Another SDMB fantasy football league

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
181

Damned if I do, damned if I don’t.

Kitna had more total fantasy points so far this season, and he was playing the 49ers. Palmer was playing the freaking Chargers, a pretty good defense even with guys missing. Now, see, the first eight weeks of the season I followed the “it’s Carson Palmer and Jon Kitna we’re talking about” line of reasoning, and week in and week out Kitna (and Brees) outscored Palmer from the bench. So last week I said, shit, I’m starting the guy who’s having the better year. Last week it worked. This week, well, I’m the idiot who started Kitna.

182

To put it another way – next week’s board of fare:

Kitna @ Ari
Brees vs. Cin
Palmer @ NO

I defy any of you to tell me you know who’s going to have the best week.

183

Fair enough. Obviously I’m seeing it in hindsight.

I felt like that game was going to be a shootout (though not that high), and that while SD’s run defense is very good, their pass defense, especially with their main pass rushers out, with a merely decent secondary, was that the Bengals would have to attack. I would’ve predicted a 300+ yard game for Palmer based on the matchup.

(Palmer will have the best week of the three you listed)

184

I saw that og adjusted his lineup last week. I just assumed he’d do it this week. Guess not.
Looks like you beat him pretty bad anyway.

185

Hey, I adjusted my lineup for this past weekend’s games. Hell, I even picked up Charlie Batch from the waiver wire on the off chance they benched Roethlisberger for him, as was briefly rumored, but which didn’t materialize. :slight_smile:

186

Huh, well thanks for that.

I thought I looked at the rosters last night, after the game were played, and it still showed you having 2 empty spots. Now, today, it shows them filled.

Hey, Chitwood - look over my roster and figure out if there’s anything you’d take for Frank Gore. You’ve got 2 top-tier RBs ahead of him, and I need another consistent RB, so a deal might work for both of us…

187

I’m not so sure. I look at Gore and KJ as 2 and 2a. How are you going to make it worth my while? Not Manning, I presume, and you’d have to give me basically your 3rd and 4th best players in order for it to help me (and even in that case it might not help me that much, what with only 6 starting slots).

188

You can’t use all 3 of your RBs though, and no one is gonna have a bye week.

You’ve got 2 pretty good receivers, but no depth after that. I’ve got stallworth
coming back healthy ready to put up crazy games, and more receiver depth.

I was figuring some sort of mcalister (injury backup, or best matchup maybe) + stallworth trade or something.

But I can see you have a pretty solid rounded out roster, so I can see why you might not want to trade anything. Well, I just figured I’d raise the idea for discussion, and see if I had anything you were interested in.

(You want manning? I might consider one of your good QBs + something in exchange.

189

Yeah, you said it… I can only start two. And only two receivers, which means I could easily make a deal for a good back and a good receiver and then have neither one of them see the field; hell, judging by performance thus far, even if you gave me Harrison I wouldn’t be improving my starting lineup. The small starting rosters kind of kill the incentive for a deal.

If it was a little earlier in the season I’d jump on the Manning deal. As it is… I’m sorely tempted. I suppose there’s little chance he’d be playing against Houston if I got to the championship. On the other hand, if I had Manning, I probably could get to the championship…

Sorry, just thinking with my fingers, as it were. Let me chew on this one for a little while.

190

I think the Colts have learned from last year not to rest starters in the late weeks and make them rusty.

I’m not anxious to give Manning away, but I’d consider the right deal.

My main problem is that I have a ton of part time RBs that sometimes put up great weeks, and sometimes barely play. Guessing which is going to be which sometimes works well, and sometimes doesn’t.

I was looking over the rosters, and you looked like the best prospect for a trade.

I know Taz is dying to give me LDT though.

I was thinking of offering Gradkowski for Stephen Jackson. Good deal, right? :wink:

191

HAH.

Corey Dillon’s available.

192

He would just add to my multitude of part time RBs.

193

[QUOTE=SenorBeef]
I

I know Taz is dying to give me LDT though.

QUOTE]
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Beef, thanks for the gales of laughter. I needed a good laugh after the morning I’ve had so far. I’d be willing to talk trade involving anyone else except LT. So make another offer, and I’ll take a look at it. :slight_smile:

194

No trading with Tazmanian Devil.

195

You’re not the boss of me! I just need to find the right combination of kicker/defense to trade for LDT.

196

So, anyone want to review their draft and movies in retrospect?

Before the draft, I figured out my top 4 would be: LDT, Johnson, Alexander, Tiki. Well, I got the top 2 right…

  1. Peyton Manning at 5 was… pretty alright. He hasn’t put up 2004-esque stats to quite justify the pick, but I feel ever so smart for passing Edgerrin James, who I believe was the top-ranked pick at my position. Or maybe that was top-ranked RB… Manning might’ve been the recommendation. Compared to picks after, James, Fitzgerald (?), Rudi Johnson, and Clinton Portis, it feels like a pretty good pick.

  2. Marvin Harrison. Not bad, but not as good as I’d hoped. Reggie Wayne is a stat vampire. Could’ve had a good RB here, but I hit pretty well on…

  3. Willie Parker. Now the third scoring RB in the league. Great value for a 3rd round pick. Obviously made the right choice between him and Droughns, ranked slightly ahead of him at the time IIRC.

  4. McAlister. He’s in the lower teens in rank, and has scored pretty good, but I’ve barely used him. He kept getting 12 carries a game, but then doing a lot with them… but who wants to use a starting spot on a guy getting 12 carries a game? You keep thinking this is the week where he’ll get nothing…

  5. TJ Whosyourmama. I’m happy with this pick. I could’ve taken a top tier TE here… but I did that, 4 rounds later.

  6. Donte Stallworth. Well, this was a good draft pick in the sense that without injury, he would be putting up crazy numbers well above this draft position. But he’s screwed me. He was the top receiver after 2 or 3 weeks, so I started starting him, and then he kept missing games. Also had a great week this week, didn’t start him. Still, good value for the future. And would’ve been a solid every week starter without injury.

  7. Neil Rackers. Blah. I went with the yahoo pick on that one.

  8. Addai. Hasn’t payed off as much as I’d hoped, but he’s only going to get more carries from here on out. Decent #8 pick.

  9. Kellen Winslow. HA HA SCOFFERS. Ranked #3 (Colston doesn’t count as a TE in my mind… he wasn’t on anyone’s radar in the draft, either) only because Cleveland’s offensive philosophy doesn’t believe in scoring touchdowns. Still, way outperforming on a value basis every other TE.

  10. Terry Glenn. Solid pick. Traded him later.

  11. Byron Leftwich. Ended up cutting him because I had 2 of the top 3 QBs in the league, and Manning never gets hurt. Also, I stupidly didn’t check his bye week, and it turned out that he had the same one as Manning - so he was an injury backup only. Stupid of me.

  12. Braylon Edwards. Eh. He started off so well, but nothing in the last few weeks.

  13. Kevan Barlow. Had a few good weeks of production out of him. Can’t complain too much. He’s very hit or miss - another 10-15 carriers a week guy. Sometimes he puts up 20 points, sometimes 4. Hard to start him.

  14. Atlanta defense. They’ve done well. Good pickup for the round.

  15. Jerome Harrison (RB, Cleveland). This guy was doing remarkable in the preseason - playing against starters as much as backups, racking up big plays and 6.2 yards per carry. Completely dissapeared during the regular season. I suspect it’s the coaching, and not him. I guess when you have a well-oiled offensive machine like Cleveland, you don’t want to mess with the parts. Gah.

  16. Vernon Davis. Good pick, I think, that was negated by injury.

  17. Cleveland defense. I expected better.

  18. Rex Grossman - great pick. He’s still among the top QBs despite a few horrid performances. He puts up the numbers most week. Traded away.

  19. Ashley Lelie. Boom or bust. Mostly bust.

Traded Grossman and Glenn for Maroney. I’m okay with the deal - I was never gonna start Grossman and I got rid of him when his value was high… the loss of Glenn was bigger. I thought it was a good deal for both teams, but none of the players outside of Glenn has entirely lived up to expectations. I thought Maroney was going to be a scoring machine after his Cinci performance, which is when I traded for him. Still, I feel okay about it.

Solid FA pickups: Jones-Drew, Scobee, Minnesota.

Best picks in the draft.

1,1) LDT. (Taz) Not exactly a great act of prognostication, but you made the right decision amongst Alexander and LJ. I wanted LT with the #1 pick too.

2, 12) Brian Westbrook (Taz) - good value here.

3, 5) Willie Parker (me) - I’m nominating him… top 3 RB from a 3rd rounder is pretty good.

3, 8) Wayne (Last Place, Kiros) #3 wr - good value. I should’ve taken the Manning-Wayne hookup instead of the Manning-Harrison.

4, 7) McNabb. (Zone Blitz) - top QB in round 4.

4, 11) Walker (Chitwood) - 2nd WR in round 4.

6, 11) Kevin Jones (Chitwood) - great value.

9, 2) Frank gore (Chitwood) - Same as above, you Chitwoodian bastard.

10, 11) Drew Brees (Chitwood) - this is becoming a pattern…

12, 9) Philip Rivers (Court Jesters)

16, 4) David Carr. (Girdbirds) Normally wouldn’t have him on this list, but somehow he managed to snag Stephen Jackson.

18, 8) Rex Grossman (me). Has had a few really bad weeks, but also had weeks where he beat Peyton Manning.

Biggest busts (I’m not gonna count injury since it’s pretty unpredictable):

1,6) Edgerrin James. (Zone Blitz) To be fair, no one saw Arizona sucking that badly.

1,7) Larry Fitzgerald (Faceisburgers). Not Larry’s fault - but obviously didn’t get value for the 7th pick of the first round.

2, 4) Randy Moss (Gridbirds) - not even on the first page of top receivers.

2, 9) Reggie Bush (Court Jesters) - if special teams yards mattered in this league, he might be decent. No one expected him to suck so much at RB.

5, 3) Duante Culpepper. Just sucks, even before the injury. Not such a big deal for round 5 though. After round 5, it’s crapshooty enough that even a total failure isn’t all that big a bust, so I’ll stop it here.
(Yes, I do have too much time on my hands)

197

I was just looking at the draft a couple of days ago. I came to the conclusion that it’s my fault Taz is whupping everybody so bad. But I like doing this, so here goes:

  1.  (2)  	Larry Johnson -- Easy one.

  2. (23) Willis McGahee – I do like McGahee, but this pick turned out to be a dud. I wish I’d gone with Westbrook, I really do. It’s weird how pre-season player rankings cannibalize each other so that you end up going into the draft believing things that objectively you don’t really believe. Then again, it appears that least Yahoo’s rankings had McGahee well below the Brook, so maybe I’m just retarded.

  3. (26) Carson Palmer – I thought at the time that this was going to be a gargantuan steal. Turned out not to be the case, especially as there was quarterback depth available at all times during the course of the draft.

  4. (47) Javon Walker – Loved it then, love it now. Ideally these next two picks were going to be Walker – Andre Johnson on the comeback. I preferred to risk losing Johnson than Walker, which in hindsight probably was the wrong way to go about it, but it worked out. PS – I met Javon Walker my freshman year at FSU. His hands are about three feet long.

  5. (50) Donald Driver – Heroic production out of him lately. Looking at about the 20-pick stretch in this area, every WR pick ended up producing: Darrell Jackson, Plaxico, Roy Williams, Walker, Johnson, Driver, Joey Galloway, Houshmandzadeh, Reggie Brown. Every single one of them has been worth the pick.

  6. (71) Kevin Jones – Obviously this worked out nicely. By the time this pick rolled around it seemed like no one had taken a RB in forever. I felt like, in a yardage-dominant league like this one, no starting running back who gives you any reason to believe should be ignored; even if you can only spot-start them, they’re just way more valuable than everything else, and you don’t want the other guy to get them at value. I had some reason to believe because of Martz, but I’m not going to pretend I thought he’d be a top-5 back. Honestly, I was ready to just take running backs until the cows came home if they didn’t get snapped up. Every pick from here on out where I didn’t take a running back, I had to talk myself out of taking a running back.

  7. (74) L.J. Smith – Was going to take another running back but I didn’t like any of the tight ends that were left after Smith. Not a great pick, but at least I’ve been able to keep starting him.

  8. (95) Eddie Kennison – I don’t like Kennison at all, really. He’s a guy you can reasonably expect to start on any given week and not get shut out, though, and I figured that’s a good thing when you only have two other receivers and they’ve both been hurt.

  9. (98) Frank Gore – That he kept hanging around puzzled me. After the lull where nobody really took a running back for a couple rounds, another run on them started in this round. I thought Gore was clearly above the rest of them; so I was happy to jump on him right before they started going scarce.

  10. (119) 	Drew Brees -- I liked this one.  Same basic philosophy as the Palmer pick.  He had had a great year and gotten hurt, and he looked to be on the mend.  I figured one of the two, at least, would end up being really good value.

  11. (122) 	Drew Bennett --  This was a Billy Volek pick.  Didn't work out.

  12. (143) 	Wali Lundy -- Another guy who was supposed to be starting, who seemed reasonably able to matriculate the ball down the field, and who would be getting touches.  I gave up on him and dropped him pretty soon thereafter, though, which I guess is the danger of underdrafting in other areas.

  13. (146) 	Denver 	-- I don't know, it's a defense.

  14. (167) 	Jermaine Wiggins -- Tight end.

  15. (170) 	Chad Jackson -- Oh, wait, I remember now.  I looked at my team after the Lundy pick and realized that, even though there were a million roster spots, everybody else was taking all the useful players at the non-running back positions, so I tried to root through the bargain bins to get something useful.  I was mocked for taking Jackson, but damn it, he's going to be a player.

  16. (191) 	Travis Henry -- I can't take full credit for the way this one shook out.  I *always* draft Henry.  The previous two years he just sat as dead weight on my roster while I insisted he was awesome.  He is awesome, though.  

  17. (194) 	Jon Kitna -- Don't know why he was hanging around either.  There's a certain type of quarterback that doesn't get any respect, I guess.  I'm not saying I had him outscoring Eli Manning this season, but with pretty good receivers, a back that can catch the ball, Martz running the offense, and a defense that's going to get you behind in games, I thought it made sense that he'd have a very serviceable year.

  18. (215) 	Arizona -- Whatever.  I have a hard time believing I pressed the button to make this pick.

  19. (218) 	Mike Nugent -- Gotta have a kicker, right?

Picks I thought were great during the draft, and were:

Willie Parker, Exploding Pancakes
McNabb, Zone Blitz
Chester Taylor, Last Place
Philip Rivers, Court Jesters
Thomas Jones, Taz
Marion Barber, Isotopes – 14th round; tremendous. I thought he’d actually end up starting, but he’s still been about equal to Jones.

Picks I thought were great but turned out not to be:

DeAngelo Williams, Taz
Chad Pennington, Zone Blitz
Ahman Green, Isotopes
Vernon Davis, Exploding Pancakes – Nothing to be done about that, though.

The best picks of the draft, all things considered:

Westbrook, Andre Johnson, Marc Bulger, Chicago, Michael Vick, Tazmanian Devils – This is the league right here. LT’s a force all his own, obviously, and Gates was pretty standard, but at every point along the way through the middle rounds Taz got exactly the right guy. The downside of having the first pick is that you miss out on all the players that everybody else gets two cracks at – but Westbrook fell and Taz capitalized. The downside to taking two RB’s and a TE in the high rounds is that the elite QB’s and WR’s are gone, and they score pretty high in this league, so if you miss it really hurts. Vick and Bulger are 3 and 5 in total points, and Johnson ensures that the WR production will be pretty good. So, uh, he didn’t miss.

Add on top of that the significant advantage afforded by the Chicago defense… well, it makes sense that this team’s dominating. When you go up against this team, you know he’s going to have the highest individual scorer, and you also know that Westbrook might not be far behind. Gates will probably outscore your tight end, his defense will outscore yours, probably handily, and he’s got his pick of matchups with two top-5 quarterbacks. Oh, and by the way, if he’s got an injury or something, there’s always Thomas Jones, who may very well be outscoring your first-round pick. Yeah, it makes sense.

Holt and Wayne, Last Place – (Although Holt was an autodraft). Not because either one was really a magnificent pluck, but because by taking both you got a leg up on everybody else without sacrificing your chances at other positions.

Peyton Manning, Exploding Pancakes – There were so many places you could have gone wrong with that pick. If you had taken a running back, there was a greater than 50/50 chance you’d have ended up pretty disappointed. Instead you ended up with one of the three highest scorers in the league. Which is really the point, isn’t it?

198

We’ve got some really good matchups this week. Zone Blitz vs me will be really good, Chitwood and Gridbirds, and Holding out for Bush vs PHW.

Btw, I’m going to reiterate my request to get players plugged in for Og just this once. He’s the only one in the league with empty slots.

199

Ugh, I’m part of a good matchup? I just lost my starting RB (Portis), my normal starting WR are both hurt and are more than likely going to sit on the bench (Moss and Glenn) and I’ve got absolutely no faith in Grossman after the Arizona game.

Damn his negative points in Week 6 that cost me a win against Kiros.

200

You want a quarterback?