Week One Roundup
The first week is always a little tough; everyone’s getting their bearings. A brief writeup and standings below the fold.
Our marquee matchup of the week wound up in a tie, of all things, between the Not-so-Gentlewomen and Partisan Warrior. The big disappointment here was Victor Cruz for the Gentlewomen — all he did in his game against Dallas was drop three passes. No salsa dance for you!
Two games resulted in squeakers — first, Heisman Cain beat out Fuzzy Dunlop by one point, as a great game for Denver’s Demaryius Thomas was not enough to make up for a lackluster outing by Cam Newton of the Panthers, letting Heisman Cain ride the Aaron Rodgers gravy train, putting up good numbers despite a clobbering rendered by unforced penalties and a tough 49ers defense wearing their whites in Green Bay. And in the last game of the week, a touchdown pass from Philip Rivers to Malcolm Floyd was just enough to let the Unlikely Pseudonyms squeak by the Ordinary Marksists, again by one point.
The blowout of the week was looking like the Dictionary Kids over Stoicdread, powered by a stellar opening day performance from Matt Ryan. But Stoic came back over the course of a long Sunday afternoon to make it respectable. No, the big differential came from Multiple Scorgasms, who topped Legitimate Reception by 47 points on the strength of a fantastic Monday night kicking game by the uninjured Nate Kaeding and a guy you might have heard of who wears #18 for a new team this year.
Rounding out the action was Bullmoose Revival over Haulin’ Oats, powered by Tony Romo of the Dallas Romos, and Black Hole over the Tebow Ghostwriters on the strength of 96 yards and a touchdown by the crippled-but-still-playing Jeremy Maclin and a phenomenally lucky David Akers, who got the only clunk-off-the-crossbars kick that actually scored points in living memory — tying the NFL record for longest field goal while he was at it. Not that I’m bitter about that happening against my favorite team or anything.
Thanks to the NFL’s new policy of staging one game per week a day before the other 30 teams are required to post their injury reports, we all get to post our teams early every week. Players, please get your teams posted by Thursday before the Packers-Bears grudge match. So after week one, our standings are:
| Team | W-L | PF | PA |
| Multiple Scorgasms | 1-0 | 101 | 54 |
| Dictionary Kids | 1-0 | 125 | 81 |
| Black Hole | 1-0 | 71 | 52 |
| Bullmoose Revival | 1-0 | 89 | 76 |
| Unlikely Pseudonyms | 1-0 | 95 | 94 |
| Heisman Cain | 1-0 | 91 | 90 |
| Not-so-Gentlewomen | 0-0-1 | 83 | 83 |
| Partisan Warriors | 0-0-1 | 83 | 83 |
| Ordinary Marksists | 0-1 | 94 | 95 |
| Fuzzy Dunlop | 0-1 | 90 | 91 |
| Haulin’ Oats | 0-1 | 76 | 89 |
| Tebow Ghostwriters | 0-1 | 52 | 71 |
| Stoicdread | 0-1 | 81 | 125 |
| Legitimate Reception | 0-1 | 54 | 101 |
Good luck to everyone next week!
Sigh.
Too bad I didn’t have enough energy to play in two leagues.
Also: WHY DID I NOT START RGIII?Report
Beginning to think going bearish on the 9ers was a mistake. The NBA never would’ve let that trade go through Commish!Report
I dunno. The NBA allows some pretty wild transactions. But I think it would have gone through: Moss was of uncertain value at the time, and Daniels was not only prospectively of great use (and proved it) and you needed a second kicker. Both teams became more competitive for it.Report
So I am figuring out that 10 points is a good number of points for a defense and much more than that is not something that can be expected on a regular basis.
Kickers cannot be expected to give me more than 5ish points either. Certainly not 40.
And Roethlisberger will give me more points when he’s playing in a city that isn’t Denver.
And my running backs and wide receivers are all either cruddy or haven’t signed with a team yet.Report
On that last point, yes, it is true that a player must actually play in order to produce points.Report
Defense points don’t align well with defensive performance, most leagues.
Look at SF’s defense, last weekend. They basically held GB all day. They got 5 points for that.
If they give the same effort in week 8 against Arizona? They’ll get 5 picks and score two touchdowns and you’ll get 20 points from your defense.Report
Games like Nate Kaeding’s Monday night game are aberrations (and incidentally, I own him in another league and he was instrumental in my victory). Fantasy-wise, the difference between the best kicker and the worst kicker comes down to a handful of points.Report
All great names, but especial props to Fuzzy Dunlop.Report
If there is a best way to lose a fantasy football game it is to look at your lineup and see that you would have lost no matter who you started.Report