Looks more likely that Ellis will lose because Eli is throwing touchdowns to everyone except Mario Manningham.
I’m going to need huge second halves from Steve Smith and DeSean Jackson, and probably a big game from Cedric Benson, to knock off Hamlet. If I lose this one it might be time to start planning for next season.
I need Rodgers and James Jones to hold a 37 point lead over Furt’s Wallace, Mendenhall, and Mike Nugent.
Justin Bailey needs a 30 point game out of Witten to beat Stringer.
RNATB needs 33 points out of Benson and Crosby to beat Hamlet.
Omni needs 39 points out of his rapist QB, Hines Ward, and Terrell Owens to beat Dale.
Retro needs Jennings, Austin, and the Packers D to make up a 22 point gap while outscoring Brandon Jackson and Dez Bryant to beat Varlos… who deserves to lose due to starting an inactive kicker.
James Motherfucking Jones.
Now… he’s clearly no Chris Chambers, Stefan Logan, or Michael Jenkins, but I think James Jones is doing pretty well on his first game with Driver out.
Man, 122 points would have beat 8 other teams this week. I gotta be playing the guy who puts up 146.
Yeah, what can I say? I neglected to take 5 minutes to do a last minute roster check this morning after setting my lineup on Thursday (Wednesday?) – would’ve been inconvenient, but not impossible. Fortunately, Dez Bryant pulled my testicles out of the fire by being the only Dallas player to even come close to putting up the 9.26 points I wound up needing at that position to win. I wasn’t following the fantasy score live and was pretty sure that Green Bay’s defensive TD sunk me, but, phew, no.
Somewhat off-topic, but I think I had a nice little draft this season. Dez Bryant looks legit (or will, once he’s officially a starter), TB’s Mike Williams is on pace for over 1,000 yards as a rookie, and Colt McCoy is looking surprisingly non-shitty in Cleveland.
ETA: Oh, right, I didn’t draft Williams, but instead traded Pierre Garcon for him straight up, which I still like. I did draft Jermaine Gresham, though – looks ok, I guess, jury’s still out.
Williams has to be rookie of the half-season with Best and Mathews pulling disappearing acts. 559 yards and 5 touchdowns. Bryant’s production has been comparable when you factor in his return yardage, but he’s playing for an all-but-winless team and Williams has singlehandedly made the Bucs offense viable.
I sort of regret that trade.
I considered taunting you about his big fat donut last week after you picked him up, but decided I had more class than that. I did chuckle to myself all during that pathetic Jets game about how much he sucked, though.
Also, you understand that those guys you keep mentioning aren’t part of my team, right? They just happened to be the tops of the projected free agents. When I need someone and they’re no longer among the higher projections, they’ll get switched out. (Though I do kinda like Logan.)
Er, they are part of your team in the sense that you own them, and that you could’ve dropped any of them instead of James Jones, they’re taking up roster spots that could be better used. I’m not sure I understand your point.
You said you’d “take any of those guys you list over Jones any day of the week and twice on Sundays.” out of a list of “Michael Jenkins, Michael Spurlock, Stefan Logan, Earl Bennett, Jason Avant… Chris Chambers…”
So you’d prefer the guy who’s the #3 WR, possibly replacing a 35 year old gimpy #2 WR, in one of the league’s top 3 most prolific passing offenses, with:
*Michael Spurlock, who’s 3rd receiver on a mediocre passing offense, who was cut by the team that drafted him, then cut by another team his next year, and who has 190 yards in a 3-year career.
*Michael Jenkins, a guy generally regarded as a bust, who has 124 receiving yards this year
*Stefan Logan, who is purely a returner and hence has a ceiling of about 75 points per year
*Earl Bennett, the #3 receiver in a disfunctional passing game (who so far is the best prospect of the bunch)
*Jason Avant, who’s okay been has been in the league long enough to know he’s never going to challenge the starting WRs on his team for playing time,
*or Chris Chambers, who at the age of 32 has almost no dynasty value, and has fewer than 200 yards receiving combined between 2009 and 2010, indicating he has no current value
all of these guys you’d take gladly before James Jones?
He did put up a zero last week - it happens (and how did those other guys do last week?). He put up over 100 yards in the game before that. So even counting that zero, he’s put up more yards in the last 3 games than:
*Michael Jenkins has put up all year
*Stefan Logan has put up in his entire career… by a factor of about 40
*Michael Spurlock has put up in his whole career
*Earl Bennett has put up all year
*Tied what Avant has put up all year
and
*more than Chris Chambers has put up in 2 years.
This is a dynasty league. I have guys on my team that I will never, ever part with. Eli Manning, Antonio Gates, Jahvid Best, etc… Most of my team – thanks to the horrid yahoo autodraft in the inaugural season – are scrubs I don’t care a whit about and will happily replace them in any week there is a free agent that yahoo projects to score higher in the current week. Even if it’s just this one specific matchup that the free agent is better for and he’ll be way worse for the rest of the season, I’m happy to take the free agent over the guy on my roster.
For a long while I considered James Jones one of “my guys”, part of the actual team. He was one of my first acquisitions, drafting him in the 11th round last year because – I shit you not – I remembered him scoring well for me that day he caught the TD pass that gave Favre the career TD record years before.
So I hung onto this guy because of that one catch for a season and a half. Every time I ever needed a WR and looked to him, he was projected to score <2 points. Worthless. But I couldn’t drop him because he was one of “my guys,” y’know? We’re talking 20 weeks straight of him being an albatross around my neck.
Finally I decided fuck it, this pathetic loser has lived on my roster way too long based on one goddamn TD catch 3 years ago. The tipping point was two weeks ago when my injury- and bye-ravaged team couldn’t field an entire roster without starting him, and even though he was healthy yahoo projected him to score 0.00 points. Zero! So I went to the free agent pool, signed 3 players who were projected to score 6+ points that day, and washed my hands of the scrubbiest of scrubs known as James Jones. Good riddance. (EDIT: I think these are the same three guys you keep taunting me about how they suck compared to Jones.)
I wasn’t kidding when I said I was laughing to myself watching that Jets game as he did absolutely nothing. They didn’t even target him until the second half, and then he dropped all 3 that came his way. Exactly as I figured he would, and I was thrilled he was no longer my problem.
Enjoy him. I hope he scores 1000 fantasy points for you. Just know that no matter how loudly you crow about how awesome he is, or how deeply you analyze his stats, nothing will ever dent the year and a half of suck he was for me. Much like how I will never again draft Matt Hasselback or Donovan McNabb because the seasons I had them they sucked, I will never again sign James Jones to any fantasy team. Nor will I ever feel the slightest bit bad about releasing him.
Sounds like some weird psychology going on there. I get your point about how half your team is expendable, but when you need to make roster room, you’d drop your most worthless player. I just can’t imagine a scenario you concocted where you thought Chris Chambers had more value - especially dynasty value - than… anyone.
James Jones is the kind of guy you should be stuffing your roster with - players that have the potential due to situation or talent to amount to something. Even if he never reaches that potential - someone like Chris Chambers has almost no potential at all.
I don’t know what you mean. That week Chambers was projected to score 5+, Jones was projected to score ZERO. Seems pretty clear to me.
You ever draft someone who ends up totally sucking due to injury or whatever and so you never draft that guy again? Jones is one of those guys to me. (As are Hasselback, McNabb, and Addai.) New to that list this year is Anthony Gonzalez. heh.
Well it’s not like you turn over your roster from week to week. If you’re not looking at starting that player that week, then what does it matter what his projected score for that week is? James Jones is going to score hundreds of points over the next few years, Chris Chambers is going to score like… 50 for the rest of his career.
Are you just skimming my posts or something? (They are pretty long. heh.)
Ok, the part I fail to understand is that you never started Chris Chambers. Sure, he may have had a projected score of 5 when Jones had a projected score of 0 - and if you could only keep one on your roster, and you planned to use Chambers that week, it makes some sort of sense. But you never used Chambers, so why does the fact that he had a better projection that particular week matter? Do you base all of your roster decision on who has the better projection on any particular week with no regard to longer term value?
I have no idea why Yahoo would’ve projected him at 0, btw. He put up 107 yards that week, and Chris Chambers put up 0.
I guess what I’m asking is - you weren’t going to start either James Jones or Chris Chambers that week (or Logan, Bennett, or Avant) - so why was their projected score for that week the deciding factor? Why not projected score for the rest of the season? Or better yet, just plain old logical analysis of their current and future value.
Edit: I actually offered to trade for him earlier in the season, you said you’d get back to me. I’d have given you something decent for him.
I get it. I mean, if it was me, I’d have dropped Chris Chambers way before James Jones, but if the guy disgusts you than all else being equal he’s got to go (it’s a game, so have a team that makes you happy). My only criticism – and it’s a small one – is that you (Ellis) probably could have gotten some small but potentially useful piece for him in a trade. But again, it’s a small loss in value, since Jones isn’t worth all that much; WRs who spend the first four years of their career putting up yardage totals of 676, 274, 440, and 724* very seldom turn into productive, fantasy-worthy players. The only reason he has as much value as he does is because there’s likely to be a starting WR spot open in GB next year, what with Donald Driver being a million years old. So, his upside as Green Bay’s WR2 is like 1,050/7 for a couple years, and that’s if he gets the job (probably less than a 50% proposition) and if he plays pretty well.
All of which, of course, is not to say that he isn’t worth a roster spot, just that if he’s no fun to have around, throwing him back into the pond is really a very small loss.
I thought I made this pretty clear. I moved Jones into the group of disposable free agents with nop more attachment to my team than the top of that week’s free agent projections. That’s also where Chambers resides.
I wasn’t going to start any of them, but I also wasn’t going to keep any of them. To me they were exactly the same as free agents. Why not sign free agents who look like they have more potential that week and then I can think about the matchups up until kickoff.
I really don’t understand why you’re having such a hard time with this. I can’t think of many more different ways to explain such a simple thing. He SUCKED, for YEARS. It should be obvious why I dumped him.
EDIT: Yeah, I could have traded him, but generally speaking I don’t like doing trades. People always seem to want to trade for one or more of “my guys” in their trade offer. I don’t want to part with “my guys” any more than I want the Giants to trade Eli for Philip Rivers. I like “my guys.” To me, that’s most of the fun. That’s why I have Jahvid Best in multiple leagues, as well as Peyton Manning and Hakeem Nicks. Those are my guys, y’know?
I guess that’s the fundamental difference. He didn’t suck - he did well when given the chance, but he was behind Jennings/Driver/Finley. There just weren’t that many targets for him. He was talented enough to function as a more productive player, but the situation never permitted it due to the talent in front of him. Driver won’t be around for long which fills a void. You are utterly certain that he can’t fill it, but I think that certainty is unjustified.
Chris Chambers (I keep using him as the example because he’s the most stark contrast) didn’t have more potential. Chris Chambers is among the most worthless assets in this league and shouldn’t be rostered by anyone. He hasn’t produced in 2 years, he’s not producing now, and he’s too old to be getting any better. James Jones is a talented player on the rise, Chris Chambers will never do anything productive anymore.
I just… can’t come to terms with whatever decision making lead to James Jones being dropped before Chris Chambers. If it was merely a personal grudge, and not an evaluation of his future potential, I don’t know why you’d be so convinced he’s worthless.
It’s just so weird to me, given the nature of this league, that you’d treat a developmental project as “sucked for years” and then dump him right when he’s about to blossom. Those sorts of players are important to the long term health of a dynasty. I mean - the same logic could be applied to Aaron Rodgers as well, right? If we had drafted when he was a rookie. You could hold him for 3 years when he was sitting behind Favre and say “wtf! He has like 100 passing yards! He sucks!” and then dump him a few months before he became the starter.
Clearly you can’t.
How about this: I consider both Chambers and Jones worthless, but while I’m neutral toward Chambers I actively dislike Jones.
EDIT: I probably would have dropped Rodgers after a year and a half out of annoyance and actively dislike him, too. And for a year and a half I’d have been right. Not really, because of the nature of the QB position, but seriously, I’m supposed to hold onto Jones for two years because he might luck into the starting job next year that he already had and lost three years ago?