Brandon Jacobs

I’m 7-6 and the #4 seed in a six-team league. #s 1 and 2 get a bye in the first week, so technically I’m a high seed this week, getting the 6-7 Soaring Yetis, whom I beat in our last meeting in week 12. He and I are the two worst n00bs in this league, in that we’re n00bs but we’re trying to wheel and deal, make a lot of moves, etc. The other newbie did better than us, and she let Yahoo! draft her team for her and hardly manipulated her team at all. Yes, yes, there’s a lot of messages there, and I’m trying to learn from them, but I didn’t know all that at the time. Anyway, I feel mildly confident because his team has streakier players than mine - they can go off for huge numbers, but their averages are mostly lower than mine.

The good news, as I already leaked yesterday, is that I won the round. The bad news, I yet again made poor decisions that left points on the bench. Once again, the key decisions are at QB, RB, and defense.

• I started Cutler (vs. Kansas City) over Manning (vs. Cincinnati). Fail, to the tune of 22-29.
• I started Brandon Jacobs (vs. Philadelphia) and LaDanian Tomlinson (vs. Oakland) over DeAngelo Williams (vs. Tampa Bay and their supposedly-staunch run defense) and Maurice Jones-Drew (at Chicago).  Jacobs: 5. LT: 15. Williams: 30. Jones-Drew: 15. So, half-wash, half-25 point screw up.
• Chicago had 9, Pittsburgh had 23. Yep, another 14 points on the bench.

So, despite winning my match (the Yetis only got 15 from all receivers and another 15 from running backs) I still left 46 points on the bench. I’d be a monster if I could just get out of my own way. This is particularly rough since I get the #1 seed next week, and he would’ve gone for 96 or so if he hadn’t had a bye. The other match that week also went 106-97, so both of them would’ve beat me.

It’s another multi-week update this time. In case your decision tree for reading this goes something like “why would I read 500+ words when I don’t even know if he’s still got a team at this point?” I’ll cut the drama - I won my 1st round game. Now, how did that happen?

For starters, I made some correct decisions for once in my fantasy life. In week 12, I didn’t really make any roster moves, other than deciding who should start and who should sit. Those decisions play out in three key areas: QB, RB, and Defense.  Cutler was facing Oakland which, despite being an awful team, doesn’t actually have that bad of a secondary, so I went with Peyton Manning instead; Manning out-scored Cutler 20-6 over a tough San Diego defense. Running back is a pretty tough bunch to choose between, but out of Brandon Jacobs (at Arizona), Maurice Jones-Drew (vs. the Vikings), LaDanian Tomlinson (vs Indy) and DeAngelo Williams (at Atlanta), I went with LT and Williams. Well, Jacobs was a late scratch for his knee and Jones-Drew tied my lower back (LT), so win #2. Finally, I had Chicago at St. Louis and Pittsburgh hosting the Bengals. Normally I’d take the home team, but Bengals/Steelers is a divisional game and I just figured that the Rams were going to bad, home or away. Sure enough, the Bears D outscored Pittsburgh 20-7. That week my opponent put up 107 points (that’s a lot even if this league), but thanks to a rare swath of sound judgement I managed 119 for a solid victory.

The win put me at 6-6 and, thanks to a very bunched league, within reach of the #2 seed! It would take a victory with a *lot* of points (to cover a potential tie-breaker) and a loss by a 6-5-1 team. Conceivable, but tough.

Yeeeeaaah, so I have a lot of catching up to do, so let’s get to it.

• Prior to week 8, I had offered up a couple of trade that would have upgraded a couple of my opponents but would have upgraded me even more over the multiple trades; in other words, I make 2 opponents ~5 points better, but over the deals make myself ~10 points better. Alas, neither of them took me up on the offers, so I worked the free agent list a bit. In the end, though, I merely started Brett Favre over Peyton Manning, which was a 5-point mistake on my part. Fortunately Santana Moss, Roddy White, and LaDanian Tomlinson all went over 20, leading to a 9-point win over the doormat of the leauge; final score 111-102. Sad, but true.
• Week 9 saw me meddle around some more, sending Favre packing again (just can’t trust him) and picking up Maurice Jones-Drew. In hindsight that might seem prophetic, but he actually han’t busted out just yet. On the other hand, I had to soak up LT’s bye week so he was better than nothing. Once again, however, I failed at picking my QB, as Cutler scored 18 while Manning left his 24 on the bench. This week’s match-up pitted me against an opponent, however, whose team completely failed to show up, and I actually had a comfortable 81-70 win. From 2-5 to 4-5, maybe things aren’t so bad, right?
• Wrong. Week 10 faced me up against the league’s best team, and he proved it with an easy 99-86 mash. It figures, even when I pick a 27-point QB I manage to leave Cutler’s 35 on the bench. I had also dropped Maurice Jones-Drew that week, when he then proceeded to trash the Lions for 27. Add in two receivers who combined for 1 point, and, well, yeah - I lost. One interesting personnel note: Jason Witten was dropped, thanks to poor Cowboys quarterbacking and a team owner’s need to tinker with a few bye weeks. Frankly, a tight end on a bye is no worse than Anthony Fasano, who I’ve been starting the entire season. I scoop him up for the future. At any rate, my record is 4-6 and things are looking grim.

I’m catching up with this, any anyway I got creamed. 63 points in a league where about half the teams cross the century mark each week - yep, ker smackers. What happened?

Nothing happened, that’s what. Barring a bye or two I was starting what should be a 1st string team:

• QB - Peyton Manning
• WR - Plaxico Burress
• WR - Santana Moss
• WR - Marvin Harrison
• RB - LaDanian Tomlinson
• RB - Brandon Jacobs
• TE - Anthony Fasano
• K - Nate Kaeding
• DEF -Tampa Bay

Really, Peyton Manning? Really, Marvin Harrison? I lost by more than you would’ve covered, so thanks for that. :p Yes, the Ceiling Cats are down to 2-4, getting pasted 108-91. Let’s take a look, shall we?

I’m going to stop trying to be clever, because clearly I’m not very good at it. At least, so far I’ve been terrible. This week’s mayhem? Sensing a tough game with the Ravens, I benched the ’til-now inconsistent Peyton Manning and the all-season weak Marvin Harrison in favor of Jay Cutler and Santana Moss. Marshawn Lynch had a bye, so he was out as well, but I’ve actually felt ok about Brandon Jacobs, and I’ve got to resign myself to the fact that LaDanian Tomlinson is whut brung me, so I gotta dance wit’ ‘im. That makes the lineup for this week:

• QB - Jay Cutler
• WR - Terrell Owens
• WR - Santana Moss
• WR - Roddy White
• RB - LaDanian Tomlinson
• RB - Brandon Jacobs
• TE - Anthony Fasano
• K - Nate Kaeding
• DEF - Philadelphia

Success!

Finally, a couple of moves that I made paid off. I dropped Cleveland’s Derek Anderson from my bench and picked up Jay Cutler (I know, obvious in retrospect but at the time it was mildly risky). I sat my #1 QB, Peyton Manning, figuring Indy’s weak line play was going to continue. Not that it mattered this week, but Marvin Harrison became available on the waiver wire and, as a sucky team, I had an early crack at him. I dropped Roddy White and picked Harrison up, although he rides the bench for now until he gets well.

In any event, I went into the week with the following team:

• QB - Jay Cutler
• WR - Terrell Owens
• WR - Plaxico Burress
• WR - Santana Moss
• RB - Brandon Jacobs
• RB - Marshawn Lynch
• TE - Kellen Winslow
• K - Nate Kaeding
• DEF - New England

My match-up for week 1 was against the Belltown Motherbuckers (a co-worker’s dog’s name is “Bucky” and we work in Belltown). According to the projected scores I’m supposed to win comfortably. Her line-up:

• Donovan McNabb
• Reggie Wayne
• Torry Holt
• Dwayne Bowe (in for the suspended Steve Smith)
• Adrian Peterson
• Frank Gore
• Tony Gonzalez

Yes, she has some studs, but we all do in this league since it’s so small. Nevertheless, Yahoo! projects me as being up by 13.

I’ve held out on joining a Fantasy Football League (FFL) for years, for the same reason that I don’t drink: it’s not that I think I wouldn’t like it, it’s that I think I’d like it too much. I have friends who play in a dozen leagues and basically spend all of their free time analyzing match-ups; I can totally see myself doing that. So, I’ve avoided it.

Until now. (dunh dunh DUUUUUUNNNH!)

6 of us in my office got together on Tuesday night to conduct our draft through Yahoo’s free FFL tool. It’s a pretty slick operation, and the draft ran smoothly for the most part (more on that later). 30 minutes before the draft started, the system assigned the draft order. I was assigned slot #1.

The first pick in the draft, as sexy as it sounds, is not an unmitigated blessing. True, you can take the “best” player, but there’s a cluster of guys at the top who would all make excellent team anchors.  What you need to understand is that the 1st picker in the first round is the last picker in the second round. The order works like so:

• 1 - 2 - 3 - 4 - 5 - 6
• 6 - 5 - 4 - 3 - 2 - 1
• 1 - 2 - 3 - etc etc…

Player quality is a lot like a bell curve, with several outliers at the top of the scale before getting to a lot of gradual drift. While I’m new at this, I feel fairly confident that the 1st and 12th picks (which I had) could end up scoring less than, say, the 4th and 9th picks taken by the 4th picker.