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.