There's something about Brett-y

Brett Favre deserves his own post in terms of 'start him' or 'sit him'. Not to go all Dan Quayle on y'all (yes, there were dumb Republicans pre-W) but this will go one of a number of ways:

• The ol' gunslinger comes out like he did after his dad died and lights up an uninterested CHI secondary.


• The ol' interception machine comes out like he's done recently and still manages to throw a bunch of completions... to an uniniterested CHI secondary.


• The ol' (insert nickname that implies mediocrity here) comes out and throws for 180-220 yds and 1-2 TD and 1 INT.

Does that cover all the scenarios? If you had to pin me down, I'd say he's worth the risk in deeper leagues only.

Who to start/bench in Week 17

Well, it's 12:47 pm EST on Saturday and I don't think I'll have time to figure out a table where I rank players and compare them to where other sites ranked them. I guess I'll play with that in the offseason and keep you all waiting (ah, who am I kidding? No one's reading this thing yet!). So, here's a quick list of 'common sense' thoughts for Week 17, where a lot of players will sit, so 'common sense' kinda goes out the window a bit. Still here are some thoughts that SHOULD keep you from feeling stupid once the games are over (cuz that's really what it's all about!).

Guys to start:

• Players on teams with something to play for. That means all Chargers, Rams, Ravens, and maybe even the Pats. You catch my drift.


• Second stringers on teams (both good and bad) with nothing to play for. That means take a good luck at backups for the Bears, such as Mark Bradley (who filled in admirably when Berrian went down for a time), Cedric Benson and even Adrian Peterson. Another example would be Saints wideouts like Terrance Copper and maybe even Devery Henderson (Horn is hurt, I think and Colston may sit and SOMEONE has to catch the damn ball for the Saints this week).
  
  This group also includes riskier plays like backups on losing teams that coaches may want to get one last look at, such as maybe Mike Williams for DET (I'm reaching here, I know).


• Defenses playing against teams that are benching many offensive starters.

Guys to bench:

• The reverse of what I recommended above, mainly first stringers on teams with nothing to play for. So no Grossman, T Jones and Berrian for CHI and Brees/Deuce/Bush/Colston for the Saints.

Beyond this, it all comes down to trust. Do you trust Eli to lead the G-men into the playoffs? Do you trust LT2 to play the whole game? Go with that and you won't feel stupid afterwards, I promise!

Buttbags of the Year (BBOTYs)

(name inspired by Catalina from 'My Name is Earl". Her definition: "it's a bag of butts". Short and to the point; I like it!)

It's always been easier for me to criticize rather than praise, so here's who sucked for me this year:

1. Daunte Culpepper: Need I say more? He was actually serviceable until he was benched (but he WAS benched, making him my #1 goat). Until that happened, I HAD to start him, due to what happened to my #2 QB...


2. Trent Green / Herm Edwards: I didn't expect much from Trent and boy did I get it! Went down in Week 1 with a severe concussion forcing me to start Daunte more than I would've liked and work the waiver wire like mad. I finally settled on his backup, Damon Huard, who only through something like 10 TD to 1 INT and things were going great until Herm "you play to win the damn game" Edwards stuck Trent back in there and I don't think KC has won since. Oh, they beat OAK? So freakin' what!


3. Byron Leftwich / David Garrard: As I said earlier, I traded FOR him and he promptly screwed up his ankle in practice. Okay, no prob, Garrard was solid last year. Yeah, well that was LAST year. I'll never forget the week I started him against IND but benched Jones-Drew thinking IND would FINALLY stack up against the run and Garrard could make plays with his arm AND with his legs. That's pretty much when the name for this blog was born.


4. Hines Ward: Luckily, I drafted him late, but we still had a rocky relationship. If I sat him, he went for 80+ yds and a TD. If I started him, he went for 30 yds and no TD. I ultimately had to trade him for Big Ben (I had QB problems, couldn't you tell?) and I actually think I won that trade.


5. Jason Witten: With Drew running the show, he always stayed in to block. In the early days of the Romo Empire, he flourished as Tony's safety valve. Soon, though, Romo got more comfortable with his wideouts and Witten became merely serviceable.


6. Clinton Portis: to channel Denny Green, "he WAS what I THOUGHT he was!". So crown his ass! Errr... MY ass! Oh, wait, that's not right either. Ahem... anyway, I expected the slow start; I wasn't expecting the season-ending injury midway through the season. I have him ranked this low since I WAS able to pull off my amazing trade for Marion Barber to mitigate the loss.

I could go on with goats that weren't on any of my teams, like Randy Moss or Lamont Jordan, but since they never caused me any pain that I could put into words, it'd merely be a list of names without a lot of witty commentary and, really, who wants to read that? :)

Did you do ANYTHING right this year?

Yep! For starters, I snagged Marques Colston in all 3 leagues and also snagged Devery Henderson when Colston went down. That helped out a lot across the board, at least until weeks 15 and 16 when Brees struggled.

In my 8 team yahoo league I drafted LT2, Harrison, Ronnie Brown, Dillon and Bulger as my core. Witten WAS my TE but Colston filled that slot since he was TE-eligible in yahoo. I picked up Dante' Stallworth and later, Reggie Brown for my other WR (Stallworth did cost me a game b/c he went down during warmups for the San Fran game and I was nowhere near a computer when I heard). Things were going along fine until 1) Ronnie Brown got hurt and 2) Bulger and my #2 QB (we start 2) Delhomme decided to start sucking in unison. I went into a swoon and finally came out of it thanks to Vince Young (he just wins games in fantasy land, too!) and Matt Leinart. I made the playoffs at 8-6 and finished 2nd, losing by just 15 points. Now, I COULD get upset b/c I started Leinart (who got hurt) over Young (who was awesome) but Leinart WAS doing well pre-injury (160+ yds and a TD) and you can't predict injuries, so I have to just chalk this up to fate or luck or whatever. I also benched Roy Williams (playing against CHI) in favor of Devery (playing against NYG and if there's one thing I know, it's that NY can't cover anyone this year); I thought between the CHI D, Kitna's recent struggles and Williams recent disappearing act, I made the right call. Sadly, 'twas a windy day in the Meadowlands and Brees didn't throw for much and Devery gave me a goose egg.

In my 10 team yahoo league which featured fractional points and valued TDs way too much, I struggled even with a healthy Portis, mainly b/c Ocho Cinco wasn't catching TDs and Brees hadn't emerged yet. Luckily, everything came together at the same time: Portis got hurt, Ocho had a couple of good games and Brees started playing like an MVP. Why is Portis' injury good? It openned up a spot for me to make the following trade, which made sense in this league: Dunn/Ocho for Marion Barber and Reggie Brown. I leveraged Ocho's 2 decent games for a TD machine and a WR who may not get yardage but seemed to also be good for a TD every week. I rode this team from 2-6 to 8-6, but unfortunately sputtered out once Brees did (he took Colston and Devery down with him).

Bottom line: I did a lot of things right this year, so I still believe I know what I'm talking about!

Speaking of 'F'

Funny story here. In this league where I made all these bad choices ('Bad Idea Jeans', anyone?) my team was orignally called "Pardon the Domination" (b/c I had won last year and cockily thought I'd do so again, thus becoming a dominator). I had been watching a lot of PTI and I was able to take their logo and turn the I into a D. I thought I was SOOOOOO cool. Yeah, well, anyway... after a loss, I decided it was time for a new name. Having recently seen Dwight on "The Office" simply say "F" rather than the whole word, I thought it made sense. It's what I said every time I lost and it was also the grade I deserved. So I renamed my team "F---", which doubly meant the F bomb as well as "F minus minus minus". Our commish, though, changed the name back and locked that feature so I couldn't undo it. Can't say I blame him.

Bottom line: know your audience before renaming your team something vulgar.

So, how else did you F up your season?

I alluded to it earlier, but I made some bad decisions regarding TJ. The most glaring one was the Bengals Thursday night game at home against the Ravens. "Hey, it's the Ravens! They have a great pass D!" I thought. "Hey, the Bengals have a horrible pass D and Baltimore's Mark Clayton's been pretty good these past couple of weeks!" I thought.

"I'll show you!" the gods of FFB thought. Baltimore, playing on the road, just couldn't overcome the short turnaround from their Sunday game, while the Bengals were energized by their home crowd.

Bottom line: give extra consideration to players playing primetime games at home on short rest and try to avoid players from the road team.

Bottom bottom line: without looking at the stats, it seems to me that most of the Thursday night games have been stinkers. Always start your studs but if you need to choose from players on the 2nd tier or lower, choose the ones that get a full week to rest up and heal.

What have we learned, Charlie Brown?

I have to admit, I was feeling really cocky after winning my 'big money' CBS Sportsline twelve team league last year. So when we got the ability to trade draft picks and I was assigned the 2nd pick, I unfortunately had my "I'm Keith Hernandez!" moment and traded DOWN to either 4 or 5 in round 1 and the corresponding pick in round 2 (snake-style draft). All my other picks remained the same, including having the 2nd pick of round 3, but the damage was already done. See, my reasoning was without the #1 pick, I wasn't guaranteed Tomlinson and I was worried about LJ (shouldn't have been) and Alexander (rightly so). So why not trade down in round 1 and get a better 2nd round pick at the same time? Well, I took Rudi Johnson #1 and Corey Dillon #2 (there was a run on RBs as the draft snaked back around), followed by Harrison #3. I also grabbed Daunte and Trent Green as my QBs (we start 1) and right now you're all probably rolling your eyes. Long story short, Rudi was average for a few weeks and Marvin was below average. Along the way I picked Phillip Rivers off the wire. Then, out of the corner of my eye I saw Kevin Jones was thriving in Mike Martz' offense and TJ Housh was lighting it up since Chris Henry was suspended and Ocho Cinco couldn't get open to save his life. The guy proposed the trade: Rivers/Rudi/Marv for Leftwich/KJ/TJ and I thought I was robbing the guy! Well, Leftwich never played a down for me, and adding Garrard to my roster didn't make up for it. KJ was great but I had to deal with his Week 8 bye and then HE got hurt. And then I got stupid with TJ and benched him a couple of times; more on this one later.

Bottom line: don't be like me or Keith Hernandez. Had I kept my pick, I wouldn't have had LT2, but I would've had LJ and that could've been enough. I started off 6-3 and currently sit at 6-10 and it's mostly due to poor lineup decisions stemming from not having a QB and RB I can confidently plug in each week. I trusted other things when I should've trusted my gut and 'common sense', which is why I decided to start this blog. More to follow!

Who am I and why am I here?

I've been playing this game for four years now. I'll admit I don't know everything, but I know enough and I certainly know as much as the so called 'experts' and 'gurus' that seem to make good livings working for Yahoo! and CBS Sportsline (where my teams are). I've heard some pretty bizarre things come out of these guys' mouths... err... flow from their keyboards onto their webpages; stuff that back in Year 1 cost me some games until I learned how to weed through the BS. Once I did, I managed to consistently place in the top 3 in my two Yahoo leagues year in and year out and I won my Sportsline league last year (thank you Shaun Alexander!).

My goal for this blog is to help others learn from my mistakes and also poke fun at what I see as 'the establishment' when it comes to FFB advice. And by 'establishment' I mean guys such as Yahoo's Brandon Do-I-Look-Like-I'm-Having-Fun?ston: Gawd, doesn't he look angry? How can he be angry when he's getting PAID to write about fantasy sports?

Then there's those guys on Comcast Sportsnet's 'Fantasy Fix' show. I'm pretty damn sure I can rock a 5 o'clock shadow better than John Hansen and look less awkward on camera than that guy they bring on at the end to help answer email (so notable I can't even remember his name!) and I KNOW I'm more successful than that Steve Czaban guy down in DC who I think traded Ocho Cinco for Todd Heap! I must say, though, that there's some good info on that show.

Not so with these guys from CBS Sportsline (hey, my 7 year old nieces can wear their hats backwards. Does that mean they can give fantasy advice for CBS too?):

I particularly 'love' their weekly 'Fantasy v. Reality' articles where each week they'll flip-flop like so: one week they'll say something like "Fantasy: Jake Delhomme is good" (b/c they think he isn't, see?) and then the next week they say "Reality: Jake Delhomme is good" (b/c now they think he IS!). Mwuh?????

I'll be honest, I probably won't have a ton of original content. I just don't have the time. I'll rank players when I feel like it, but more often than not I'll probably just poke holes in other sites' rankings and articles ("you think I should start Steve McNair over Tom Brady? Are you high???"). I've always been better at criticizing others than coming up with original ideas and, you know what? I'm okay with that! Enjoy!