Thursday, November 4, 2010

Fantasy Football Week 8 Mid-Season Awards

We've arrived. The mid-season awards. Probably my favorite awards post, because its fun to write and involves more sarcastic remarks than Lord Voldemort's twitter account.

I'll spend your time reviewing the status of the league, important roster changes and key strategies moving forward.

Lol, nahhhhh. I'll just make fun of the rest of league like I usually do. Gotta stick to what works!

As always, lets start at the bottom. Or, the:

Pauly Shore's Career Section:

Toms R Us- In an effort to reduce the amount of times I must say "sluts" in this blog, we'll refer to this team as "Toms R Us" moving forward. Little known fact about Tom's team, if you trade a player to Tom, that same fantasy player is traded to a child in a third world country! So trade away people!

Tom's team struggled from the start. Some might blame it on a poor draft, which was run by Ricky and myself in Tom's absence, but if you don't show up for the draft thats what you get. Fortunately for this team, Darren McFadden has come on strong this year and has single handedly resurrected his team from the ashes. No longer the sole holder of last place, Tom might be on the rebound. Unfortunately, a team that isn't on the rebound...

Golden Skulls- Creasman's squadron on fantasy dynamos got off to a promising start, winning week 1 convincingly and then losing the next two weeks by a combined 5 points. I thought his team was strong, but unlucky early on. Turns out it was just unlucky...and..um...bad.

Creasman has lost his last 4 matchups, seen his points per game drop and his points against increase. He made a (at the time) savvy trade, selling Greg Jennings for Anquan Boldin and getting Pierre Thomas among others. That, of course, was the week Packer's TE Jermichael Finley went down making Greg Jennings the number one target for my QB man-crush, Aaron Rodgers. I'd go on a date with him. Whatever.

Anyway, long story short Jennings is now a stud, and we find out that Pierre Thomas' injury is more serious than we thought and is effectively unusable at this time.

The good news? During the draft Creasman kept taking players I thought were semi-sleepers and were due for a big year. As it were, none of them panned out. So, that is GREAT news.....for me. Sorry, Creasman.

One additional note regarding our oldest member: His twitter followers have noticed an increase in cranky NFL related tweets. Especially those lambasting Redskins fans for tweeting during the games. You should know Creasman is an avid Indianapolis Colt's fan. And, to be honest, if you look at things from his perspective, you can understand his crankiness. You see, its very difficult rooting for Peyton Manning and the most consistently great team in the NFL this decade. I don't know what I'd do if my team won 10-14 games every year and routinely made the AFC Championship game or the Super Bowl.

The absolute indecency Redskins fans (myself included) showed to Creasy by tweeting about their struggling team, and the quarterback controversy that arose during a loss to the Lions (Think about that, a loss to the Lions) was almost inhumane considering Peyton Manning has been the Colts quarterback for, oh, say, 100 years. I can't believe that residents of the Washington D.C. Metro Area would use a form of social media to communicate with other residents of said area about the most popular sports team in, again, the aforementioned area. THE HUMANITY!!

On the Edge of the Cliff:

WheelsGoNonStop- Wheels suffered an unfortunate turn of events this week. After trading for Randy Moss and Ray Rice a week ago (and giving up Chris Johnson), we come to find Moss has been cut from the Vikings. I'm sure Gunst expected a resurgence in Moss' career when he returned to the team that drafted him and started playing with the grizzly old quarterbacker who shall remain nameless. Who saw him being cut three weeks later?

In all seriousness, Wheels' team is probably much better than his 3-5 record would show. Unfortunately, it was a series of mistimed trades that put him in this predicament. As mentioned before he traded for Moss who was waived this week. Who knows if he'll mail in the rest of the season because of it? More importantly, earlier this year, after Wheels realized the two quarterbacks he drafted (Kevin Kolb and Brett Favre) were huge disappointments, he traded with Neil for Tom Brady, giving up Reggie Wayne. The two weeks he started Tom Brady, Brady wasn't even the highest scoring QB on his team and Kyle Orton has easily surpassed him as the must-start fantasy QB week-to-week. With Orton performing so well Wheels essentially gave Wayne away for free. It looked to be a smart trade at the time, but now we're seeing the unfortunate results of uncertainty in fantasy football.

Not to mention, now that Randy Moss is in Tennessee he'll fill in as the deep threat and stretch the defenses so they can't stack eight in the box to stop the run. Expect the Tennessee running back to have an increase in yards per carry with one less defender in the box. That running back? Chris Johnson, recently traded to me from Wheels.

The Four-and-Four Teams, Mediocrity at It's Finest:


Pledge Prez Perry- Austin has never had a week where his score was between 80 or 100 points. Here are his week by week scores: 73, 121, 76, 78, 102, 111, 103, 61. Over 100, under 80. Not surprisingly, but whenever Austin has scored over 100 points he has won and whenever he scored under 80 he has lost.

What would you do without my statistical analysis? I'm like the Rain Man of fantasy football, minus the being a genius part.

B-Button Spin Move- Jimmy would kill me if I didn't spend the entirity of this space explaining his fluke loss to Noord last week. So here goes: Jimmy, coming into week 8, was in the top 2 for points scored. He matched up against Noord, who now ranks lowest in points against (I can take my focus off Ricky benefiting from that, and point out that Noord is now the "lucky" one...you know, until it's someone else).  In the previous 6 weeks Jimmy's lowest score was 92 points, and he averaged 106 points per week. In that same time, Noord was averaging 99 points per week, 7 points (or effectively an entire player) less.

In their matchup, Jimmy's Steeler-heavy lineup (Big Ben and Hines Ward) was hurt by injury (Vernon Davis leaving after 1 catch for 12 yards). With the Steelers lacking any semblance of a passing offense last week, Jimmy's team struggled to get 54 total points. Meanwhile, Noord was having an especially mediocre week as well, posting 83 points (good for the 4th lowest total in the week). The team's he beat out? Jimmy, Creasman (the last place team) and Austin. Austin's team having two players post 0 points. That's some stiff competition...

Its not so much that Noord won, because Jimmy wasn't beating anybody with that score. It was the misguided trash talk that took place during, and after the game by both sides. Ultimately, Noord benefited from an opponents timely Bye week (Jimmy had Ahmad Bradshaw and Matt Forte on Bye) and his team did enough to win (aka, show up to the game).

Not much to brag about. Then again, what do I know?

Thats right: EVERYTHING!

deSPEcable me- My team. I don't need to tell you its the best managed team in the league, or that every loss I've incurred has been unjust and a complete fluke. Not to mention the weeks I post over 120 points are my normal weeks, and any week other than that is an anomaly. My team is like any team from New York. When I win its because I'm clearly superior to you. When I lose? Fughettaboutit. I'll smash ya head with a sewer lid if ya think ya betta than me! Dirty hippie.

Oh, just so you know I had Tony Romo on my team. Unfortunately, he now lacks the bones to hold his head up. That's why I'm starting Ryan Fitzpatrick. On second thought, maybe I won't be winning this league...or anymore games.

Touchdown Jesus- A true, middle of the pack team. I suspect that if Matt Schaub was performing up to his expectations this year Sam's record would be much better than 4-4. Unreliable quarterback play has limited his scoring potential and led to a few regrettable losses. After going on a three-game winning streak, followed by a three-game losing streak, Sam's team is like Charlie Sheen in a hotel room...one second he's scoring at will, and the next he's lying naked on the floor breaking bottles of champagne yelling, "I am a good dresser! That bowling shirt cost me $200!!"

Team Ralph- Surprise, surprise. As I've mentioned in previous weeks I thought Ralph had a very strong team that was subject to untimely matchups. A few short weeks later he's sitting in 3rd place with a 4-4 record working on a three game win streak.

Now that his confidence has been boosted, we must destroy him. We all must destroy him.


Who Does Number Two Work For!?


Corn on the Schaub- Once again my predictions prove accurate. Ricky, after beating a bunch of teams who had trouble scoring (like Jimmy on a Friday night, hey-oh!), faced two consecutive teams that put up a reasonable amount of points and he lost both matchups. Slowly, he is coming back down to earth.

Fun fact: Ricky officially has only one player on his team that he originally drafted. Don't tell me he has commitment issues! He's the George Clooney of fantasy players. He trades in for a newer model every few weeks.


The Big Bear:


O Rak Rak Rakpo- Look, we all know a certain amount of luck goes into every fantasy success. The game is so unpredictable you can't plan for everything. After the draft I considered this one of the weakest drafted teams. I didn't like Cedric Benson or DeAngelo Williams (and, to be honest, both have failed to impress this year). I didn't like Percy "Migraine" Harvin or Chad "T" Ochocinco and I thought Desean Jackson would have a down year. Yet they've all pulled through for Noord when he needed it. At 7-1 it's a long shot he doesn't make the playoffs, but I'm not sure he'll make it there the number one seed. That seat is reserved for me, duh. I mean, we're talking about a guy who is starting Darren Sproles AND Danny Woodhead this week.  He's been starting Felix Jones and Danny Woodhead in past weeks as well. I mean, to say a large amount of luck isn't involved in this 7-1 record is ignorant. It's like when I try to convince you I'll win this league no matter what.

You know me, I'm like a Mike Shanahan press conference...full of excuses and made up stories as to why my team isn't undefeated. And I make it all about me.

Maybe I should be the one mismanaging the Redskins...

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