Final Fantasy

I fully support the Bill Simmons theory that there are 3 things in life that everyone loves talking about their own, but nobody wants to hear about anyone else’s: your bad beats in poker, your kids’ accomplishments, and your fantasy football team. If you think about, it’s true. We don’t have kids, but I can imagine that when we have little Chris Jr. and Krissy Jr., all we will ever want to talk about is their latest basketball game or concert or report card or whatever. Still, when I hear someone talking about their own children’s amazing feats, all I can think is, “Please…I’m 99% sure your kid stinks,” just as I’m sure other people will think of me the same way when the day comes that I brag about my own kids. The same is true with poker. To the person telling the story, nothing is better than talking about the time you went all-in with trip-aces, but lost when another player made a full house on the river…meanwhile, everyone else in the room had probably checked-out by the 1st sentence out of the person’s mouth. Likewise, when someone starts spouting off about their fantasy football team, my eyes immediately start to glaze over, but there are few things I would rather talk about than my own team’s recent conquests. Fortunately, the beauty of a blog like this one is that A) basically no one reads it anyway, and B) if you are reading it and don’t want to read about this, you can stop reading whenever you want!

Anyway, I have talked about past fantasy teams in past blogs, but 11 weeks into this year I haven’t mentioned this team until now. This is partly because I have just been busy enough that I haven’t gotten the chance to write period, but also because this year I actually have a decent team and didn’t want to jinx it (so much for that). I’m only in 1 league this year, and for the 1st time I am the league commissioner (which has been an interesting experience). This has been the most fun fantasy league I have ever done by far. Not only does pretty much everyone in the league know everybody else, but we are all pretty much family! It’s a 12 team league split into 2 divisions comprised of Krissy and I, Krissy’s Dad and brothers, my brother, Krissy’s cousin DJ, our friends Mac, Pat, Lauren, and Allen, and Pat’s little brother. I have gone through entire leagues where I didn’t interact with anyone else in the league once. Those are the leagues that you eventually lose interest in and don’t even bother checking after a while. Inevitably, you forget to check your lineup one week, and you eventually notice that you had an empty spot in your lineup while your stud running back sat on your bench. Those leagues are no fun at all…this league has been the complete opposite, as there has been constant trash talk, taunting, and trades (even somewhat controversial disputed trades). People even vote on who is going to win each matchup from week to week…who even does that?!? The only thing that would have made it more fun was if I was able to get everyone to put in $10-20, but I just couldn’t seem to get the money part of it organized fast enough. It’s also been an interesting league because there were some weird things going on earlier in the year. Certain teams were having some strange luck, but now it seems like some of that is starting to balance out. The teams that pass the eye test (you just can look at the roster without knowing their record and tell they’re one of the better teams) are proving out to be the teams with the better rosters…but some of them had such bad luck in the beginning that they are still in catch-up mode, which could make for an interesting finish to the season.

My team is currently 7-4, good enough for 1st place in my division and 2nd in the league overall. I’d like to think my team definitely passes the eye test, and I’ve got the stats to prove it (as of right now, I’m the league leader in total points scored for the season among all 12 teams). My team has taken somewhat of a strange journey though…I had one of those teams that I was talking about that kind of fell on hard luck earlier in the year. I started off the year only 2-3, and it looked like I was headed for another mediocre fantasy season, but somehow I got my guys to rally, and I’ve won 5 of the past 6 weeks, including the last 3 overall (sorry for the bad sports coaching pun). If you look back at my draft though, it’s a wonder that my entire team isn’t a complete bust!

I ended up picking 6th in the draft, and at that point most of the stud running backs had already been taken. I had told myself that if I found myself in a position where I couldn’t take a running back I was satisfied with to stockpile wide receivers early on, and to try to get a bunch of mid-level running backs in the middle rounds hoping that at least a couple of those hit-or-miss picks would hit. I figured this wasn’t a bad strategy if I couldn’t get a top flight running back like Chris Johnson or Adrian Peterson since it’s a passing league now more than ever, and so many teams are using two-headed or three-headed monsters at running back. Anyway, I took Andre Johnson with my 1st pick, and even though he has battled through a bad ankle for most of the year (even missing 1 game) he has been pretty solid. He has had a couple of sub-par games, but he has thrown in a couple monster games as well. My 2nd round pick was Pierre Thomas, which I was really happy with at the time, but an ankle injury of his own has sidelined him since like week 3! My 3rd pick was Greg Jennings, who started off slow, but has carried my team the last couple of weeks. My 4th round pick was Dwayne Bowe, which made 3 wide receivers in my 1st 4 picks…pretty unconventional, but every time my pick came up there was no running back available that I thought deserved to be drafted that high. In the 5th round I finally took my 2nd running back with Matt Forte. I had Forte in a league the year before, and he was a bust for me, but I figured getting him in the 5th round was a pretty good value for him. In the 6th round I took Pierre Garcon. That meant out of my 1st 6 picks, I had taken 4 wide receivers. In the 7th round I took Joe Flacco. It was pretty late to draft your 1st quarterback, but I had targeted Flacco from the beginning. I just felt like he was going to have a breakout year. I followed similar reasoning in taking Chris Cooley in the next round. He hadn’t been rated as high among tight ends as in past years, but I thought he could bounce back with McNabb coming to the Redskins.

That meant through my 1st 8 picks I had only taken 2 running backs…now was the time to utilize part 2 of my plan, which was to gobble up the remaining quality running backs while everyone else was probably focused on other positions at that point. The other part of my theory was that every year there turns out to be a Cedric Benson of that year’s draft…a running back drafted in the middle to late rounds that was pretty much an afterthought, but turns in a career year out of nowhere. Either way, my season was going to make or break depending on whether my draft night strategy worked or not. In the 9th round, I took Arian Foster (remember that pick). In the 10th, I took Fred Jackson, and in the 11th I took Clinton Portis. My last 4 picks of the draft were used on (in order) Mohamed Massaquoi, Julian Edelman, Miami’s defense, and kicker Shayne Graham. I have used a dozen kickers and defenses this year so far, so those picks were pretty inconsequential.

I mentioned before that I started off the season 2-3. Part of that was bad luck like I mentioned, but part of that was also the result of some poor *ahem* personnel decisions. Early on in the year, Thomas and Portis both got hurt. Portis I didn’t expect much from anyway. I mean, I took him in the 11th round, and he was a longshot to make it through the year as a productive back. Garcon, Bowe, Jackson, Massaquoi, and Edelman were doing nothing as well. Even though it meant already cutting ties with half of my receivers, I cut Edelman, Massaquoi, and Garcon right off the bat in search for replacements. I don’t remember the exact circumstances, but I wound up needing to make a decision on whether or not to cut Bowe or Thomas as well. Thomas had an ankle sprain, and figured to be back in a couple of weeks. Bowe hadn’t done anything through the 1st 3 or 4 weeks. I felt I was stronger overall at receiver, so I decided to cut Bowe and hang on to Thomas a little longer. I was able to rent some decent running back help with Mike Tolbert, Willis McGahee, and Carnell Williams (none of whom are still on my roster) that were productive for me, but Bowe immediately started blowing up as soon as I cut him. In fact, to this point in the year he is rated as the 3rd best fantasy receiver in the league, which of course is higher than the ranking of all of my receivers. I usually am overly patient with guys who start out slowly, but for some reason I was the exact opposite with Bowe. To compound the problem, I still have Thomas on my roster. I guess I figured if he ever comes back, he is good insurance. Plus, there is no one else on the waiver wire that I really want, and I would hate to drop him only to have someone else pick him up if and when he finally is game-ready again.

After reading all that, you would think my team was doomed from the outset. 3 out of my top 6 picks were complete busts for me, and my would-be number 1 wide receiver was prematurely cut. (I still think the curse of Dwayne Bowe is going to hang over my head for the rest of time.) A couple of things let me tread water until my team finally started to get hot though. 1st, Foster, my 9th round pick, has been the overall number 1 rated player in all of fantasy so far this year. Honestly, I didn’t completely luck into him. I had my eye on him all through preseason, and he was in my draft queue for like 3 rounds before I finally picked him…but I still did pick him in the 9th round, so I guess I lucked out at least a little. He’s pretty much saved my season. Forte has been somewhat inconsistent, but he’s still been good enough to be the 12th rated running back so far this year. Jennings and Johnson have been steady all year, and they are respectively the 9th and 13th rated receivers in the league up to this point as well (with Jennings really picking it up lately). Two Buffalo Bills have given me a big boost. I drafted Jackson in the 10th round, and even though the Bills backfield was crowded earlier in the year I had a feeling he would eventually have the starting job all to himself, and picking Steve Johnson up off the waiver wire almost completely made up for dropping Bowe. Johnson hasn’t had quite as good of a year as Bowe statistically, but ranked as the number 7 fantasy wide receiver he isn’t far behind. Cooley has been steady at tight end (ranked 8th among tight ends this year), and Flacco has improved as the year has gone on (ranked 12th among quarterbacks). The sneakiest pickup of the year for me was Roethlisberger, who would probably be a top 5 fantasy quarterback this year if it hadn’t been for his 4 game suspension. Flacco and Big Ben have formed a pretty good quarterback platoon for me, and there have been a couple of weeks where I wouldn’t have won if it weren’t for Roethlisberger.

It has been a fun year so far for fantasy. Like I said, this is the most fun league I’ve been a part of, and it doesn’t hurt to have a good team for once as well. I’ve had decent teams before, and I even won a league once (it was somewhat fluky, as my team entered the playoffs as the lowest seeded team), but whether my team advances deep into the playoffs or not I can say this has easily been my best fantasy team so far…of course, luck always plays a part in that. Like my Dad always says, “It’s better to be lucky than good.” Hopefully, I can be lucky for a couple more weeks…although I wouldn’t bet against Dwayne Bowe coming back to haunt me again before all is said and done.

All Dogs Go To Heaven

So much for my last post (which was a month ago)! Despite Griffin (16 points, 10 rebounds, and about 3 “wow” plays per game) and Landry’s (tied for 4th in the league in tackles) individual successes, the Clippers are currently 1-10 and losers of 6 in a row, while the Redskins just got housed on Monday Night Football this week…to top it off, Landry is now being accused of spitting on opposing players during games…not a good week for my man-crushes. Anyway, yesterday I got a call from my parents, and sadly they had called to tell me that the family dog, Dayton, had passed away.

Dayton had definitely lived a full life, and it was definitely her time. She was 17 (going on 18) years old, which might not be uncommon for little dogs, but Dayton was a lab-retriever mix. Relatively speaking, she was a big dog, and that is a long, long time for a bigger dog to live. Honestly, I had kind of been prepared for when she would pass for a while now. You had the feeling that it could have happened any day now every day for the last two years, but Dayton just somehow kept hanging in there. She could barely get around anymore, and she was constantly having accidents in the house. In fact, she had had so many accidents that for the last year or so my Mom has half-jokingly vowed that whenever Dayton did happen to pass away she was immediately ripping up the family room carpet and getting all the carpeting redone. When our whole family went to the beach for a week in August, we all wondered how Dayton would deal with it, but she survived…the two long car trips, being carried up and down 2 flights of stairs in a giant Rubbermade tub several times a day just to go to the bathroom, and everything else. I think we all started to get the feeling that, as fragile and feeble as she had become in her old age, Dayton was just going to go on living forever. Unfortunately, time catches up with us all though at some point.

I had talked to my Mom and Dad over the phone a couple of times last week, and they had informed me that Dayton hadn’t been doing very well the last few days. Through all her problems (her lack of balance, the loss of some of her senses, her accidents, her loss of strength in her legs), Dayton was still able to do a couple basic things necessary to survive. She could get up and move when she really had to or wanted to, and she was still eating food and drinking water! Anyone who has grown up with dogs knows that as long as the dog at least still does those things, they are still going to be alive and kicking. Well, last week Dayton had stopped doing all of those things. She couldn’t get up, she didn’t eat, and she didn’t drink any water. On Thursday of last week, my Dad said that as he was making himself a sandwich or something, he saw her perk her ears up little. He offered her some lunchmeat, and she took a few nibbles, but that was all she could manage to do. Amazingly, despite not eating or drinking, Dayton kept hanging on. My Dad said that every morning he would come downstairs and wonder whether or not Dayton would have made it through the night, and each morning she was still alive...but on Tuesday afternoon, she apparently couldn’t fight anymore. She died peacefully in the same room that she had spent the majority of her life.

It’s hard to justify comparing the death of a pet to that of a human being, but in many ways it is just as sad. It is a different kind of sad, and it’s hard to pinpoint exactly what is different about it, but it’s sad none of the less. I’m 25 years old. We got Dayton the year we moved into our new house, almost 18 years ago. The math isn’t all that tough…that’s the majority of my life, as well as my younger brother and sister’s lives. It is, after all, just a dog, but it’s not hard to see how something or someone becomes a part of your life after 17 or 18 years. Everyone who has ever had a pet could list a hundred things that they will always remember about that pet, so I will leave that part of the story out. It’s one of those things where every pet story is both unique and similar to everyone else’s at the same time. If I started down that road, I don’t think I would ever stop! Naturally, everyone thinks their own dog is the greatest dog to ever live, but Dayton really was a good dog, and she will always be my family’s first dog as well. I know my parents’ house will be a little emptier the next time we go over to visit. I do believe though, much like the title of that kid’s cartoon movie from back in the day, that all dogs go to Heaven. (I was always a sucker for that movie.) I think my Mom said it best when she said, “Dayton, Nonna will be waiting for you with a nice piece of Italian bread when you get there”…and Dayton will devour the bread, tail wagging all the while.