Monday, November 14, 2005

Fantasy Football Heaven/Hell

For those of you who don't know me I am a Fantasy Football owner. I love it. I love the NFL and fantasy leagues make it that much more enjoyable to me. Every year I play in a few leagues. This year has been somewhat troubling. There is one league I started with a bunch of poker buddies on ESPN. I run that league. My team will be 2-8 at the end of the night. Worst record in the league. It sucks, but I'm not that bothered by it. Things out of my control have caused me to lose, like injuries. Plus it's only $10.

Then there are the 2 leagues that mean something to me. Both are on CBS Sportsline. There is the team I share with my boy BillyB, Swamp Nutz, and my other team, Killed For Less. This is Billy and I's 5th year in the American Fantasy Football League. It's a tough year. Injury after injury is killing us. No matter what we do, it doesn't work. This week for example we entered at 3-6 but only 2 games out. We made some trades in a last ditch effort to produce victories. We got Cedric Benson for Antonio Chatman, and traded our stud Torry Holt for Joey Galloway and Jimmy Smith. The trades appeared to be working for us, at first. Cedric Benson was tearing up the 49ers defense until he had his leg rolled up on. Next thing we knew he was being carted off the field. He had already gained 50 yards, and was within scoring range at the time, and appeared to be just warming up. Yet again we were bitten by the injury bug. Jonathan Wells a midweek pick up off the waiver wire worked out for us. He started for our original RB Domanick Davis who didn't play DUE TO INJURY this week. He got 75 yards and a TD for us. So that worked. Joey Galloway joined are team and showed us why we wanted him right away collecting 131 yards and a TD. Awesome. Byron Leftwich, our backup QB, showed why we drafted him to use on Drew Brees' bye by throwing a long TD score as well. Another move I made during the week was picking up Kicker Matt Stover. Our kickers were both stuck on disappointing offenses and not scoring. Matt Stover has been the Ravens entire offense this year and has racked up a decent amount of points. Points were at a premium for us, especially in this win or our seasons done week. So I tried something. I put Stover in and took Ryan Longwell out. Result? Stover scored 4 points. Longwell scored 21. We lose. All that shit we did during the week and we lose on that? Fuck you fantasy football.

Now this brings me to Killed for Less. I bought this team in a league full of people I don't know. It cost $40. (Swamp Nutz is $125 a season.) Killed for Less is the complete opposite of Swamp Nutz. I can do absolutely no wrong in this league. I have a stacked roster, and am by far the highest scoring team in the league. Of the 10 weeks (including this week) played so far I have been the high scorer 7 times. As a result I sit at 8-2 with a comfy lead in my division. This week though I figured to suffer a letdown. My main beast Ladainian Tomlinson was on the bye, along with my other starting Running back Rudi Johnson also being off. So I had to pick up to RB's off the scrap heap to fill in. I was fully prepared to lose. I got Greg Jones of the Jacksonville Jaguars and Samkon Gado from the Packers. Result? Jones 19 points, Gado 28. See what I'm talking about? I can start my mother at QB next week and she will somehow find a way to get me at least 25 points.

It's totally frustrating to me. I'm not even enjoying the fact that Killed For Less is killing people cuz of Swamp Nutz. Swamp Nutz is and always will be the one of my teams that truly matters to me. Now I have to deal with basically just playing out the string in these last 4 games. Bill and I aren't gonna quit, and were not gonna try to lose on purpose so we can get first pick next year. We're gonna do everything we can to win and try to fuck up somebody else's season. That's all we can do. Killed For Less will probably go on to win the championship in my other league, and don't get me wrong, that would be nice. Just not as nice as a victory for Swamp Nutz would have been.

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