September 23, 2011
September 20, 2011
September 10, 2011
A little recap
Alright, so I will be doing my world famous "Bold Predictions" again this year, but I probably won't get to them til after week 1. In the meantime though, I thought I'd throw up a quick recap of last year's picks and where I hit and missed worst. (*Thinking that I could make this a "quick recap" turned out to be my first blown prediction of this season.) I'll give a little bit about each team and the accompanying call from last year's predictions.
Hurricane Ditka (Joe- AKA: The Quitter, as Pat calls him)
My prediction- 7-6 making the playoffs.
Actual- 6-7 missing the playoffs.
I'm not gonna spend much time on Joe since he's no longer with us, but basically I'm blaming this missed call on 2 things, Joe's QBs. The first was Romo, who went down with a season ending broken clavicle a quarter of the way into the season, and the 2nd was the Gay Butler who was the 10th QB picked and was supposed to have top 10 potential but ended up being the QB15. That wouldn't be horrible underproduction from a normal #2 QB, but with Romo gone, the 15th best QB ain't gonna cut it. To be honest, I'm impressed that Joe was able to squeak out 6 wins given the circumstances, cause the rest of his team was pretty meh.
Firing Line (TB Sr.)
My prediction- 5-8 missing playoffs
Actual- 8-5 and finishing #2 overall
Ok, 0 for 2, not a great start here. Let me just say right off the bat, Mr. Barriere deserves the top manager award for last year, cause I have no freaking idea how he took 2nd place with that team. His best running back was Thomas Jones who ranked 27th for RBs, after Miles Austin (who underperformed and was #15 WR) his next best WR was Lance Moore who ranked 27th for WRs, and his #2 QB was McNabb who was the 22nd ranked QB. Really, the only bright spots on the team were Drew Brees and Vernon Davis, and a probably slightly better than average defense.
Big Tony had the 4th lowest point total (meaning 2 non playoff teams outscored him for the season), but had the benefit of the 6th easiest schedule. Using the Pythagorean Expectation (tweaked for football), team Firing Line would have only won 6 games and would have missed the playoffs. That being said I'm only giving about 20% of the credit for TB Sr's season to scheduling/luck, and 80% to good team management. The Bengals should give Mr. B a call cause he seems to have the ability to mold a group of scrubs into a quality squad.
In the end, the logic behind my call for TB Sr's team was pretty solid- crappy RBs, Check, crappy #2 QB, Check, lack of overall depth, Check. But I just couldn't account for the managerial mastery that Big T possesses. I'll have to keep that in mind for this year's calls.
Dirty Dominicans (Juan)
My Prediction- 6-7 missing playoffs
Actual- 4-9 missing playoffs
Looking at Big Tony's and Juan's teams from last year back to back tells you how crazy fantasy can be sometimes. On paper Juan's team looks way better than Tony's. Juan had the elder Manning and then a serviceable #2 QBs in Sanchez- #16, 2 top 25 RBs (neither spectacular, but both better than any of Tony's options), and the #6 and #12 WR, in addition to a deeper bench than TB Sr. I have to chalk Juan's season up to inexperience and just picking the wrong guys to start at the wrong time, in addition to the luck factor which is undeniable in fantasy. Hopefully getting a year of experience under his belt will give Juan the experience needed to have a better go at it this year.
Junkyard Dogs (Jolly)
My Prediction- 8-5 making playoffs
Actual- 7-6 making playoffs
Unlike Big Tony, Jolly took the more traditional route to the playoffs, having stud players. He rode Rivers, Foster, Jennings and Witten, as well as a healthy first 3/4 of the season from Frank Gore, and an above average defense. Jolly was one of 2 playoff teams, along with Big Tony, to be outscored by his opponents on the season, and actually had the most points against of any team in the league. In the end, getting the #1 overall player with his 4th round pick ended up being enough to get Jolly into the playoffs with relative ease.
My record through 4 teams- 2-2 (with Joe being a very close call only ruined by Romo's injury)
Pattymakers (Tim)
My Prediction- 5-8 missing playoffs
Actual- 6-7 just missing playoffs
Well, Tim's team is a bit hard to evaluate because there was 1 or 2 late season trades that changed up the team he had for the first part of the year quite a bit. But from what I can tell the two biggest problem areas for Tim's team were QB2 where he had Chad Henne and RB where Cedric Benson was his best option. My bias towards QB & RB as the two most important positions in this league set up have been expressed plenty, but last year made it clear as ever. John Herrin was the only playoff team that didn't consistently start 2 QBs throughout the year (more on that exception below). It's just a reality of a league where you can start 2 QBs, that you have to have 2 decent QB options to be competitive. That being said, Tim did finish 7th in the league, only missing the playoffs by one win. So it was a close call on this one.
The Mighty Monarchs (Ben)
My Prediction- 4-9 missing playoffs
Actual- 5-8 missing playoffs
Ben's team was the first to run into injury problems last year when Ryan Grant went down a few plays into week 1. Because of that injury and his relative lack of depth at RB, Ben was forced to make a move right away to try to sure up his RB corps. So his team for most of the season was somewhat different from the one he drafted. He ended up with a team of very young mostly unproven talent. Some of that talent broke out, guys like Maclin & Dez Bryant put up solid years, and Matty Ice was a solid #1 QB, but others didn't, most devastatingly, Ryan Matthews & CJ Spiller flopped at the already thin RB position for Ben. Ultimately, it was as I predicted for this team, a lot of young players that would need a bit more time to develop before being consistent fantasy producers. For the second part of my prediction to come true, Ben needs to have a strong bounce back year 2, so...GO BEN!
Kenosha Moose (Tony Jr)
My Prediction- 6-7 missing playoffs
Actual- 7-6 finishing 5th in the playoffs
Another one I missed by 1 game. My biggest preseason concern for Tony's team was WR, but unfortunately for my prediction, Brandon Lloyd (undrafted last year) decided to go crazy and be the #1 WR last year, Danny Amendola was a return stud again and ended up as the #9 WR, and Stevie Johnson (undrafted) broke out and was the #14 WR. So my ? on Colston turned out to be warranted (he was the #22 WR), but WR still turned out to be the strength of TB Jr's team. His QBs also worked out decently, with only Matt Ryan & Josh Freeman finishing as better options that the 2 guys Tony drafted when he took his 2 QBs back-to-back at the 2/3 round turn. Tony had a decent pick up in Mike Tolbert later in the year, but aside from AP his backs were pretty weak overall. In the end, Tony made the playoffs because of a couple great WW pick ups in Lloyd and Stevie Johnson. Just goes to show, it's not all about how you draft.
Bob Loblaws Law Blog (Dave)
My Prediction- 7-6 "narrowly beating out TB Jr for the final playoff spot"
Actual- 3-10 narrowly beating out Juan for the "Worst Team of the Year Award"
Well, Dave (& to come later Pat) is the perfect example of why you should always stick with your gut when predicting things. My gut feeling going into last year was that in a league where you can play 2 QBs, you should play 2 QBs, the reason being that QBs put up higher point totals than any other position, and they do it with more week to week consistency than any other position. So that being the case, I had a strong suspicion that the teams that waited to draft their QB(s) (Pat, David, & John H) would struggle because of it. With the exception of John H (more on that later), that gut feeling turned out to be valid.
Dave's struggles certainly weren't completely due to weak QB options. He had the normal DH bad luck with Stafford going down early and Randy Moss (2nd round pick) disappearing from the earth. But he also had some really good fortune as well. Jamaal Charles (3rd round pick) was the #3 fantasy RB, Matt Forte (5th rd pick) was the #8 RB, and McFatten was maybe the biggest steal of the draft being a 9th round pick that ended the year as the #6 RB. So I'd say Dave got equal, or even better value out of low picks than he lost with under performing high picks. The other bit of bad luck Dave had was in the scheduling. His points against was 2nd highest behind only Jolly, and his Pythagorean Expectation win total would be just over 5 wins. So team Blablablabla was definitely a bit better than their record, but still not close to playoff caliber. In the end, the 2 things that I think doomed this team were lack of QB depth & quality, and horrid WR play. (Danny Woodhead was the highest scoring WR on Dave's final roster. Lucky for Dave, after the years of injury plagued teams, odds are in his favor that one of these years he's bound to have a relatively healthy season. Here's to hoping it's this one.
Wheaties (John H)
My Prediction- 6-7 just missing the playoffs
Actual- 10-3 best regular season and 3rd overall in the playoffs
John's is the 2nd team to wait on QB, holding out til round 7 to take VY and then til round 12 to take Bradford as his #2. Bradford ended the year as the #20 QB, and VY ended the year banned from his team facility and on suicide watch. So how on earth did John have the best record in the league?! Believe it or not, Ryan Fitzpatrick saved John's season (along with decent RB & WR production and some help from the scheduling fairy). I have no idea why Fitzpatrick was not valued higher going into the 2011 season, because he was a top 10 fantasy QB last year if you compensate for the first 2 games of the year when the Bills were giving Trent Edwards his one last shot at glory. His first 4 games as a starter he averaged 20 fantasy points a game and was the #1 fantasy QB during that stretch. Fitzpatrick was the #8 QB last year for fantasy points per game and only missed 3 games (the first 2 due to Edwards starting, and week 17 because of a minor injury). So when you consider that Bradford (#20 QB) would have been the ONLY QB option John had after VY went down, quite literally, picking up Fitzy off the waiver wire was the savior of this team. Of course, he needed help from quality RBs which he had in Chris Johnson, Bradshaw, and McCoy, and decent WR options which he also had.
The other thing he had (probably not even worth reading this John since you'll likely disagree with everything I'm about to write) was a lot of help from the scheduling fairy and the rest of the league in the form of under performance when playing against John. Four of his wins came against teams (Me, Johnny, Dave, & Ben) putting up their 2nd or 3rd worst week of the season when playing John, and a 5th, Juan, put up his 4th worst game. John faced the 2nd weakest competition in the league having the 2nd lowest points against total, and despite being the 4th highest scoring team, his Pythagorean Expectation puts his win total at 8 (still plenty good enough to make the playoffs mind you). Now that being said, I'm not at all saying John didn't do a great job with his team, because he absolutely did. He did have some luck go his way, but even without it, he used an unconventional (for this league) philosophy to put together a team that would have competed for 1st place overall even without the breaks of a good schedule. So, kudos to John H on the season and on proving my prediction to be way off.
Shikaka, later Long Division John (Johnny)
My Prediction- 8-5 good enough for top 4 in the league
Actual- 9-4 2nd place regular season, #1 overall
Well, lucky for Johnny (and my prediction for his team) Yahoo's projections mean absolutely squat (which is why I won't be using them for this year's Bold Predictions). His projected point totals from last year were 10th overall for starters, defense, and overall team total, clearly they were a bit off. Fortunately, I was not swayed by those numbers in predicting Johnny's solid season. Of course, Johnny's solid season didn't really stem from his draft anyway, but rather from the 2 early season waiver wire pickups that both turned out to be Mega Millions level winning lottery tickets. Vick and Peyton Hillis were John's #1 and #3 highest scoring players, and he got both of them off the junk heap. When they were combined with solid draft picks S-Jax, Brady, & Bowe, as well as Calvin Johnson picked up in a trade, that's a solid team right there. There really isn't much more to say about John's team, the #1 & #3 QB in a QB heavy league, a top 5 & top 15 RB, and two top 5 WRs are going to put you at or near the top of your league every time, even if you have crap for the rest of your team (which John didn't). Those 2 waiver pickups were possibly the best John will ever see in his life and he certainly made good use of them last year. Congrats again to Johnny on a season well played.
Eugoogoolizers, later Suck-O-Matic (Patty-O)
My Prediction- 7-6 good enough for the final playoff spot
Actual- 6-7 just missing the final playoff spot
Well, Pat *nearly* avoided his playoff missing fate with what was one of the best picks of the draft last year- taking Josh Freeman (#7 QB last season) in the 21st round. But...he dropped him before the season even started and was left with QBs picked in the 8th (Orton) and 11th (G'tard) rounds as his teams 2 options. Lucky for Pat's playoff hopes, Orton turned out to be a sneakily good fantasy QB, before being benched in weeks 15, 16, & 17 while the Broncos gave Tebow a look. If Orton's numbers from weeks 1-14 are projected out over those last 3 games, he finishes the season as the #7 fantasy QB. Garrard was also surprisingly good, missing only one week yet finishing the year as the #13 QB. So when you consider Orton, Garrard, and Freeman's performances, Pat's strategy of waiting on QB could have been an absolute HOME RUN, and even after throwing Freeman away, it still was a solid 2 run double.
So if waiting on QB actually worked ok for Patty-O, what went wrong? Well, a little bit of bad luck, his Pythagorean Expectation was 7 wins, good enough for the playoffs, but mostly it boiled down to the RB position, and believe it or not, IDPs. Because of the high level of player turnover for IDPs, there are no solid stats to look at other than the season totals we keep, but in those categories Pat finished 10th for tackles, 9th for INTs, and 10th for sacks. And on his year end roster Pat had a total of 2 players with more than 80 fantasy points (Tim, Ben & Juan all had 6 IDPs each with more than 100 fantasy points). So I think it's plenty safe to say that defense was a very much a weak spot for Pat's team.
Looking back at Pat's draft, I'm not sure why I predicted him as a playoff team because aside from waiting on QB, I also hate the strategy of going WR heavy in the early rounds of a draft, and Pat took WRs with 3 of his first 4 picks. As already noted, his waiting on QB ended up not hurting him too bad, but the same can not be said for waiting on RB. His 2nd round Mendenhall pick ended up working out ok, but after that, he didn't draft another legitimate RB (Brandon Jackson as a last round flier ended up being an ok pick only because Grant went down week one). In his defense, there was a bit of uncertainty about guys like Sproles & Leon Washington's value due to the return points change, but in the end, both ended up having very little value.
Ultimately, I would say Pat's in season management skills made up very well for what in hindsight I would consider pretty poor draft strategy for this league. Though the QB picks worked out in the end, it's too much of a gamble in my opinion, and going WR heavy instead of RB heavy early is never a winning strategy if you ask me. But, Pat made due.
An even more important question though...how was his strategy this year, and where is he going to end up in this year's Bold Predictions? Come back sometime soon to find out.
For last year my final tally was 6-6 (my last right call was picking myself to make the playoffs). Had some decent calls, but I'll definitely be looking to improve this year.
Hurricane Ditka (Joe- AKA: The Quitter, as Pat calls him)
My prediction- 7-6 making the playoffs.
Actual- 6-7 missing the playoffs.
I'm not gonna spend much time on Joe since he's no longer with us, but basically I'm blaming this missed call on 2 things, Joe's QBs. The first was Romo, who went down with a season ending broken clavicle a quarter of the way into the season, and the 2nd was the Gay Butler who was the 10th QB picked and was supposed to have top 10 potential but ended up being the QB15. That wouldn't be horrible underproduction from a normal #2 QB, but with Romo gone, the 15th best QB ain't gonna cut it. To be honest, I'm impressed that Joe was able to squeak out 6 wins given the circumstances, cause the rest of his team was pretty meh.
Firing Line (TB Sr.)
My prediction- 5-8 missing playoffs
Actual- 8-5 and finishing #2 overall
Ok, 0 for 2, not a great start here. Let me just say right off the bat, Mr. Barriere deserves the top manager award for last year, cause I have no freaking idea how he took 2nd place with that team. His best running back was Thomas Jones who ranked 27th for RBs, after Miles Austin (who underperformed and was #15 WR) his next best WR was Lance Moore who ranked 27th for WRs, and his #2 QB was McNabb who was the 22nd ranked QB. Really, the only bright spots on the team were Drew Brees and Vernon Davis, and a probably slightly better than average defense.
Big Tony had the 4th lowest point total (meaning 2 non playoff teams outscored him for the season), but had the benefit of the 6th easiest schedule. Using the Pythagorean Expectation (tweaked for football), team Firing Line would have only won 6 games and would have missed the playoffs. That being said I'm only giving about 20% of the credit for TB Sr's season to scheduling/luck, and 80% to good team management. The Bengals should give Mr. B a call cause he seems to have the ability to mold a group of scrubs into a quality squad.
In the end, the logic behind my call for TB Sr's team was pretty solid- crappy RBs, Check, crappy #2 QB, Check, lack of overall depth, Check. But I just couldn't account for the managerial mastery that Big T possesses. I'll have to keep that in mind for this year's calls.
Dirty Dominicans (Juan)
My Prediction- 6-7 missing playoffs
Actual- 4-9 missing playoffs
Looking at Big Tony's and Juan's teams from last year back to back tells you how crazy fantasy can be sometimes. On paper Juan's team looks way better than Tony's. Juan had the elder Manning and then a serviceable #2 QBs in Sanchez- #16, 2 top 25 RBs (neither spectacular, but both better than any of Tony's options), and the #6 and #12 WR, in addition to a deeper bench than TB Sr. I have to chalk Juan's season up to inexperience and just picking the wrong guys to start at the wrong time, in addition to the luck factor which is undeniable in fantasy. Hopefully getting a year of experience under his belt will give Juan the experience needed to have a better go at it this year.
Junkyard Dogs (Jolly)
My Prediction- 8-5 making playoffs
Actual- 7-6 making playoffs
Unlike Big Tony, Jolly took the more traditional route to the playoffs, having stud players. He rode Rivers, Foster, Jennings and Witten, as well as a healthy first 3/4 of the season from Frank Gore, and an above average defense. Jolly was one of 2 playoff teams, along with Big Tony, to be outscored by his opponents on the season, and actually had the most points against of any team in the league. In the end, getting the #1 overall player with his 4th round pick ended up being enough to get Jolly into the playoffs with relative ease.
My record through 4 teams- 2-2 (with Joe being a very close call only ruined by Romo's injury)
Pattymakers (Tim)
My Prediction- 5-8 missing playoffs
Actual- 6-7 just missing playoffs
Well, Tim's team is a bit hard to evaluate because there was 1 or 2 late season trades that changed up the team he had for the first part of the year quite a bit. But from what I can tell the two biggest problem areas for Tim's team were QB2 where he had Chad Henne and RB where Cedric Benson was his best option. My bias towards QB & RB as the two most important positions in this league set up have been expressed plenty, but last year made it clear as ever. John Herrin was the only playoff team that didn't consistently start 2 QBs throughout the year (more on that exception below). It's just a reality of a league where you can start 2 QBs, that you have to have 2 decent QB options to be competitive. That being said, Tim did finish 7th in the league, only missing the playoffs by one win. So it was a close call on this one.
The Mighty Monarchs (Ben)
My Prediction- 4-9 missing playoffs
Actual- 5-8 missing playoffs
Ben's team was the first to run into injury problems last year when Ryan Grant went down a few plays into week 1. Because of that injury and his relative lack of depth at RB, Ben was forced to make a move right away to try to sure up his RB corps. So his team for most of the season was somewhat different from the one he drafted. He ended up with a team of very young mostly unproven talent. Some of that talent broke out, guys like Maclin & Dez Bryant put up solid years, and Matty Ice was a solid #1 QB, but others didn't, most devastatingly, Ryan Matthews & CJ Spiller flopped at the already thin RB position for Ben. Ultimately, it was as I predicted for this team, a lot of young players that would need a bit more time to develop before being consistent fantasy producers. For the second part of my prediction to come true, Ben needs to have a strong bounce back year 2, so...GO BEN!
Kenosha Moose (Tony Jr)
My Prediction- 6-7 missing playoffs
Actual- 7-6 finishing 5th in the playoffs
Another one I missed by 1 game. My biggest preseason concern for Tony's team was WR, but unfortunately for my prediction, Brandon Lloyd (undrafted last year) decided to go crazy and be the #1 WR last year, Danny Amendola was a return stud again and ended up as the #9 WR, and Stevie Johnson (undrafted) broke out and was the #14 WR. So my ? on Colston turned out to be warranted (he was the #22 WR), but WR still turned out to be the strength of TB Jr's team. His QBs also worked out decently, with only Matt Ryan & Josh Freeman finishing as better options that the 2 guys Tony drafted when he took his 2 QBs back-to-back at the 2/3 round turn. Tony had a decent pick up in Mike Tolbert later in the year, but aside from AP his backs were pretty weak overall. In the end, Tony made the playoffs because of a couple great WW pick ups in Lloyd and Stevie Johnson. Just goes to show, it's not all about how you draft.
Bob Loblaws Law Blog (Dave)
My Prediction- 7-6 "narrowly beating out TB Jr for the final playoff spot"
Actual- 3-10 narrowly beating out Juan for the "Worst Team of the Year Award"
Well, Dave (& to come later Pat) is the perfect example of why you should always stick with your gut when predicting things. My gut feeling going into last year was that in a league where you can play 2 QBs, you should play 2 QBs, the reason being that QBs put up higher point totals than any other position, and they do it with more week to week consistency than any other position. So that being the case, I had a strong suspicion that the teams that waited to draft their QB(s) (Pat, David, & John H) would struggle because of it. With the exception of John H (more on that later), that gut feeling turned out to be valid.
Dave's struggles certainly weren't completely due to weak QB options. He had the normal DH bad luck with Stafford going down early and Randy Moss (2nd round pick) disappearing from the earth. But he also had some really good fortune as well. Jamaal Charles (3rd round pick) was the #3 fantasy RB, Matt Forte (5th rd pick) was the #8 RB, and McFatten was maybe the biggest steal of the draft being a 9th round pick that ended the year as the #6 RB. So I'd say Dave got equal, or even better value out of low picks than he lost with under performing high picks. The other bit of bad luck Dave had was in the scheduling. His points against was 2nd highest behind only Jolly, and his Pythagorean Expectation win total would be just over 5 wins. So team Blablablabla was definitely a bit better than their record, but still not close to playoff caliber. In the end, the 2 things that I think doomed this team were lack of QB depth & quality, and horrid WR play. (Danny Woodhead was the highest scoring WR on Dave's final roster. Lucky for Dave, after the years of injury plagued teams, odds are in his favor that one of these years he's bound to have a relatively healthy season. Here's to hoping it's this one.
Wheaties (John H)
My Prediction- 6-7 just missing the playoffs
Actual- 10-3 best regular season and 3rd overall in the playoffs
John's is the 2nd team to wait on QB, holding out til round 7 to take VY and then til round 12 to take Bradford as his #2. Bradford ended the year as the #20 QB, and VY ended the year banned from his team facility and on suicide watch. So how on earth did John have the best record in the league?! Believe it or not, Ryan Fitzpatrick saved John's season (along with decent RB & WR production and some help from the scheduling fairy). I have no idea why Fitzpatrick was not valued higher going into the 2011 season, because he was a top 10 fantasy QB last year if you compensate for the first 2 games of the year when the Bills were giving Trent Edwards his one last shot at glory. His first 4 games as a starter he averaged 20 fantasy points a game and was the #1 fantasy QB during that stretch. Fitzpatrick was the #8 QB last year for fantasy points per game and only missed 3 games (the first 2 due to Edwards starting, and week 17 because of a minor injury). So when you consider that Bradford (#20 QB) would have been the ONLY QB option John had after VY went down, quite literally, picking up Fitzy off the waiver wire was the savior of this team. Of course, he needed help from quality RBs which he had in Chris Johnson, Bradshaw, and McCoy, and decent WR options which he also had.
The other thing he had (probably not even worth reading this John since you'll likely disagree with everything I'm about to write) was a lot of help from the scheduling fairy and the rest of the league in the form of under performance when playing against John. Four of his wins came against teams (Me, Johnny, Dave, & Ben) putting up their 2nd or 3rd worst week of the season when playing John, and a 5th, Juan, put up his 4th worst game. John faced the 2nd weakest competition in the league having the 2nd lowest points against total, and despite being the 4th highest scoring team, his Pythagorean Expectation puts his win total at 8 (still plenty good enough to make the playoffs mind you). Now that being said, I'm not at all saying John didn't do a great job with his team, because he absolutely did. He did have some luck go his way, but even without it, he used an unconventional (for this league) philosophy to put together a team that would have competed for 1st place overall even without the breaks of a good schedule. So, kudos to John H on the season and on proving my prediction to be way off.
Shikaka, later Long Division John (Johnny)
My Prediction- 8-5 good enough for top 4 in the league
Actual- 9-4 2nd place regular season, #1 overall
Well, lucky for Johnny (and my prediction for his team) Yahoo's projections mean absolutely squat (which is why I won't be using them for this year's Bold Predictions). His projected point totals from last year were 10th overall for starters, defense, and overall team total, clearly they were a bit off. Fortunately, I was not swayed by those numbers in predicting Johnny's solid season. Of course, Johnny's solid season didn't really stem from his draft anyway, but rather from the 2 early season waiver wire pickups that both turned out to be Mega Millions level winning lottery tickets. Vick and Peyton Hillis were John's #1 and #3 highest scoring players, and he got both of them off the junk heap. When they were combined with solid draft picks S-Jax, Brady, & Bowe, as well as Calvin Johnson picked up in a trade, that's a solid team right there. There really isn't much more to say about John's team, the #1 & #3 QB in a QB heavy league, a top 5 & top 15 RB, and two top 5 WRs are going to put you at or near the top of your league every time, even if you have crap for the rest of your team (which John didn't). Those 2 waiver pickups were possibly the best John will ever see in his life and he certainly made good use of them last year. Congrats again to Johnny on a season well played.
Eugoogoolizers, later Suck-O-Matic (Patty-O)
My Prediction- 7-6 good enough for the final playoff spot
Actual- 6-7 just missing the final playoff spot
Well, Pat *nearly* avoided his playoff missing fate with what was one of the best picks of the draft last year- taking Josh Freeman (#7 QB last season) in the 21st round. But...he dropped him before the season even started and was left with QBs picked in the 8th (Orton) and 11th (G'tard) rounds as his teams 2 options. Lucky for Pat's playoff hopes, Orton turned out to be a sneakily good fantasy QB, before being benched in weeks 15, 16, & 17 while the Broncos gave Tebow a look. If Orton's numbers from weeks 1-14 are projected out over those last 3 games, he finishes the season as the #7 fantasy QB. Garrard was also surprisingly good, missing only one week yet finishing the year as the #13 QB. So when you consider Orton, Garrard, and Freeman's performances, Pat's strategy of waiting on QB could have been an absolute HOME RUN, and even after throwing Freeman away, it still was a solid 2 run double.
So if waiting on QB actually worked ok for Patty-O, what went wrong? Well, a little bit of bad luck, his Pythagorean Expectation was 7 wins, good enough for the playoffs, but mostly it boiled down to the RB position, and believe it or not, IDPs. Because of the high level of player turnover for IDPs, there are no solid stats to look at other than the season totals we keep, but in those categories Pat finished 10th for tackles, 9th for INTs, and 10th for sacks. And on his year end roster Pat had a total of 2 players with more than 80 fantasy points (Tim, Ben & Juan all had 6 IDPs each with more than 100 fantasy points). So I think it's plenty safe to say that defense was a very much a weak spot for Pat's team.
Looking back at Pat's draft, I'm not sure why I predicted him as a playoff team because aside from waiting on QB, I also hate the strategy of going WR heavy in the early rounds of a draft, and Pat took WRs with 3 of his first 4 picks. As already noted, his waiting on QB ended up not hurting him too bad, but the same can not be said for waiting on RB. His 2nd round Mendenhall pick ended up working out ok, but after that, he didn't draft another legitimate RB (Brandon Jackson as a last round flier ended up being an ok pick only because Grant went down week one). In his defense, there was a bit of uncertainty about guys like Sproles & Leon Washington's value due to the return points change, but in the end, both ended up having very little value.
Ultimately, I would say Pat's in season management skills made up very well for what in hindsight I would consider pretty poor draft strategy for this league. Though the QB picks worked out in the end, it's too much of a gamble in my opinion, and going WR heavy instead of RB heavy early is never a winning strategy if you ask me. But, Pat made due.
An even more important question though...how was his strategy this year, and where is he going to end up in this year's Bold Predictions? Come back sometime soon to find out.
For last year my final tally was 6-6 (my last right call was picking myself to make the playoffs). Had some decent calls, but I'll definitely be looking to improve this year.
Vote Results - Tackles and Interceptions
All,
The results for the two votes we recently took are below:
QB Interception -1pts. to -2pts
Out of all votes received, those voting "yes" outnumbered those voting "no" by only one vote, thus there is not sufficient support to make this change. We will continue keeping interceptions at -1pts.
Counting Assisted Tackles into Total Tackles
There was unanimous support for this change in all votes, thus it will be implemented from now on going forward.
The results for the two votes we recently took are below:
QB Interception -1pts. to -2pts
Out of all votes received, those voting "yes" outnumbered those voting "no" by only one vote, thus there is not sufficient support to make this change. We will continue keeping interceptions at -1pts.
Counting Assisted Tackles into Total Tackles
There was unanimous support for this change in all votes, thus it will be implemented from now on going forward.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)