NBD - Season in Review Pt. 2

2010 Seasonal Re-Caps continued, after the jump...

Derek~This Team Here is Dead (5-8 / 1,027 pts / 10th Place)
The Draft in Hindsight
As you might expect from a team that finished tenth last year and twelfth the year before, Derek came in to this season with a mediocre set of keepers. Larry Johnson (15th rd) was a last-round shot in the dark who ended up not even keeping his spot on the Skins roster. Beanie Wells (5th) was projected as a decent running back option, but he too had trouble laying claim to a starting job, and his team's overall offensive futility made him irrelevant anyway. Malcom Floyd (14th), however, found himself rising into San Diego's top receiver position with Vincent Jackson holding out, and Derek paired him with Andre Johnson in the first round for a powerful wide receiver tandem. All he needed was a solid QB and for some of his RB picks to pan out to build a successful season. The quarterback slot was filled early with Tony Romo in the third round; I feel like this is the fourth year in a row that Derek has taken Romo two rounds earlier than I would take him, but maybe that's just me. Many RBs were taken with the hope of one or two of them developing into something; only LaDainian Tomlinson (7th) rose to the challenge, though he did so very productively, at least for the first half of the season. The rest, like the afore-mentioned Wells, were largely busts. Pierre Thomas (2nd) failed to repeat last year's success and spent quite a bit of time in the trainer's room; Michael Bush (4th) joined the ranks of This Guy Here is Dead draftees who lost out in position battles; Donald Brown (6th) was part of a Colts offense that started roughly seven hundred different players at the skill positions this season; and Kareem Huggins (11th) could very well be a fictional character, for all I know. When Romo went down injured, and with Tomlinson's early-season success abating a bit, that put all the onus for success on those receivers, and Malcom Floyd suffered some injury woes himself during the second half of the season. Andre Johnson is a great receiver, but he cannot carry a fantasy team all by himself.

Key Transactions
While Derek's draft may not have panned out that well, we can not accuse him of resting on his laurels (perhaps because he has no laurels) and accepting his fate. The team formerly known as Chaz Whitehurst Daughter Slayer spent nearly their entire budget in attempts to improve the team, though none of their acquisitions turned into much. Jason Snelling (9/22, $16) had a huge Week 2 in relief of an injured Michael Turner, but he never replicated that success. Grabbing Tim Hightower (10/20, $6) gave him both halves of the useless Arizona running timeshare. Ryan Fitzpatrick (10/27, $21) and Lee Evans (10/27, $17) scored most of their points in the weeks leading up to their acquisition, rather than once they were on Derek's roster. No, we can't accuse Derek of being stingy or inactive on the waiver wire, but we can accuse him of mis-spending his money and energy.

Crucial Victories and Crushing Defeats
Having followed up his 2007 2nd-place season with a 12th place, 10th place, and 10th place finishes, and with no victories that led to a playoff berth this year, I can only assume that Derek's most joyful victory this season was the one that brought him a little bit of cash. Week 5's 131 - 65 whomping of the Buck Stops Here made Derek that week's Classic Soul Jam High Scorer of the Week, and he had his much-maligned quarterback (Tony Romo, 26) and late-keeper value receiver (Malcom Floyd, 27) to thank for it. Those represented the high scores of those gentlemen's shortened seasons, and with Michael Bush (20) and the Atlanta Defense (19) also scoring their season-highs, Derek must have felt on top of the world, at least for one week. One month later, with Romo and Floyd both out with injuries, Derek would suffer his most crushing defeat of the season.
I am sure there are families in which individual triumphs are celebrated collectively and in which occasions where two family members must square off against each other are anguish-filled moments that the whole family can't wait to get past (like Giants-Colts games for Archie Manning or Grand Slam finals between Venus and Serena Williams). Then there are families, such as my own, in which these moments are seen as opportunities to expose all the repressed, underlying hostilities of the years and truly rip into each other, revelling in your own success while your flesh and blood crumbles futilely beneath your victorious boots. I am assuming that the Haller family is of the latter variety, and that the yearly fantasy clash between Matt and Derek is filled with expletive-laden smack talk and painful re-hashing of childhood arguments. Unfortunately for Derek, This Team Here is Dead came out on the losing end of this year's HallerBowl, and this might just have been the game that killed them. Down a star quarterback and solid receiver and having never had a running game to begin with, the Dead were left to fend for themselves with a mediocre replacement (Ryan Fitzpatrick, 15), a star having an off-week (Andre Johnson, 4), and a keeper so useless he took points off the table (Beanie Wells, -.2). Bringing that against an Emailarrhea squad that gets 21 points from its defense alone (New Orleans), not to mention the 17 each out of Drew Brees, Ray Rice, and Mike Wallace, isn't merely a recipe for a loss; it's downright embarrassing. Furthermore, this crushing 57 - 117 loss at the hands of his own brother started Derek off on a four-game slide that would take him from being a .500 team to well out of the playoff picture. Woof. When the family got together for Thanksgiving, do you think Derek left the room when the conversation turned to fantasy football, or do you think he went ahead and left the entire state?

The Playoff Run
As was just alluded to, it was not a strong finish to the season as this team echoed their one-time team name and said "Laters on the Menjay" to the post-season. Week 11 was the highwater-mark, scoring-wise, during the four-game losing streak, and at 77 points, tells you that this team was not unlucky. They were bad. Most of that week's scoring came from the unpredictably occasional scoring dervish known as Ryan Fitzpatrick (28), though he was pretty much the only bright spot for a team who only had one other player in double figures, and only barely at that (LaDainian Tomlinson, 11). Otherwise, futility from AJ (3), Wells (4), Bush (5) and the rest led to an easy victory for Papkin, 110 - 77.
By Week 12, the team had pretty much given up, and that was reflected in their season-low score of 44, which allowed a Sir Lucious Left Fut squad that had two players score no points to still defeat them by 37 points. Then again, when Floyd, Bush, and the Detroit Defense combine for negative-three points, two 0-fers begins to sound like an offensive dream come true. The less said about this game, the better.
Only a jokester like the Cavillari could appreciate that once the hope of making the playoffs were over, This Team Here is Dead finally came back to life and won a game in Week 13. Andre Johnson (16) finally started acting like himself again; Michael Bush (16) had a strong day; and Robert Meachem (17) had one of the four strong fantasy days he is contractually obliged to produce each year. All of this was accomplished in pursuit of an 87 - 68 victory over Woody's Warriors that meant absolutely nothing to anyone, and has probably not even been examined for more than a few cursory glances by anyone other than myself in writing this re-cap right now. Wonderful.

What the Future Holds
With most of these season re-caps that I've written for BIFL or here, I've been able to spend a whole write-up trashing a team but still come up with some bright spots for them in terms of the keeper picture for next year. I'm going to have a hard time doing that here. Derek's best players this season have been Johnson, pre-injury Romo, Floyd, and Tomlinson. Johnson and Romo are unkeepable because they were drafted in the first three rounds; Floyd is unkeepable because he was kept last year; and Tomlinson is keepable in the 7th, which is nice, but do we really think this resurgence is going to last another season and another year older for LDT? Seems unlikely. So what does that leave, keeper-wise? Frankly, I'm not seeing much. Chris Cooley in the 9th? Okay, sure. Ryan Fitzpatrick and Robert Meachem as last-round waiver wire pick-ups sound nice, but all they're doing is giving you bench security for next year so that you can grab a flyer in Round 8 instead of a WR4 or QB2. Which isn't nothing. It's just not much. Sorry, Derek.

Eric~Woody's Warriors (5-8 / 1,054 point / 9th place)
The Draft in Hindsight
Jeez. When I look back at this draft with pre-season glasses, this team looks pretty incredible on paper. At quarterback, they've got one of the most talented quarterbacks in the league who's about to embark on his first season in a high-powered Mike Martz offense (Jay Cutler, 7th). At receiver, one of the best in the league (Brandon Marshall, 4th) and one of the brightest young talents (Michael Crabtree, 15th) were already under contract as keepers, and Woody managed to add one of the top receivers in fantasy over the last five years in this year's draft (Larry Fitzgerald, 2nd). At running back, you find one of the most consistent options in fantasy (Maurice Jones-Drew, 1st), and two time-sharers who've proven they can be effective out of a committee system (Jonathan Stewart, 3rd & Brandon Jacobs, 6th). I think if we were giving out trophies in Week 0, you could have made a pretty good argument for etching Woody's Warriors into the base of that bobblehead.
So how did we get from pre-season champ to post-season no-show? Simply put, every single one of these guys disappointed this season, some in bigger and some in smaller ways. I managed to unearth Yahoo's pre-season positional rankings; let's see how each Warrior stacked up to expectations. Cutler: predicted rank, 8th; actual rank, 15th. MJD: predicted rank, 3rd; actual rank, 8th. J-Stew: predicted rank, 19th; actual rank, 38th. Brandon Jacobs: predicted rank: 38th; actual rank, 24th. Brandon Marshall: predicted rank, 6th; actual rank, 32nd. Fitzy: predicted rank, 9th; actual rank, 18th. In case you missed the point there, or didn't feel like reading all those numbers, that's underachievement by practically every Warrior starter. You don't expect the pre-season rankings to be 100% accurate, of course, and you expect that some of your players will disappoint. But you don't expect that every single player on your team will disappoint, and that virtually none of them will out-perform their draft position. That is what happened to Sherwood this year.

Key Transactions
Perhaps because this team had so many big names, Woody never seemed to feel compeled to make significant changes to the roster, despite losing five times in his first seven games. Rather than making any splashes in the free agent market, the Warriors seemed content to simply wait for the players on their roster to start playing up to expectations. At least, that's one theory to explain the mere twelve roster moves from Woody. The other explanation is that Woodrow was so embarrassed by his first move, in which he spent $29 on September 29th to acquire St. Louis running back Kenneth Darby (remember Kenneth Darby? yeah, me neither) that he was too ashamed to reach back into his wallet again. Indeed, the Warriors did not spend a single dollar more on free agents for the rest of the season. Even with this miserly attitude, they still managed to acquire Mike Goodson (11/14, $0), who would go on to produce 52 points over the next four weeks. Nice pick-up.

Crucial Victories and Crushing Defeats
It's not always easy identifying crucial victories for my fellow bottom-dwelling teams. After all, Woody's Warriors had only five victories to choose from this season: None of those victories led them to the post-season; none came over anyone who might be considered a natural "rival" to Sherwood; none was a slim margin of victory or last-minute come-from-behind; and none was a weekly high score. Sometimes, the importance of a win is a little more nuanced, and becomes apparent only with a little bit of research and historical context. For example, did you know that due to scheduling quirks, Woody's teams and mine have played each other seven times over the past four seasons? Or that if you go back to my first year in the league (2004), you'll find three straight wins by Woody, followed by a split season (one win each in 2007), followed by three straight wins by me? Or that for two of the past three seasons, we have finished with the exact same record? It would seem that while nobody was looking, and with neither of us suspecting it, a brutal and vicious rivalry has sprung up between the dastardly Chinaman and myself. Who knew? Apparently the Warriors themselves did, because though they stepped up and won only five times this season, two of those weeks were when they were facing the McClusterfuck. That includes a 72 - 68 win to kick off the season and a 113 - 85 Week 12 victory that basically slammed the window of a playoff appearance shut for the McClusterfuckers. I never realized it, and I suspect you didn't either, Woody, but we fucking hate each other. This season, the advantage was yours, but next year, now that my players know about our bitter rivalry, watch out!
As for crushing defeats, there are many to choose from but, again, no obvious choices remain. Probably the most frustrating loss of the season would have been Week 3's defeat at the hands of Matt Ryan Loves Dogs, 104 - 96. That loss came despite being the Warriors' second-highest scoring output of the season and featuring the only time this year that Brandon Marshall (23) resembled the super-stud we all knew him to be (and expected him to remain). Even with MRLD's running back trio combining for 58 points, the Warriors had a chance with Jay Cutler going in the Monday Night game, but his 16-point outing wasn't quite good enough to ensure success. The same could be said for the Warrior season as a whole.

The Playoff Run
Since Week 5, Sherwood has been alternating wins and losses, so it's no surprise that he finished out the season the same way. Like the afore-mentioned Week 3 loss to MRLD, the Week 11 game against Sir Lucious Left Fut would turn out to be a relatively high-scoring affair for the Warriors that nevertheless resulted in a loss. Maurice Jones-Drew (25) and Larry Fitzgerald (15) resembled their former selves in terms of scoring, and waiver wire golden boy Mike Goodson (15) turned in a solid day, but it wasn't enough to take down eventual regular season champ Elliott, who got a monster 30-point day from Aaron Rodgers along with strong showings by Thomas Jones (19) and Reggie Wayne (17).
Week 12 brought about one of the cherished victories over arch-rival McClusterfuck mentioned above, as well as Woody's sole foray into triple digits this season. Jay Cutler (28) led the charge, with support from Mike Goodson (19), MJD (12) and Tony Gonzalez (11), but the real difference-maker in this one was the New York Jets defense, which notched 21 points by teeing off on Carson Palmer and the hapless Bengals.
A week later, that same defense would go on to score a negative point, setting the pace for an effort in which the Warriors had an outside chance to make the playoffs and instead laid down and quit for a 68 - 87 loss to This Team Here is Dead. Jones-Drew (19) continued his late-season binge, and Jonathan Stewart (16) replaced Goodson (8) as the primary points-producer for the Panthers, but with Brandon Marshall dropping his second consecutive 0-fer and Cutler (13) having a very mediocre day, the Warriors went down without much of a fight.

What the Future Holds
I don't know what's going to happen with the Carolina Panthers running situation next year, since they seem to have three reasonable running backs in DeAngelo Williams, Jonathan Stewart, and Mike Goodson, but whatever happens Woody won't have to worry about it since Stewart was drafted too highly to keep (3rd round) and Goodson was picked up too late (two days after the keeper deadline). That leaves little in the way of keepable assets for the Warriors. Brandon Jacobs (6th) and Jay Cutler (7th) seem the most apt to be kept, but neither is terribly exciting. Woody will have his work cut out for him to build a 2011 contender, and I think I speak for all of us when I say that I hope this leads him back to drafting Antonio Gates in the third round.