Covid Fantasy Football Challenge Week 5

It's Memorial Day Weekend, the time of year we have always set aside to remember the performances of those who've served our country, laying down their lives so that the rest of us can continue to live the American way. I'm speaking, of course, of football players who've suffered serious brain trauma, shortening their lives so that we can spend our Sundays lazing on the couch and staring at multiple screens. Let's remember their service to us in Week 5 of the past twenty seasons:

Covid Fantasy Football Challenge Week 4

I went unexpectedly loquacious during this week's write-ups, so I'll keep this intro pretty short and simple: Week 4 is done, which means it's time for the transaction window to open. Read the details on how this will work in the previous post, and e-mail me your free agent auction bids by midnight eastern time on Tuesday, May 12th. I have sent mine to Will for safe-keeping.

Covid Fantasy Football Challenge Week 3

I'm gonna try to publish two weeks' worth this weekend, once on Saturday and once on Sunday. Before we get to the Week 3 results, I wanted to get into the logistics of the transaction window that will open after I publish the Week 4 results on Sunday. It will operate basically like any Free Agent Auction Budget system you've ever played fantasy with, it's just that I'm the computer for this one. I am not an actual computer, as you may know, so please read through this and let me know if it makes sense or if you foresee any complications:
You will have a budget of $50 to bid on any player-season(s) from 2000 on that is not currently on a CFFC roster. When you submit your bids (by e-mailing me) you should indicate what player from your current roster will be dropped if your bid is successful. You may make multiple bids to replace a single player; I will prioritize your additions by the amount you bid and you will only lose money from your budget for successful bids. For bids of the same amount, I will start with a tie-breaker list that is the reverse of our current rankings. Every time one of your bids is successful you will move to the bottom of the list. I will start by processing the highest bids and move my way to the cheapest. Once the new rosters have settled, I will give you a chance to re-organize your roster in terms of starters and back-ups.
There will be another transaction window after Week 8, and whatever you don't spend this time will be added to your budget next time, which will start at $50 as well (so you could have as much as $100 to bid next time if you make no transactions this time). If any of you plan on making no bids, please let me know and I will make you the repository for my bids, which I will make before seeing anyone else's. If not, you'll just have to trust me. I think my results so far prove pretty conclusively that I am not interested in cheating at this game. Speaking of which...

Beb entered this week with a weakened roster, due to an Arian Foster injury (a minor, but recurring one, I think) and Tony Gonzalez on a bye (there used to be Week 3 byes, I guess? Also there were a few seasons where there were an odd number of teams in the league so they just rotated a week off every week? That feels like a cockamamie plan.) The Gonzalez-Gates swap is not much of a drop-off, but behind Foster Beb has 2017 Marshawn Lynch. For those of you who might be confused like Beb is, that is not Seattle Seahawks Beast Mode. And it's definitely not Buffalo Bills Beast Mode (that was a full decade earlier). It's Oakland Raiders Beast Mode. who was pretty decent for a guy who'd come out of retirement, but not exactly the caliber of players we have in this league. Or I should say, that you all have in this league. It's exactly the caliber of player that I have in this league, except that I've got a bunch of them, and they're not my back-ups they're my starters. Calvin Johnson made an admirable showing, but he is used to being an outstanding talent on a terrible team. I just hope he doesn't retire early from my fantasy team. I should probably mention here that Priest Holmes scored 40 fucking points. It should surprise none of you to know that this five-touchdown performance came against the Redskins. I'm considering spending my free agent budget on three different seasons of "RB vs. Redskins."

Wow, Holmes merely dropped off from '01 to '02, huh? No wonder they drafted Larry Johnson after the season ended. Actually that was a pretty good decision, considering that a 'roided-up Shawne Merriman would more or less end Holmes' career with a vicious hit, and Johnson would ably fill the void... except that that hadn't quite happened yet by Week 3 of 2005, when Elliott could have used some positive scoring from LJ to help overcome the Bardey onslaught. That's tough to do, though, when Peyton Manning can't even get within a dozen points of his future self, and your big gun Christian McCaffrey scores less than four members of the opposition. I only wish that Elliott can forgive his former Internet Boyfriend for trouncing him so thoroughly, and that these two can find love again. 

Wow, this is embarrassing. Joe clearly didn't do a very good job of preparing for the draft that I wouldn't allow him to prepare for or adjusting the roster that I wouldn't allow him to adjust. Come on, Joe, it's not fair to the rest of the league when you hand a win to someone like this! Actually, there isn't a single player in the entire league, or maybe in the history of fantasy, that you could have filled that empty slot with and beaten Screen this week. That multi-generational trio of Faulk, Peterson and Jackson are monstrous, and this performance will move them to the top of our standings. 

Oh man, I used up all my good Dutch jokes last week and then these two go and play each other. It's a shame too because there's not a lot to talk about here. I recall somebody during the draft saying QBs were "a dime a dozen," and it does seem like the easiest thing in this era of non-stop passing attacks should be to find a quarterback from the past twenty years who can give you 15+ points a week. And yet four of our passers failed to meet that mark this week, none failing harder than Dekker's Kurt Warner '02. A competent signal-caller in that slot might have made the difference between a win and a loss, as Souts' performance was nothing spectacular. But as it is, Souts' Saints connection of Brees, Kamara and Jimmy Graham filling in was enough to carry the day.

 Five years ago, Todd Gurley was drafted into the NFL. Three years ago, he had a hell of a Week 3 for the Rams, running for 113 yards, receiving for 35 more, and scoring five touchdowns en route to being named the NFL's Offensive Player of the Year by the Associated Press. Less than three years later, he was cut by the Rams and signed for five million dollars with the Falcons. He'll probably be out of the league in another few seasons. Maybe they'll give him an Arby's franchise for a day.
20 years ago, Tom Brady was drafted into the NFL. 13 years ago, he had a pretty good Week 3 en route to being named the MVP of the league. Over a dozen years later, at the age of 42, he signed a contract with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers for 50 million dollars.
22 years ago, Peyton Manning was drafted into the NFL. Ten years ago, he had a solid Week 3, contributing to a season in which he broke the record for most pass completions in a season. In the past few years, he has led a life of blissful retirement, including a recent decision to turn down 20 million dollars a year to be the new Monday Night Football analyst*.
I guess what I'm saying is: some of you have sons. For god's sake, raise them to be quarterbacks, not running backs.

Oh, and make sure to raise them to be white, as well. Seems to help.

*side note: I am desperate for sports right now (let's go, Bundesliga!), and so when I saw on Monday that ESPN was re-airing an old MNF game between the Packers and Seahawks, I was ready for it. But then the broadcast started, and it turns out that even the sports desert we are currently mired in could not overcome my hatred for Jon Gruden's unique brand of analysis.

Certainly part of the appeal of this league to me is a chance to re-live a time in my life when I more deeply enjoyed NFL football. I don't actually think the difference between that era and this owes anything to the stylistic changes in the game, or all of the socio-political baggage (domestic violence, CTE, jingoism) that lingers around the game these days, although the latter certainly doesn't help. I think more likely it's that when I see lines like "L Tomlinon '05 43.04" and "S Alexander '05 38" I can so vividly imagine waking up on a beautiful fall Sunday of 2005 in Sunset Park, hopping on the D train to the Village, and spending the afternoon at Off the Wagon drinking cheap pitchers of beer, trying to keep Doit from fighting with our beer pong opponents, and monitoring the TVs with a hand-written list of my multiple fantasy rosters and those of my opponents (no smart-phone to monitor on yet). That afternoon, I would have already been quite drunk by the time Shaun Alexander rattled off 140 rushing yards and four touchdowns against the Cardinals, and would almost certainly have been half-passed out in my Golden-Ager electronic recliner as LaDainian Tomlinson single-handedly destroyed the fucking Giants with 192 rushing yards, three rushing touchdowns, and a 26-yard passing touchdown. And I would have done all that with no fear of the effect it'd have on my job teaching tweens the next morning! There wasn't even a Redskins game that Sunday to ruin my mood! Fuck, man.

Here are your standings after Week 3. Enjoy them, they won't last long!

Covid Fantasy Football Challenge Week 2

I was originally intending to post these scores two or three times a week, but this week was the end of our first marking period of Remote Learning, and I set a policy early on that I would accept any and all late work during that time, because I know that my students have various challenges, obligations and stresses going on in their lives. Of course, my generosity was rewarded with a flood of assignments being turned in on the last possible day (Tuesday), giving me just a few days to grade hundreds of assignments and preventing me from entering Lassard mode mid-week. I finally finished up all my grading yesterday morning, had a lovely time drinking cocktails in the (finally) spring weather last night, and was looking forward to writing up some fantasy scores today.

So I get to my computer, open up the old Chrome browser to get to bloggin', but first notice a flurry of new emails in my account. What could this be? I wondered. Perhaps my students have started a campaign to send me emails, thanking me for my tireless, diligent, and caring service during this difficult time? Nope, not quite. Turned out to be a firestorm of angry comments from a student of mine who I had accused of cheating--a month ago--after receiving a picture of the exact same work from her and another student. Not a re-writing, not even a tracing. Just the exact same diagram of a circle with relevant terminology written in. So I've spent the past hour of my precious Spring Sunday trading emails with her and the other student. Delightful!

Let's look at some goddamn fantasy scores from before these children were born.

Covid Fantasy Football Challenge Week 1

Holy shit this thing is still alive! It's just been sitting out here in the ether for the past eight years, probably preventing me from getting jobs when employers Google me and find borderline racist/sexist/homophobic comments mixed in with years of fantasy football commentary. Actually, they probably don't get as far as the racist/sexist/homophobic comments; seeing years of work put into a fantasy football blog - and not one where you, like, give useful information to fantasy players - is probably reason enough not to hire anybody.

But anyway here we are! And years from now when people are marveling over the great novels written and great albums composed and great technologies innovated during the Covid Pandemic of 2020, I'll be able to say that I forced my friends to gather around their laptops on a Friday night to try to remember the best fake football players of the past twenty years and then spent hours and hours compiling their statistics and writing about it. Without further ado, let's dive in to Week 1!

NBD - Week 9 Review

Tuesday was Decision Day for America, and I think most of us - with the possible exceptions of Ms. PAC-Man Haller, log-cabin militiaman DeYoung, and maybe Derek and Papkin, whose politics are unknown to me - made what turned out to be the popular (not to mention correct) decision. But while most of America is content to cast their votes every few years, we here in NBD are forced to make much more difficult decisions every week. We scour the wire services, expert advice, and last-minute panicky voices in our heads to decide who to start and sit. Truthfully, most of us probably put more effort and thought into those decisions than we do into who we vote for. And yet, so often we are wrong. With that in mind, I've spent some time going back through the season and analyzing each owner's decisions over the course of this year.

There was a time when Yahoo(!) would tell you your Optimal Line-Up Score at the touch of a button, but they seem to have abandoned that, so I was left to my own devices to go back through each week of games and determine just how much you idiots could have scored if you had only played the right guys. After scouring the scoreboards for hours, I may have made a few mistakes here and there, but I believe I've more or less come to a solid calculation of just how many points each team could have scored every week if they'd played their top scorers. The one potential problem here is that with people picking up breakout players after the Thursday games, we sometimes end up with players on our end-of-week rosters who we did not actually have the option to play. Otherwise, though, I think the numbers are secure:

BaDoBuKiBro - Week 6 Review

I missed the Week 5 Review. Nobody seemed to notice. And yet I shall continue to chronicle the exploits of our young league, whether you bastards want me to or not! Here's Week 6:

NBD - Week 5 Review

The conversation rages on over in the Week 4 Review comments section. I've really enjoyed and appreciated everyone's opinions, whether I've 100% agreed with them or not. The link that Screen most recently posted is the most thorough and interesting thing I've read yet on the issue, and further muddies my thinking. I encourage you all to check it out. I hope Mr. Screen (and anyone else who hasn't commented yet) will weigh in with his own thoughts at some point. In light of our interest and excitement over the whole issue, I've chosen some proverbs to characterize each of Week 5's games. Enjoy.

NBD - Week 4 Review

I'm about to pontificate for a bit, so if you're not into that sort of thing, feel free to scroll down 'til you get to the game reviews. Still, I'd love to hear what you guys have to say about this:

I was watching 'Around the Horn' on Tuesday, and the long-debated issue came up of whether or not it's appropriate for the Washington football franchise to use the name 'Redskins.' Obviously, this is not the first any of us is hearing of this, and I'm sure I've had conversations with many of you before as to our thoughts on the name. Apparently, this latest round of debate was brought up by the decision (or defense of the decision) of the Kansas City Star not to use the name in its coverage of the team, presumably referring to them instead as simply Washington. Now, historically, I've been relatively agnostic about the whole issue, and half-heartedly defended the name based on a few arguments: 1) That choosing something as your mascot implies a pride and adoration in that mascot, so calling the team "Redskins" is a celebration of Native Americans, not an insult to them. 2) That the name "Redskin" does not seem any more inherently offensive than "White" or "Black," both of which are freely used to refer to ethnic groups (I feel like the brief era where some black people insisted on being called "African American" has passed; I don't know any black people who are offended by being called black), although admittedly the idea of having a team named the Minnesota Whites or Atlanta Blacks does seem a little odd, if not necessarily offensive.
But this latest discussion got me thinking again and investigating my logic, particularly because the argument made by the ombudsman of the Star reminded me of a decision I made myself about a decade ago to stop using the words "f*g" and "f*gg*t." Those were words I used often in high school and college, and if pressed on the bigotry of using them, I always pointed out that really my use of them had nothing to do with homosexuality, it was just kind of a synonym for "bad" or "weak" or "lame." But at some point I kind of decided that that was bullshit, and that it was a word that was used in a nasty way towards a group of people who I respected as humans, and so I just wasn't going to use it any more (or at least try not to - I'm not perfect and I may have even used it on this blog a time or two). Nowadays, I work really hard at educating my students not to use those words.
So is there a huge difference between the two? Well, maybe a little. "F*g" is never really used with a positive connotation (except for sometimes by actual gay folks in somewhat the same way black folks say "nigga"), while I believe that naming your sports team "Redskins" connotes pride and celebration of that name. All the same, they're two words that a group of people born a certain way find offensive. I don't say f*g, I don't say k*ke, I don't say n*gg*r, so should I not be saying r*dsk*n? Seems like I probably shouldn't. So I think I'm going to try not saying it or writing it for a while. I'm just going to go with Washington, or if it's really tortured to do that, maybe Skins (I think that's what I say most of the time anyways). A bigger question, of course, is if the franchise itself ever reached this conclusion, what would they become? While it's very difficult to think of the team by another name, it's even harder to think of them with a different logo or colors. So is there a way to keep the scheme of the franchise without the name? The actual, politically correct appellation we use for the people we're talking about is Native American or American Indian, but it's difficult to imagine ever calling a sports team that. But there could be a simpler solution:

BaDoBuKiBro - Week 4 Review

As you may recall from my post-draft post, I'm tracking the performance of all of our auctioned players this season based on Points Per Dollar. Though I'm not ready to publish the individual rankings yet, I did take some time this week, with roughly a third of the fantasy regular season under our belts, to calculate positional rankings. The formula is simple: total number of points contributed by drafted players at a position divided by total number of dollars spent on that position. A couple things to keep in mind:

1) This includes only players purchased during our auctioned draft, not ones that have since been acquired in the Free Agent Auction.

2) This includes only points that were actually contributed as part of the starting line-up, so even if you drafted, say Marques Colston, his 25.8 points this week didn't count towards your WR PPD if you started Lance Moore instead, you stupid fucking idiot.

Anyways, here are the rankings/results:

WR
Bev         3.94
Souts 3.54
Bost         2.81
JDC         2.38
Dekker 2.37
Bardey 2.34
Hambone 2.07
Jong         2.05
Wilson 1.77
Cody 1.72
Casano 1.29
Sovic 1.19


TE
Casano 14.90
Bost         7.40
Bev         5.23
Hambone 4.76
Souts 4.73
Wilson 3.92
JDC         2.33
Cody 2.15
Bardey 1.47
Dekker 1.41
Jong         0.87
Sovic 0.73


RB
Souts 2.44
Hambone 1.81
Bardey 1.73
Cody 1.64
Bost         1.52
Sovic 1.49
Casano 1.43
Wilson 1.29
Dekker 1.10
JDC         1.10
Jong         1.03
Bev         0.56



QB
Jong         31.25
Bev         17.6
Wilson 8.66
Dekker 8.12
Casano 4.75
Sovic 3.25
JDC         2.66
Bardey 2.10
Bost         1.43
Hambone 1.32
Cody 1.05
Souts 0.84


K
Bardey 47.00
Wilson 41.00
Casano 32.00
Souts 31.00
Bost         30.00
JDC         27.00
Dekker 25.00
Hambone 21.00
Cody 18.00
Sovic 17.50
Bev         7.00
Jong         5.00



Def
JDC         65.00
Bardey 40.00
Dekker 36.00
Bost         35.00
Casano 26.00
Hambone 14.00
Souts 12.33
Jong         12.00
Cody 11.50
Wilson 10.00
Bev         9.00
Sovic 3.00


Basically, the kicker and defense ratings just answer the questions Did you spend a dollar on your kicker/defense? and Have you used the same kicker/defense for all four weeks? Those rankings are pretty insignificant, right?

BaDoBuKiBro - Week 3 Review

God damn, with this new every-week Thursday football, it makes it hard on a blogger to get the game reviews out in a timely fashion. Seems like as soon as Week 3 is over, Week 4 is beginning. I'm posting this before the first quarter of the Browns-Ravens game is over, and they're paused right now because Josh Cribbs just got cold-cocked, so I feel like these are still relatively fresh. Enjoy:

NBD - Week 3 Review

After months of acrimonious negotiations, two intractable parties finally came together this week to resolve their differences and come to an agreement for the good of the game. I am speaking, of course, of the agreement reached by the NFL and Time Warner Cable, which finally added the NFL Network and the Red Zone Channel to their line-up this week, thus allowing me to watch NFL coverage 24 hours a day. Today was Yom Kippur, and I had the day off. I watched a replay of the Lions-Titans game and an hour of Terrell Suggs being mic'd up for every game of the 2011 season. I don't even like Terrell Suggs. I also spent a good amount of time writing NBD's Week 3 Reviews. So there's a good chance I'll burn out on NFL football within the next 10 days. But until I do, here are the fruits of my obsession:

NBD - Week 2 Review

In the course of preparing this week's game reviews, I had occasion to look back through our league's history pages (you'll see more below). One of the most enjoyable parts of doing this "research" was seeing some of the bygone franchise names that I had long forgotten.  Inspired by that trip down memory lane, I've prepared a little quiz. Can you name the owners of the following NBD teams?

1) McGahee = the Christ (2004)
2) We Want Prenump (2005)
3) Fall Out Boys (2005)
4) Dock War (2006)
5) Fredo (2007)
6) Pat Magroin (2007)
7) Tri Steeg Area (2008)
8) Pubers and the 'Fro (2008)
9) Goin' Rogue Y'all! (2009)
10) The Death Panel (2009)
11) Sir Lucius Left Fut (2010)
12) This Team Here is Dead (2010)

Answers will appear in the Comments. Read on for more recent history: Week 2.

BaDoBuKiBro - Week 2 Review

"I said that to say this: If you wouldna did what you woulda did, 

we wouldna been where we woulda been to get what we got."

-Michael Johnson to Robert Geathers, Bengals sideline

For anyone watching halftime of the Monday Night Football game last night, these words of wisdom came floating down from heaven during ESPN's cavalcade of clips from mic'd players. Amazed by their sagacity, I rewound three times just to get the transcription exactly right. Like some sort of Zen koan, it may seem like a bunch of nonsense, but deep truth lies within Mr. Johnson's words. Read through this week's recaps, and the meaning should become clear.

NBD 2012 - Week 1 Review

The temperature has cooled, school is back in session, and Lassard has risen from the grave with a thirst for brains and human flesh. We're back in the high life again, boys, so let's take a look back at Week 1:

BaDoBuKiBro Draft Stats

Whereas there are roughly 10 straight hours of sports programming on TV tonight between the US Open and two Monday Night Football games; and...

Whereas my 21st Century attention span is incapable of simply sitting and enjoying said programming, but instead demands that I be doing something on my laptop at the same time; and...

Whereas the Draft Board still lives in my living room, and will probably take longer to throw out than the box of defective patio chair parts that has been here for the past year...

Therefore let it be known that it was pretty much inevitable that I would spend some time tonight entering our auction results into a spreadsheet, and using that to make some calculations.
I share these with you now:

NBD - Draft Stats & Review

Before I dive into the results of Week 1, I wanted to take a look back at the draft and delve into the numbers a little bit. With this being our first auction draft, most of us had some question marks as far as strategy and definitely some different approaches emerged during the auction. Some people focused most of their money on a few big expenditures, while others spread the wealth around to help create a more balanced team. I spent the first two sets of this evening's US Open final putting together a spreadsheet and have found identified some statistics that I thought might be interesting and useful in future auctions.

Everybody Sucks

There are worries and headaches associated with every fantasy player out there, even the supposed best of them. Read on and discover why you might as well just scratch them all off your cheat sheets and let me worry about them.

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:

BIFL Team Reports - 10/2/11

Faced with increased professional responibilities (I'm now the Union Rep at my school) and increased personal commitments (I've got a real, live girlfriend for the first time in recent memory), I've been forced to re-consider the amount of time I spend as Lassard every week. I also discovered, whilst writing last year's State of Your Team write-ups, that it's a lot more interesting for me to write about each team over a several-week span with a kind of narrative arc than it is to simply re-cap games every week. With those factors in mind, I've decided to re-structure this blog a little bit. Every week this season, I'll be writing Team Reports, but not for every team in every league. Instead, I'll be rotating around, which gives me the opportunity to write a little bit less but take a more indepth look at what each team has done over a period of time, rather than just finding creative ways to say X scored __ points, Y scored ___ points, and the team won/lost. This week we'll look at four BIFL franchises. I hope you enjoy it, and if you didn't get mentioned this week, rest assured that your time will come soon.