NBD Team Reports - 10/9/11 (pt. 1)

With nearly a third of the fantasy regular season under our belts, here is a status update on a few more of NBD's favorite franchises:

Moseley's Mask  (Screen) 2-2
After years of middling results, lagging ticket sales, and fights with town officials in Durham over a new, modern stadium, Justin Koehler finally gave up the ghost this summer and decided to sell off his Matt Ryan Loves Dogs franchise. This left the league without one of its longest-tenured owners and calmest voices; and even more troublingly, without a guiding hand for a franchise in need of an overhaul. In stepped brash internet billionaire Andy Screen. Screen has been a controversial figure ever since a New York Times exposé suggested that his hugely successful internet translation site, pantallon.com, was not powered by a highly advanced translating algorithm, as Screen had always claimed, but rather by armies of third-world workers housed in low-lit, poorly-ventilated warehouses, chained to their Wang terminals and forced to translate for as much as 30-hour shifts before being sent back to their families with barely enough wages to buy a loaf of bread. Though Screen had circulated on the fringes of numerous fantasy leagues for years, trying to find a way in, most leagues rejected him due to his controversial standing and loud-mouthed reputation. But in need of revenue and looking to revive a flailing operation, NBD had no choice to but to allow Screen's takeover and makeover. Rather than continue to fight with city officials over a new stadium, Screen simply built his own facility in northwest Washington, DC, complete with hundreds of luxury boxes, enormous high-definition scoreboards, and locker rooms that feature individual televisions, stereos, videogame systems, and royal penis scrubbers for each player.
The early results of this reorganization have been mostly positive, with the Masked Men scoring in triple digits in each of their first four games in the league. The offensive display began in Week 1, when Philip Rivers (19), DeSean Jackson (16), and Wes Welker (28) combined on numerous long plays to expose the Finga Sniffs' porous secondary. After establishing a big early lead thanks to that passing attack, the powerful running back duo of Darren McFadden (16) and Adrian Peterson (10) were able to do some work on the ground, propelling Moseley (and Screen) to its first NBD win, 120-93.
In Week 2, the afore-mentioned rushing tandem of Peterson (26) and McFadden (24) took center stage. After one particularly destructive Peterson run, an exuberant and obnoxious Screen was seen wildly gesticulating in his owner's box, taunting the visiting Blam-a-Lam fans and repeatedly pointing to the 150-foot, 4,062dpi scoreboard to emphasize the replays of Peterson's amazing play. Those taunts soon turned to tears, however, for despite the rushing dominance and solid play by quarterback Philip Rivers (20), Moseley could not contain the onslaught of the Blam-a-Lammers and eventually lost, 115-108.
After failing their teammates in the Week 2 loss, the Moseley defense stepped up in Week 3, holding the Wild Stallions to a mere 77 points. The Stallions, for their part, focused on freezing Rivers (8) and Jackson's (3) deep pass potential, but this left them wide open underneath. Taking a series of short dink-and-dunk passes and turning them into huge yardage, Welker (36) and tight end Jermichael Finley (27) feasted on the defense. McFadden (30) and Peterson (16) did serious damage as well, raising the specter that Screen might possess both the best fantasy rusher of the past several years and the best fantasy rusher of this year (a la those old arguments of Jordan and Pippen being the "best player in the NBA" and "best overall player in the NBA," as though those could be two different things). For non Mask fans, this game lost its entertainment value early on as they romped to easy victory and the first Classic Soul Jam of the Week High Scorer Award for the new franchise, 142-77.
Despite the obvious talents of Peterson and McFadden, they may not even be the most impactful players on this roster. In Week 4, Wes Welker (22) continued to be dominant, leading the team in scoring for the third time in four weeks. And though DeSean Jackson (17), opposite him, also racked up the points, the running game never seemed to click in the way it had the last two weeks. A mere 21 points combined from Peterson, McFadden, and Danny Woodhead brought Moseley their lowest point total yet. And though 104 points is respectable, it wasn't enough to overcome the 110-point effort of Woody's Warriors, and the Masked Men fell to 2-2.

Kenny Brittle (M Haller) 2-2
Winning an NBD title is no easy task. Repeating that task is nearly impossible. Every year, one franchise attempts to undertake that impossible task, and often without much of the personnel that enabled them to win their first championship. The league policies that limit team's ability to keep top-tier talent and shorten the contract length of emerging stars make maintaining a consistent roster very difficult. So leave it to a shrewd, some might say cut-throat, back room lobbyist like Matt Haller to find a way to re-construct a winning team, by hook or by crook. Though Haller was only able to officially hang on to Jeremy Maclin and Marcedes Lewis, he sneakily constructed a deal before the draft with frequent patsy collaborator Eric Sherwood to trade his first and fourth round selections for Sherwood's first and fifth.  Although this meant sacrificing Aaron Rodgers, it ensured Haller the services of Ray Rice, which along with the drafting of Drew Brees, gave Haller much of the core of last year's champion Emailarrhea squad. The traded Kenny Britt would look to fill the shoes of Roddy White, while Jahvid Best would attempt to take the place of departed scatback LeSean McCoy.
In the first two weeks, things were looking good for hopes of a repeat, with Brees (29) and Britt (26) immediately establishing the same rapport that DB shared with White last year. With Ray Rice (27) providing the ground support and the Bears (24) showing a stout defensive effort, this franchise showed that they did not lose any steam in the off-season, following up their string of success in the playoffs with a High Scorer title in Week 1. That result must have been doubly frustrating for opponent Stuffed Quahog, the very team that had lost to Emailarrhea in the NBDBowl last year.
Week 2 saw more of the same, with Brees and Britt (43 combined) once again succeeding through the air, with Brees now spreading the wealth to include Jeremy Maclin (29). With Jahvid Best (24) also posting a strong showing, it was beginning to look like the power trio of Brees, Britt and Rice (16) was becoming a power quintet. Everything was going right for Haller's team, and their second win of the season came at the expense of the owner's brother, 133-105.
Then Week 3 happened. Although Brees (29) remained inscrutable, his favorite target Kenny Britt went down early, tearing the anterior, medial, and ulterior cruciate ligaments in his right knee. With Britt gone, the Buck Stops Here's corners were able to key on Maclin, limiting him to seven points. With Rice (16) and Best (9) having unspectacular days, the Brittles earned their name and managed only 94 points. That said, with only nine-tenths of a point more, that would have earned them a victory, but instead BSH managed a slim victory.
The bad luck and declining fortunes of the passing game continued in Week 4, with Brees (17) posting his first total south of 20 points, and his receivers - Maclin, Percy Harvin, and Mike Sims-Walker - combining for the same amount. Although Ray Rice (19) was effective and the defense and kicking teams (25 together) were strong, the suddenly struggling Brittles faced a second straight loss, 113-89, and now find themselves having to focus their efforts on winning their next game rather than their next championship.