Dilettante’s Ball

Well, my inaugural fantasy football season is over. Somehow, despite not having a freaking clue of what I was doing (and it being a year I actually have watched the least football in… ages), my team somehow limped into the championship game against Jeremy.

I knew I was screwed. I barely got past Carol in the playoff round; we were tied going into the Monday night game. It boiled down to Peyton Manning (my team) having a great game and T.J. Houshmanzadeh (Carol’s team) merely showing up.

And then I immediately overanalyzed my team and choked. Fearing that the Bears were going to sit all their starters (since their playoff position is decided), I benched Desmond Clark for Alge Crumpler (no net difference in points this weekend) and I benched Bernard Berrian (eight points) and played Lee Evans instead. This would, on the surface, seem ok, but to get Lee Evans, I dropped Travis Henry (another career day and how about them Titans, y’all?) leaving God knows how many points sitting in free agency.

I then focused all of my attention on matchups and injuries. I benched Fast Willie since he was facing the Ravens (good choice) and substituted him with Deuce McAllister (who probably had one of his best games of the season) — so that was a total net gain. Since I had cut Travis Henry (ugh, why?) and Joseph Addai (meh) for the Dolphins defense (more on that in a bit), I started Marion Barber III alongside McAllister. This dude… When he’s on my bench he scores, like, 5 TDs/game. When I play him he runs 6 times for 3 yards.

My wide receivers were a mess. Marty Booker was hurt, so I traded him for Braylon Edwards who subsequently sucked. I didn’t play Laveranues Coles, since he was “questionable” and this worked out fine since he got hurt (I mean for me, not him).

So, I didn’t play the Dolphins’ defense in the end. In my angst, I read several articles by fantasy football pundits (what kind of a job is that?) talking about how overmatched the Bears defense was for the Lions.

Man, they sucked. For two weeks in a row.

So I lost. And I’m not even sure I “beat myself” (to use football losing team jargon). I’m not even sure that my poor choices could overcome that day Steven Jackson had.

Anyway, fantasy football was fun. I came, I saw, I lost to Jeremy.

Better luck next year.

.