!”
Would an NFL player really miss a block on purpose and sabotage his real team to beat a teammate in fantasy football? We highly doubt that would happen. But we do know guys have admitted missing blocks on purpose for even worse reasons, so you really can’t rule anything out.
UPDATE: MJD later said on Twitter that he was joking with the story — which is what most people figured.
Stop the madness!! Listen to the broadcast…it was a JOKE people…made during the Sirius fantasy draft. #commonsencejournalism!
— Maurice Jones-Drew (@Jones_Drew32) July 18, 2013
You can listen to the audio of his appearance here.