BIFL - Week 6 Review

So yesterday was the NFL trade deadline, and as usual, nothing too huge happened. The biggest news was Roy Williams heading to Dallas, where he and TO can compete to see who bitches more about how they should be a bigger part of the offense. Of course, there may not be an offense in Big D for a little while, what with Brad Johnson taking over for Tony Romo, and maybe no defense either with Terrence Newman ailing and Pacman suspended again. I'm really feeling for Jerry Jones right now; he must be so disappointed.
Anyways, all this reminded me that our trade deadline usually comes and goes without anything too major happening either, so I thought I'd use my platform here to help things along. I took a look at each team to see what sorts of assets they might have to trade or where they may need strengthening. Hopefully this will prod some of you into realizing that you can actually help each other out, and we will have a healthy transaction wire at last. Without further ado:
(keeper round status will be indicated in parentheses; no number indicates that the player will not be keepable next season)

Juse and the Argonauts: Juse has an embarrasment of riches at WR, with Plax (4) and Brandon Marshall (8) currently in the lineup and Anquan Boldin (3) presumably returning soon, as well resurgent golden-agers Isaac Bruce (9) and Marvin Harrison. He could use some help at RB and potentially upgrade at QB. Worth noting, however, that he does have 3 QBs on his roster - Schaub, Anderson (5), and Delhomme (11) - and a lot of people are hurting for those these days.

Alligator Fuckhouse: Souts' team doesn't have a lot of talent on it to trade away, but Michael Pittman on his bench does strike me as someone who could potentially find a spot as a RB2 or bye week fill-in on another roster. The major trading power that Souts has is Tom Brady (1) in his IR spot, who you could probably acquire the keeper rights to for less-than-Brady talent.

Hernial Growth: Ha! I just saw Bardey's new team name for the first time, and love that it's a joke that only he, Trost and I would get. And I also love that DJ White appears to actually be holding his jaw in the picture. Anyways, Bardey appears to be starting Brad Johnson this week, so I'm assuming one of the players he'll want to trade for is a quarterback. If Bardey has a surplus, it's probably at WR, where he's got the returning Marques Colston (2) as well as the seemingly-back-on-track Andre Johnson (3), plus Santonio Holmes (6). He's also the guy to talk to if you're looking to invest in the future of your RB corps, with two rookies - Matt Forte (5) & Kevin Smith (4) - and 2nd-year man Ryan Grant (1). Grant has sucked so far this year, but he was a monster in the second half of last year, so if you think he can regain that form, now is your "buy low" opportunity.
Pet Monkey: Billy's team actually seems pretty well-balanced to me, with a solid QB, two reasonable RBs, and two strong WRs. If there are trades assets here, it may be in trying to sell off LenDale White (6) and Jerious Norwood (10) as handcuffs to Chris Johnson and Michael Turner owners. Hey, both of those are me!

Chip Lohmiller: Dekker just lost Tony Romo (2), and at 3-3 can't really afford to ride out the next month without him, so now might be the time to take advantage if you've got QBs to spare. I would think his biggest bargaining chip in acquiring a QB would be one of the Philly RBs, either trading Buckhalter to someone who needs a quick fix for a few weeks or Westbrook (4) to someone who can afford to sit on him for a bit. By the way, between Romo being down and Philly being on a bye, Ben's starting Jeff Garcia, Mewelde Moore, and Cedric Benson this week. Congrats on your victory, Will!

Iron Chef of Pounding Poon: Like Billy's, this is a team that seems relatively well-balanced, without major surpluses at one position or deficits at another. If you're looking to pick up some injured guys on the cheap that might help you later in the season, though, you could try prying Carson Palmer (3) or Kevin Curtis (10) from him, if you're of the mind that they'll be viable fantasy options once they're healthy. I'm not certain I do.

Egon Spengler: I've mentioned this before, but I've got two viable fantasy quarterbacks in Favre (6) and Campbell (11), three perfectly startable fantasy RBs in Johnson (7), S-Jax (1) and Turner (3), and a sub-par group of receivers. I'm 2-4 here, folks, and way open to offers! None of these guys is untradeable for me! I'd love just one stud wideout!

Sky Vault Centurions: This is the highest-scoring team in the league, so I'm not sure if they'd want to make a trade. They're also pretty well-balanced, with no glaring holes to address. The one trade asset of interest here is Roy Williams (3). So far this year he's been mediocre at best, but depending on what you think the ramifications of his move to the Cowboys - Will he benefit from being opposite TO? Is he being groomed to replace him? - he could have some pretty big upside and be available pretty cheaply from an owner who's been disappointed by him so far this season and doesn't necessarily need to take a chance on keeping him.

Manatee Eaters: This is the second highest-scoring team, and the only undefeated one, so they probably won't want to mess too much with perfection. That said, there are some definite strengths/weaknesses to this club that could be exploited in a trade. First of all, they're super-deep at RB, with Reggie Bush (2), Ronnie Brown (4), Steve Slaton, and even Edgerrin James (3) as good-to-excellent rushers. So far, the ability to shuffle these guys in and out is probably what's kept Chuck undefeated, but as we get past the bye season, he might want to use one as trade bait to strengthen his receivers, which at the moment is headlined by DeSean Jackson (10) and Bernard Berrian (6). If anyone believes that Randy Moss (5) is going to regain his form as the season goes on, he is here to be bought low as well.

Cholish Chachfaces: I still believe this to be maybe the best group of starters in the league this season, but that said, they are basically starter-deep at each position, without a ton of support on the bench that would lead Chalski to feel comfortable trading away one of those starters. If a trade happens here, it'll likely be a same-same trade, where Mark and another owner have similar quality players and both feel better about the other guy. In other words, the kind of trade that never happens.

FUBAR: Probably Spencer's most valuable trade assets before this weekend were excess running backs, but with Felix Jones (6) and Joseph Addai (1) suffering injuries this weekend, he'll probably want to keep both Le'Ron McLain and Derrick Ward around as fill-ins at that RB2 slot complementing Frank Gore (2). If anything, Spence might want to trade away one of his elite players - Gore and Drew Brees (3) - for several mid-level players to deepen his roster a bit and strengthen his receivers a bit.

Jeff Stryker is not really gay: I'm hoping Will didn't just pick up Dominic Rhodes this week to blackmail Spencer, Joe Addai's owner, with him, but if he did that is certainly a potential trade move for him in the short term. If I were Will, I would instead be looking to trade away Adrian Peterson (2), whose health is a ticking time bomb, but I'm sure he won't do that. Those two guys aside, I don't see any major trade bait on this roster, unless Will is a disbeliever in Braylon Edwards' (5) recent resurgence and can find someone who does believe to give up some talent for him. Will has probably already made his biggest trade of the season, acquiring Kurt Warner from Bardey.

So now that I've done all the heavy lifting of scouting out each team for you, let's see some trades! Find somebody who's strong where you're weak, or weak where you're strong, and make an offer. Remember that our keeper rules reward trades, freezing the keeper value of a traded player, and dropping a player a round if he's kept in the same round as one of your original keepers.

Let's take one last look at your rosters as they were in Week 6 before the dramatic round of trades that this set of Notes will undoubtedly provoke:

Juse and the Argonauts 46, Manatee Eaters 104.5
Y'know, drafting a team is like being a surrogate mother. After that brutal night of excruciating labor, you watch your baby go off into another woman's arms, and all you can do is watch from afar as she raises that baby. And you know that that's what you were getting into when you signed on; the ad on Craig's List made the terms perfectly clear. And ultimately you never regret the decision to let the baby go; you'd have never had time to look after it and your own. But deep down you can't help but suspect that maybe you'd do a better job of raising it yourself. It's especially hard when you see your baby fail as miserably as Juse's team did in Week 6. It's not so much that they did poorly, but that they did poorly because of shoddy parenting. Juse left his top 4 scorers on the bench this week, including two quarterback options (Matt Schaub-24 and Derek Anderson-26) that would have vastly outscored the starter (Jake Delhomme-3). It would be hard to fault him for starting his mighty trio of wideouts, Marshall (7), Burress (11) and Bruce (2), but he left Marvin Harrison's 22 on the bench as well. Even if he'd managed to start Harrison and, somehow, both QBs, he would have had a hard time beating Chuck, who continues on unbeaten in BIFL '08. This week's notch in the belt came courtesy of Peyton Manning (24), Bernard Berrian (23), and Ronnie Brown (15). On top of this offensive blietzkrieg, Chuck also got a big defensive week out of linebacker Robert Mathis, who had three sacks, six tackles, a forced fumble, and a fumble recovery. That sort of multi-category stat day gets me all fired up about fantasy basketball.
Iron Chef of Pounding Poon 66, Sky Vault Centurions 92
With all this trade talk being bandied about (yes, I realize that "all this trade talk" is just me writing about trades, and that probably doesn't qualify as bandying), I kind of wonder if Andre would just be willing to trade teams with me. I think I'm falling in love with the Sky Vault Centurions roster. My infatuation (and presumably Dre's) begins with Clinton Portis (27), who continued to dominate this week. I have loved CP for years of course, and if you don't watch the Skins regularly you might not realize just what an awesome football player he is, blocking the fuck out of blitzing linebackers and safeties on passing plays and following his own blockers so loyally that he often just grabs onto the backs of their jerseys as he rumbles down the field. But this season his fantasy value is finally catching up to his real value to Washington, and it's a beautiful thing to see. In addition to Portis, Andre's got the manimal Brandon Jacobs (12), who I can't help but enjoy watching mow down tacklers even though he plays for the hated Giants. Larry Fitzgerald (13) is another stud who always seems to come up big and Jay Cutler (13) is the future of fantasy quarterbacking. Throw in this week's benchwarmers smiley-guy Hines Ward and Justin Fargas (I have an inexplicable fondness for shouting out "Fargas!") and you've got a team I could totally get behind. So whaddya say, Dre? I'll let you keep your record, and we'll just swap squads. Come on.
Oh goodness I've gone on and on about Andre's team and left little time to mention Dick's. Fortunately, they didn't do shit this week, so there isn't much to say. Steve Smith (13) was this week's high scorer; I'm pretty sure he's a guy I'll never have on my fantasy team.

Egon Spengler 72.5, Chip Lohmiller 118
Ugh. Last week I complained that my team had suffered an unlucky loss and that we did not deserve to have the same record as heinous franchises like Alligator Fuckhouse and the Skinny White Guys. After performances like this week's, I can no longer complain. We were awful this week, and while 73 points might not look as bad as some of those 50- and 60-point outputs we've seen from the suckier of the BIFL teams this year, my score is really skewed by an incredible 18-point day by my kicker Jason Elam. Oh by the way I immediately cut Elam because he has a bye week. Being a fantasy kicker is even more cutthroat than being a real kicker. Anyways, besides my kicker not a single Spengler reached double-digits. There's not much more to say about it. Lohmiller had a very strong week, including two ginormous performances from Tony Romo (32) and Maurice Jones-Drew (30). MJD must be a frustrating guy to own, as he seems to generally disappoint, but then throw up a great outing every few weeks, forcing you to keep him in your lineup. I was gonna follow that up with a comment about how frustrating it must also be to have a huge pussy in your lineup who sits out when he hurts his itty witty pinkie, but I just read an updated report that Romo may actually try to play through the injury. I do not plan on going back through this entry so far and changing every other reference I've made to Romo being out.

Pet Monkey 85.5, Cholish Chachfaces 124.5
Despite a bad case of bye-litis (LJ, Fast Willie, LenDale, and Big Ben all out), Hollywood's squad actually had a decent week thanks to strong showings from Aaron Rodgers (24) and Roddy White (19). And actually 86 points is incredibly decent when you consider that his starting running backs were Jerious Norwood and TJ Duckett, who combined for 1 point. At least Billy can rest assured that he played his best line-up this week, considering that there wasn't a single point on his bench. Chalski also had his optimum starting roster, and they were optimum enough to be the top scorers in all of BIFL this week. As is usually the case with the top Lassard-ranked squad, they were led by Philip Rivers (28) and Marion Barber (26). I was pretty hammered by the time the 4 o clock games rolled around, and actually played beer pong through most of the 1st quarter, so I'm not sure exactly how the game went, but I do know that the Cowboys lost. So how the fuck did Tony Romo get 32 fantasy points and Barber get 26? Did the Cardinals score a thousand points? I mean, Tim Hightower is on the Chachfaces and he only got 4, so what happened? It's really a conundrum for me: if I stay home, I only get to watch 2-3 games, and don't really see around-the-league action. If I go out, I focus on the Redskins, get plastered watching them, and then black out for all the other games. Is there another way?
It's just a matter of time.

FUBAR 93.5
Like my Uberleague squad, Spencer was able to overcome the -2 point performance by previously reliable Le'Ron McLain this week and gain victory, despite the fact that we had all assumed McLain was going to run all day on the lousy Colts rushing defense. I overcame that on the shoulders of man-crush Clinton Portis, and Spence did it thanks to Drew Brees (26), who has gone batshit crazy with fantasy scoring down in New Orleans. I seriously think that when Colston and Shockey return we could see Brees get the first ever 100-point fantasy individual performance. You know what team gives up more points to quarterbacks than any other team in fantasy? Detroit. You know when Drew Brees and the Saints take on Detroit? Week 16. You know what happens in Week 16? The BiffleBowl. Let's not let Spencer into the BiffleBowl. Because Frank Gore (19) is no slouch either. And Calvin Johnson (12) isn't splitting touches anymore. I fear the FUBAR.

Skinny White Guys 108, Jeff Stryker is not really gay 112.5
Coming into this game at 2-3 and 1-4, this did not look like the type of match-up we have come to expect in the storied history of these two franchises. And yet the final result was undoubtedly the game of the week between two of the league's top scoreers. Going into Sunday night, Bardey's day was over but he held a 16.5-point lead. Andre Johnson (23) had led the way thanks to a huge receiving day (178 yards and a TD) that would have been even bigger had he not fumbled. AJ was able supported by Donovan McNabb (17) and Matt Forte (16). I read a lot of the ESPN and Yahoo fantasy columns and blogs and stuff, and I feel like Matt Forte is not given the sort of love that rookie running backs of the past have gotten, despite the fact that he's putting together a pretty incredible season. He's averaging almost 16 points a game, has only dropped out of double-digits once, and is a threat both in the running and passing games. If he keeps this up, he's going on the cover of next season's Lassard Illustrated fantasy preview issue.
Anyway as I was saying, Forte et al's Sunday afternoon performance had Bardois up by almost seventeen, and considering that Will's only remaining player, Vincent Jackson, had yet to eclipse 10 this season, a victory seemed like a safe bet. And yet "vjax," as Will called him on the smackboard (makes me think of Oprah saying "v-jay-jay," which is gross on many levels even to a lover of women of color), came through with a huge night, putting together 21 fantasy points on 134 yards and a touchdown. Following the big days by Steve Breaston (18), Greg Jennings (16), and Warrick Dunn (14), that was enough to put Jeff Stryker over the top. I should probably acknowledge here that I talked shit about Jackson, Breaston, and Dunn prior to the game, but I think I'd rather not.

Now that we've been through all the games, you can head right over to your roster and start putting those trade proposals together. I'm looking forward to unloading my excess, over-rated players on several of you. Until then, here's something that made me laugh:

The funny thing is, I had just seen John Oates and Fred Armisen (who plays Oates in that clip) perform live at a weird comedy thing in Brooklyn. Only in the BK.