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.