Week 3 Review

Crazy week as per usual. And, we are down to 2 undefeated teams and 1 non-win team so parity has struck our league rather hard.

Injuries of the week:
http://fantasysports.yahoo.com/analysis/news?slug=ch-damagereport-week3&prov=yhoo&type=lgns&league=fantasy/nfl

+ Shaun Alexander - broken foot (i think RB's need those)

Fantasy team of the week:
Ummm...yeah. I think it might be Alex's team. Maybe. I mean if you want to call scoring 25 points more than anyone else has all year good. Then, yeah. 47 points from Westbrook and Portis sure helped. Another 35 from D-Jax and Winfield didn't hurt either.

Fantasy Flop of the week
Lance was undefeated and had scored well in his first two games but that all ended this week as he could only manage 50 points with LDT and Bledsoe on a bye. Noone else on his team stepped up leaving him with a struggle for the week.

Game of the week: Justin vs. Say Something.
Justin was down early, but he made a furious comeback in the late games and in Monday nights game. He almost was able to pull it out, but NO just ground the clock in the 2nd half and didn't put up enough FG's for Carney to sneak out the win. SS pulled out the win when all 3 of his WR's went off (over 100 yds each and combined 3 TD's).

Pillow-Fight of the week:
No true pillow fight this week as Tommy had the lowest winning score, but he still had over 79 points.

Surprise Outcome of the week:
Joe's Lover puts the Bobby Brown love on Joe. Only scoring 25 points in his first 2 games, JL came out of nowhere to put up 95 and take out the previously #1 team in our league.

Week 2 Review

A huge week by QB's and some surprising developments becoming assurances. I mean who saw the Bears and Jets as having two of the best passing games in the league? Or Colston as being one of the most valuable low-tier players? Maybe they are a mirage and disappear later this season, but for now, they are the fun surprises that make fantasy football so enjoyable.

Week 1's best bench warmers and waiver wire fodder:
With all the QB's going off this week, the waiver wire was flooded with WR's who caught those balls: Toomer, Colston, Desmond Clark, Grossman, Devery Henderson, Berrian, Jennings and Cotchery.

Injuries of the week:
Viniatieri - pulled his groin and Indy had their punter try the extra point (and it was not pretty)
TO - broken finger, but with the week 3 bye...he may only miss one game.
Chad Johnson - he got leveled and Palmer said he was still "loopy" after the game. Of course, how do you tell if CJ is bad loopy or normal loopy?
Rich Braham - I normally don't list OL here, but he is a center and played against Cleveland. For those of you keeping at home; this makes 5 centers the Browns have lost, 1 ex-Brown center lost to injury, and now an opposing center lost to injury. The moral: don't be a center with ANY connections to the Browns.
Aaron Brooks - like it matters. Actually, this downgrades any IDP's playing against him.
Rod Smith - left the game with a concussion. And apparently took the Broncos passing game with him.
Itulu Mili - apparently Seattle TE's are very similar to Cleveland centers.
Braylon Edwards - he heroically played through SHS during the game. He is not expected to miss anytime, but hopefully he does find a cure for his Stone Hand Syndrome.

Fantasy team of the week:
(Could have easily been Tommy or Joe, but they are taken care of in the next item)
Lance's team may have only had 4 players show up to play this week, but when those 4 players total 60 points by themselves, there isn't much more need for points.

Game of the week: The battle of the Raffays.
Tommy had about a good of a week as possible from his defense as they gave him nearly 40 points. The rest of his team struggled to score TD's though and Shockey and Fitz had rare off-weeks, which opened up an opportunity for Joe to steal the week. Joe's team took advantage with another phenomenal performance by Donovan McNabb and decent starts by everyone else on his roster, which was enough to squeak out the win.

Pillow-Fight of the week:
Tim over Joe's Lover. Neither of Joe's friends have bothered to update their rosters with actual players who play on Sunday, so it was no surprise that his team finished sub-30 points for the second consecutive week. Tim's team is doing more than doubly-better, which still wasn't exactly an inspiring performance, but I'm sure he will gladly take the win. And one of these days Larry Johnson should have a 2005 type performance.

Surprise Outcome of the week:
Justin's team rebounds from a horrendous week 1 with solid contributions from Palmer, Bryant, Dillon and Carney. He also continued to get good production from his IDP's, which helped him over the fact that he had 3 offensive players decide they didn't need to play for the 2nd consecutive week.

Week 1 Review

A relatively low-scoring week left a lot of games decided by who plugged in one of the few guys that had a big week. I'm going to try to keep my weekend review to a basic template, so let me know if there is anything you want me to add.


Week 1's best bench warmers and waiver wire fodder:

Frank Gore, Lav. Coles, Donte Stallworth, Charlie Batch and Pennington.

Injuries of the week:

Trent Green - concussion (just to make matters worse for Alex who is already sporting the all-injured team in our league)

Joe Jurevicious - he got injured on an incredible catch. of course, as was the entire day for the Browns, it was called back on a penalty.

Fantasy team of the week:
Tommy had a great week. And he had Coles and Gore sitting on his bench too.

Fantasy team flop of the week:
Joe's Lover not only started an injured Steve Smith, but also never updated his defense, which means he had backups there as well. To top it off, the few stars that he did have playing (Hasselbeck, Cadillac) all flopped too.

Game of the week:
Lance vs. Chetan. Chetan had an astounding 5 players in double-digits, but he couldn't overcome 2 of his defensive players being backups and Delhomme's poor performance. Lance pulled out the win on the strong performance of Ladanian Tomlinson on Monday night.

Pillow-Fight of the week:
Alex vs. Justin. This category will go to the game with the lowest score for the winner each week. Both teams were held back by shoddy QB play and at least 1 player that didn't show up (Galloway for Alex, Janikowski for Justin). Alex's entire team basically ended up being Fletcher, Westbrook and a surprising Porter (see below).

Surprise Outcome of the week:

This spot will be reserved for the team that either completely underperforms or overperforms based on expectations of previous weeks. Week 1 doesn't really have those expectations, so this will be added at a future date.

For this week, the surprise of the week is Portis actually playing and contributing. All week it was said he would be held out of the game, but he showed up and pushed Alex's score out of reach from Justin (he would have won without him, but Justin would at least have had a fighting chance in the late game).

1st Game

It's great to have the NFL back in our lives.

While I hated that Pittsburgh won the game, it seemed pretty obvious they would eventually pull away as they never really should have been losing the game (they controlled the line on both sides of the ball). So, at least it was a good fantasy showing for the players involved.

Fantasy Heroes

1. Charlie Batch - too bad noone even had him on their bench. He may end up top 2 or 3 for QB's this week.

2. Ronnie Brown - even while struggling mightily to get yards, he punches in 2 TD's.

3. Heath Miller - ok, he stepped out of bounds at the 3 yd line. Saban didn't challenge it, so Chetan reaps the rewards.

4. Zach Thomas / Joey Porter - both had huge nights. And I hate giving credit to that loudmouth obnoxious Porter. Great thing is, the Brown's won't have to deal with him because we can just send Willie Green (on IR) over to their side of the field before the game to start a fight with him and he will get ejected.


Fantasy Zeroes

1. Culpepper - Was having an ok night and could have turned it into a good night with just 1 TD. Instead, he threw 2 INT's and got sacked twice in the 4th quarter erase all of his points for the night (and really should have been picked up to 5 times during the game).

2. McMichael - 1 catch, 10 yards. That will not get it done.

3. Cedric Wilson - He started for the Steelers all night at split end. He ended up dropping 1 ball and not even recording a catch all night.

4. Chambers - He actually ended with ok stats (will be better once they correct the stats - he had a fumble recovery they didn't account for), but they should have been better as C-Pep threw to him 10 times in the 2nd half, but was only on target with 5 of the throws.

1st Week of the Season Coming

Quick Reminder: The NFL kicks off on Thursday with Miami vs. Pittsburgh. Be sure to update your line-ups accordingly.

Already, we have had a season-ending injuries (Greg Jones and Dominick Davis), weird injuries that will keep guys out (Roethlisburger), and guys who may or may not be injured and noone knows when and how well they will play (Branch and TO). Always something fun going on.

Good luck with the upcoming week and enjoy.