MY BOLD PREDICTIONS teams 9-11 (John H, Johnny, & Patty-O)

Team Wheaties
GM- John H

Team Total- 2968 (8th) Starters- 1368 (10th) K&D- 960 (3rd)

So John was one of 3 teams to wait until at least round 7 to take their first QB (Patty-O & DH being the others). Only time will tell if this was a solid strategy or if it would have been worth it to pass on other talent and reach in the earlier rounds for a signal caller. For what it’s worth, I clearly don’t consider it a death blow to a team to have waited on a QB considering that I picked Dave for one of the playoff slots. John had what some might call the good fortune of the first overall pick in the draft. He did what was, in my opinion, the smart thing, and grabbed the guy that has the very real possibility of being the #1 guy in all of FF for the full term of this league. If there was any doubt whether CJ could keep the ball rolling after last year’s studly performance, he removed it by going for 142 yds and a couple of scores in week 1. Hands down, for my money, there is no player I would rather have in this league format than Chris Johnson. That said, you can’t win a league with one guy, so what did John do with the rest of his draft?

Well, after CJ, he had to wait a bit, all the way down to pick #24, during which 8 QBs went off the board. I have to say that I was a little shocked, knowing that John, while harboring some unexplainable affection for da Raidas, also has an almost equally unexplainable soft spot for da bears, didn’t decide to use one of his pics at the turn to grab up da Butler (you know who I’m talking about Jolly). I certainly can’t say what I would do should I have been in John’s shoes. It’s a tough spot to have to decide to take a bubble top 10 QB with the first pick of the 3rd round, but the way QBs were flying off the board, he had to know this would certainly be his last shot at Cutler, as well as some other higher quality QB prospects. But, John’s picks of Wayne and Shonn Green were certainly quality picks at those two spots (more on Green later though).

I don’t question John’s decision to pass on a QB with his 2nd & 3rd picks, but (again, I’ll remind everyone that everything I say here is simply my opinion which will almost certainly be proven wrong time and time again throughout the year, AND that it is written with hindsight) I do think he made a misstep by passing on Matt Ryan with either his 4th or 5th round pick. While picking 1st overall is the only way to get a player like CJ, it also means that when you are drafting, there are huge blocks of picks between your selections. By passing on a QB at the 4-5 turn, John gave up the chance at the last couple QBs with top 10 potential—Ryan, and then Favre & McNabb (IF either were to stay healthy, they would have a shot, though I doubt it’ll happen). So like David, John ended up grabbing VY, his first QB at the start of round 7. While I like Vince this year, I think with a weapon like CJ on the team, Young’s value is somewhat limited. I think it will be a stellar year for him if he breaks the top 15 for QBs.

The benefit of waiting so long for a QB is the potential to stack up on RBs &/or WRs. John did so, taking 4 RBs and 2 WRs in the first 6 rounds. In addition to CJ, John’s got 3 guys with big potential in Greene, McCoy, and Bradshaw. While all of these guys have big time potential, none of them are absent of risk, as was seen with Greene last Monday in the Jets first game. Surprisingly enough, Greene is actually the one of these 3 that I am most concerned about. LT looks incredibly spry, and the Jets offense as a whole looked remarkably unimpressive (though admittedly it was against the Ravens). No doubt, the Jets are going to run the ball a ton. But as long as LT is healthy and running the ball like he did last week, and unless Greene can really have a break out performance, I think this will be a dead even 50/50 time share *at best*. I don’t think it is beyond the realm of possibility that LT ends the seasons with more rushes than Shonn Greene. Depending on how you look at it, McCoy’s situation may have gotten better (no more Weaver to take goal line carries) or worse (no more full back to lead block) when Weaver went down last week with that nasty injury. I’d say the jury is still out a little bit on McCoy’s value this year, though it should be noted that Andy Reid always has been a pass first coach, and that isn’t likely to change any time soon. Bradshaw though the latest picked, is actually the back I like best of the three RB2s that John has. He got the lion’s share of the carries in week 1, and did more with his chances than Jacobs did with his. Though he doesn’t have the same pedigree as guys like McCoy & Greene (whatever that means, but I hear it from talking heads all the time), he has a great opportunity on a Giants team that historically has run a lot, and has a decent line. If I had to pick a guy today to have the best #s at season’s end, I’d say Bradshaw.

Wow, I’m long winded on this one, so I’m just gonna get to it.

My Bold Prediction- 6-7 Just missing out on the playoffs.

These teams with no QBs are the toughest for me to grade. There is a lot of talent on this team, but QBs just put up numbers more consistently than WRs and RBs (other than the top guys). Having VY and a rookie in Bradford as a team’s only 2 QB options is in my opinion too risky and inconsistent to be a sure thing. If McCoy, Greene, or Bradshaw turn out to be a top 10 RBs, or 2 or 3 of them are at least top 15 options, then I think John should be able to work a deal for an upgrade at QB. But if these guys flounder early like Greene did week 1, it is going to be a big hit to their value, and even if they bounce back later on, John will have a tough time getting the value needed to bolster his QBs. On the other hand, as with every team, there is always the possibility that VY or Bradford will break out and be a top 10 QB, and my concerns will be moot. If I were in John’s shoes though, I would take the first opportunity I could (which may be right now with Bradshaw), and move one of the 3 RBs and try to pick up another QB option (someone like Orton or Garrard).

Team Shikaka AKA- Team Kaka
GM: Johnny Rocker AKA- The fattest kid in our league (and that’s PRETTY fat, cause I ain’t so skinny myself.)

Team Total- 2847 (10th) Starters- 1368 (10th) K&D- 833 (10th)

Well, if there’s one thing we can say about Johnny, it's that he’s consistent. As noted above, he had the most steady rankings of any team, though unfortunately they were steadily bad. Lucky for Johnny, yahoo’s projections aren’t worth squat, so you can pretty much throw them out the window. But, it’s gotta say something about his team that he was ranked 3rd to worst no matter how you measure it…right? We shall see.

Johnny’s draft nearly started like a dream. If that jerk Jolly had just grabbed Steven Jackson instead of Frank Gore, Freeboen (yes, I know I spelled it wrong, it was on purpose) would have been in heaven getting the studly 9ers RB with the no. 12 overall pick. But...it was not to be, so instead he went with S-Jax & Brady as his 1-2 punch. I think both of these picks were pretty much no brainers, though S-Jax is certainly not without risk. He is as tough a back as any in the league, and given a better situation would probably be a sure thing top 5 guy year in and year out. But, he’s been stuck on the crappy Rams, running behind a crappy line, and supported by crappy Marc Bulger as his QB. Well, hopefully for Johnny’s sake, some of the changes that came about this year—a couple of upgrades on the line and a new signal caller (a rookie still, but anything is an upgrade from poopy butt Bulger)—will give S-Jax the help he needs to make the jump up to “elite RB” level. Though some of these moves around him have the potential to help out considerably, the other concern with Mr. Jackson is his injury risk. He is a hard running guy, and it seems that every season he has some type of ailment that either keeps him out for a time (he missed 4 games in 07 & 08, and 1 game last year), or at least limits him to some extent. Hopefully for John’s sake a bit of a passing game boost from Bradford can take some of the pressure off of S-Jax and allow him to stay healthy all season.

With 2 of his first 4 picks Johnny went QB, taking Brady at pick 13 and Flacco at the start of round 4. I like this move for a couple of reasons. Number one, being that this is a 2 QB league, QBs have significantly more value than in standard leagues. In our test season last year (thanks again Pat for the practice :) we found that while not a necessity or a guarantee for making the playoffs, it does help to have 2 quality QBs on a squad (the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place teams last year all had 2 top 20 QBs). The 2nd reason I like these picks is because both these guys have a high probability of being keeper level players for all 3 seasons. I actually think these are the safest 2 picks Johnny made in the early rounds.

Unfortunately, smashed in between these 2 picks was John’s 3rd rounder, Jonathan Stewart. Now don’t get me wrong, the younger half of Carolina’s two-headed monster is absolutely a stud running back with tons of potential. And last year showed that the Panthers can and will run the ball enough for both guys to be viable fantasy options. But, the big problem I have with Stewart is that he’s not the starter. In every game that DeAngelo Williams was healthy for last year, he got more touches than Stewart. As long as Williams is around, even IF (note the big IF cause week one showed that this is unlikely) Carolina decided it wanted to move Stewart into the starting role in DeAngelo’s place, his upside and value would still be limited by the fact that Williams is there. The fact is that unless Williams gets hurt, until next year when these 2 beasts are split up, Stewart is going to be limited to 50% of the carries. And even on a team that runs as much as Carolina, that isn’t going to be enough to put up top 10 RB numbers.

Now, all that being said, I can’t tell John that taking Stewart there was a bad pick, because the fact is, I had him as the best available RB still on the board at that time as well. Of course hindsight is 20/20, but Johnny will be kicking himself all year that he didn’t pass on Stewart and take the guy who unfortunately, didn’t fully prove he was the real deal until week 1, Arian Foster. In the long run of this league, it may be fine for John, as it is a virtual certainty that one of the two, either Williams or Stewart, will be moved after this year, and if Stewart falls into a program where he will be the feature guy, he will be a lock for keeper status next year. For the time being though, he is a limited upside asset taken in a round where John probably needed a sure thing.

The sure thing that I would have selected if I were him is “the real” Steve Smith; and Johnny’s passing on him, B-Marshal, Colston, and “the other” Steve Smith, is why I think the Stewart pick was a bad one. Because he passed on these guys and went RB, QB in rounds 3 & 4, Johnny (again having one of those wrap-around pick positions) pretty much guaranteed himself a weak WR corps. Now as I have stated many many times, I think QBs and RBs are vitally more important than WRs. You can’t win a FF league with just a strong WR corps, and mediocre RBs & QBs, you can win with just strong RBs or QBs and so-so WRs. So that being the case, I don’t think it is damning to John’s team that he waited for WR. BUT, I think he could have gotten away with taking one of these higher level WRs and had decent RB options later down the road. Javid Best, Bradshaw and Ronnie Brown (who despite his injury risk went really late if you ask me in the 8th round) were all available at Johnny’s next pick, and I would rather have Steve Smith or Colston and one of those guys than J. Stewart and D. Bowe (Johnny’s eventual #1 WR pick).

Mr. Rocker did at least do the right thing in going heavy on WRs after waiting so long to dive in, taking Welker & Wallace with his next 2 picks and then Jacoby Jones and Dexter McCluster a couple picks later (still think McCluster was a reach, but we’ll see). Overall, I’m not terribly concerned about Johnny’s WRs, but his top 3 WRs were ranked 18, 21, & 24 in my rankings, so I also wouldn’t be overly confident in them either.

My Bold Prediction- 8-5 Good enough for top 4 in the playoffs.

I am going to state outright that this prediction rests wholly on Steven Jackson staying healthy. If he gets banged up this year and has to miss some time, I have zero confidence that Stewart and Brown (who is himself a huge injury risk) can carry this team to the playoffs. However, if John can get top 10 production from S-Jax, and top 15 RB production from a combination of Stewart & Ronnie, I think that the combination of strong RBs and a top 10 & top 12 QB will be enough for John to have a solid season. Aside from RB health and somewhat weak WRs, the other two areas of concern for Johnny’s team are his TE and defense. The TE, he’s probably not doing anything about unless there is an opportunity in a trade, but keeping the defense on par (now that he drafted somewhat poorly) will require week-to-week attention and smart pickups. Given that Johnny is possibly more into fantasy football than me, I have enough confidence in his ability to do this that I put his team in a tie for the 2nd highest ranking. Don't dissapoint me fatso.

Team Eugoogoolizers AKA- Team The only reason we have to read a Eugoogely is because our GM screwed up and KILLED the league.
GM: Patty-O AKA- The guy that...ok, fine, I guess I’ve beat the whole “ruined the league” drum enough eh?

Team Total- 2991 (6th) Starters- 1493 (1st) K&D- 731 (12th)

So, here we are again. After Pat’s dismal performance last season, he decided he couldn’t go on, and needed the slate wiped clean. I actually figured out what happened last year, and the REAL reason why Pat “forgot” to tally the final stats. If you remember, towards the end of the year a certain member of our league—not mentioning any names, *cough*Dave*cough*--decided that since he was out of the running for the playoffs, he would have a fire sale and auction off his team for draft picks in next year’s (this year’s) draft. Well, it turns out that the only team to take a serious interest was a certain smelly outfit called Pat’s Porta Potties. See, the thing is Patty-O had taken a while to recover from drafting Matt Hasselbeck in the 3rd round and Laurence Maroney in the 5th, but to his credit, he had bounced back and by about trade deadline time, he was back in the hunt for the hotly contested final playoff slot. So Pat, knowing how important a playoff birth could be, especially in this league, decided that it would be worth the hefty price of his 1st round draft pick in next year’s (this year’s) draft in order to add a stud WR like Brandon Marshall to his squad for the final playoff push. So Patty & Dave did the deal (after an unbelievable amount of drama of course, much of which, caused by yours truly).

Well, unfortunately for the younger Mr. Okeefe (and as it turned out, the rest of us as well), Marshall just wasn’t enough to push him over the hump that had been caused by his two early draft blunders, and he missed the playoffs by a game. Well, now he was in a tough spot. He hadn’t made the playoffs in year one, and because of his last minute deal with the devil...er, I mean David :-), he didn’t even have a pick in the first round of next year’s (this year’s...is that getting annoying yet?) draft. And the fact that he didn’t make the playoffs only made all of this worse, because now he was ranked even lower giving him a higher 1st round pick (which was handed over to the dev...I mean David) but a lower 2nd round pick. Essentially, not only had he doomed his first season with a couple poor draft decisions, but he had also put his crappy team (pun intended) in a terrible predicament for year 2 as well. What else could he do, but conveniently “forget” to tally the year end stats, and in doing so, guarantee a big fat do-over after his year of blunders. Lucky for him, we are all nice guys...and dummies, and we bought hook, line, and sinker his tragic tale of ahugelosernamedpatokeefe and the sappy, humility filled email that we can clearly now see was a total and complete fraud. My recommendation to everyone reading this is to never join another fantasy football league with Patrick M. O'keefe again (don't know if M is his middle initial, but that just seemed like a spot where a middle initial was needed). Wait, what? We already started another league with this guy? Oh well, too late for that, let’s get on with it then.

In all seriousness Pat, if there was any residual feeling bad for not tallying the stats, don’t. Things worked out perfectly having the “practice year” to get the kinks of the league worked out and having the ability to make the tweeks and adjustments that we did before starting over. It turned out to be a great thing for the league to have that opportunity (assuming of course that I crush everyone again and take an early lead in the 3 year championship, if that doesn’t happen, then you really screwed up big time buddy).

So now, without further ado (well, actually there will probably be plenty more ado, cause I have a tendency to put in a lot of asides just like this one into my writing. I’m going to do an especially lot of it on this last post because Johnny complained about all my parentheticals, so now I’ve got to do it even more) on to Patty’s team. I have to say first and foremost that when I went back and looked at the draft, and realized that Pat didn’t take a QB until round 8, I was more than a little concerned for my friend. (I’m sure I noticed it on draft day too, but you’re so focused on your own stuff then that you don’t have much time to pay attention to other people’s.) If you want to find out if I think that move of playing the waiting game was a death blow for Pat, you’ll have to just keep reading, or just jump down a couple of paragraphs where it says “My Bold Prediction”.

Pat started his draft off at pick nine with the consensus number one WR, Andre Johnson. I’ve got no objection to this pick at all, though I would also have no objection to either Schaub or Gore here. Mendenhall with pick 2 and again, no objection, though again, I would have had no problem with taking Romo instead. By the time Pat’s 3rd round pick came around, the best available RB was Steward (really it was Foster, but again, hindsight is 20/20), and the best QB option was Flacco/Kolb/Ryan. (I put them that way because I have them ranked bunched together like that- though not in that order-and it seems that every analyst has them ranked closely together in the QB10-14 range in some varying order.) Pat decided to pass on these guys and grab his 2nd top 10 WR, Larry Fitz, and then grabbed his 3rd, the original Steve Smith, in the 4th round, followed by a stud TE, Gates, in the 5th. So, his first 5 picks gave him 3 top 10-12 WRs, 1 top 10-12 RB, and a top 3 TE.

While there is absolutely no doubt Pat will have the studliest set of pass catchers in the league, I’m not sure what effect going this WR heavy early in the draft will have on his success. In the 6th and 7th he took guys that could turn out to be complete busts, or could help Pat win the league. Sproles and Cribbs were both studs in our league last year because of their return ability, but this year the point reward for return yards was more than cut in half. Even with the change, these guys will continue to have value, possibly significant, as long as they continue returning kicks and punts. Without the return yards though, both guys are essentially worthless from a fantasy perspective; and while it seems very unlikely that either guy will “lose it”, players who were at one point return specialists have lost their talents and in turn their jobs before (recently Hester, and before that Desmond Howard). I’m ok with the Sproles pick because Pat needed an RB2 at that point (though I think that Javid Best and Ahmad Bradshaw are both better options, especially when you consider keeper potential, than Sproles), but I think the Cribbs pick was an unnecessary risk. It ended up working out ok because no QBs were selected between Patty’s 7th and 8th round picks, but this was certainly not a guarantee, even if the 3 teams picking between already had 2 QBs.

Finally in round 8 we get to Pat’s first QB pick, Kyle Orton; and his second, Garrard, came a few rounds later. I’m not really sure what to think about Pat’s 2 QB options. They ranked 14 & 15 last year at the QB position, which for being the 20th and 22nd picked QBs this year isn’t bad. But, there are some young guys, Kolb/Flacco/Ryan, who finished behind them last year but are expected to leap to the next level this season. I think that for where he got them, and what he was able to draft in the earlier rounds, Patty-O may end up being in a better position than a couple of other teams that waited to draft QBs. But, that said, I don’t think either of these guys is a sure thing, and it wouldn’t surprise me at all if at some point this year Pat decides to try to work a deal for an upgraded field general. With that, I am going to give my bold prediction and then explain what *WAS* Pat’s most significant weakness (aside from QB).

My Bold Prediction- 7-6 This year, Pat’s mad scramble to squeeze into the last playoff spot will prove successful (and he won’t even have to give up a 1st round pick to get there).

Well, if I would have decided to start my predictions with Pat’s team instead of do his last, I think I would have had his record flip-flopped and had him missing the playoffs by a game yet again. Reason being, if Ryan Grant didn’t go down, resulting in Brandon Jackson’s bump to near certain top 15 RB status, I would have been very concerned about Pat’s RB situation. I don’t quite trust Mendenhall as a guaranteed top 10 back (though I think it’s likely), and as stated above, Sproles value will take a hit from last year, and I just don’t like the idea of trusting return guys to major roles with this new league setup. Having a pretty much sure thing most week starter allows Pat the flexibility to see how things are going to work out with guys like Sproles and Washington, and even with his QB experiment. My gut based on week 1 is that the QBs will be ok, not great but ok, the RBs will be fine, and in this one instance, Pat will be able to ride his corps of stud WRs all the way to playoff glory. If I have one recommendation for Mr. Patty-O, it would be to work something out to get another QB (not sure why you dropped Freeman, but thanks , if possible one of a bit higher quality and more consistency than either Garrard or Orton. In general though, I like this team a lot more than I would have ever though considering the fact that 5 of Pat’s first 7 picks were pass catchers and he didn’t take his first QB til round 8.

Best of luck with your grand experiment commish. Certainly hope it works out better than your starting pitcher experiment in fantasy Baseball. And absolutely hope it works out better than last year, cause I don’t want to start over again if your team bombs yet again. ;-)