It’s been a week or so since I last made a fantasy or any other update on here, but it wasn’t because I was hiding in the fetal position somewhere. I actually got to the acceptance stage fairly quickly, as I knew even if I made the playoffs my team was likely going nowhere. Either way, the odds were greatly in my favor to at least get in. If I won I was in. If I lost, I could still get in as long as Krissy lost and my brother Dan didn’t win his own matchup and outscore me by more than 50 points. From early on in the weekend, it didn’t look like I had a shot to win, but it looked like Krissy was out of it pretty early on in her matchup also. The only problem was that I had the perfect storm of a bad fantasy weekend, and Dan’s team put up a wopping 123 points. Matt Hasselbeck, who I picked up thinking that he would be a solid fill-in starter, left the game in the 1st half and got me 1 point. Plaxico Burress, in a game where the Jets beat the Chiefs by 4 touchdowns, put up 0 points. Mike Wallace, who had carried me at times earlier in the year, put up a pedestrian 7 points. DeMarco Murray broke his ankle in the 1st half and got me 2 points. CJ Spiller, in a blowout loss to San Diego, got me only 5 points. Jermichael Finley was held without a catch in Green Bay’s game. The only players that did anything for me were Roy Helu, who had his 3rd 100 yard rushing game in a row, and Seattle’s defense. My total output was my yearly worst by far: 53 points for the week, good enough to be outscored by Dan by 70! Adding insult to injury, I had 3 different receivers on my bench (Laurent Robinson, Julio Jones, and Nate Washington) who had at least 24 points apiece. Now, I would have never started all 3 of them because Mike Wallace is a must-start every week, but I could have conceivably started 2 of them over Burress and Spiller for example…especially Julio Jones, who I had consistently started (when he was healthy at least) all season despite having an up-and-down year. To put a positive spin on it though, this mercifully ended what was by all standards a pretty crappy fantasy season for me. Earlier in the year I complained about being unlucky, but my final record was 6-8, and in all honesty this was a 6-8 fantasy team (and all things considered I had to work pretty hard and get pretty lucky even to get to 6-8). Why was this team such a failure? Let’s run down the list…
1. Michael Vick…I have detailed this before, but prior to our league’s draft I heard ESPN fantasy guru Matthew Berry explain on a podcast why he would take Vick if he had the 1st pick in a draft this year. It went something like this…the Eagles have an explosive offense, and last year Vick put up numbers that would have made him a top 10 fantasy quarterback and a top 20 fantasy running back if you isolated his rushing stats (if you extrapolated those stats through a full 16 games). Vick came with risks: a lack of consistency over the years, the propensity to get injured, etc…but if he played up to his abilities and stayed on the field, it would essentially be like having an extra player in your starting lineup every week. I understood the riskiness, but I bought into the theory hook, line, and sinker, and when I found out I had the 1st pick in our draft this year, I didn’t hesitate in taking Vick. Unfortunately, Vick was inconsistent, got hurt early and often, and the Eagles were a bust in general this year. The theory works though…just ask Cam Newton owners this year. Cam went undrafted in our league though, but he is the overall 2nd rated fantasy player in the league right now behind Aaron Rodgers (by the way, while I had completely bought in to Vick, Rodgers was my 2nd choice). Vick’s current ranking is still a respectable 47th, but the pick killed me. I ended up dropping him with a week or 2 left in the regular season (during his most recent time missed due to injury). The result of this left me with a revolving door at quarterback this year including Josh Freeman, Tarvaris Jackson, Carson Palmer, and the aforementioned Hasselbeck. I did pick up Jay Cutler for a couple weeks, which was a good pickup except for the fact that he broke his finger, causing me to drop him shortly thereafter.
2. A bad draft in general…At season’s end I only had 5 of my original 14 picks still on my roster, and that’s generally not a good sign. I guess it could mean that you were really wheeling and dealing to try to make improvements. Also, it’s pretty common to have a lot of turnover with the guys at the back end of your draft, including kickers and defenses. However, it also probably means that you drafted crappy, and you have to replace a lot of the dead weight on your roster.
3. Injuries…One of my favorite “Dad” sayings is, “Sometimes, it’s better to be lucky than good.” Well, that is rarely more true than in fantasy football. Injuries are part of the game, and some guys (Vick for example) are more injury-prone than others. Still, most good fantasy teams (much like the real teams) are partially good because they managed to not catch the injury bug that year, but on my team injuries spread like a pandemic. Aside from Vick being in and out of the lineup, 2 of my best running backs going into the season were put on injured reserve during the course of the year with leg injuries. Felix Jones was my 2nd round pick, but I dropped him fairly early on in the year when he was out with a shoulder injury. His replacement, Murray, was my number 1 back by the end of the year, but even if I had made the postseason I would have been in big trouble, as Murray was placed on injured reserve after last week’s injury as well. Speaking of a little luck going a long way…
4. Sleeper picks (or lack thereof)…Most leagues aren’t won with the top picks in the draft. Sure, a superstar can have an unbelievable year, but it always seems to be the guy that is shrewd and lucky enough to get those players who have great years out of nowhere that end up winning. Last year when I won our league, I got Arian Foster, Matt Forte, and Fred Jackson in the middle rounds of the draft. I don’t even remember who I used my draft picks on for the 1st couple of rounds because it didn’t matter…those 3 picks basically won it for me right there. This year I tried to employ a similar strategy of grabbing a lot of “2nd tier” backs in the middle rounds with the hope that a couple of them would breakout from the pack. Hightower and Jackson were having solid and great years respectively before they got hurt, but the fact that neither James Starks or Ben Tate really ended up being sleepers for me hurt almost as much as those injuries. Starks has been fighting off injuries the 2nd half of the year, but even prior to that he hadn’t done enough to separate himself from Green Bay’s other backs in their multi-back system like I had hoped. I thought Tate was a smart pick given how Foster pulled the same hamstring like 3 times in the preseason, but while he’s having a great year for a backup running back, he’s still just that: a backup running back. I drafted 5 running backs in total, but none of them, for one reason or another, were one of my starting 3 running backs the last 2 weeks of the regular season.
5. Inconsistency at key spots…Wallace and Finley had been great at times for me this year, but they have been wildly inconsistent as well. Wallace’s decline has been more steady, as he started off the season on pace to break all kinds of single season receiving records. The combination of defenses paying more attention to him, the emergence of Pittsburgh’s other receivers, and the Steelers renewed commitment to the running game as we’ve crept into the winter months seem to be the cause of that. Finley has been more of an enigma, catching 3 touchdown passes 1 week, and disappearing from the offense completely the next. Blame the fact that the Packers have like 1,000 good skill position players for that. At this point, they have still been the 5th and 6th most productive fantasy players at each of their positions this year, but I would have traded a little more consistency for the couple of big weeks that they had.
6. No number 2 receiver…Percy Harvin was penciled in as my 2nd receiver at the start of the year, but when it quickly became apparent that Donovan McNabb couldn’t play anymore I traded him away. In retrospect, I should have held on to him a little bit longer, as he’s had a decent 2nd half of the season with Christian Ponder at the controls of the offense. Julio Jones has had 2 or 3 great weeks, but has had several other weeks where he hasn’t played due to injury or just hasn’t performed when he was on the field. I rode him for much of the year while he was healthy just hoping to catch lightning in a bottle, but as I mentioned before I stupidly sat him when I could have used his production the most this past week. Still, my number 2 receiver position was my biggest revolving door of all. It also may have proven another point when it comes to fantasy: having depth is nice, but sometimes too many choices can be a bad thing too.
In the end, I have no one really to blame but myself. Sure, I was unlucky with injuries, but I outsmarted myself on several draft picks and moves during the season. I guess I can take solace in the fact that as bad as I drafted and as unlucky as I was with guys getting hurt, I was able to piece together at least a mediocre season. Free agent pickups like Helu, Murray, Robinson, and Burress literally kept my season afloat when I probably should’ve been eliminated weeks before. Hopefully for my next fantasy team I can combine that resourcefulness with a little better luck and drafting as well.
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