Victory is Mine

I have mostly resisted the urge to write about my fantasy football team for a number of reasons. First off, I’m surprised that people come here for the poker content, I can’t imagine that anyone would care about my football team. Secondly, for the first half of the season, I was doing shitty. I had scored the second most points in the league, but I was in 6th or 7th place. Every week I would play the only team that scored more points than me. Any other scheduling arrangement and I would have run away with the lead. So I didn’t want to write about it because I didn’t want to seem like a whiney bitch. At least any more than usual. And finally, writing or bragging about your team is just asking for your star running back to break his leg and be out for the season.

Now as I’m sure you’ve figured out by now, I turned things around and won the league. That means I have won twice out of the four years we have had this league. I’m pretty sure that qualifies my team for dynasty status. Since I am obviously a better fantasy player than the other members of my league, I think I’ll impart some wisdom on them. The rest of this post is mainly directed at them, and is my why of bragging, but feel free to continue and revel in my success. You might want to bookmark this for when you are preparing for next year’s draft. Here are some pointers you might find useful:

1. Unless you have some real odd scoring rules, the single most important thing to a good team is a strong running back. They get the ball more than anyone other than the quarterback, and are going to score the majority of your points. Sure QB’s can throw for a lot of touchdowns, but the difference between the top QB and the tenth best isn’t nearly as significant as the top RB and the tenth best. I had Eli Manning as my QB, and still managed to win. While I’m on the subject, make sure you actually get a good RB if you have the chance. This year I got Shaun Alexander with the fourth overall pick. Alexander and Ladanian Tomlinson are the only two players you should have even considered picking with the number one or two picks this year. Depending on your league Peyton Manning may have been an acceptable choice, but you had to figure that he wasn’t going to repeat his 283 TD season. Brian Westbrook and Priest Holmes went one and three in my league. Thanks guys. I hope you draft ahead of me again next year. Speaking of next year, unless some fluke career ending injury happens in the next week, only Alexander, Tomlinson and Larry Johnson should be considered as top three picks.

2. Defenses and Kickers are extremely underrated. Sure you don’t pick one until the last few rounds of the draft, but that is because it’s tough to tell what kind of season they are going to have. By mid season you should know. The key is bye weeks. People hate keeping a spot on their bench for kickers and defenses on bye weeks, so they drop them thinking they can pick up any old replacement. Bad move. I picked up Neil Rackers when someone dropped him mid season and I’m pretty sure I won a game or two because of it. Last year I got Pittsburgh’s D the same way and they scored an average of two touchdowns a game. Ok fine, maybe not that much, but it was a lot more than an other defense. If you have a top D or kicker, drop your fifth or sixth WR to make room for a substitute during bye week. You have a much better chance of picking him up again.

3. Don’t pick injury prone players early. Do pick backups to injury prone players in the late rounds when there is only garbage left. As I mentioned earlier, Priest Holmes went number three over all. I picked up his replacement Larry Johnson in one of the later rounds. Holmes struggled and then got hurt while Johnson scored the second most points in the league even though he only started half the games. I’m not saying that I’m some fortune telling genius, but the evidence doesn’t lie. Once Holmes went down I could have benched my whole team with the exception of the running backs and still won most games.

That’s all I have for now. Be grateful that I was willing to divulge those secrets.

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Speaking of kickass teams, who’s going to see the Bears in Detroit this February?

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I don’t think I’m going to get any more poker playing in this year, but there is home game tournament scheduled for the first weekend of the new year. From what I have heard there could be a pretty good turnout. Also, I am planning on doing some sort of year in review type post where I actually sit down and summarize my winnings/losses/tendencies/other things. I not get it done until next week though. Man I’m a slacker.