So I need a 30 point lead plus Jacob Temme to hold up against Wayne, Foster, Garcon, and Vinatieri. That should be easy, right? Tomorrow’s night will probably have a final score of 3-0.
Riiight.
On the other hand, I need a hair under 40 points from Schaub and Blair White. Last year, I probably would have been confident at this point. This year, Schaub’s been a bit of a letdown.
ETA: Fantasy Bizarro World: after owning Chris Cooley, Jason Witten, Owen Daniels and Jermichael Finley during the second half of last season and the first half of this one, my starting TE - and really, the best player on my team this season - is Marcedes Lewis, who I picked up off waivers.
Trading a TE on the SDMB spells death. Finley got traded to me this year - IR. Gates gets traded to me - injury happens the next day and he’s gimped (but not out at least). Vernon Davis gets traded to me, out a week later. We had like 3 TE trade/injuries last year.
I know. That’s how I ended up with Daniels: Cooley got hurt, so I traded Brandon Marshall and Cooley to Hamlet for Daniels (who was leading all receivers in TD catches at the time), and he promptly tore an ACL. Then I traded for Witten - forgot what I gave up there.
The whole time I had Finley on my bench, but he hadn’t started producing yet.
Oh, and ironically, I traded Witten for Reggie Bush this year… who promptly also got hurt.
Gates has 200+ yards and two touchdowns in the two games since his injury, so I’m not sure you can count that one.
ETA: Gates has scored a touchdown every week this season, except the game he got hurt in, and that was in the first quarter.
Nate Burleson. Who did better for me than Witten in the last few games of last year, but who has been a total bust this year.
That’s right. So I definitely came out ahead on that one (well, except the Reggie Bush part) but giving up Marshall hurt bad, especially in the PPR format.
I was thinking that it would be fun if, at the end of the year, I (we) went back and evaluated our roster moves: i.e., the best FA pickups, worst drops, best and worst waiver wire purchases, best and worst trades, etc. We could go team-by-team and also come up with league-wide Best Of lists.
The only hurdle is that it’s, if nothing else, rather time consuming to comb through the whole transaction log looking for notable moves. But of course we all know our own teams pretty well, so perhaps we could each try to make note of moves that we ourselves made which worked out particularly well or poorly (or were interesting in some other way). Not hard, and should make for an interesting little retrospective at the end of the year. Thanks.
I also think I’ll try to look back and do a write up of trades from our first season and how they’ve turned out, to the extent that it’s possible to recover the basic info – AFAICT, Yahoo doesn’t archive the transaction log from previous seasons. So, again, if you remember with some confidence the details of a trade or trades that you made last year which never made into the SDMB thread, be a mensch and make note of it here or via PM. Thanks once more.
(Similarly, a review of our inaugural draft from two years later would also be a blast. But of course we have all the info we need for that; all that’s needed is the free time…)
I was just looking through our draft the other day. What a clusterfuck. I don’t think anyone really took the proper strategy to draft for our league, but rather just thought more in terms of “well I’ll do a normal fantasy draft and maybe drop or raise a player a round based on age” but a much more radical strategy was called for IMO.
No kidding. I drafted 3 players, and only one is any good (Jordan Shipley), although he’s very, very good - should be a solid WR2 for years to come, once TO or Ocho moves on.
I think I already won FA pickup of the year with Marcedes Lewis. He’s this year’s Vernon Davis. If Torain gets healthy quick it will be a close thing, though.
Okay, maybe Brandon Lloyd, but I didn’t have to spend $26 on Lewis, and I still think Lloyd disappears after this season.
I meant our original draft, last year.
I liked my draft. I had the highest scoring year last year, and so far I am again this year (and still not yet .500). I’ve kept all but 6 guys from my original draft, and everyone from rounds 1-13 are still there (or traded).
I definitely went with putting an emphasis on winning these two years, but I also like my depth and looking to the future.
Offhand, I kinda doubt it. Lewis is a very good free pickup, obviously, but even with his big uptick in production he’s “only” the 5th ranked TE, and I don’t think it’s likely to be the start of a trend in which he’s a perpetual Top 8-ish TE. He’s 11th among TEs in yards, and 16th in receptions (which is even less impressive when you consider that he’s played 8 games whereas 22 out of 32 teams have already had their byes and thus have only played 7). If you prorate his numbers out to a full season, you get 50 catches for 652 yards, which is a pretty modest improvement on his last two years (41/489, 32/518) and could well just be statistical noise. The reason he’s been so valuable this year, of course, is his 7 TDs, but he’s extremely unlikely to reach that number in the second half of the season, to say nothing of next year or the one after that. It took him four years to catch his first seven TDs; that he caught his next seven in only eight games – without a corresponding spike in yards and receptions – means this is almost certainly a pretty big fluke.
All that said, he has value (especially this season for your specific team) and getting Lewis for nothing is definitely a great play. I’m just reasonably confident that there has been or will be a few better FA pickups this year. Just looking at my own team, Danny Woodhead appears at least comparably good: if you prorate his stats from the 5 games he’s played to a 16-game schedule, he winds up with 180.5 fantasy points, which would be good enough for the 18th best RB last year. That’s probably at least as valuable as the 5th best TE, and since Woodhead is in only his second year (after getting no meaningful playing time with the Jets last season), regression to the mean isn’t his enemy and he’s pretty likely to see his production rise in the coming years.
(Sorry, I don’t know why I have to attack other people’s fantasy football dreams like this. I didn’t even mean for this post to be more than a couple sentences. It just happened. Most likely, we’re both a bit too much in love with the players we grabbed from the bargain bin.)
LaGarette Blount motherfuckers!
1500 yards and 27 TDs from here on out.
I went into the draft trying to put together a winning team for year 1, but also try to nail guys I thought would be good for year 2 (Rice, Charles, Nicks). Looking back, I blew a shitton of picks (Lynch in the 4th, Cotchery in the 7th hahaha), but I hit on some picks and some waiver pickups as well.
Wow. I only have 11 out my original 25 left on my roster (including my top 8, which means just 3 out of my last 17). I did trade away four players: my 15th, 22nd, 24th, and 25th Rounders, who brought back a lot more value than I expended for them in the draft, so it’s not as bad as 11-for-25 would imply.
My draft was thanks to the Yahoo Autodrafter, but I still came away with a lot of players I was hoping for. However, those players were definitely of the “win right now” variety and I may have a few long years ahead of me.
But picking up Michael Vick as a FA at the end of last year and Ryan Fitzpatrick as a FA this year has shored up my QB situation after McNabb was exiled to Washington.
Okay, so my top six picks didn’t go so well, although Kevin Smith is suddenly showing signs of life.
It’s really in the back end that I won last year’s championship: Ced Ben, Steve Smith 2.0, Meachem, Finley. Drafting 5 ½ starting running backs was costly, but considering where I’d be without Turner, Benson and Cadillac it was well worth it. I’ve still got the deepest slate of playable running backs in the league, though I’m really going to regret not picking up Blount - especially if Torain’s injury is serious.
What’s funny is how many of my draft picks aren’t on my roster any more, although I’m always among the most active GMs in any league. 3 of my first 8 picks and 12 of 25 overall. Of those, 5 were traded and the rest were straight up drops, IIRC.
Factoring in this year’s draft, I only own 13 of 28 players I’ve drafted.
Might wind up as the best waiver-wire pickup ($6), true, but I was just talking about FAs which were picked up for free.
Let’s not go crazy. The Buccaneers offensive line was built to run block, but is only any good at pass blocking - and the Cardinals were second from last in the league against the run heading into yesterday’s game.
Alright, pulling back my rest of the season prediction to 1200 yards and 20 TDs.