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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