This isn't your daddy's Cedric Benson...

Interpreted in its simplest form, a trap game occurs when a good team beats another good team and then subsequently has to play a mediocre team. The good team is often so emotionally spent from the previous win that it sometimes overlooks the mediocre team, hence the trap. It's a phenomenon that happens each week in the NFL – just ask Jacksonville and Washington – and is even more rampant in the NBA, NHL and countless other games.

A little known fact, however, is that the trap can also transcend sports and happen in everyday moments to run of the mill people. Say you and a coworker are competing for the same promotion, you think he's a weak and consider the job yours before the interviews even take place. TRAP. 

It can happen in– of all things– fantasy football when you breathe a bit easier knowing your opponent swapped bye week WR Greg Jennings with Miles Austin. TRAP. 

Or take me for example, who just returned from a killer 15-day wedding and honeymoon so complete and fantastic that I foolishly assumed that it would be easy to leave. TRAP! I should have known it’s been mathematically proven that when you spend fifteen straight mornings sitting on a beach while chasing down 9:00 AM Cuban sandwiches with the first of many Medalla’s you are laying the foundation for a serious letdown once back in the real world. I'm talking classic Mitch Cohen letdown without even considering the fifteen additional evenings you were so very content in that same seat at that same establishment when that same stoner bartender you suspected could be Kerry Von Erich (before you realized he had died over ten years ago) demanded you create a more catchy name for the obnoxious amount of “two shots of whiskey and two beers” rounds we’d been bugging him for every twenty minutes since arriving on the island. By that time we were eight “Chuck Woolery’s” deep and life was too good. Time stood still.

Then– poof–  you're 30,000 feet up headed somewhere thirty degrees colder and 35 to 50% safer. You regain internet access and learn the New England Patriots didn’t score a point once JetBlue’s television satellite feed died at halftime way back in Week 2. You’re body begins to shiver intensely. You feel like Julian from Less Than Zero just before one of his serious coke withdrawals set in. My honeymoon trip had ended. The trap had begun.

Miserable and defeated, you read that, according to actress Mackenzie Phillips, she and late father Papa John of the Mamas and Papas slapped skins from time to time while she was 13 years old – first as rape but later as quasi consensual guilt sex – until a pregnancy and abortion tore their precious relationship to shreds. Soon after you notice Mackenzie has a book to sell and that former Mama and Papa Denny Doherty had a son who now swears his father knew about the incestuous affair and even told him so just before pop Doherty died in 2007. Hmmm, I thought. In normal circumstances I’d consider this story tragic, no matter who was telling the truth. But this day was different. On this day – yup you guessed it – my honeymoon trip had ended.

In choosing to put aside such scandal I instead focused on the pulsating throbs traveling through in my neck as well as the odd feeling that my white blood cell count was on the rise – and fast. Ultimately I would correctly blame the episodes on an email which explained my on-autopilot fantasy football team was now 1-4 and in last place. 

As the flight forged on my mind and body remained considerably miserable. After all, my honeymoon trip had ended. I did, however, muster enough strength to discover why Jaguars QB David Garrard is still a #2 fantasy quarterback. Just one week after dropping 323 yards, three touchdowns and a 126 passer rating on the hapless Titans in Week 4, Garrard managed just 188 yards, no TD’s and two lost fumbles versus a Seattle secondary that had previously given up 600 yards and 5 TD’s to opposing quarterbacks in its last two games.  Although owners who started Garrard in place of bye-week QB’s Drew Brees, Aaron Rodgers, Jay Cutler and Philip Rivers obviously should have tempered their expectations a tad, it did seem like the Jacksonville QB was on the precipice of becoming a low-end #1 fantasy quarterback and a decent bye-week play. Well, maybe he is but it didn't look that way against Seattle. We’ll see how he responds in the coming weeks versus the Rams, Titans and Chiefs – who rank 25^th, 32^nd and 30^th respectively against the pass.

Dehydrated and bitter from my honeymoon trip ending, I determined– of course–  that tight end is yet again a position best left undrafted until at least round 7. OF COURSE! Yup, it’s a guarantee that if we all flashed back to August and were told Kellen Winslow, Vernon Davis, Heath Miller and Benjamin Watson all would be in the top 10 after week 5, eyes would roll. In other words, it’s still somewhat of a crapshoot after Dallas Clark, Jason Witten, Antonio Gates and now to a lesser extent, Tony Gonzalez. 

Thirty-five minutes later, just after a slight bowel movement in 13B, induced most likely from my honeymoon trip ending, I realized I wasn’t reading about “my father’s” Cedric Benson anymore. Five games, 487 yards, 3 TDs. Wow. But what I was especially surprised with was his newfound ability to find the end zone, which he struggled with in 2008. This year he’s already managed to score against a tough Pittsburgh team (the lone rushing TD they’ve given up this year) and wore out (27 carries, 120 Yards, TD) a Baltimore defense that had not allowed an opposing player to rush for 100 yards in 40 games.  Not a bad start, don’t you think?  What was even more promising was the Bengals upcoming soft schedule (Houston, Oakland, Cleveland, Detroit, San Diego and Kansas City) throughout the next few months. Benson, gulp, may just be getting started.  

And in what would prove to be one of the more appropriately morbid finales before reentering civilization, I thought about players like RB Darren McFadden, who may ultimately become wasted draft picks in 2009. With Raiders management in absolute shambles, QB Jamarcus Russell unable to complete a pass and McFadden scheduled to return around November 15, time is certainly ticking especially when Oakland has a tough schedule in the second half of the season. But then, out of nowhere, you’re reminded that in Week 16, which in some leagues hold their championship game, McFadden faces off against none other than the league’s current worst run defense, the Cleveland Browns!

Just another one of those trap games.