I Won My Fantasy Football League
So this year I've been playing a lot of World of Warcraft. And because you end up using a VOIP server (voice over internet protocol) you get to know the people you're playing with a bit. We decided it would be fun to make a Fantasy Football league so we did. It was pretty small, just 6 or 8 teams. It was my first year playing so I figured it would be a gentle introduction.I got lucky and drew the first draft spot. Naturally I picked LT, the San Diego Chargers star running back Ladanian Tomlinson. He had a slow start to the season and just barely eked out the rushing title this year, so it didn't turn out to be as solid a pick as in past years, and Tom Bradey would have been a better choice in hindsight, but LT still scored me a lot of points. My other good draft pick was Antonio Gates, the chargers star tight end. He was hurt near the end of the season though, and his last four games were bad. Astonishingly, the rest of my picks were basically garbage and I dropped them all for other undrafted players fairly quickly.
You have to start a QB, 2 running backs, 2 wide receivers and a running back or wide receiver, a tight end, a kicker, and a defense/special teams unit every game. As the season wore on I learned about how important it was to notice the matchup the player's team faced, and bench or start them accordingly. I.E. if you normally productive running back's team is playing the patriots, consider finding an alternate starter. Conversely, if a mediocre player is playing Miami, start him. I learned to be fluid with my roster, dumping unproductive players like Chicago Bear Cedric Benson early in the season. You can't allow loyalty to influence you, I root for Philip Rivers every Sunday, but he's an inconsistent QB and it isn't often safe to start him.
I made the playoffs by beating a team in my final regular season game. I was 5-6 and that team was 9-1. That made me the fourth seed in the playoffs so I had to play that same team two weeks in a row. One week I absolutely rolled, scoring about 150 points, and the next week about 100 points, winning about 250 - 160 to make the Fantasy Super Bowl. I faced the number two seed, and he jumped to a 110 to 55 lead in the first week as some of my normally reliable picks tanked. Green Bay's defense/special teams gave up 35 points and a bunch of turnovers for -7 points. I had two d/ST units on my bench that each scored about 20 points so that was really discouraging. I was so far behind I almost just gave up.
But I decided that since it was the last week of the season anything could happen. Normally reliable starters might only play half a game and give little or no fantasy output. So I dumped anyone on my team that I didn't think would produce, even great players. It was the last week of the season so it didn't matter. Fred Taylor, arguably the hottest running back in the NFL: waived. Stuff like that. I pulled Kurt Warner off of waivers and started him. His team scored almost 50 points, and he gave me about 20 fantasy points. I started the Oakland Raiders rookie running back Rhodes because I knew the Chargers D would play him loose and because Oakland was starting a QB in his first pro start and I knew that they would run a lot. He ran for 130 yards and a touchdown, for about 20 fantasy points. I also knew that the Chargers D/ST is hot and would victimize these new guys...and they did, and that unit got me about 20 points from a couple or three turnovers.
So it came down to Sunday night and I had gone from 55 points to 181 points with all my players having played. I had gone to see the Chargers and Skins games at a local pool hall and I hadn't checked the fantasy scoreboard, so when I got home I was pleasantly surprised to see that my opponent had only score 175 total points...but he had two Colts starting in the night game, receivers. I bit my nails a little in the next few hours, but they only got 6 points, putting us in a tie. Overnight, a few decimals were tallied to break the tie, and it went in my favor, 182-181. AMAZING!
So I really feel great about going from a total newbie fantasy footballer to a savvy sly winner in my first season. So great I had to go and blog about it. I'd really encourage you football fans to try out a league with some friends next year, it really deepened my enjoyment and awareness of football, over against just following one team.
posted by Mark @ 4:44 PM
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