Week Done: It's Done

Ok, so my plan to write a preview swung in the complete other direction, and I ended up not even recapping last week. I'll blame holiday craziness. Yeah, that's the ticket. Truthfully, I'm just burned out on these. I'm surprised I made it as far as I did. I deserve a round of applause. Thanks.

As for our team, let's see what they deserve. For the championship we were matched up against the best team in the league by record and point total. We were second in both regards, so what a matchup we had here, folks. The sad truth is the injuries to Gronk and Welker kind of caught up with us. Our receivers for the last two weeks were Edelman, Nelson, and Decker. Not bad really, but at tight end we were hurting. We randomly grabbed some Eagles guy, but he didn't do much either week.

So here's how it broke down. Peyton Manning was very good both weeks. In week 16 he went and beat the season TD record with 4 of those and 32 points for us. Two of those were to Decker who also compiled 130 yards and 25 points. No more TDs for us, though. Some yards here and there. Nothing from our second RB. Phil Dawson had 11. Defense sucked. Here, check for yourselves:

 

Our opponent, on the other hand, cheated for 7 TDs from position players and 2 more from Nick Foles. I'm feeling lazy, so here all that is:

 

As you can see, his team is pretty balanced. And his defense doesn't suck. So after Week 16 we were down almost 20. Certainly not impossible to overcome but not where you want to be.

 

Onto Week 17 we go! Luckily Manning had more records to break, so Denver was trying for a while against the Raiders. He had 4 TDs again and also took over the record for most passing yards in a season, but because they were up so much he sat out some in the second half and only ended up with 26 total points. Decker only had one TD this time but almost no yards, while Jordy Nelson had many yards but no TDs. 8 for Decker and 16 for Nelson. Edelman had no TDs but did have a 2 point conversion for 8 points as well. Nothing from tight end again, though. Woodhead kind of vanished these last two weeks as well, but Peyton Hillis managed 5 points. Dawson was good and the Packers defense, yet again, was terrible. In the end we managed the exact same number of points as Week 16:

 

Our opponent was not as good this week, but still had a nice spread of points. Here, look:

In fact, you could argue that we lost this championship because of the disparity in defense. So in the end we should all blame Victor and his stupid Green Bay Packers and their stupid coach who should have gone for two but got bailed out by three 4th down conversions but he's still stupid. But it's important not to feel bitter about this ending. Every year we have advanced farther than the last one. So tune in for the next exciting edition* of White Devils Football! It can only end one way now!! Peace.

* Disclaimer: No one knows when next time will be. This stuff takes years of preparation.

 

Week 15: Playoffs 1.2: Fuck Jamaal Charles

This marked the second week of the first round of the playoffs. To recap, we entered this week with a 122-96 lead.

This week we actually had some important people play on Thursday night. The game featured the Broncos and San Diego, meaning we had Manning, Decker, and Woodhead all in play. Unfortunately none of them had a great game. Manning managed 2 TDs, but was under 300 yards and had an INT as well. He totaled 17 points. Decker only had 42 yards for 4 points, and Woodhead was even worse with 3 points. Not what we were hoping for from those particular players, but with our lead it should be enough.

Unless fuck head Jamaal Charles does something stupid like score 5 TDs and have over 200 yards. Charles had a great week last week when he contributed 27 points. But this week he cheated and scored 51 points. Yes, a two-week total of 78 points from a running back. Totally fair. So that basically wiped out our lead.

Luckily, at the same time Julian Edelman was putting up 19 points with 139 yards and a TD. Brady likes his white guys. Phil Dawson was also doing kicker things a lot. Four field goals and three etra points totaled 17 for us. Jordan Cameron and Peyton Hills, however, did not do much for us. Two points each actually. That's four total.

Luckily our opponent's other players didn't do much either. Cobb was still out and Pryor was still benched, though he did come in for one series and managed an INT for us to give him -1 points. Thanks Terrelle. Denarius Moore had 4 points and LeSean McCoy only had 9. The Patriots defense gave up some late points and contributed 5 points.

Then came the Dallas-Green Bay game. Important for us because we have the GB defense and Jordy Neslon. Important for him because he had the Dallas kicker. Now this promised to be a low-scoring affair since both defenses are quite goo....Oh, 37 to 36 you say? Oh that's right. Both defenses are good....at giving up points. LOL guys, LOL. Well, at least Jordy scored a TD and had 61 yards for 12 points. But Dan Bailey, the aforementioned kicker, had just 5 field goals and 3 extra points for a measly 24 points. That means his kicker outscored any individual on our team this week. That's good, right? Well, we still had the GB defense to save us. And they sort of did even while giving up 36 points. With just minutes left in the game the defense had produced -5 points. But then good old Tony came through with not one but two picks. This gave our defense 4 more points.

So we were left with one game on Monday night. We had no one in this game, but our opponent had Joique Bell. Thankfully, Reggie Bush returned for this game, relegating Bell back to second string. We had a lead of 197 to 188 going into this game. Bell wasn't much of a factor, tallying 20+ yards passing and receiving, giving him 4 for the game.

For those of you that can't add, that means we were victorious and we proceed to the championship round. Like last round, this will be a two week round. We're against the only team to score more points than us, but they don't have our heart. No Thursday games this week, so I'll try to throw up a little preview on Friday. Try not to flip over too man cars in celebration this week.

Week Playoffs: Round 1: Week 1: Which Is Really Week 14

Our playoffs have begun. Four teams made, and there are two rounds consisting of two weeks each. I think that pretty much explains everything. On to the action.

The schedule made this a rather exciting week for us. Our opponent was the Arabian Bomb Squad. Of his nine players, eight were playing in the one o'clock games. On the other hand, we had 6 of our nine in the 4:30 games. Our opponent got some huge games. He had Jamaal Charles and LeSean McCoy. Charles ran for over 150 yards and had 2 TDs while McCoy had over 200 yards and 2 TDs. Together they put up a decent 60 points. He also got some quality points from Joique Bell with 15 and Charles Clay with 21. Luckily the Patriots defense ranks somewhere between poor and poor, so they managed to remove 4 of his points. Also, he got zeros from Randall Cobb (understandable due to his not playing), Terrelle Pryor (understandable due to his coach not wanting him to play), and Demarius Moore (see note about Cobb). With only his kicker left to play, he had 92 points. Here's how his scoreboard looked:

Note: At the time of this publication, his kicker is still playing. For the bad Cowboys.

On our end we had the Green Bay defense, Edelman, and Gronk playing in the early games. Green Bay played with my heart for a while, but managed to hold at 21 points allowed while picking up an INT and a fumble recovery for 7 decent points. The Patriots managed to piss me off until the last second. Somehow they could not score against the Browns. To add injury to worthlessness, Gronk went down with season-ending ACL explosions. He only had 30 yards at the time. Also, since the Patriots couldn't score, Edelman had almost nothing for most of the game. But then God or Jesus or whoever really hates the Browns stepped in. First, Edelman picked up a 2 point conversion, and later he grabbed a TD as the Patriots came back in improbable fashion. Edelman's final tally was 14. This put us down quite a bit, but we still had most of our big guns left.

First up was Peyton "I Love Cold Weather" Manning. Well this time the cold was not an issue for the old man. Manning had nearly 400 yards, no INTs, and 4 TDs. He didn't even fumble. 31 points for him. Then there was Danny "I'm Playing the Giants!!!" Woodhead. He had his usual Woodheadian performance with 42, 52, and 1 TD for 15 points. Alert scouting on our part imformed us that Peyton "I'm on the Giants??" Hillis was going to suit up this week, so even though AP went down and Gerhart got some quality time, Hillis made us not feel too bad about it by scoring a TD and grabbing 7 points. Wes "I'm Running Out of These" Welker managed 60 yards and a TD before being concussed again. He'll probably be out next week, but this week he got us 12 points. Eric "I Score 4 TDs a Week" Decker had 1 TD, but 117 yards for 17 points. And finally, Phil "Dawson" had 4 field goals and blah blah for 15 points. This put our final tally at 122. Here's some evidence:

So we enter the second week in a good place, up roughly 30. We will have to replace Gronk and probably Welker, but we have enough random white receivers I think. That's all for now. On to next week.

Week 13: Playoffs!?

This will be a short one because it's been an oddly busy week. This is in addition to the fact that I'm lazy. Bad combo.

Luckily I can basically just talk about Eric Decker this week. It seemed early in the week we were going to lose the receiver roulette game because we played Jordy Nelson. Green Bay did not do well on Thanksgiving, and Jordy could only muster 14 yards for 1 point. But we also randomly selected Welker and Decker. Welker didn't do much, but that's probably because Decker was busy having the game of his life. He amassed 174 yards and 4! touchdowns. This came out to 41 points. I think this is the highest single game total for us yet by one player (we didn't play Manning for his Week 1 7 TD performance).

As a bonus, all those TDs were thrown by Peyton Manning. He actually had a 5th, but also a couple INTs. Manning tallied 32 points for us. Between him and Decker we had 73. Our opponent only ended up with 82. With our 12 kicker points we didn't need anyone else.

On Tuesday I was perusing the standings to see if we had managed to take over first place yet. The answer is no because the one guy ahead of us won as well. When I checked the schedule to see if we played him again I was in for a shock. Wait, that needs something. Try again. When I checked the schedule to see if we played him again I was in for a shock!! The schedule ended!!! What could it mean?? Playoffs?! That's right, I didn't even realize it, but week 13 was the final regular season week. With our win we maintained 3rd place and are officially in the playoffs.

These playoffs are structured as two rounds each of which is two weeks long. I will attempt to give more frequent updates about our status during this time. We are playing the Arabian Bomb Squad. Only one offensive team may advance! We beat the Arabs in Week 10 in an ugly 63-37 affair. It appears this guy is not actually paying attention. He still has Terrelle Pryor and Randall Cobb starting. That seems good for us. Then again he somehow won his division with Terrelle Pryor and Randall Cobb hurt. Who can figure this crazy, kooky game, am I right???

Week 12: Receiver Roulette

This week was going to be an odd one. The Patriots and Broncos played each other on Sunday night. With our kicker playing Monday we had more than half our players going in the final two games of the week.

As expected we entered Sunday night losing. Our opponent managed to rack up 74 points, mostly on the strength of Eddy Lacy (21), Jason Witten (15), and Sebastian Janikowski??? (15). The last guy is a kicker, and that would be a lot for a kicker.

We had 28 going into the big game, 18 of which was from Danny Woodhead. Thank Jeebus for him. Another 5 from Jordy and 5 from the defense to compliment zero from random running back number 78 and we were at our number.

But with Peyton Manning, Wes Welker, Gronk, Amendola, and Dawson still to play ESPN was projecting us to win. So was I. Unfortunately we ran into two problems.

First, Manning played basically his worst game of the year. If you are a Denver fan I'd be concerned about Manning apparently freezing to death in cold weather. Then again, a Super Bowl in New York in February should be pleasant enough. Manning did squeeze in two TDs, but he only had 150 yards to go with it. Compounding our usual top scorer sucking, his crapitude meant Welker didn't get much action. Then again he sucked enough on his own in this one. Final total: 31 yards, no TDS, 3 points. Still beats Eric Decker's 5 yards and no points I guess.

At least Gronk showed up. He managed 90 yards and TD for 15 points. But Amendola's production is a good example of our other problem. He only had 3 catches for 17 yards. Meanwhile, Julian Edelman had 110 yards and two TDs. Let's see, 1 point versus 23. Hmmm. Basically we have 3 receivers on the bench each week, and any one of them could have a huge game. Ok, maybe not Brian Hartline. But with two receivers on the Patriots and two on the Broncos it's highly unlikely both from the same team will have a big game. So there's only one solution. I'm making Victor choose receivers. If we lose it's his fault.

Anyway, back to the results. After the Sunday games we were down 77 to 59. We just needed 5 or 6 field goals from Phil Dawson. He did not kick that many field goals. After a nice little run a few weeks ago we seem to have fallen into the Jets mode of alternating wins and loses. Yet again no team tied with or ahead of us managed to win this week. We are still one back in the division and third overall. Except now there's about 15 out of 12 teams with the same record as us. Here, look:

 

That's all I got.

Week 11: In a Rush, Bad Title

This one needs to be quick. For some reason I'm working early each day this week. But it's ok because this was a boring week anyway.

Our full team was back in action, but we seem to have lost some of the mojo from earlier in the season. We only had a couple players in the Sunday day games. Danny Woodhead finally had a bad week, managing just 3 points total. But Peyton Hillis had a worse week, managing to just be deactivated once. Deactivation is somehow worth no points. Looks like we need a new running back.

Phil Dawson managed 10 points in his team's lose. Pretty good there Phil. The Packers also managed to lose to Eli and the streaking Giants. But they did manage an interception. Doubtful they would have gotten one against Eli, but somehow they did. So that contributed to a 6 point effort.

This left Manning, Welker, and Decker for Sunday night, and Amendola and Gronk for Monday night. Needless to say, we were losing going into Sunday night. But we were only losing 35 to 19. and our opponent had no one left. Some solid defense these last two weeks.

Denver started off really slow, at least in regards to our players. In fact, we were still losing late in that game. But a few passes to Welker and Decker to go with Manning's subpar 1 TD performance gave us enough to jump in front. On Monday Amendola added 4 points, and Gronk added 11. So a comfortable win, and yet it does not inspire confidence.

Perhaps the most interesting part of the week was our strange bench results. Brees was exactly the same as Manning with 14 points. Toby Gerhart surpassed both our running back starters with 6 points. We benched Jordy Nelson since he had no QB, and he ended up with 117 yards receiving for 11 points, more than any of our other receivers. And Garrett Graham, the random tight end I picked up to cover the position in the bye weeks of Gronk and Cameron, had 136 yards and a TD for 17 points. It's all here for your perusal:

On the extra plus side, nearly every team ahead or tied with us lost. We are currently 7-4. In our division there is one team at 8-3, so we are now one game back of the lead there. In the other division there are two teams tied at 7-4 as well. This puts us currently in 3rd place with a one game cushion. But there are four teams one game back, so this race is far from over.

Week 10: A Jihad on Us?

This week the Patriots and some other teams were on a bye. As everyone certainly recalls from last week, the Patriots are the other team that we really on somewhat heavily. Oh, and the Browns were on a bye, too. I guess they matter a little. This would mark the end of our toughest two week stretch. We already lost the first week. Could we do better this time?

Our opponent this week was none other than the infamous Arabian Bomb Squad. That meant we were playing for the entire U S of A this week. Except maybe for Mike. It's hard to say which side he's on. The ABS is first in the other division and had a better record than us so a win would be somewhat extra valuable. For America.

Since the Browns and Patriots were both on bye we were left with zero tight ends. I somewhat randomly grabbed one. His name is Garrett Graham. Super white sounding. He also played like he is white, amassing 2 catches for 18 yards and one fantasy point.

Some other people that did little for us this week:

Peyton Hillis, 21 yards negated by a fumble for 0 points.

Wes Welker, 3 catches for 21 yards for 2 points.

Packers Defense, 27 points allowed, 3 sacks and a fumble recovery for 2 points.

Kind of a down week here. So down, in fact, that the people who scored 5 points for us didn't make the crap list above. Those two people would be Eric Decker and Jordy Nelson. Nelson has a valid excuse at least. He was being thrown to by Seneca "Not Aaron Rodgers" Wallace, who also got hurt. Then he was being thrown to by Can't Be Bothered "Also Not Aaron Rodgers" To Look This Guy's Name Up. So all in all his 50+ yards were a nice bonus. Mr. Decker may be riding the pine soon due to his inconsistency. This week he managed just 3 catches for 52 yards.

Somehow even though Decker and Welker didn't participate, Peyton Manning still threw for 4 TDs. He added 330 yards and one old man fumble. This totaled 27 points. Danny Woodhead also did his thing. Not many yards this week, but he did have a TD. This gave him 9 points for the week. Woodhead is average 8.8 points a game. Quite a startling number for one of our running backs.

But the real star of this week was Mr. Philip Q. Dawson. As I've been saying all these weeks, kickers are a vital and valuable addition to any group of people looking to do great things. P-Daw kicked three field goals, one of which was over 50! yards. This gave him 12 points, second most by any player this week for us. That's a good sign right?

Well it is when you play the kind of defense the Devils have been known to play in Week 10 of 2013. We held those dirty Arabs to a measly 37 points. Granted, their best running back and defense were both on a bye and left in the lineup, but that's probably only because we scared them into a bye. So this week the Devils win with the third worst score. We are no longer close to leading in points, but due to our previous dominance we are still second in that category. Not dominance. We are first in that. Second in points. Unfortunately, every other team tied or ahead of us also won, so no ground was gained this week.

As you can see, we sit in a cluster of three 6-4 teams with two teams ahead and three 5-5 teams behind. We are officially in 3rd place due to our points advantage, but there's plenty of fake football left to be played. Ladies and gentlemen, we have a playoff race.

Week 9: Scrub Team Go Time

Being so heavily invested in Broncos and Patriots means that there are two weeks where many of our top players are on byes. That happened to be week 9 and week 10. This week we were missing the top QB in the league, our top receiver, our third best receiver, and our newly acquired Peyton Hillis, half of the double-headed white running back doom squad.

At QB things would probably be fine since we also have the number two QB in the league, Drew Brees. In place of Hillis we trotted out Gerhart for the second and probably last time this season. He was last week's hero, so maybe once-in-a-lifetime performances can happen twice-in-a-lifetime. We slotted in Jordan Cameron at our flex position. The last receiver slot had to go to Brian Hartline or Danny Amendola. I think early in the week I put in Hartline because it was unclear if Amendola would play this week. Then I promptly forgot to check again or ask Victor about it, so Hartline was in.

Now, we had one big advantage. Our opponent also had two receivers on a bye as well as his defense. In addition, our opponent is clearly not paying attention any more. I brilliantly deduced this by noting that these three spots remained filled with his players on the bye. So even though we had Scrub Team Go Time, we should win easily, right?

Well, Brees ran into the Rex Ryan buzz saw that is the J-E-T-S. Now, he's Drew Brees, so he's never going to be terrible, but he only managed 2 TDs to go with 2 INTs for 19 total points. Cam Newton countered with 17 points, so basically a draw at QB.

At running back Danny Woodhead did his usual thing. No TD this week, but over 90 yards for 9 points. Gerhart also did his usual thing. One reception for 6 yards and no points.

Cleveland is really awesome, but for some reason Jordan Cameron seems to have retired. He actually had less production than Gerhart. For those who don't understand math, that means also no points. Luckily Gronk is back. He had a huge day with 143 yards and a TD. This equals 20 points.

Meanwhile, at receiver we got 3 points from Brian Hartline on Thursday night. Not so good.

Our normal kicker was also on a buy, so I dropped the immortal Brandon Weeden and grabbed Adam Vinatieri. He was so-so. He missed his first field goal, but made a couple more with some extra points. Unfortunately the Colts had to go for two a bunch of times, so just 6 for Vinatieri.

This brought us to the actually important Monday Night game: Packers vs. Bears. We still had the Packers defense and Jordy Nelson. Our opponent had Matt Forte, running back. Even with our meager production we were winning 57 to 41 thanks to our opponent operating at 66% strength. All we really needed was a semi-low scoring game or just a no-show from Matt Forte.

Well, Aaron Rodgers went ahead and got hurt early. For some reason the legend that is Seneca Wallace could not throw well, so Nelson was kind of screwed. Meanwhile, Matt Forte was crushing it, which was bad not only because he was racking up points, but also because it meant the Bears were scoring against our defense. Our lead was slowing slipping away, but we were still winning in the last 10 minutes of the game. But the Bears had the ball and they were running out the clock, which meant yards for Forte. The Bears kick a field goal with under a minute remaining. They've scored enough points to give us zero for our defense. Forte has 23 and Nelson has 5. This means we are down 2 points with roughly 48 seconds to go. But the Packers do have the ball, and they will need to pass. First play goes 15 yards to Nelson. Now we're within one. All we need is 3 yards to Nelson for a tie, 13 for a win. Next play, Best Player Ever Wallace gets sacked. Also, Green Bay has no timeouts. Not good. But there's time for one more play. And.........another sack. Awesome. So we lose by one.

Some final notes. The guy in front of us in our division had Rodgers, so he finally lost. That means we're still two games back. But at 5-4 things are a bit more log jammed now. Also, Amendola did play and had a mere 18 points. Whoops. No images today. Too sad.

Week 8: Gerhart of a Lion

This week shows the importance have having strong managers that put in the time and effort. Well, it will show that after I recap what happened.

Let's start with Thursday night. My meticulous preparation has me occasionally remembering to check if we have anyone playing on Thursdays. That reminds me to check that for tomorrow. Hold on a sec. No, but holy fuck our whole team is on a bye. Uh, we'll deal with that later. So we had no one playing on Thursday, but our opponent did. Some running back from Tampa. 5 points only. No big deal, but we went into Sunday down 5.

So Saturday night I remember that we have two tight ends, and I quickly set up a conference call with Victor. We hash out the relevant options, pouring over statistics and game tape. Wait, I think it's easier if I just post the transcript that I hired some old lady to keep:

 

 

That includes some follow up minutes from Sunday's pregame meeting. So as you can see we went with Jordy and benched Cameron.

So onto the early games we went. I must say, things did not look good. We only had two active players in the early games, Gronk and Dawson. Dawson is our kicker, so you may not know who I was talking about. Gronk was coming off a strong week but was weak this week (#poetry (#soldoutwithhastagusage)). He only managed 27 yards and no TDs. Just 2 points. Meanwhile, benched Cameron had over 80 yards for 8 points. OOPS.

San Fran scored a lot which is normally good for kickers. But, having played Jacksonville, they only managed to score touchdowns. This is less good for kickers. So six successful kicks for 6 points.

Meanwhile, our opponent also benefited slightly from the San Fran game. His QB was Colin Kapapereoransick. He didn't have a great game, but he did managed two rushing TDs to go with one passing. All in all, 27 points. We played Manning again, and he had a late game, but Drew Brees played early and had a monster day with 5 TDs and 33 points. Go bench team! So that made me not happy.

When the late games started we had scraped together 8 points with our opponent having 39. Now we both had a lot of players left, but let's just say it looked possible that the Devil's three game winning streak was at risk.

As you know by now, we are heavily invested in Denver. So when I got a chance to check scores this was the game of most interest. I looked in during the 3rd quarter with Denver losing 21 to 7. Luckily the 7 was from a TD pass to Welker, so we had some points from that. But we needed much more out of Manning and Co. to pull even.

At the same time our opponent was getting contributions up and down his lineup. No one stood out, but he got 10, 12 and 9 from various players in the late games.

So then I check back later in the Denver game. Denver managed to squeak out 38 more points in that time. Hm, that might help. Manning ended up with 4 TDs, but also 3 INTs. This gave him 22 points. Welker had 14 and Decker had 4. So decent in the end, but not great.

We also had Peyton Hillis in a late game. He didn't score this week, but he had over 80 yards and got us 8 points.

Going into the Sunday Night Game (caps required) we were losing 68 to 56. We still had carefully selected Jordy Nelson as well as Packers Defense and Toby Gerhart (more on Gerhart to come). Our opponent had Mason Crosby, kicker, and Jarret Boykin, RB, both for the Packers.

The Packers managed to gain a large lead in this game. This meant Mason Crosby kicked a lot. Five extra points and three field goals actually. This was worth 15 points. Also, his running back managed over 80 yards but did not score. So that was 23 more points from his players. But it also meant Jordy Nelson had 123 yards and 2 TDs for 24 points. BOOM. SUCK IT. Wait, we're still losing. But seriously, good managing us. Well, except for the Drew Brees and Jordan Cameron thing.

Ok, hold on, we still had Packers D and, uh, Toby Gerhart. Well the Packers were playing Minnesota. They aren't so good, so the defense had a good shot here. Unfortunately the Vikings put up a bunch of meaningless late points. The Packers managed some sacks and defensive TD though. The TD was big, giving us 10 points there. BUT WE WERE STILL LOSING BY ONE.

So this left us with dear old Toby. Toby had 3 points going into this game, and never more than 1 a game. This is what ESPN's fantasy news said about him going into this week:

"Adrian Peterson's backup has three carries and nine receptions on the season. Given the Vikings' ongoing issues at quarterback, Gerhart is not even a realistic handcuff play."

He had three TDs in three full years in the league. Could he manage 2 points for us???

Toby Gerhart: 1 rush, 2 recpetions. 13 yards rushing, 15 yards receiving, ONE TOUCHDOWN.
BOOM. WINNING STREAK ALIVE.

And why was Gerhart playing, you ask? You probably didn't ask, but I ask for you. Well let's let our late-night emergency meeting transcript explain:

Yes, because Danny Woodhead was on a bye, and I remembered to check that. Oh, and we actually ended up with the most points again. So now we lead the league in scoring, though we are still two back in our division. But with our managing skillz that won't be the case for long.

And our superior managation (that's managing and imagination) will be needed next week. As noted before, we have a fuckload of people on a bye next week. Here's a list:

Peyton Manning
Wes Welker
Eric Decker
Peyton Hillis
Phil Dawson

What will we do without the top QB in the league? Oh right, play the 2nd best QB in the league. As for the rest? Leave it to the masters.

Week 7: A Devil of a Week

Welcome followers. This is week featured something we haven't seen since week one: a chance to claim a winning record. Would the Devils continue on their march to glory, or do the opposite of whatever a march to glory is?

First some roster notes. The Gronk made his return this week, and we were faced with the choice of benching Cameron, Gronk, or playing both tight ends in place of a receiver. Victor did some scouting, reporting this to me:

I benched jordy
Haden on him and no other wr on pack

Someone is not feeling great about his team. Then again, they haven't lost in weeks, and they were playing Cleveland. At least your team isn't Cleveland. So the answer was play two tight ends. Of course, one of them is on Cleveland. Oh what a tangled web.

Also of note was the triumphant (maybe) return of a former Brown, Peyton Hillis. The biding-their-time 0-6 Giants picked up Hillis this week to replace the running back that gets injured every week. Hillis is an important piece of this puzzle if no other reason than he was basically the inspiration for this team. We were watching a preseason game at Victor's house one year, and Victor was discussing an upcoming draft. Then this random white guy came on the field to run the ball for Denver, and the rest is history. That random white guy? Peyton Hillis. Hillis would go on to sort of star for Cleveland, even making it onto a Madden cover one year. Of course, he was out of the league a couple years after that. And now he's back for the Giants. And us.

Well I have good news to report. This was essential a perfect week for the Devils. Let's get the regulars out of the way first.

Peyton Manning was ok but not great this week. But for us he was fine. Three TDs and a pick. Almost 400 yards. Came out to 25 points. Brandon Weeden, not so good. I think we can put the QB controversy to rest now.

We went with Decker and Welker this week. Welker had over 90 yards, but no TDs, so 9 points. Decker looked to be the weak link but had a late surge during the Broncos' attempted comeback.  He ended with 150 yards and a TD giving him 21 fantasy points.

Our double tight end attack worked out pretty well. Cleveland put up a garbage TD that happened to go to our guy, so Cameron came away with 11. Gronk basically had the exact same day, and he also produced 11 points. Nelson actually did manage to score a TD and had 10 points so we could have slightly improved by swapping out Welker. I guess we'll have to see if we lose by one this week!!!

As mentioned, the Packers played really good defense. This mostly consisted of them getting scheduled to play the Browns. They gave up 13 points, had a few sacks and an INT, and contributed 10 points.

Phil Dawson kicked some stuff. Mostly extra points, but there was a moderately long field goal in there too, so 8 points.

Danny Woodhead seems to have settled into a groove. He's obviously not the primary runner, but he's a pass catching threat. he had his typical week of 20 to 40 yards rushing, 30 to 50 yards receiving, and one TD. 12 points for Danny.

Surprisingly, Mr.Hillis had a nearly identical day. In fact, he had a few more yards to go with his TD, so he actually contributed 13 points. And the Giants won a game. I smell two championships for Hillis this year. Running back is getting a little crazy for the Devils. Earlier in the year we had a record high score by Danny Woodhead, and this week we have our first ever double double-digit scoring by running backs.

So what does it all mean? We simply crushed everyone this week. Forget the guy we played. We beat the second best score by 32. Here, I can prove it:

So now we sit at 4-3. We are in second in our division (two games back). We are currently fourth place overall, so we'd make the playoffs if the season ended now. We have the second most points on the season and are only 4 behind the top guy. I'd say you can book your hotel rooms for the big game.

Week 6: Manning Bowl 2013

This week we were treated to that annual gift: The Manning Bowl! Out team featured older brother Peyton with our opponent trotting out younger, handsomer, more Super Bowl MVPier Eli. The Mannings have met three times in the meaningless regular season, and Peyton has never lost. Would he win again when it matters most? As a master of suspense I will save the QB battle for last.

The Devils are really starting to gel as a team. At least one of our receivers always puts up a big week. This week it was Jordy Nelson's turn. He went for a big 113 yards and a TD for 17 fantasy points. Welker and Decker had decent weeks in terms of yardage, and Welker added a TD so together they also contributed 17 points.

As I've been saying all year, Phil Dawson is the best. This week he had three field goals and three extra points. One field goal was longish so we got 13 points there.

The Packers have ben very solid on defense in terms of points allowed since the bye week. While this is good for them the National Football League, it doesn't matter too much in Our League. They added 5 sacks and a fumble recovery at least which gave us a decent 7 points.

Jordan Cameron was alright. He had 64 yards but no TDs. But that still beats Gronk's DNP.

At running back things were fairly predictable. Victor's pickup, Tommy McBohananburg, still has no carries or receptions for no yards and no TDs. But Danny Woodhead actually plays. Hurray. This week he had his usual mix of rushes and receptions. No TDs though, so 7 fantasy points. Woodhead might be our dark horse this year. We've never had reliable production (as in more than 1 point) from the running back position before.

So on to the Mannings. On paper this was a horrible mismatch. Peyton's 6-0 Broncos were playing the Jaguars. This game was tied for the highest spread in history. Meanwhile Eli's 0-6 Giants were playing the Bears on Thursday night. Thursday night games are typically sloppy affairs. Peyton wins, forgone conclusion, right? LET'S FIND OUT!

Eli managed to win the interception battle. This was a close one. Both players had two INTs for a while, but Eli has always been more clutch in the fourth quarter, so on the Giants' final drive he managed to throw the game clinching pick. Eli up one.

Peyton countered with two fumbles lost to Eli's none. This also makes sense. Peyton is old with a broken neck. His hands probably tremor constantly as he drools and asks who's talking. Peyton ties it up.

Eli managed to go under 60% completion, but Peyton countered with -7 rushing yards to Eli's zero. This was a tight one folks.

But finally Peyton put the game away by throwing two TDs to Eli's one. Final score? Peyton 13 to Eli's 7. So all of Peyton's practice games against Eli the last few years paid off when it mattered most.

Oh, and final score for the week was us 80 opponent 41. Some solid defense this week. The Devils are back to .500 now. Start making the championship banners.

But wait! Does this mean our QB controversy was settled? As you can see, we went with experience over badness and played Manning instead of Weeden. Manning against the Jaguars should have put this to bed. But it turns out the only way we could have scored more points was to play Weeden over Manning. That's right, Weeden had 16 points to Peyton's 13. Weeden accomplished this by strategically not fumbling twice. Otherwise they basically had the same stats. So the drama continues. Let's hope our fans don't cheer if Peyton gets hurt next week.

This week as the obligatory random image I've decided to include position rankings for our team. Enjoy?

 

As expected we have the top two QBs. Also of note: two receivers in the top 10 and a top 5 tight end. Also, a running back in the top 20. Championship banner. You heard it hear first and only.

Week 5: Locker Room Turmoil

I'm going to get through the boring how-did-we-do stuff quickly this week because we have more important things to discuss.

Short answer: Nailed It. My running-the-table prediction seems like a sure thing at this point. Here's quick rundown:

QB - Peyton beats Romo! Peyton beat Romo! 414 passing yards. 5 TDs (one rushing). He did have his first INT of the year (more on this later (also, a lot of paratheses so far)). 36 fantasy points.

RB - Woodhead is actually useful. 71 total yards and a TD. He did have a fumble, but with 10 fantasy points as an encore to his 20 points week last week we can safely say we have never been stronger at runningback. Victor also picked up some guy named Tommy Bohanon. I'll give him credit for finding a really whitely named guy, but I was promised 1 point and he didn't even carry the ball. Stick to scouting Pokémon, Victor.

WR - Welka, Decka, and Nelsona. Good job by these guys. It helps two of them play with Manning. Welker and Decker each had a TD and some yards for 10 and 12 points. For Nelson, no TD but over 80 yards for 8 points. They all bested our bench receivers meaning we achieved maximum scorage this week.

Defense - Well, the Packers didn't give up many points this week. 9 actually. But for some reason I still can't understand, points and yardage are basically meaningless for defenses. So the 9 points was worth only 3 points, and the under 300 yards was worth 2. And the 5 sacks I have not yet mentioned were worth another 5. That's 10. Hm, what other seemingly random numbers can I add to make this more clear?

Kicker - Finally Dawson kicked some G-d (for the Jews) Damned field goals. Two field goals and four XPs means 10 for our kicker.

So our total was 99. Quite respectable. We were the fourth highest score, though the high scores were all clustered near 100. We are clearly the class of the league. Or clustered near the class of the league. Our opponent never really threatened this week. He had Vick who got hurt and only produced 11 points. He played two RBs that didn't play as well as Chris Johnson, so we actually won the RB battle in an alternate world where we had 4 more points from out runningbacks. Blah blah, we won 99 to 69.

Ok, now to more important matters. First, Clay Matthews is hurt. Due to a broken thumb he will likely be out for a month. As the face of our defense this obviously hurts locker room morale. But I think I've seen some other white guy on the Packers do a commercial with him about soup so we're ok.

Also threatening to tear the locker room in twain is a burgeoning quarterback controversy. As mentioned, Payton Manning threw an interception this week. And in one of those quirky twists of fate (actually, I think it's a commandment since it involves the Browns and bad things) Somebody Hoyer was lost for the year. This meant Brandon Weeden made his triumphant return. Advanced statistical analysis shows that while Manning had one interception, Weeden had NONE interceptions. That's right, NONE. Now I was a math major, and what this means is that Manning threw INFINITEY TIMES MORE INTERCEPTIONS. Look, there are some other stats that are still inconclusive, so we're not ready to declare Weeden the starter, but let's just say the defense is grumbling about always have to clean up Feyton Hanning's mistakes. So we will track this development and try not to lose the locker room. Our faithful readers can help us decide who should start next week. I've included relevant season stats below. Goodnight and G-dbless.

Week 4: Woodhead Rising

Let's get right to the most exciting news of the year. Danny Woodhead put up 20 points!exclaim! This is easily the highest amount ever for one of our runningbacks. Woodhead managed 86 yards running and receiving and scored 2 TDs. This bodes well for our future.

In addition, Jordan Cameron continues to contribute every week. This week he put up 15 points with 1 TD and 91 yards. This Somebody Hoyer guy that's throwing to him may be a real keeper. If there was anyone in the league that was good and white that we didn't already have it might be worth trading Gronk. But there is no one else good and white so we'll probably just keep both.

Peyton Manning continues to be a good decision. Another 4 TDs and no INTs to go with 300+ yards. Good for 29 points. Drew Brees was actually slightly better with 4 TDs and over 400 yards, but the point difference was only 3.

Speaking of Manning, people he throws to are doing quite well. Welker had 2 TDs and 76 yards and Eric Decker actually had more yards (91), but no TDs.

Our kicker remains an issue. Even though the 49ers scored 35 points, Dawson only managed 3. This is because he missed a couple field goals. We are looking into a new kicker. I hope we can find a white one.

I can't complain about our defense this week since the Packers were on a bye. Not wanting to complain about another defense, I simply forgot to pick one up. So we went defenseless this week. Looking back, I'm not even sure which defense we could take. There are not many defenses with a white guy as the top dog.

So with all the positives from this week, how did we do? Well, the good news is we outscored 10 of the other 11 teams. The bad news is we played against the other one. This guy had Frank Gore, Dez Bryant, and Tony Gonzalez. They scored 19, 20, and 26 respectively. His QB (Stafford) only put up 15, but his kicker scored 12. He has our desired defense, the Texans, and they scored 11 for him. He didn't even play a second runningback because of a bye week, and he still outscored us 121 to 97.

So the Devils sit at 1-3 for the year so far. Better than the Giants. Not as good as the Browns. The league page says we are in 6th place in our division. I don't trust it. We are actually 5th in points scored. Just like the Giants, I think we are poised to run the table. See you in the playoffs.

Week 3: Are we better than the Giants?

There was something gnawing on everyone's soul this week. It was a question. Would the Devils suffer the same fate as two-time Super Bowl MVP Eli Manning's team? Or would they right the ship and pick up their first win? Ok, so maybe two questions. It really depends on how your soul chooses to construct sentences.

This is so much more suspenseful when done in semi-chronological order, and this week deserves all the suspense it can get. Neither team had players in the Thursday game, so let's look at a few key Sunday games first.

The keyest of all key games was obviously Bucs at Patriots. Our opponent somehow has Josh Freeman as his starting QB in a 12 team league. God, we better win this week. Anyway, Freeman was solidly Freemanish, putting 236 yards with an INT and no TDs. Only 7 points there. So far so good. Peyton Manning shits 7 points before stretching. On the other side, we played Julian Edelman again. As Brady's only current white receiver he projects to be targeted 83 times a game. Or so we thought. Only 7 catches for 44 yards this week. And only 4 points. Touche, Freeman. Our opponent also had the Patriots kicker. Somehow the Patriots managed to score points against the Bucs, so the kicker, a guy with the extremely white sounding name of Gostkowski, put up 14 points.

For our opponent, the Washington/Detriot game featured two key receivers. Calvin Johnson did what you'd expect, amassing 115 yards and a TD for 17 points. Garcon did what you'd expect also, assuming you expect anything from that dirty Frenchman. He had 73 yards but no TDs for 7 points.

For us, the Packers game was more interesting. We played Jordy Nelson again. Nelson had a nice yardage total (93) but no TDs. Still, 9 points and better than some dirty Frenchman. It appeared our recurring nightmare with the defense was going to recur, as the Packers once again gave up over 30 points. That would have been good for -1 points. But by limiting the Bengals to under 300 yards they earned 2 positive points for a total of 1 positive. Luckily this game was extremely insane, so there was also an INT, 3 fumble recoveries (one for a TD), a block, and 4 sacks. This was good for, respectively, 2, 6 (6), 2, and 4 points. Add it all up and you get 21 for our defense. The moral of the story: giving up points is something no defense should care about.

Let's stick with our team because I like it better. Over in Cleveland there was real excitement. Future hall of famer Somebody Hoyer threw three touchdown passes to Jordan Cameron in addition to 60-plus yards. This gave Cameron 24 points. This means if we win this week we quite possibly owe it to a Brown. It doesn't seem like we can sit Cameron when the Gronk comes back either, but luckily the flex position can hold a tight end. But now on to the really exciting news from this game. Toby Gerhart played! And caught 2! passes! For 14!! yards!!! That equals 1 point. Go Toby.

Rounding out our team on Sunday was Danny Woodhead and Phil Dawson.  Woodhead had a nice day with 5 rushes for 31 yards and 7 receptions for 55 yards. But he also had a fumble which knocked his total points down to 6. Apparently the 49s can't score anymore, so Dawson only managed one extra points for 1 point.

We don't care too much about our opponent, so I'll just sum up. His runningbacks put up 20 points, and with a few other points his total was 77 at the end of Sunday. Ours was only 66. But Monday night would be key. The Broncos were playing the Raiders. We still had Manning and Welker and our opponent had the Broncos defense. Seemed like advantage us.

As usual, I did not see this game, so I can't give you a play-by-play breakdown. Not that it matters since there wasn't much suspense here. Manning had another 3 TDs and 374 yards, good for 24 points. That would have been enough, but Welker had 84 yards and one of those TDs for 14 more. The defense only gave up 21 points, but since points allowed are the last thing a defense should care about, this only netted our opponent 3 fantasy points. So ultimately an easy win for the Devils. All we need is 57 fumble recoveries from our defense and 3 TDs from a Browns player and we're good every week I think.

Lest you claim we only won because we went up against Josh Freeman, it also turns out we had the top score for the week, so we would have beaten anyone. Which you probably could have figured out yourselves based on the meaning of top score. And we didn't even play our highest scoring combo. Drew Brees actually had 31 points and Eric Decker and Brian Hartline had 19 and 11 respectively. That's 24 more points if played perfectly. It just goes to show how deep a white team really is. So the Devils are now on an unstoppable run to the championship. Sit back and enjoy the ride.

Week 2: So you're saying there's a chance?

This week will be best served by being reviewed in a mostly chronological order. So that's what will happen.

The first game of the week was the Patriots versus the Jets on Thursday night. As hinted at last week, we picked up Julian Edelman and dropped Riley Cooper. Danny Amendola was hurt this week, so we expected Brady to turn to the next white guy on the team for most of his passes. That would be Edelman. This is pretty much how it went. Edelman caught 13 balls, but only for 78 yards. He was helped by the fact that other receivers on his team were trying to make Tom Brady kill himself. He was hurt by the constant rain and general lack of scoring. So one TD and a total of 7 points for us. No one in this game for our opponent, so early lead for us. Sure to hold up.

I missed all of the Sunday day games, so I'm just going to lump them all together in whatever order I desire. For us the Packer game was important. Aaron Rodgers had quite the day, which was good for us since we played Jordy Nelson this week. Only three catches, but they totaled 66 yards and produced 2 TDs. Good for 18 points. We also have the Packer's defense. They seem to have trouble defending, though. They gave up 20 points, had one interception, and one sack. Apparently this totals out to zero points. We're trending the right way I guess.

For the opponent, the Bears game was crucial. He had Brandon Marshall and the Bear's defense. Marshall had 113 yards and a TD for 17 points. Hah, we win top receiver. Suck it. Unfortunately the defense bested our effort with 2 fumble recoveries and a TD. Even though they gave up 30 points this totaled out to 11 fantasy points.

The Denver game was also important because this week we played Peyton Manning over Drew Brees. It wasn't a 7 TD performance but it was solid. Manning threw for 307 yards and 2 TDs. That was worth 20 points. One of those TDs was to Wes Welker as well. That plus his 39 yards gave him 9 points.  Unfortunately, the Broncos scored many more times than that and our opponent had their kicker. With 2 field goals and 5 extra points the kicker put up 13.

Some other random stuff from the Sunday games: Woodhead had 5 points with mixture of running and pass catching. No points for Gerhart but he did carry the ball once. Jordan Cameron continues to produce with 95 yards this week.

On to the Sunday night game. This was Niners versus Seahawks. The only player in this game for either team was our kicker, Phil Dawson of the SF49s. Dawson was perfect, making the only kick he attempted that night and scoring all 3 of San Francisco's points.

So heading into the Monday night game we were up 71 to 65. We had no more players left, and our opponent had two. Tight end Tyler Eifert for the Bengals and motorcycle rapist Ben Rothlisberger for the Steelers. Keeping them under 6 points would be a tall order. I won't milk the suspense any longer because if you were watching the game you know we were done by half time. Eifert had 6 by himself, and even though Rothlisberger didn't have a great game, he did toss a TD and managed 12 fantasy points.

So another lose for the Devils. We are starting off slow this year, but I'm a really positive fellow, and I can find some silver linings. First, we would have beaten 4 teams and tied another, so the wins are out there. Second, we left essentially no points on the board this week. Decker for Edelman would have given one extra but that's it. That clearly means we have a feel for our team and know what buttons to push now. And finally, sources say Gronk is 50-50 to play next week. Who doesn't love Gronk? Oh, one more. I noticed there's a team called Arabian Bomb Squad in the league. So that's a plus. I even have proof:

Week 1: The First Week

Another year has begun. And it has begun with a win or a lose. You have to finish reading to find out. As a reminder, I basically miss every game due to work. That and the fact that Victor is too lazy makes me the most qualified to do these recaps.

Let's do this one by position. Up first: QB! So exciting. Our team started Drew Brees. Theirs, Aaron Rodgers. Both quarterbacks were competent, throwing multiple TDs and over 300 yards with one interception. Since I didn't watch I can't tell you much more. Brees ended with 20 points and Rodgers had 24. The real story at QB was the guy we didn't play. Yes, that's right. Brand Weeden had an historic week. Wait, no, not Weeden. He sucked. Oh right, Peyton Manning did it. As I mentioned in the draft recap, Manning had 7 TDs and over 400 yards. This translated to 46 fantasy points. Is it possible that a lose of 26 points would hurt us? Let's find out.

The runningback battle featured Danny Woodhead and Toby Gerhart on our side versus Vick Ballard and Bryce Brown for the enemy. His two backs only put up 8 total points giving us a real chance to win the runningback position for maybe the first time ever. Then again, our backs were Danny Woodhead and Toby Gerhart. In what is surely a good sign, neither had any actual rushing attempts. But at least our backup, Brian Leonard, also had no rushes. Woodhead at least had 2 receptions for 16 yards. Final total: us 1 point, them 8.

Wide receiver may pose an interesting (relative to the rest of our team of course) dilemma most weeks. We seems to have five or six good but not super great receivers to pick from each week. It may end up being a real crap shoot. This week we went with Welker, Decker, and Amendola. Decker had a very poor game, but was much better last year. Welker had a good game, netting 16 points. Amendola also had a decent game with 10 points. However, it appears he may be hurt and miss the next game. But on our bench Jordy Nelson had 19 and Brian Hartline had 17. So this week our bench receivers topped our scoring. Riley Cooper was underwhelming. We will likely be picking up Julian Edelman with Amendola going down. Cooper may get the axe. As for our opponent, he had AJ Green, Larry Fitzgerald, and Golden Tate. Green and Fitzgerald crushed us with 48 points between them.

Tight end was actually a positive development. Mike's suggestion of Jordan Cameron did well. 108 yards and TD for 16 points. Our opponent had Jimmy Graham and got 10 points, so we win that position.

No one cares about kickers, but ours won 9 to 7.

Defense. Or the lack of defense. The Packers did not really stop much. By giving up 34 points with no turnovers they managed to remove 4 points from our total. Our desired choice, the Texans, put up 11 points. But looking through the defenses, most give up over 20 points. It seems it's the turnovers and defensive scores that really make the difference. So if the Packers can start getting lucky we should be fine. The Rams defense managed 7 positive points, so we lose there.

So what's the final tally. Our team has had some suspenseful, close weeks in the past. This was not one of them. We lose 109 to 71. It's actually comforting to know that playing Manning would not have been enough for us to win. Manning plus one of our better receivers in place of Decker would have won us the week. We would have actually beaten three teams with our score, though, and our opponent had the second highest total this week. So if Manning can just average six TDs a week we should be fine.

Draft Recap

This turned out to a be a year where Victor and I were together at the end of August. That's pretty much all it takes for the Devils to happen. This time we were in Colorado visiting Mike and Judy. Mike's input ensured the Browns were represented. So on our last day we fired up the ESPN fantasy football lobby and picked a random league with a draft starting in the next five minutes. We opted for auction again. It fits our needs better, allowing us to way overbid on a few key players if needed while picking up players no one will take anyway for one dollar. But this was not your typical auction draft...

Things started off as expected. Adrian Peterson was nominated first and went for $88. Teams have $200 to spend in total, so this seemed a bit high, but I'm sure crazier things have happened. Next up was Matt Forte. Running backs are valued most, so when Forte went for $57 no one was surprised. The third player nominated was also a running back. His name is Marshawn Lynch of the Seattle Seahawks. Obviously not white, so of little interest to us. Yet for som reason none of us could determine, Mr. Lynch went for $105. Yes, more than half of a team's budget spent on one player. At this point we were starting to suspect that people were going a little crazy here in the early rounds. The next seven picks went as follows:

$63 Colin Kaepernick
$42 Cam Newton
$57 Arian Foster
$86 Aaron Rodgers   (Our first white player up for auction)
$65 Julio Jones
$55 Ray Rice
$42 Jimmy Graham

Now I'd label most of these prices as high to ridiculously high. Rodgers was our top choice for QB for three reasons. He's good, Victor is a Green Bay fan, and he's white. But even we couldn't manage to bring ourselves to spend that much on him. Also interesting is the fact that about half the teams were on autodraft. When on autodraft the system will not bid much past the expected value of a player. All of these players were well above their expected values, so it was basically only four or five people bidding like this. In fact, one guy got three of the top ten players chosen. The value of his other 16 players? $18. So we were actually feeling good here. We should have enough of a dollar advantage to get the players we needed to get. I stress needed to get, since there's not exactly a huge selection of white players at certain positions. We were number 10 out of 12 in the nomination order, so Graham was our nomination. The idea for us early on was to nomination non-whites in positions we would need later in order to fill rosters and drain some money. So basically early on we are just biding our time.

Unfortunately, the next team nominated Drew Brees, so a decision had to be made. Our list of four QBs before we started was Rodgers, Brees, Manning, and Brady. We weren't too set on the order, but we wanted to make sure we got at least two of them. With Rodgers gone and some big money already spent we decided to go for Brees. As before, the bidding was crazy and he quickly shot above $50. We debating letting him go, but ultimately got him for $69. We would soon slightly regret this, and in a few days we would greatly regret this.

Prices were still a bit crazy for the next ten or so picks, but then things swung the other way. Without money people had to go low on players. Our next pick up was Peyton Manning for $42. Brady went two picks later to another team for just $35. So we could have had Manning and Brady for just a bit more than the cost of Brees if we had been more patient. But at this point we still had $89 and the players we needed to get were relatively cheap.

After the QBs our focus became wide receivers and tight ends. We wanted Gronkowski even though he was hurt to start the season. We had to get Wes Welker and Danny Amendola. After that we wanted to pick up between two and four other receivers and another tight end. We continued our strategy by nominating players at these positions for others to bid on. Gronkowski was nominated at number 45 and we scooped him up for $15. Welker came in at 49 for $19. Amendola followed ten spots later and went for $16. We picked up two more receivers, Eric Decker for $12 and Jordy Nelson for $10, at 64 and 70 respectively.

Nelson marked the point where we began to nominate the players we wanted. This was because the only way to get a player for $1 is to nominate them and then have no one else bid. So we started nominating our runningbacks next. First was Danny Woodhead. Remarkably we had to go $5 to get him. But he's the only white runningback that is likely to get significant playing time, so we were going as high as necessary. Next was Toby Gerhart. Gerhart is the backup to that first guy chosen, so he's unlikely to do much. That makes him our second best runningback.

After Gerhart was locked up we set our sights on the Texans defense. Our rule for choosing a defense is that the face of the defense must be a prominent white player. We also allow the Patriots defense because they are just a really white organization. The Texans were perfect. Not only do they have two well-known white players in Brian Cushing and J.J. Watt, but they are also actually good. At this point we had $11 dollars to spend with seven slots to fill. This meant our max bid was $4. The Texans got nominated (not by us) and we went all the way up to $4. Unfortunately someone bid $5 and that was that. This was when we really felt the Drew Brees overbid. Our defense ended up being the Packers, represented by Clay Matthews.We rounded out our draft as follows:

121 Phil Dawson, SF K               $2
130 Jordan Cameron, Cle TE      $1
142 Riley Cooper, Phi WR          $1
151 Brandon Weeden, Cle QB    $1
160 Brian Hartline, Mia WR        $1
169 Peyton Hillis, TB RB            $4

Some final notes. We threw Mike a bone with our Weeden pick. He's unlikely to play. He just adds a general whiteness to the squad. Our random selection of second tight end also went to a Cleveland guy. Though this team is about the challenge of fielding an all-white fantasy team and any perceived racism is merely an unfortunate side-effect, we do tend to fill our bench spots with people that personify being super white. Thus, we felt obligated to grab Riley Cooper. After spending our final pick on Peyton Hillis we discovered he is likely the fourth string running back, so we immediately dropped him for a backup runningback, Brian Leonard.

Oh, and that big regret about Drew Brees? Well, since we spent so much on him we decided to start him in Week 1. He hasn't played yet, so he might still be great. But that guy on our bench? The one named Manning? He did alright on Thursday night. Only 450 yards with 7 TDs and no INTs. I've heard that hasn't happened since the 60s. That would be 42 points. Probably would have started him if we had passed on Brees and taken Manning and Brady. OOPS. GO DEVILS!!

And So It Begins...For The Third Time

That's right. We're back with an all new edition of America's favorite team. I'll get into a draft recap and some other stuff over the weekend, but since there's a game tomorrow I thought it was important for everyone to know who to root for. So without further ado, here is the roster for your 2013-2014 White Devils:

Let the celebrating commence.