Wednesday, December 24, 2008

End of Season Top Lists

I've noticed some significant movement in just the last few weeks - Deangelo Williams going nuts, for one example. In any event, here's the season ending lists for posterity from Yahoo standard scoring:


QB
Rivers 251
Brees 247
Rodgers 241
Cutler 229
Peyton 225
Warner 210
Cassel 209
Romo 194
Thigpen 191
McNabb 187
Eli 175
Favre 167
Pennington 166
Garrard 164
Ryan 154
Roethlisberger 148
Flacco 143

Note:
Anderson 77
Kitna 37
Carson Palmer 29


WR
Fitzgerald 185
C Johnson 174
A Johnson 171
Jennings 168
Boldin 163
White 162
S. Smith 159
R. Moss 154
A. Bryant 150
TO 146
Wayne 143
V. Jackson 142
B. Marshall 141

Note:
S. Moss 133
K. Walter 128
I. Bruce 118
L. Evans 110
Housh 107
Colston 74
C. Johnson 71


RB
Deangelo Williams 255
M. Turner 241
T. Jones 223
M. Forte 218

If you had those four as your top RBs going into the year - you're a prophet.

AP 217
Westbrook 205
Jones-Drew 197
Steve Slaton 194
Portis 193
Chris Johnson 192
Brandon Jacobs 190
LT 185

Note:
Pierre Thomas 148
S. Jackson 142
Ryan Grant 137
McGahee 99
Addai 96
W. Parker 86

TE
Gonzo 147
Witten 108
Dallas Clark 107
Gates 105
Shiancoe 94
Daniels 87
John Carlson 85
Zach Miller 74
Cooley 74
Fasano 71
Boss 69


Kicker
Gostkowski 152
Bironas 144
Akers 138
Lindell 136
Carney 134
Elam 134
Longwell 134
Crosby 131
Bryant 130
K. Brown 129
Prater 128
And the list goes on minus one or two points a slot...


Defenses
Baltimore 183
Tennessee 169
Pittsburgh 164
NY Jets 147
Chicago 146
Philadelphia 145
Tampa 143
NY Giants 142
Minnesota 139
Indianapolis 128
Green Bay 127
Dallas 127
Miami 126

Tuesday, December 2, 2008

Auction League After Action Report

At an auction draft, you can have any player if you're willing to commit the money. Budget right, do a little research and you can pretty much know who is going to be the core of your team. My plan this year was to bank on the rise of the WR compared to the fall of the RB, reasoning that the WRs would be the better value compared to over priced RBs.

After crunching the numbers, examining the trends, and noting the player and coaching movements, I decided that my two favorite high ceiling, lower cost WR plays were Marques Colston and Andre Johnson. I passed on a lot of big names and was the last one to get a player. I waited until most teams had two or more players, actually. It was starting to get scary sitting there with all my auction draft cap still available while others had already spent more than half of theirs. It seemed that was working in my favor as people had already spent big and I got both Colston and Johnson well below my budget.

Being flush with cash and under budget with two core players nailed down turned out to be a curse because it freed me to bid on players I didn't really want. Unfortunately, I landed two of them.

I think it was Steven Jackson first. I had him as a top 10 player, I admit, but he wasn't a targeted player of mine either. Still, sitting there at $20, I was thinking he was worth at least $25 or $30, so I dropped $21 on him and won the bid. If there hadn't just been a rash of people paying WAY too much for QBs, there would have been more cash out there and I would have lost Jackson. In any event, this was bad call number one.

Bad call number two followed shortly.

I lost my two targeted QBs - Jay Cutler and Drew Brees. After losing Cutler and still being under budget, I decided I really wanted Brees yet after making him the most expensive QB in the league, I just couldn't bid another two bucks and lost him. At the time, I was glad but in retrospect, Brees is right now the #1 QB in fantasy football. Instead I got Peyton Manning at the bargain price of $19. Bad move number two.

Peyton started off slow, as I anticipated due to his knee injury, but he never really reached stardom this year either.

After landing Manning, the guy who got Brees looked at my roster and started saying how strong it was. He's all respecting my picks and I'm starting to get sick because it's dawning on me I spent $40 of my $100 cap on players I didn't really want while the QBs I did want were on someone else's roster.

The TEs were, in my opinion, going for too much money but when it got down to Shockey as my last top tier TE option (yeah, bad call, I know), I had to overpay for him - somewhere between 7 and 9 dollars. Thankfully I got Tony Gonzalez for $2. One of the few bright spots on my roster - he is the #1 TE in fantasy football right now.

So after about doubling my budget for both QB and TE and spending almost my entire RB budget on Jackson, I'm tapped out. I ended up not being able to win Brandon Marshall or Jericho Cotchery as #3 and #4 WR. I figured I'd be okay at RB, but that didn't work out either.

For RBs, I had a slew of options I was willing to consider. Jamal Lewis and Thomas Jones were my top value plays. I got Lewis, which was alright but not good, but surprisingly I lacked the budget to compete for Jones. I figured no one would want him after he disappointed so greatly last year and got a year older. Oh, well.

Other options I wanted at RB included Michael Turner, Jonathan Stewart, Steve Slaton and I even identified Maurice Morris as my secret last few rounds 1 dollar player. I ended up with Jackson, Lewis, Morris and Chris Perry. Morris, I believe, had won the starting role in Seattle before being injured.

Perry is a short story of his own. I was never sold on Perry, but with my $ situation and the RBs that were left, he was a long shot hope at least. So after I put him up for a dollar and the Bombers started going: 'He's a starting RB, people, don't let him go for a buck,' that really strained my charity. I think my red face, loud voice and finger pointing probably went unnoticed though. It was subtle red-faced pointing, I think.

I got Tampa for $2, Denver for a dollar or two, and for kickers I took Brandon Coutu and someone else. Coutu was, allegedly, going to be the starting kicker for the Seahawks. I lost Longwell to a vulture with a few more dollars but I ended up with John Carney and Jason Elam off the wire eventually - numbers two and three in fantasy football right now.

As you might recall - Colston and Maurice Morris got hurt in week one, both of which I started. It didn't help that the Texans and Andre Johnson started off slow along with Peyton Manning. Jackson got injured in there somewhere and suffered through a coaching change. I was drug through broken glass and mud to a 1-5 start.

I don't really blame the injuries because I know darn well that if I hadn't spent $40 on players I didn't want, I would have had Thomas Jones, maybe Michael Turner and certainly Jericho Cotchery (I lost him late - two of us saved $ for him and the other guy saved more.) Cotchery has dropped off some but at the beginning of the year, he would have won me a game or two and that would have made the difference in my making the playoffs. I finished 6-7, missing by a game.

Turner and Jones, meanwhile, are the number one and two RBs in fantasy football. Doh!
Just imagine if I'd had the $ to get both of them. In a league where the best player is 8-5 and the worst is 5-8, I would have been a gorilla.

If 'if's and 'but's were candy and nuts, I'd have a Merrier Christmas, right?




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