I’m no genius for fantasy sports. And I’ve never done fantasy football - basketball and baseball a few times each only. But I’d have picked LT first no matter what. I’d be pitting the idiots who failed to do so…
Joe
Not that LT isn’t an outstanding athlete, but there was another healthy option available during the draft. You know, the guy who owned the record that LT beat, setting it just last season; goes by the name Shaun Alexander. Why would you choose LT over SA?
Steve Hutchinson. I don’t have all that much respet for SA’s game, personally. He benefits from a great supporting cast.
Not that he’s bad, but he’s not elite.
Also, rookie QB + Marty could equal an overreliance on the running game, even by Marty standards, leading to LT getting 400+ touches.
For what it’s worth, I worked out my top 5 before the draft, and they were
- LT
- LJ
- SA
- Tiki
- Manning
As it was, I drafted 5th, and took Manning. I’d rather have gotten a running back, but I didn’t like my options at 5 - Edgerrin James was the recommended pick, but I knew that line would hold him back, Clinton Portis was hurt and Washington was sucking…
It wasn’t a bad pick. Peyton Manning is the leading fantasy QB by our rules. But it wasn’t a great pick either. Better than picking Edge, who went a pick later, anyway. What saved me was having Willie Parker fall to the third.
I doubt many people drafted him, but I’m sure he made his way onto many rosters after his first game.
The guy in our league who has LT (Tazmanian Devil) is 14-0. He picked him #1 overall, so he has to have credit for making the pick. He also has a very good team all around, and has played well. It is pretty sick, though, when he can almost count on 30+ every week.
I get to play him next week for the championship. It’s a bit intimidating playing a guy who has won all 14 games he’s played in. But my team has been on fire during the playoffs, and I think I’ve got a shot.
Now watch LT put up 5 TDs…
I feel GO’s pain. In my leagues, LT is not just a stud, but he’s far and away better than any other RB, like 130 points better than Larry Johnson. That’s roughly 10 points per regular season game, which is a hell of a lot of ground to make up in a league where 100 is a great score. In two of my leagues, the guy who has him has, or will be, running away with the title. This year, it seems unless you had a top three pick and got him, or maybe LJ, or an outstanding draft without missing on any of your picks, you got no serious chance. Of course, week to week, anyone can win (cough, neuroman, cough), but having LT gives you such a huge advantage, it’s almost not fair.
In my league:
LT 407
LJ 276
Steven Jackson 249
Willie Parker 239
Brian Westbrook 237
That’s nuts.
Funny enough, though, Maurice Jones-Drew is the 7th RB in scoring, I just noticed, and he wasn’t even drafted, despite a 19 round, 12 player draft. I picked him up early on as a free agent 
He’s one spot above Tiki Barber, who I’d have drafted 4th.
I drafted Tiki 4th. Tike has had a very good year, but has been hurt in fantasy because of Coughlin giving the ball to Jacobs on the goal line. Tiki probably has the worst YDS / TD ratio in fantasy history.
Here is an interesting stat from Yahoo! Sports:
Keys to Success : The list of players who appear most often on the top 500 Public League teams in Yahoo! Sports Fantasy Football.
LaDainian Tomlinson (SD - RB) 99.2%
Torry Holt (StL - WR) 28.6
Drew Brees (NO - QB) 27.8
Marques Colston (NO - WR,TE) 27.2
Antonio Gates (SD - TE) 24.2
So out of the 500 best Public Teams on Yahoo! LT is not on a total of 4 of them. Compare that to the next guy, Torry Holt who is not 357 of them.
Except for that guy from a few years ago - Barry Sanders. When I had Barry, every week I would scream at whatever fullback took all his TDs.
I managed to beat a guy who has both Brees and LT (and Harrison) this week in the first round of the playoffs. Brees had a bad game, but I had McNair as my starter, so that’s even worse.
LT #1 wasn’t really that clear cut coming into this year. Hindsight and all that, but he was the 3rd-highest scoring RB last year. Larry Johnson was second last year, with a very similar total number of points to LT… but he wasn’t their starter going into the year and did most of it after Holmes got hurt. Look here and check out from week 9 on down - once he was starting, his WORST week in terms of fantasy production was 132 yards rushing, and his AVERAGE week was something like 140 yards and 2 TDs. So, basically, what LT has been doing this year - and with similar results. Shaun Alexander was coming off a 1900yd, 28 TD season. There were very logical reasons for LT slipping to #3 - and that doesn’t even get into the Completely Unknown Philip Rivers factor.
That little diversion brings up another thing - being the guy with LJ last year was at least as large an advantage as being the guy with LT this year, particularly because you most likely took LJ in the later rounds. If you had a team in the top half of the league already (very possible since the LJ pick didn’t really affect your core players), you were basically a lock from there on out. The team with LJ won all three of my leagues last year, including one where my team dominated the entire regular season, highest total points by a bunch, etc etc… only to run into the guy (evil VarlosZ!) who dominated the second half of the season once he was able to pair his first round LT with his eleventh round LJ. Yeah, that was a party. But… fantasy sports that run head-to-head matchups (and football first and foremost) happen like that, sometimes. Fantasy Football is at LEAST a third luck, and there’s no way around it.
It’s still super-fun, though. Even with LT, it creates a whole favorite/underdog scenario where everyone is gunning for his team, and beating them is hugely satisfying. So it’s not all bad. And it makes the SDMB league even more interesting when, as SenorBeef mentioned, Taz went out on a limb (and against the prevailing wisdom) and grabbed LT first. Good stuff.
It’s sure as hell looking like Martyball today halfway through the third quarter. What a shit performance and terrible play calling.
How often can you call 123/0 a bad game?
Oh how I needed that.
I can’t believe that they pulled that one out. LT is finally shut out. Amazing.
If they beat Zona at home or the Bills manage to beat the Ravens, we get the #1 Seed. Go Bolts!
What do you mean “finally” shut out? LT was shut out the last time you faced the team that’s gonna beat you to go to Miami. Only question is weather we beat you here or in So.Cal.
It doesn’t matter where the game is played. You barely got away with that last game in your own house and there’s a new Offensive Coordinator now and things have changed. You will get scorched in that game that determines which team will humiliate whomever plays in the Super Bowl for the NFC.
Dude, I like the Ravens and you like the Chargers. I get that. We both quite naturally support our home teams, and both teams are very good. However, I don’t see how you can objectively see a Ravens/Chargers game as anything other than a Ravens victory. LT is a phenomenal player, one of the best ever at his position, absolutely no question. But the Ravens can shut down LT. The Ravens have shut down running games all season. It’s the one thing that the Ravens do better than anyone else, period. Take away LT, and what do you have left? A rook at QB, a stellar TE and sub-par WRs. You want to bet your mortgage on that? You have a vastly superior RB, we have a better QB and WR, at TE it’s a wash and our Defense is better than yours. You had to get lucky to beat the lowly Seahawks ferchristsake. I understand your pride, and the Chargers are a very, very good team, no doubt, but from whence comes this feeling of superiority over a team that already beat you once this season?
Not a Chargers fan here, but this smacks of pure homerism on your part, Dave. Ravens have a better QB? Experience-wise, perhaps, but not in terms of on-the-field performance this year. WRs I’ll give you. TE is a wash? Antonio Gates is probably the best TE in the league. No way is this a wash. Defense is better? Sure, but not significantly so. And the Chargers team (specifically, the Chargers offense) that played the Ravens earlier this year is nothing like the team, and offense, at the moment. Martyball is dead.
I don’t know, as a guy who hates both teams, I think Dave’s right on the money.
Ravens hater, but I think the only reason the Chargers lost the first game was the Marty Choke ™.
After that game, the old man let his coordinators plays some real football, and the Chargers have been nuts since then.
There’s a chance when the stakes are raised in the playoffs that Marty might take control again and choke, but if he doesn’t, and the Chargers play as they have been, I can’t see them losing.
Rivers is a lot more experienced since then, too.
Except for the part where he doesn’t acknowledge that the Chargers have a chance. Even if the Ravens should be favored I don’t think there’s any reason to claim that there’s no chance for a Chargers victory and that thinking so is ridiculous. Two homers going at it, it’ll be settled on the field and no talk will change that.