Scoring's up, but not me
When your fantasy world turns upside down: How to survive Tony Romo, Drew Brees& Matt Forte woes
Last week, I was tempted to write in this column about how Week Six was one of those rare fantasy weeks for me when everything falls into place. All three of my teams scored triple digits in winning handily, and I figured that I would talk about how awesome it felt when things come together like that, especially since it’s such a rare occurrence.
I ultimately decided against it, fearing that it would be show of hubris, causing the fantasy gods to show offense and immediately plague my team with locusts or floods or ACL injuries.
Apparently, even considering such braggadocio was enough to turn my fortunes against me, because I suffered through a heinous Week Seven. On the NFL’s highest-scoring week in two years, even though two of my three leagues have scoring systems so liberal that your players practically get points for drinking Gatorade, I managed to crack 50 points in just one of the three leagues and was soundly beaten in all three.
What’s impressive is that I managed to underwhelm in a variety of ways. There were poor performances by reliable players, idiotic lineup decisions by yours truly and one injury that not only ruined my week in one league, but possibly destroyed my championship hopes. Let’s take a look back at this carnage. Maybe you can take some sort of lesson from this horror show
In my NFC-only league, which I run and contains close friends and family, I came into the week at 3-3, but riding high after back-to-back huge efforts gave me the overall point lead. But my team has been notoriously all-or-nothing, and this was a nothing week, with all my weaknesses glaring brightly. My top running back, Matt Forte, was supposed to be Marshall Faulk in the Mike Martz offense but instead gets about as much carries as Trung Canidate used to. And Michael Crabtree went back in the Witness Protection Program after emerging from hiding the past few weeks. My brother’s team beat me by a jillion.
Next up was my work league, where the situation was very similar: So-so record (3-3), but solid point totals. Plus, I thought that this was the week that my first-round pick, Drew Brees, would have a bust-out day against the lowly Browns. By his fourth interception, it became abundantly clear that wasn’t going to happen. This actually was the least of my disasters, as Brees got some garbage points and Ochocinco finally used his hands for catching and not tweeting.
Still, my two heretofore reliable runners, LeSean McCoy and Rashard Mendenhall, struggled, leaving me vulnerable to a Monday night comeback by my opponent.
Worst of all was the debacle that my online league suffered. This team was unbeaten after six weeks somehow, despite the fact I whiffed in the draft with early choices on Ray Rice on Larry Fitzgerald. I caught a break by playing a guy who scored just 63 measly points, and yet my team sputtered and stumbled their way to a pathetic 34 points heading into Monday night.
It would have helped if I had Kenny Britt on my roster. Oh, wait, I do have Kenny Britt on my roster; I just chose to sit him in favor of Jabar Gaffney. Oof!
Yet I still had my quarterback in play on Monday night, and a big game would allow me to come back for an ugly victory. If you haven’t guessed that my quarterback was Tony Romo, then you haven’t been paying much attention.
By the time I turned off the TV on Monday night, I felt like I’d been hit by a bus. The bottom line is that I’m probably not as smart as I thought two weeks ago, nor as dumb as I seemed last week. Who knows what this Sunday will hold?
If it’s another like last week, I’ll be switching to a Fantasy Celebrity Apprentice League real quick.