Starting off 2011 with a fresh new post! In my last entry of 2010, I said something to the effect of, “I could post a Blake Griffin highlight of the day after each Clippers game for the rest of the season if I wanted to.” It was funny at the time because I think I had written about 10 blog entries to that point, and I had mentioned Griffin in at least 3 or 4 or them. At the end of that particular post I made mention of the fact that I don’t buy myself jerseys anymore, but if I did I would definitely buy a Blake jersey…I didn’t know that those words would prove to be prophetic, as one of the coolest Christmas gifts I got this year was from Krissy’s brother Nick, and it just so happened to be a home Blake Griffin Clippers jersey. Big ups to Nick for the jersey…I only hope that the Chris Postell jersey jinx doesn’t continue. If Blake comes down on someone’s foot and sprains an ankle in his next game, you’ll know why!
The 2nd part of this post is the wrap-up of my fantasy football team. The last time I did a fantasy update on here, my team was 7-4. That was good enough for 1st place in my division and 2nd place in the league overall. I finished up the season with 3 more wins to go 10-4, which gave me 6 consecutive wins to end the regular season. This made me the outright regular season champ and the overall #1 seed for the playoffs…both firsts for me, but being the pessimist that I am I also figured this meant certain doom and devastation for my team. The rational side of me kept telling myself that this notion of impending disaster was pure lunacy. My team was a juggernaut. I only had the best regular season record by a half a game, but I easily had the highest scoring team for the whole year, and I also somehow managed to have the least total points scored against my team for the whole season as well. To me, this means that I not only had the strongest team in the league but the luckiest team in terms of matchups from week to week as well. With that combination, it wouldn’t have been out of the realm of possibilities for me to have gone 12-2 or 13-1…still, my pessimistic intuition proved to be pretty on point. In the 1st round, I very nearly lost to Pat’s 8th seeded team. In fact, my point total for the week was low enough that my team would have been sent packing against any of the other 6 playoff teams if I had happened to be matched up with them. I guess it pays to be the #1 seed after all. Anyway, after escaping the 1st round I ended up beating Krissy’s team (who finished 4th in the regular season and 3rd in the playoffs…not too shabby) and Allen’s team to take the postseason league title as well. It was a pretty remarkable run considering that I was the regular season champ, the postseason champ, and finished the year on a 9 game win streak. You never know…I might not have a team that does any 1 of those 3 things ever again (much less at the same time). The only other fantasy league I ever won was a league where my team was the lowest seeded team in the playoffs, and this year my #1 seeded team was on the verge of being KO-ed this as well. The fact is that the best teams in fantasy don’t always win (which was one of the roots of my pessimistic outlook in the first place).
Last year when the fantasy football season was over and done with I went back and analyzed my picks and some of my other moves. There were a lot of draft picks where I wished I had picked someone else in retrospect…it was tough to do that with this year’s team, but my team could have actually been better if it hadn’t been for some poor waiver wire decisions though. It’s pretty tough to argue against taking Andre Johnson in the 1st round. He missed the last 2 games of the season due to injury and 3 overall, and that’s not the best time for your stud wide receiver to go down, but I was able to plug the holes. Even with he missed games and nagging ankle injury that plagued him since week 2, he was good enough to be the 8th rated wide receiver. My 2nd round pick, Pierre Thomas, was pretty much a bust due to injury, but without knowing that I’m not sure who I else I would’ve picked. Greg Jennings was my 3rd pick, and he started off slow, but finished as the 4th best receiver in the league. In the 4th round, I took Dwayne Bowe, who finished as the 2nd rated receiver. I could have potentially had the greatest receiver corps in the history of fantasy football (I later picked up Stevie Johnson as a free agent, who finished as the 10th best fantasy receiver), but Bowe started off so slow that I dropped him after the 4th or 5th week of the season…shame on me. I took Matt Forte in the 5th round. Forte had been overrated the year before (was rated as like the 4th or 5th best player overall in preseason fantasy rankings in 2009). After a subpar season, he was consequently underrated going into this year, and he finished as the 11th best running back and 21st ranked player overall this season. In the 6th round, I picked Pierre Garcon, who I prematurely dropped after a slow start to the season as well. Garcon finished the year as a top 40 receiver, but he was probably a top 25 wideout for the 2nd half of the year. I was pretty strong at receiver anyway, but he would have been a nice spot starter in my flex position, and that would have kept him out of someone else’s lineup also.
Having basically wasted half of my top 6 picks should have crushed my fantasy hopes for this year right off the bat, but the late part of the draft is where my bread was buttered. I took Joe Flacco in the 7th round. Flacco was solid for me, but not spectacular…however, I picked up Ben Roethlisberger as a free agent, and Flacco and Roethlisberger gave me a pretty good quarterback platoon. I picked Chris Cooley in the 8th round. By then, most of the more highly rated tight ends were off the board, but Cooley finished the year as the 7th rated fantasy tight end, so I got pretty good value for him in that spot.
The 9th round is where I hit the jackpot. Often times, fantasy leagues are won and lost because of one player. Several years ago, millions of fantasy football teams went in the toilet when Ronnie Brown blew his knee out like in week 7 or the season. Last year, millions of leagues were won or lost depending on who was able to get to their computer and pick Cedric Benson off of the waiver wire first. Peyton Hillis was a good example of that type of free agent pickup this year. Arian Foster was the one player that swung leagues more than anyone else this season though, and I had the good fortune of drafting him. To be honest, I had my eye on Foster throughout the preseason leading up to our fantasy draft. I thought he was a potential sleeper, and he would be worth a mid-round pick. Having said that, I’m not going to sit here and pretend that I knew how good he was actually going to be. In our league, Foster was projected to go in the 7th or 8th round I believe. I had him in my draft queue for awhile, but no one else seemed willing to take him at that point. I think he was the highest rated remaining player in the draft for a good round or so, and for whatever reason (either people had more pressing needs or just had no idea who he was) more lowly rated players kept getting picked before him. I was trying to hold off on picking him myself because I had my eye on some other guys as well, but in the 9th round I finally pulled the trigger. From talking to other people in the league, it was a good thing I picked him then because he wouldn’t have lasted another whole round. Simply put, Foster was a beast. He finished the year as the overall #1 rated fantasy player. Fittingly, he carried my team in the championship round with nearly 200 all-purpose yards and 2 touchdowns that week. I was also proud of my 10th round pick, Fred Jackson. Jackson was in a 3-way backfield battle when the season began, but eventually regained his starting position. He finished the year as a top 25 fantasy back. Still, everything paled in comparison to drafting Foster. Regardless of how shrewd or not so shrewd some of my other moves were, he pretty much was the difference between winning the league and having a mediocre team that got bounced in the 1st round of the playoffs. The rest of my later draft picks were inconsequential, and this season once again proved that in fantasy sports it’s better to be lucky than good.
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