Fantasy Football Update

Week 10 of the NFL season concludes tonight and more importantly, week 10 of the Fantasy Football season concludes tonight as well. That means only 3 or 4 more weeks in the regular season, depending on when your playoffs start and how many weeks and teams make the playoffs in your league. How are your teams doing?

In my $$$ league, I moved to 6-4 this week with a 92-33 victory over one of the first place teams. We have 3 divisions, 4 teams per division, each division leader plus 1 wild card team make the playoffs. I've had a tough time in this league but I'm still in position to win the money. Week 10 saw me starting my 5th QB of the season. Yes, injuries are a huge part of fantasy football. I drafted Carson Palmer and Matt Hasselbeck and assumed I wouldn't have to worry about QBs all season. Wrong. Both players performed uncharacteristically bad before succumbing to injuries. Next up, Matt Schaub and Kyle Orton. Both performed well above expectations only to get injured on the same week. I tried to grab Atlanta QB Matt Ryan off of waivers, but another manager snagged him so I ended up with Sage Rosenfels as my starting QB this week. Yikes.

Add to this, my #1 draft pick, Steven Jackson, was out for yet another week with a strained quad and I was without WR Santana Moss, who was enjoying his bye week. Yet somehow, I found a way to win.

I'm actually in a reasonably good position in the $$$ league. Despite being in 5th place overall, my team is 1st in total points scored. Which means three things. One, my team scores a lot of points. Two, my team will have the wild card tie breaker advantage if needed, and three, my team is the victim of unfortunate scheduling.

I'm one game out of first place in my division and I still have a head to head matchup against the team that is in front of me. I just need my players to get healthy in time for the playoffs and I think I can win the league.

Moving on to my Marathoners League. What a roller coaster season this has been. I drafted 14th in a 14 team league, which really, really hurt. The best RB available at #14 was Ryan Grant, who totally, totally sucked for the first 7 weeks but is finally getting healthy and putting up respectable numbers over the last 3 weeks. But it's hard to compete when your 1st round pick is scoring 7 or 8 points per week and other teams 1st round picks are putting up 30.

I started the season 1-3, only to win 4 straight, only to lose my last 2. So I'm sitting at 5-5, with 3 weeks left in the regular season. Top 8 teams make the playoffs in this league, so although 5-5 isn't where I want to be, it will probably be good enough for 7th or 8th place, assuming I win 2 of the next 3. Again, if I can make it to the playoffs healthy, I have a chance. Although, realistically, this probably isn't my year in the Marathoners League. Stupid 14th pick!

Finally, my son's team moved to 5-4-1 this week, good for 3rd place overall, with the top 4 making the playoffs. Again, his team is #1 in total points scored and the victim of bad scheduling. I predict he wins the championship.

What do I mean by bad scheduling? Assume your team scores the 2nd most points of any team in your league almost every week. You'd have a pretty strong team and win most of your games, right? Not so fast, what if your schedule somehow managed to match you up against the team that scored the most points every week? Suddenly, 2nd most points isn't quite good enough. So even though you would have won against 10 out of the other 11 teams in your league, you were unfortunate enough to have been playing against the 1 team who could and did beat you that week. I know, fantasy football's just not fair.

OK. Sorry to bore you with fantasy football. I just needed a well earned break from politics for a minute.