There comes a point in every FF manager’s life where they inevitably become what they hate. The one thing that he or she has railed on for seasons is suddenly the reflection of what their team has become. It’s a sobering reality that fantasy football is cyclical. Sometimes, you’re Scott Baker. Sometimes you’re Kim Vanderzee.
If you had to think of the one fact that I spent the most time harping on last year, what would it be? I’ll give you a hint: the answer is not how unlucky Peter is, how much Kim’s team sucks, or how many transactions Jason makes a year. No, what I spent the year obsessing over was how Kyle’s team could pull off so many wins while being so bad. Kyle’s team only rarely flashed moments of competency; the rest of the season his team was mediocre at best. But when playing Kyle, you could expect your star QB to tear his ACL, your RB to leave the game with a concussion, your WRs to all get migraines, and your Kicker to out himself for the season while trying to tackle a player on a kickoff return. 49-32 Kyle was not an uncommon score. It seemed to me so unjust that teams would keep winning when they don’t deserve it.
Flash forward one year and hey, what do you know! That’s me sitting pretty at 2-0! My points for? A measly 178, or under 90 a game, the 7th highest our of ten. My points againt, however? Why, that would be 143 points, or just over 70 per game, the lowest of any team by 32 points. That’s right, my schedule is currently 16 points per game easier than anyone elses. Compare this to Scott, the #2 overall point scorer with 235 (27.5 more than me per game) at 1-1 due to an opponent average of 257 (a staggering 128.5 points per game.). I haven’t broke 100 points yet this season; Scott’s opponents are averaging 130 points. I think it’s blatantly unfair and deviously lucky, but I can’t argue with good fortune. Though I still hate myself.
Here’s another example. What team has had worse late-season luck than Kyle? Kyle has a long history of spectacular seasons being ripped apart by snippy upstarts who have no business being anywhere near his league. Well, Kyle stands currently as the worst scoring team in our league (RIP Peyton), and while not out of contention by any means, in a very deep hole. After all those years of bitching about being the #1 seed who loses to Scott after the bye week, Kyle now has become the annoying cockroach team that simply will not die.
Takeaway Points
Bob vs. Kyle (of, Shame on You, You Poor Sad Sluts)
Two of three worst scores of the week…and by their powers combined, I become a 2-0 team! I pause for your applause.
Any team where your RB struggle to break ten points COMBINED is going to be in a hurt locker, and right now the combination is ROB-SUCKS-NUTZ. I’ve got consistency without flare, thanks to Arian Foster’s hamstring.
That’s really nothing compared to Kyle, who squandered all his money on Peyton Manning and then got marched to the gas chamber by the AutoDraft-Bot-Of-Doom. His team is not without shining spots, but there are too many players with no fantasy value cluttering his team. WRs, WRs everywhere, but not a ball is caught.
Travis vs. Scott (or, The I Can’t Believe It’s Not Season 1 Bowl)
Stop me if I’m wrong, but I’m temporarily declaring this the highest score of the revised rules era (discounting the anything goes, 6-points per QB TD season). Travis is a deadly monster. On the flip side, Scott continues to have the deepest bench in the business, but even his squad of all stars is NOT competing with Travis Almighty
The Frum vs. Stay Healthy Gates (or, The Passing of the Torch)
Remember when Jason never lost and Drew’s team was a bottom-feeder? Me neither. Since his dramatic victory last year, Drew’s sort of been on a roll. Since starting 2-5 last season, drew has a 9 game winning streak and has not lost a game since Week 7 of last season (he had a bye week and a tie in the middle) leaving him 12 weeks out from his last loss. That is, for FF at least, remarkable and unheard of.
Jason has a streak of his own going on; he has beaten only one team in 23 weeks that is not Kim or Travis, and that is Scott in Week 6 of Season 4. Against Kim and Travis over that period of time he is 6-2 against Kim and Travis and 1-14 against EVERYONE ELSE. Isn’t that ridiculous? It’s almost more than coincidence. Almost
Ryan vs. Peter (or, The I Bet Peter Can Score Over 100 Points Yet Lose Every Game This Season, Don’t You Agree Fiesta)
And for insult to injury the gods smite Jamaal Charles where she stands. Which was on the sidelines. Turrible.
Donel vs. Kim (or, And Then the Universe Returns To How Things Were Always Meant To Be)
After blazing forth in a moment of small victory (okay, a tie) last week, Kim decides it’s time for a usual meltdown. Donel, after a rare display of pure tomfoolery, smashes in with 128 points while wisely sitting the Chargers D/ST for the Lions (a 26 point swing!)
Bonus points to Kim’s profile picture, however. Whoever this band “Snatch” is, I have to assume they understood what they were “selling” when they arranged an A/B side as “Snatch: All I Want / When I’m Bored.” Truer words have never been spoken.
Tidbits O’ Knowledge
Despite scoring the same amount of points during Week 1, Travis has 74 more points scored than Kim does after the end of Week 2. Travis could have cut his team in half to play Kim twice and been competitive.
Were you Aware?: All of our user tags are some variation of our name (Bob, Bohm, Feva) etc., except Peter, who uses “MHC,” which of course stands for Major Histocompatibility Complex.
Around The League
I made the point clear to a couple of people that I thought this would be the year that people decided to take advantage of trades. With most good players already snatched up before the draft, it seems like teams would make trades to fill the inevitable holes in their roster. Yet this has failed to happen!
1) Despite having two solid QBs and 5 RBs that scored over 10 points last week, Jason has not managed to use that depth to obtain more than one WR capable of scoring over 5 points during a game.
2) Kim is holding onto two Top 10 TEs, 3 Top 15 QBs, and one RB of any particular worth.
3) Scott’s team is good. How much better would it be if he ditched two of his five feasible starting RBs for an Adrian Peterson?
Spotlight on Transactions
Just when I thought I couldn’t make fun of Jason anymore…In comes Free Agent Saturday! After ditching $23 on Wednesday, I figured Jason would play conservative to either a) have a chance to get a player during the last ten weeks of the season or b) have some shame and not allow himself to be played a fool again. I was wrong.
Jason paid 100% of the overall cash offered for Marques Colston ($16) and Chad Henne ($8), with no other bids being placed for either player. This lowers his budget to $53, which is 32 less than his closest big-spender, Ryan Good. Break out the $2 bids, boys and girls! We’ll have Jason in a corner in no time.
Manager Evaluation: Week 2
Here’s a breakdown of the lost points that each of us had from our benches this week.
Rob: 20 (Santana Moss over Percy Harvin and Rob Gronkowski over Jermichael Finley)
Kyle: 14 (Addai over Pierre Thomas, Santonio Holmes over Mike Williams)
Travis: 1 (Fitzpatrick over Romo)
Scott: 39 (Stafford over Vick, Gonzalez over Gresham, Green over Steve Smith, Tate over James Starks)
Jason: 11 (Cam Newton over Roethlisberger)
Drew: 0 [MAX SCORE]
Peter: 12 (Spiller over Charles, Antonio Brown over Plaxico, Ochocinco over DeSean Jackson)
Ryan: 7 (Brandon Jacobs over Mike Tolbert, Branch over Jennings)
Kim: 14 (Matt Ryan over Jay Cutler, Hakeem Nicks over Braylon Edwards, Greg Olsen over Vernon Davis)
Donel: 2 (Burleson over Roddy White, Woodhead over DeAngelo Williams)
1) First, congrats to Drew for being the first team to max out their score during a given week by making all the right moves
2) Only the Rob-Kyle and Peter-Ryan games were close enough for bench decisions to have played into who would have won the game, but both were close enough that the outcome would not change if the managers on both sidestook their “ideal team” for the week.
3) The average margin of victory this week is 28.8 points. With this information we can extrapolate that any team that had a LBP of over 28.8 (here’s looking at you, Scott) made management decisions that lost them the game. While Scott had no chance of overwhelming Travis’ 150, you have to expect if this week is run repeatedly Scott will come out on top over Travis more often than not if he makes the right moves.
4) No teams were definitively outcoached this week, though Kyle and Peter both made management decisions that lost the game. Scott, Jason, and Kim were outplayed.
5) This is the second week in a row that Scott had 85 points from his bench, a score that would have beaten Kim, Kyle, and myself this week. This is a double-edged sword. On one hand, the more “solid” players Scott has, the fewer solid players the rest of us have. On the downside, Scott was outplayed this week, not outcoached. Scott has a plethora of good players, while Travis has a small amount of great players. Luckily for Travis, you can only play so many players in a week.
Finally, here are the tallies for LBPs so far on the season:
Donel: 5 [1.0]
Travis: 6 [0.833]
Kyle: 17 [0.294]
Drew: 21 [0.238]
Peter: 29 [0.172]
Ryan: 32 [0.156]
Rob: 34 [0.147]
Jason: 36 [0.139]
Kim: 45 [0.111]
Scott: 46 [0.108]
This represents a general tally for the strength of coaching this year. Low numbers generally mean better coaching while high numbers generally mean worse coaching. This number is NOT supposed to correlate with how good your team is, as a good team can have a terrible coach and still prevail. It is a diagnostic approach to evaluate how skilled each manager is at setting the correct roster. The number in brackets is a factor of how well each manager is doing in comparison to the best manager in the league, which at this point is Donel. There is a very small sample size right now, but per this calculation, for example, Scott is coaching at the 11% the proficiency of Donel at this point in the season. But remember, they’re both 1-1.
Text Messages of the Week!
Donel: Guess puberty and manhood is kicking in all at the same time this week for my squad.
Ryan: Poor Kyle. Good thing he already paid.
Special Email of the Week = Peter: My phone has been dead for two days and my charger is a half-hour drive away, but I still need to complaint to someone about having just watched Jamaal Charles hurt his leg flying into the Lion’s mascot.
Ryan: Another week, another torn ACL for Peter’s team. Tom Brady better watch out – he could be next!
Peter: I’d like to blame it on that dick lion mascot. Who is named “Roary” anyway? Clever, Detroit. Real clever.
One Random Thing
Some of you might watch SNL. Some of you may not. Regardless, I highly recommend watching this clip from the Emmy’s where The Lonely Island plays a medley of its hits from the year. The individual videos from the songs themselves are good, but the real highlight comes at 2:00.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8nfJ5F3XLF8
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