NBD - Week 2 Review

I Drink Your Milkshake 65.36, Chestpubes & Ballfro 95.48
The trouble for me this week started when Hurrican Ike caused the postponement of the Texans-Ravens game, leaving me without stud wideout Andre Johnson. The trouble continued... wait, scratch that. The trouble actually started several weeks ago when I drafted a shitty team for the fourth year in a row. The worst move I made? Drafting Seahawks. My back-up to AJ would have been Nate Burleson, but he's out for the season, just like eight other Seahawks receivers (I'm pretty sure that's not an exaggeration). With all those receivers out, you'd have to figure the Seattle passing game is gonna be pretty much defunct, right? Well, guess who my quarterback is! Matt Hasselbeck! Ugh. I started Hank Baskett in lieu of Burleson. That doesn't even need a joke. Meanwhile, my opponent didn't get much from his receivers either, but unlike me appears to have other, skilled players who aren't entirely useless at the other positions. The Monday night shootout led to 20 points for Tony Romo, and Colly got a second straight strong rookie running back performance, but this time out of a different rookie: Chris Johnson (12). LDT had a down week, but the slack was picked up by Tony Scheffler (18), who's fast becoming the talisman of this Ballfro squad.

CH Croakies 94.24, Our Generation's Rodney Dangerfield 130.14
Normally 94 points would win you most games in our league, but this week (when every team in the league went nuts on offense), against this opponent (top performance of the league so far this season), Elliott didn't stand a chance. Still, the Croakies had some good showings this week, including the Green Bay D/ST, which won the game for E last week and led his crew in scoring this week. A high-scoring defense and Adrian Peterson (18) aren't quite enough, though, to top a team that had only two players not in double figures. Tri Steeg's output in Week 2 may be the most effective balanced attack I've ever seen in fantasy, with no truly dominant performances, but a bunch of really great ones, including TO (21), Jonathan Stewart (20), Earnest Graham (19), and Reggie Bush (15). Kex' score this week was also subject to some controversy, although most of you guys were probably unaware of it. Apparently there was a play last week where Frank Gore fumbled the ball, and a Seattle defender picked it up. Then he fumbled it, and another Seattle defender picked it up and ran it in for a touchdown. Yahoo did not score this as a defensive TD, reasoning somehow that after the first Seahawk's fumble, the Seattle defense became an offense and so it was not a defensive touchdown. Eventually this was resolved (Yahoo gave them the touchdown), but in the meantime I wandered on to the Yahoo Commissioner's Corner message board. I'm not sure if Dante Alighieri never played fantasy football, or if he was just too horrified to describe it, but this message board is most certainly one of the deepest rings of hell. It's like a thousand Papkins all screaming at each other via capital letters, poor grammar, a teenager's IM/text shorthand, and horribly mis-spelled words. Actually that sounds less like a circle of hell and more like my very specific personal hell.

The Leadfarmers 101.5, Mephistopheles 61.84
Why is it that when I talk shit about Derek's players, they invariably prove me wrong, but when I talk shit about my own players, they simply back me up? My biggest nitpick with the Leadfarmers heading into the season was their early selection of Eli Manning as their starting QB, so of course he spent Week 1 picking apart my beloved 'Skins and Week 2 leading (or almost leading--Marion Barber had one more point) Derek to victory over my (somewhat less) beloved father. Manning posted 22 this week, and catch end of his pitch-and-catch tandem, Plaxico Burress, chipped in 14 as well. Meanwhile, Ray did a great job of maintaining the Tarasovic stranglehold on the bottom of the rankings. Greg Jennings had a nice week with 17 points, and post-draft snag DeSean Jackson had another decent outing (11) despite his bone-headed premature celebration, but that wasn't enough to put Mephistopheles within shouting distance of the Leadfarmers. I'm thinking that if I can replace four of you with other relatives of mine next year, I might stand a chance at making the playoffs.

Hamster Now Guinea Pig 125.8, Woody's Warriors 87.26
Like their former namesake, Jim Zorn, Haller's team made a huge turnaround this week, more than doubling their output from Week 1 for this drubbing of fellow Wolfpacker Sherwood. Appropriately, the charge was led by Clinton Portis' 22 points on Sunday afternoon, and was enthusiastically followed up Sunday night by the Cutler-Marshall connection, who put up 54 points between them in a performance that looked reminiscent of last year's Brady-Moss juggernaut. Woody actually had a couple of outstanding performances, too, in the form of 28- and 25-point weeks from Brian Westbrook and Calvin Johnson, respectively, but no one else did much. Woody is especially smarting from the ugly early-season play of Carson Palmer, whose once vaunted passing offense appears to be in shambles. If the Bengals don't get their act together soon, our resident faux-Hawaiian may soon be regretting that fourth-round Palmer selection.

Wyld Stallyns 122.72, Matt Ryan Loves Dogs 74.84
After year after year of awful teams and over a season of consistent abuse in these Commissioner's Notes, DeYoung had his first good week ever in Week 2, inspiring him to talk some trash (see the Comments on last week's preview). If you read closely, you can see the positive effects of DeYoung's participation in Tony Robbins' recent "Nice Guys Can Talk Smack Too" seminar. I only hope this new spirit of competitiveness continues once the Wyld Stallyns come back to earth. As it is, they had the kind of performance in Week 2 that could keep Jon under the delusion that he has a good team for another couple weeks. Aaron Rodgers (26) is riding high in Green Bay, looking like a more-than-able replacement for you-know-who. The game I saw in Green Bay last year led me to retire my Santana Moss jersey, but he had a return to form this week with 25 fantasy points. And Julius Jones had an unexpectedly strong showing for the Seahawks. Meanwhile, what was seemingly Koehler's biggest problem is actually no problem at all, as Kurt Warner had a Brady-like week in Arizona with 26 points. The rest of the Matt Ryan squad, however, looked like they all had multiple sprained collateral ligaments, with only Frank Gore breaking into double-digits.

Ooslay Oopypay 111.24, Burke City Giants 67.94
You might think, after all the awful things I've said about him over the past few years in mean-spirited e-mails, notes, and blog posts, that I would be upset that Papkin won another game this week, leading him to a 2-0 record and the top position in the league. But you would be wrong. In fact, I hope that Papkin wins every game of the regular season, after which I'll happily pay him the regular season winner's pot. And then I hope that he enjoys his bye week off in the first round of the playoffs and goes on to beat his semi-final opponent in a spirited match. And then I hope he suffers an utterly humiliating defeat in the finals, one that will crush his psyche and leave emotional scars that won't be fully apparent until many years down the road. Then and only then will he be repaid for the headaches he has caused me. I believe it can happen, and helping me out this week were Anquan Boldin (32), the Tennessee Defense (17), and Michael Toobin's lousy team. The Giants came up quite small in Week 2, managing only a few decent performances out of Reggie Wayne (15), Stephen Gostkowski (13), and Marshawn Lynch (13)

With five teams over the century mark, this was one of the highest-scoring NBD weeks in history. Shootouts make for good fantasy and even better spectating, so let's hope this trend continues as the season wears on. I'll be back late this week with predictions for all the upcoming games.

Oh, and sorry no pictures this week. I'm off to Nobu tonight, bitches, so my gourmet sushi-eating ass has no time to Google Image-search more pictures of gay guys.