2008 Fantasy Football Lineup

It's September, which means another fantasy football season. Every year I plan on escaping, but fantasy football is much like the Mafia: "Just when I thought I was out...they pull me back in." I mean, our fantasy football league contains two twin brothers and their father, and they have a set of (very attractive) twin sisters. This means every lewd joke is three for the price of one. You cannot beat that, people!

This year we had a standard draft (where you get 12 hours per pick, but are encouraged to go faster.) I guess this was in response to last year, which didn't go so well. (You will no doubt recall me writing about the debacle that resulted in picking 4 Linebackers by Round 10.) I thought a few small changes would have allowed the Live Draft to continue, but maybe it was just as well.

Unfortunately, due to my popularity with the ladies (and my Shirt Tales Fan Fiction Forum Moderator commitments), I was not able to adequately prepare for this year's draft. See, that's the trap of the 12 hour picks. You figure, "Oh, I can just do my research whenever it's my turn." Sadly, the Tyranny of the Urgent always seems to intervene, not to mention the fact that 11 out of the 12 guys sleep at night, which means the draft is silent, when I could be picking like crazy. This puts me under even more pressure to get up every few hours and check to see when I'm up. (And don't even get me started about the abomination of the Auto Picker.)

Case in point: We play in an IDP league, which means we pick Defensive players as well as offense. Generally defensive scoring is a crapshoot, and (more importantly), the leaders tend to score right around each other, so with a few exceptions, picking defense early is not seen as too bright. However, I have this whole separation theory. The way I see it, if (say), the top Defensive Lineman (DL) is going to score 25 more points than the next DL down the list, it would be worth it to take him, even if DLs score less overall than Wide Receivers. (WR) It's about that separation.

But I did so badly! I picked up Antonio Comarte in like the Sixth Round! What was I thinking? Defensive Backs (DBs) are notorously hard to predict scoring, because Interceptions are not steady stats. Then, I wanted a top DL. However, instead of picking the guy I think is set for a monster year, Mario Williams, I pick Jason Taylor. Every year up until now Taylor would be a great early pick, but with his hold out, Dancing with the Stars and advancing age, it's more of a risk. THEN THE BASTARD GOES OUT AND GETS HURT IN THE FIRST GAME!!

Speaking of getting hurt: in the 4th Round I knew I had to take a WR. The sad secret (that no one will admit) is that we're all using the same 4 or 5 sources for our information. This means that early on, there is not much discrepency. Also, Fantasy Football is all about trends, and this year the big trend is to take WRs earlier than normal. Running Backs (RBs) have always been tantamount, with conventional wisdom being that most WRs score so similarly that it doesn't really matter who you get after the top couple. Maybe not any more.

As I wrote last year, we have a "Keeper" league. This means that each season we can keep up to three people. I've always been against the Keeper concept, and still am, but lately it's been in my favor. Two years ago I drafted Tom Brady too early, but last year it really paid off. I also drafted Joseph Addai too early (in part on the advice of Wordnerd), partly because I was looking to the future. And last year I drafted Adrian Peterson too early. Of course, I didn't have to wait a year for him to pay off.

The end result is, I have thee Keepers (QB Tom Brady, RB Joseph Addai, RB Adrian Peterson) who would go in the first ten of any start-from-scratch draft in the country. That's pretty sweet.

But there are tradeoffs. Every keeper loses an early draft pick, which means I'm not selecting until the 4th round. the big-name WRs were all keepers, and several others were drafted early, which means if I wanted a quality guy I had to draft early. I took Santonio Holmes with my 4th Round pick, and then Kevin Curtis with my 5th. I was unsure about that one, but the paper trail seemed tight. Of course, then he goes and gets hurt. (And don't tell me for a second it had nothing to do with me.)

After the first 7 or 8 rounds it's more of "Anybody's Guess." Even after six years most of our league is playing by ear. (And the most prepared guys are usually awful.) You take some chances, because the coolest part of Fantasy Football is drafting that Sleeper that no one has heard of who ends up being awesome. (Case in point. Last year I picked up Wes Welker UNDRAFTED. How cool is that?)

Again, though, I'm hemmed in. I took Rashard Mendenhall (RB from Pit), on the chance he pans out and Willie Parker is hurt. That's a flyer. Then I had to take Chester Taylor (RB from Min), because the one scary thing about Adrian Peterson is that he's hurt some weeks. You HAVE to have Taylor if you have Peterson, just in case. This gave me 4 RBs, which means, I notice DeShawn Foster (RB Car) still available in the 14th Round, but I couldn't pick him because our Commish Bear (or Der Furher, as I call him) has a 4 RB limit. The hell!

One other dilemma. I get to the 18th Round, my pick coming up. Just then news comes across the wires that Michael Strahan (DL) is thinking about coming out of retirement. Strahan is always a huge scorer. Taylor is hurt, and my other DL Robert Mathis is hurt, which means that Strahan could really help. Except: he's retired! Do I take the chance he comes out of retirement?

I did.

And, of coruse, he stayed retired. Oh well.

As soon as the draft was over I dropped him and picked up Shawne Merriman. Merriman went undrafted because he's injired, looks like season-long. However, the idiot is determined to play. Probably break his leg in the first game, but he also scores a lot, so who knows, right?

Anyway, here's my team going into this week:

Tom Brady QB NWE
Joseph Addai RB IND
Adrian Peterson RB MIN
Santonio Holmes WR PIT
Kevin Curtis WR PHI
Antonio Cromartie DB SDG
Jason Taylor DL WAS
Rashard Mendenhall RB PIT
Chester Taylor RB MIN
Jerricho Cotchery WR NYJ
Devin Hester WR CHI
Reggie Brown WR PHI
Vernon Davis TE SFO
Josh Brown K STL
Darnell Dockett DL ARI
Robert Mathis DL IND
Mike Vrabel LB NWE
Ray Lewis LB BAL
Paul Posluszny LB BUF
Leigh Bodden DB DET
Shawne Merriman LB SDG

Obama or McCain?

Conversation I had this morning on my way home from taking my grandmother to breafast. I'm in line at the checkout stand of the dollar store.


Hippie/Redneck Cashier Woman: Who you going to vote for?

Me: (Inwardly cringing, and deciding not to launch the "Why Hyperion is Best" speech): Well, I heard that if I don't vote for Obama, I'm racist, but if I don't vote for McCain, the terrorists win. [Pause] So I figured I'd vote for them both. I think it's time the Black Terrorists had a chance to win, don't you?

Cashier (after staring at me for at least 10 seconds): Wow. You've obviously thought about this a lot more than me.

Me (deadpan): Obviously.

81

My Grandmother turned 81 today. I took her to breakfast to celebrate. This alone was a Herculean task, because it required me to (attempt to) sleep during the night. How do you nutcases do it?

Anyway, breakfast was quite the trip. She was in rare form, which is something else. We went to IHOP, and they brought her a chocolate pancake with ice cream AND whipped cream on it. And they sang. The IHOP staff was very nice, except they originally thought she was my mother, not my grandmother. (I don't know whether that says more about her looks or mine.)

My aunt has a birthday on the 2nd, and last night we celebrated both days in a big family get-together.

(Originally my grandfather was on the 3rd, but I found out that he was really on the 2nd, and my Grandmother told him it was on the 3rd, because she thought spreading it out evenly was better. I just think she didn't want to share.)

I had a lot of trouble getting anyone interested last night that my Grandmother, at 81, was actually 3 to the 4th. Why aren't more people excited by prime numbers? Haters.

Most people hit 1 to the 4th (=1), and quite a few hit 2 to the 4th (=16). However, 3 to the 4th is a much tougher gig. (Nobody is hitting 4 to the 4th, or as people from Bangor Maine like to call it, 2 to the 8th.) I tried explaining this to my grandmother over breakfast, but I think she was more impressed by the sausage.