Roddy White

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

Streak!

Marshawn Lynch

After squeaking out a win by a single point last week, this week’s version of Ceiling Cats was high score in the league, beating my opponent by a comfortable margin. As I’m learning more and more each week, a lot of it was luck. For example, Santana Moss and Terrell Owens both had bit point hauls in the Washington-Dallas battler and I had both of them. 35 points out of my 3 receivers is a pretty darned good day.

Before the week, I had to do some shuffling as I had several byes to contend with. Peyton’s bye was no biggie since Cutler has been playing lights out this year, but Plaxico Burress and Brandon Jacobs had been doing well for me. The RB issue wasn’t so big since, after all, I had the #1 frickin’ pick of the league riding my pine - it was time for LaDanian Tomlinson to shoulder his load. The receiver issue was trickier since Marvin Harrison was on a bye, too. I decided to ditch Santonio Holmes of Pittsburgh, since he hadn’t been fit to start all year, and picked the inconsistent Roddy White back up, again.

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

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.