Effor.com

Ok, I’ve got the bug.  I got it from a coworker when he invited me to join a fantasy football league late last summer.  I’d never played before, and to be honest, I always thought it was a bit silly.

How times change!

I got lucky with a few picks in our draft last year, did a lot of homework before each game, and got really lucky during the year a few times - like the Monday Night game when Green bay was playing Denver.   Here’s the story….

I had Greg Jennings, the guy I was playing had Bret Favre, and I was up by one point when the game went into overtime.  I really didn’t care who won the game, I wanted to beat my opponent!  I was hoping that Denver would win the toss and score, because then I’d win.  But nooooo, Green Bay wins the toss and Favre drops back to pass on the first play of OT…..

I was sunk.  I’d lose if Favre completed one or two passes for just a few yards.  I was chatting via IM with another team owner in our league and all I could think of to type was “repeat after me - throw it to jennings!” because that was the only possible way I could win.  (We have a PPR league, where the receiver gets a point for every catch, a point for every 10 yards he gains, and 6 points for a TD.  The quarterback only gets a point for every 20 passing yards and 4 points per TD.)

So just after I type the “throw it to jennings” comment on IM, Favre throws a long (about 80 yards) TD pass to Jennings.   Favre (and my opponent that week) got 8 points (4 for the yardage and 4 for the TD), while me and Jennings got 14 points (8 for the yardage and 6 for the TD) so I win “easily” by 7 points….

If I wasn’t hooked before, I was as of that week!

I think it’s the way that each week is so unpredictable.  I was in a “Pick ‘em” league a couple of years ago, and it proved fairly easy to pick a majority of the NFL teams that would win each week.  I think I had a win ratio of about 80% - which was good enough to win that league that year.

But in Fantasy Football, in any given week, some no name player (like Greg Jennings at the time) could come up big for you. 

I drafted Jason Whitten (a TE with the Cowboys) as a backup for my “main” TE Kellen Winslow in the 9th round of our draft last year!  He ended up being the top TE in our FFL, but there wasn’t much (ie any) skill involved in drafting him….  I just needed someone to play during Winslow’s bye week.  Lucky pick, ’cause I don’t think I’d ever heard of him. 

But I ended up putting him into my starting lineup much of the year because Winslow was on the injury report much of the year - and I refuse to put a player into my lineup that’s listed as probable or doubtful - no matter how often they’ve played with the same status in the past.  So Whitten started for me most weeks, and he helped me win most weeks.

To make a long story even longer, I somehow managed to win our league championship last year, going 13 and 1.  I’m definitely hooked now - take a look at the trophy on my mantle!

With that as a background - is it too early to start ranking players in order to prepare for our draft in a few months? 

I’m asking because I’ve already started my cheat sheets, I’ve already read a bunch of projected stats on other sites, and I can’t wait until draft day! 

Crap - I think that means I’m hooked….

gk

Tags: BDFFLP, Fantasy Football, Favre, FFL, Football, Jennings, NFL, Whitten

This entry was posted on Monday, May 12th, 2008 at 9:09 pm and is filed under Sports. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.