NBD - Season in Review Pt. 5

Sam~Missing 3 Jacksons (8-5 / 1,251 pts / 4th Place Reg Season / 4th Place Overall)
The Draft in Hindsight
Papkin's 2009 team was nothing special, finishing in 9th place at 5-9, but they did make several savvy pick-ups and trades during the season that allowed them some quality keepers heading into 2010. Pierre Garcon, Vernon Davis, and (especially) Hakeem Nicks were great values at the end of the draft, and allowed Sam some flexibility early in the draft. It's a good thing, too, because Sam's draft ended up really sucking. It's hard to ever go wrong with Steven Jackson in the first round, especially in a season where he actually managed to start all 16 games, but after that it was a mess. Ryan Grant looked like a great pick in the 2nd round, but when he was shot and killed injured his ankle just eight rushes into the season, it immediately became a waste of a top selection. Chad Ochocinco (3rd) and Steve Smith 1.0 (4th) were always uninspired choices, and they proved to be even less effective than their advanced age would have you predict. Carson Palmer (7th) was this team's first quarterback selected, and though I didn't watch a single Bengals game this season, it seems like every columnist and blogger I read each Monday or Tuesday felt a vigorous and almost personal hatred for the putridity of Palmer's play. So how did this team achieve any level of success? Well, a couple of free agent pick-ups worked out well (which we'll get to in a moment), and Nicks' emergence as a top receiving talent (pre-injury) helped, but so did two late-rounder draft choices. Fred Jackson (8th) and Kyle Orton (11th) turned into home runs for Papkin, vastly out-playing their draft positions and emerging as leaders on a team where the expected captains crumpled into the fetal position at the first sign of difficulty.

Key Transactions
Despite the early loss of Ryan Grant, Papkin did not panic and waste a ton of money picking up his replacement, Brandon Jackson. Well, actually, he probably did try to do that, but didn't throw enough money out there to outbid Manning. Instead, he got Mike Tolbert ($42, 9/22) a week later, and ended up getting much more bang for his buck. Although he was no Peyton Hillis, Tolbert ended up among the top twenty fantasy running backs for the season and provided the 3-Jacks with plenty of useful weeks. An even more successful pick-up, for significantly less money, was the move that paired Papkin's QB, Kyle Orton, with his favorite receiver, Brandon Lloyd ($13, 9/29). Lloyd finished as the top receiver in fantasy football this season. Holy fuck that can't be true, can it? I'm going to type it again: Brandon Lloyd finished as the top receiver in fantasy football this season. Still feels awful and untrue, and yet Yahoo tells me that it is so, and Yahoo never lies (except about positional elibility; see: DeYoung's Key Transactions write-up). Anyways, between Lloyd and Nicks, Sam had two of the top seven receivers this season, and speaking as someone who did not have a receiver inside of the top 16, that must have been pretty awesome for him.
Also, since I am writing this re-cap for posterity, I would be remiss if I didn't mention the big trade fiasco that Papkin was involved in this season. A lot of argument ensued, and a lot of nerves were frayed, so I will do this with absolutely no editorializing and report simply the facts: on November 6th, Sam attempted to trade Steven Jackson to Elliott for Ronnie Brown, Vincent Jackson, and a draft pick in the 2011 draft (I don't remember at the moment which round, but 5th/6th sounds about right). This trade was vetoed by the league.

Crucial Victories and Crushing Defeats
Wow, looking back on the season for these re-caps has made me realize a lot of stuff I didn't notice while the season was ongoing. Like, did you all realize that Papkin won seven straight games in Weeks 8-14? That's damned impressive. These were no flukes, either, with the 3-Jacks averaging 107 points per game over that stretch. The most impressive of those victories came at the expense of regular season champ (and would-be trade partner) Sir Lucious Left Fut, in Week 10. The offensive onslaught began with the Orton-Lloyd connection, combining for 49 points, and continued with the Jackson 2, with Fred tallying 27 and Steven racking up 21. Even Chad Ochocinco (15) and the Defense and Special Teams (Philly, 13; David Akers, 11) got in on the act and pushed the 3-Jacks to a season-high 151 points, enough to outscore Elliott by about 90. Woof.
While Papkin's team enjoyed a long win streak and a respectable 4th-place finish in both the regular season and the playoffs, there is one ignominy that belongs to them and them alone from the 2010 season. Though we did not know it at the time, we all had a chance to witness something rare and beautiful this year, and Papkin ruined it for all of us way back in Week 3. I am speaking, of course, of the winless season, an accomplishment very nearly pulled off by Ray Tarasovic and his Buck Stops Here squad, but one that was lost forever thanks to Sam's pitiful effort. Granted, it would have taken an impressive performance to overcome the 132 points scored by the Buck-Stoppers, but Papkin's team - which at the time was called "Lion Tastes Good" - didn't even put up a fight. S-Jax was the "high" scorer with 12 points, which tells you about all you need to know about this 132 - 55 trouncing. The bright side of this: whenever Sam wins the league next (it'll happen eventually), he'll show up at the next year's draft full of pompous asshattery, and we'll be able to deflate him by reminding him of the time he couldn't beat the team that lost every other game that season.

The Playoff Run
As noted earlier, the second half of the season was a string of wins for Papkin, and that obviously includes the lead-up to the playoffs. In Week 11, fantasy surprise Ryan Fitzpatrick provided 27 points in an attempt to kick-start the flailing This Team Here is Dead, but appartently forgot to tell his teammates that they weren't Dead yet. Only one of Derek's other players made it into double figures - LaDainian Tomlinson (11) - and that was never going to give them a chance against the rushing onslaught of Fred Jackson (25) and Mike Tolbert (21). Those two paced the 3-Jacks, who were also helped by Brandon Lloyd (14) and the Defense and Special Teams (25 combined from David Akers and Green Bay), leading them to a 110 - 77 victory.
Week 12 brought a stronger opponent, but a similar result. The Finga Sniffs' Peyton Hillis (37) put up his last monstrous day of the season, but like Fitzpatrick the week before did not quite get enough support to surmount the strengthening Missing 3 Jacksons squad. Fred Jackson and Tolbert were only slightly less effective than the week before (40 pts combined) but they were picked up by the Orton-Lloyd connection, who pitch-and-catched their way to 46 points. That was enough to give Papkin a tight win, 116 - 111.
Despite a lag in offense in Week 13, Missing 3 Jacksons managed to continue their impressive win streak thanks to the pitiful performance of the Wild Stallions, grinding out an ugly 83 - 60 victory. Vernon Davis (19), Steven Jackson (18), and Pierre Garcon (13) were Papkin's high scorers, and while none of those numbers is terrifically impressive, they didn't really need to be against a team that was led by Philip Rivers' 15-point performance. Even a mere 6-point day from the Orton-Lloyd connection couldn't keep the 3-Jacks from continuing their roll into the playoffs.
The playoffs would kick off with a reprise of that same match-up, and once again the Wild Stallions pretty much laid out the red carpet in front of Missing 3 Jacksons for a walk to the second round of the post-season. Rivers once again tallied 15, and the New England Defense posted a solid 20, but the rest of the Stallions came up lame. On Papkin's side of the ball, Orton and Lloyd were just as ineffectual as in the week before, but every other 3-Jacker reached double-figures, leading to a well-balanced attack that put the game away easily, 99 - 68. The roll call in this triumph: Garcon (21), Tolbert (14), Davis (13), Akers (13), F-Jax (12), S-Jax (11), Green Bay (10).
The Final Four is never a great time to be monkeying with your line-up, but after two straight lousy weeks and a rib injury to Orton, Papkin decided to move away from the combo that had brought him so much success throughout the season. Half of that move worked out alright, with replacement QB Jason Campbell posting a respectable 15 points. Leaving Lloyd (and his 14 points) on the bench, however, was probably not the greatest move, especially in light of Pierre Garcon's underwhelming day (4 pts). Combine that with the fact that no 3-Jacker scored more than 16 points (Steven Jackson), and you have a recipe for a loss in the Semi-Finals. The architect of that loss? None other than Elliott Toobin and his Sir Lucious Left Fut team, whom Papkin had defeated so soundly back in Week 10 (remember that, like 9 paragraphs ago?). The high scorer for the Left Futted ones? Vincent Jackson (29), who would have been 3-Jacker if the trade had gone through. Crazy.
The bad news continued in Week 16, as Papkin's boys couldn't seem to get motivated for the 3rd-place game, despite the $100 prize attached. The much-vaunted three-headed running attack of Jackson, Jackson and Tolbert was a disappointment, with the Jacks combining for 20 points and Tolbert taking two of those away with some negative scoring. Campbell (14) was okay again, as was Hakeem Nicks (15), but that wasn't enough to get it done against Colly's line-up of Michael Vick (22), Adrian Peterson (17), and Miles Austin (16). After seven straight wins, the Missing 3 Jackson season ended with a pair of losses, this one at 97 - 69.

What the Future Holds
Despite his final ranking as the top receiver in fantasy this year, I would be shocked to see Brandon Lloyd atop anyone's pre-season rankings next season. He just has too strong a history of lousiness and not a long enough history of reliability. That said, he'll undoubtedly be one of the top values in next year's draft, assuming Papkin keeps him in the 15th round. We could very well see him joined at the end of the draft by fellow waiver wire pick-up Mike Tolbert, or re-united with partner Kyle Orton (11th), although with new management, a new coach, and Tim Tebow in the wings, who knows what Orton's situation will be with the Broncos next year, or even if it'll be with the Broncos. Another decent option for Papkin will be Fred Jackson (8th), although with Papkin traditionally putting emphasis on value, it'd be hard to see him keeping Jackson there over the slightly inferior - but far cheaper - Tolbert. Either way, Missing 3 Jacksons will enter 2011 with some pretty decent talent under contract and at a reasonable price. That's always a good situation to be in.

Joe~Sex with a Pharaoh (7-6 / 1,321 points / 6th Place Reg Season / 3rd Place Overall)
The Draft in Hindsight
After his second-place finish last year, you'd expect Colly to have some quality holdover players. You wouldn't expect him to have a high draft pick. And yet he managed both, thanks to an incredibly lucky drawing in the summer's draft lottery. That allowed Joe to enter the year with a great pair of receivers already on his roster (DeSean Jackson, 5th, and Miles Austin, 15th) and guaranteed one of the top two running backs to add to them. With Manning taking Chris Johnson 1st overall, that left Adrian Peterson (who ended up out-scoring CJ) to join the Sex with a Pharaoh roster and build an incredibly strong foundation with Jackson and Austin. In the next few rounds, Colly added tailback depth by grabbing Knowshon Moreno (2nd) and hoping to find the next big thing in Jahvid Best (3rd). The next few picks were spent solidifying Colly's NFC East connections, with Jason Witten (4th) and Kevin Kolb (6th) rounding out the starting spots for SwaP. The rest of Colly's draft was filled with handcuffs (Toby Gerhart, 10th; Javon Ringer, 11th), coulda-beens who never were (Devin Aromashodu, 7th; Steve Breaston, 8th; Legadu Naanee, 14th), and the typical late-round defensive/kicker fodder. None of them would really pan out, but it wouldn't matter much since Cletus is a waiver wire jockey nonpareil.

Key Transactions
Perhaps it should not surprise us that a man who spends so much of his professional and personal life on the internet should be such an active fantasyist, adding and dropping more frequently than any other NBDer. Though the Colly transaction log is a sea of information to dive into, one of the first waves encountered is clearly the biggest. When Kevin Kolb went down with a concussion in the first week, Colly did not hesitate to replace him with Michael Vick (9/15, $6), and it didn't take much to get him. I guess the rest of us thought that Vick's success in the second half of that first game was a fluke, but considering that Vick finished as the top quarterback in fantasy despite sitting out for four games, I'm gonna go ahead and say we were wrong. Speaking of those missed games, the Pharaoh-Fuckers always made sure they had some QB insurance, making good short-term use of Josh Freeman (9/22, $5) and Shaun Hill (10/6, $11). Many of SwaP's other pick-ups were similarly useful only in short-term fill-in situations, though a few (like Kenny Britt, 10/13, $8) were briefly spectacular, while others seem to have been trivial even to their owner (see: Steve Breaston, added 10/20 at 3:49am, dropped again that same day at 4:16pm). Sex with a Pharaoh's most expensive free agent pick-up of the year never actually played a down for them, but Colly may have picked up James Starks (12/8, $36) simply to keep any of his playoff opponents from getting their mitts on him. Or to be able to make Tony Starks/Ghostface Killah references. You never know.

Crucial Victories and Crushing Defeats
Interesting fact: not one of SwaP's seven regular season victories was close. Their narrowest margin of victory was 16 points, and most were significantly higher. This team was a roller coaster, with four weeks scoring 76 points or lower, and five at 120 or higher. What does all this mean? Basically, that Sex with a Pharaoh, like Colly in bed*, was a volatile commodity, leading to several steamroller victories and a handful of embarrassing losses. Though hardly one of those blowouts, surely the most emotionally satisfying win of the season must have been Week 11's 101 - 72 win over the Wild Stallions. After last year's down-to-the-last-play NBDBowl, where DeYoung just barely edged Colly for the championship, the 2010 season kicked off with another tight game (77 - 73) between those two and another loss for Joe's team. Finally, in Week 12, the Swappers had their revenge. With the Stallions starting to swoon heading into the post-season, Sex with a Pharaoh was only picking up steam. The holdovers from last season's team, Miles Austin and DeSean Jackson, were not terribly impressive (17 combined), but newcomer Michael Vick (25) recognized the importance of this game to his team's psyche and brought the pain. He was joined by Knowshon Moreno (16), in the midst of a streak of five games of 15+ points. With significant contributions from Adrian Peterson (13) and the 49ers' D (12), Colly finally overcame his nemesis in a victory that would springboard him to playoff success and accelerate DeYoung's end-of-season descent.
If that triumph served as an emotional release for Cletus, then surely the Week 3 loss to Michael's Burke City Giants must have been the most frustrating of the season. SwaP put a ton of points on the board, seeing enormous days out of Michael Vick (33), Adrian Peterson (31) and DeSean Jackson (22), but despite all that scoring, they couldn't quite overcome the Giants. Michael's squad got contributions from every corner, including Peyton Manning (25), Randy Moss, Ahmad Bradshaw, and the Philadelphia Defense (16 each), allowing them to eke by the Pharaohs with a tiny 3-point margin of victory despite not boasting as solid individual performances.

*look I'm just saying what I heard.

The Playoff Run
Though Colly's team was generally dominant over the second half of the season, Week 11 saw them run into a brick wall known as the Finga Sniffs. Had the Sniffers scored one more point that week, they would have actually doubled the Swappers' total, but as it is they had victory pretty well in hand, 151 - 76, so they probably figured that would have been overkill. Only Vick (20), Moreno (18), and Austin (13) bothered to show up that week, whereas Manning's guys were all there with bells on. Greg Jennings (33), Stevie Johnson (32), John Kitna (28), and Peyton Hillis (20) turned this one into a massacre, and would have won pretty handily all by themselves. At least the Pharaohs didn't waste too much energy in a game that would have been nearly impossible to win anyway.
Week 12's exploits have been covered in the Crucial Victories section above, so I'll just move on to Week 13, when Colly defeated Ray's Buck Stops Here for the second time this season. This victory was more decisive than the first, ending 123 - 92. Though Truman looked on approvingly as Anquan Boldin (18), Tashard Choice (16) and Wes Welker (14) led the Buck-Stoppers to their highest point total since the first match-up between these teams, they were no match for the unstoppable combo of Vick (30) and Peterson (29). With 18 more coming from Moreno, SwaP's place in the playoffs was secured.
Though Sex with a Pharaoh entered the post-season as the sixth seed, their regular season point total (best in the league) should have provided some clue that they were destined to have some success. Sure enough, round one's opponent, the Burke City Giants, were dispatched with relative ease. The rushing crew that Michael had relied on so consistently throughout the regular season finally let him down, and when you're taking on the lethal Vick-to-Jackson combo (52 together in Week 14) you need your engine to be humming. With Jason Witten (19) and Moreno (18) also having strong outings, this turned into a romp for Colly, who won 106 - 87.
Round 2, however, brought a more formidable opponent in the form of eventual league champion Emailarrhea. Despite 40 points from Vick, Colly could not overcome an 0-fer from Adrian Peterson and equally poor performances from Moreno and Best (1 each). 20 from Jason Witten helped make up for that a little, but with Haller's Ray Rice (35) exploding for his biggest day of the season, Drew Brees (22) doing his usual thing, and four other Emailers reaching double figures, the crushing wave of offense was too much to overcome, and Colly saw his championship hopes sink.
There was one more game to be played, however, for the rights to Third Place. As was documented in Papkin's write-up (just before this one), Missing 3 Jacksons didn't really show up, and the Pharaoh-Fuckers did. Scroll on back up there for more details.

What the Future Holds
Well call me a prophet, a soothsayer, or what have you, but I'm pretty sure Colly will be keeping Michael Vick in the 15th round next year. Seems like a decent value. The question mark is where he'll be playing (he's a free agent, right?) and who'll be joining him on Joe's roster. Braylon Edwards and Kenny Britt, also waiver wire 15th-rounders, would be solid values, and even with Vick and one of those, Colly would have the option of keeping rookie Jahvid Best in the 3rd round. Best struggled with turf toe this season, but if he can get over that it seems like he's probably worth holding on to. The other option floating out there is Jason Witten in the 4th, who is always dependably solid but could also probably be had in that round without being kept.