My remaining plan for the season will involve hokey team names for my QB, whomever that may be at the time. And vengeance on Team Bruce for stealing superstar Jeff Tuel. This may or may not be related to my pessimistic opinion of my team.
Something I did during the first season I was in this league, albeit not all year, was I flexed my Vegas boy skills (Or lack thereof) and would pick the winner of each week's matchups, with the caveat of using the listed "Spread" on ESPN's Scoreboard Preview pages as the spread for my picks (IE If someone is -23, I say they are beating them by 23.5+).
While I did not follow through with it all of last year, it was fun to do, and let you all get in some chuckles over how I probably sucked a lot. So I decided to bring it back this year and try to do it every week this time!
Below are my picks for Week 1, with reasoning (In spoilers so that this page does not become huge from posting multiples per week if that happens) and spread.
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Team Bruce (+23, Sir Bruce) vs. The Pony Express (Ruki Motomiya)
Team Bruce has a bit of an inenviable position here, as Gronkowski is probably going to miss the Week 1 game and poor Week 1 TE options on the wire are slim pickings. He also has the unenviable quality of Aaron Rodgers facing his D/ST while he has Rodgers, making it a bit of a lose-lose proposition (RBs, WRs and TEs have less of a problem with this because they can put up good points while a D/ST still defends well by getting a single touchdown and about 30~ yards). In addition, Arian Foster has been said to have a reduced Week 1 workload and McFadden is iffy due to a poor offense (Heightened by playing Pryor over Campbell). On the bright side, however, Miles Austin offers excellent upside against the Giants this week and, with Bailey under a big of a finger issue, all of his wideouts have nice, cushy matchups this week.
But I think The Pony Express' superior Week 1 matchups allow him to cover even the large spread. Both Tom Brady and Stevan Ridley get very nice matchups against a soft Bills defense, while Darren Sproles is matched up against a team that has been poor stopping RB catches. Megatron also has a nice Minnesota matchup while Hartline threatens to boom this week against the Cleveland Browns. If there is downside here, it is that Greisham's tough Chicago matchup means The Pony Express will be unable to take strong advantage of Gronk being out and that Steve Smith could easily disappear against a powerful Seahawks defense, plus Hartline's potential bust. If Smith and Hartline both bust out, they probably won't cover.
Pick: The Pony Express (-23)
Stamford Cyberams (+24, David Corporial) vs. Noble Nitpickers (NobleHelium)
The Cyberams don't start off too good, as their thin drafting at wideout shows, along with a few other issues. The Cyberams entire wide reciever corps are very untested, as Thompkins is a rookie in a wideout system that is still shaking out and Josh Gordon, while offering great upside later in the year, will start the year under a three game suspension, forcing Nate Washington into a starting role against the strong Pittsburgh Steelers defense. Peyton Manning could also be in for a tough assignment if the Ravens replacement defense turns out to be quite strong. The upside here is all running backs: Jamaal Charles and David Wilson both have VERY nice matchups, offering the chance of them both exploding this week, although Charles always has to be on the lookout for suffering Andy Reid Syndrome. Their key to winning will be those two exploding.
But the Noble Nitpickers are simply the better team. Matthew Stafford faces a soft Vikings defense and Steven Jackson could run and catch amok against the Saints defense. DeMarco Murray, A.J. Green and Reggie Wayne all have average matchups, Green least of all, but that means their natural ability is likely to shine and provide points. And while Vick Ballard is no starter, he could see both garbage time minutes and time on the field to keep Bradshaw, who is nursing an injury some, fresh, which against the hapless Raiders defense would betray some points. Finally, Vernon Davis could explode on the Packers, who will have to deal with Kaepernick as well while having a defense that isn't too great in overall prevention.
I think that Wilson/Charles will fail to go off enough to offset Josh Gordon's suspension, Nate Washington's matchup + skill and the unpredictability of if Thompkins will get solid catches. Usually such large points are good to take, but here, I've got no nitpicks for the Nitpickers.
Pick: Noble Nitpickers (-24)
Portland Pindis (+17, Pindicator) vs. Beijing Lewd Lobbers (Lewwyn)
Pindicator has some nice matchups this week, as RGIII goes after a soft defense and MJD should run wild against Kansas City. And Lamar Miller versus the Browns ain't bad either. While McCoy gets a bit of a tough assignment, and I feel he may be a bit overvalued overall, I still like him to run well as teams adjust to Chip Kelly. V-Jax vs. the Jets is interesting, but I like Decker to make some noise fighting Baltimore while they deal with Welker and Demaryius. Finally, the Cardinals have a soft offense and a shot at S/T scores. A solid team with solid matchups makes a solid possibility.
Lewwyn, on the other hand, is hoping for the boom part of boom or bust: DeSean Jackson is very iffy, but he IS facing a bad aerial defense, while ROmo hopes to explode against the Giants and Tony Gonzalez has a great matchup. Unfortunately, his RBs are a lot less lucky: Eddie Lacy faces a tough Seattle assignment that will probably mean more ROdgers than running, Marshall is striking at a hard Bengals defense without any backup to take coverage off of him and even Colston could have problems if the Atlant D is as good through the air this year. While his booming means he could explode to a win, I can't give up 17 with it, and I like Pindicator to pull through, especially with +17.
Pick: Portland Pindis (+17)
Gaspar Werewolves (-15, Gaspar) vs. Baltimore Blue Jays (Cyneheard)
Gaspar has some tough matchups this week: While I don't trust the New England defense to contain Spiller, Ivory has a poor matchup against Tampa and might not even see as many carries as you'd expect, while Cobb gets the always-tough Niners defense. But he only has a single matchup against a bottom-half points allowing team (Using last year) on his team and that is his D/ST. I don't trust Ivory, CJ2K can get off to slow starts and I think the Browns D/ST will flop.
The Blue Jays have their own problems by comparison as well: Montee Ball is, for now, stuck in a 3-way RB situation with Ronnie Hillman and Knowshon Moreno, while DeAngelo Williams' ability is iffy while he faces a strong defense. But Antonio Brown has a cushy matchup, Brees is strong even against good defenses (And Atlanta isn't, to me, Niners/Seahawks level) and Thomas threatens to do well if the Ravens D is not up to snuff with it's new players. While Ray Rice vs. Denver also isn't sexy, the Blue Jays get +15 and that tips the scale in their favor.
Pick: Baltimore Blue Jays (+15)
Bench Brady And... (+13, Sunrirse) vs. Tuel Time (Wetbandit)
This matchup is hard to predict because of injuries: Sunrise has both Victor Cruz and Roddy White at Questionable, so there is a lot of flipping and flopping that could go on. Sunris emassively improves if they (and well through the injury) and is much more likely to be toast if they don't. Matt Ryan gets a very nice Saints matchup, but Matt Forte has to deal with the Bengals, although he is likely to still do pretty good from volume. Isaac Redman has a good matchup against the Titans, but he's never proven he is actually any good. If both Cruz and White missed the game, he'd be forced to start Jennings and Michael Floyd: While I doubt both will, Jennings is iffy even against a good D until Ponder steps up and he gets more used to the offense, while Floyd has no upside or even a good floor.
Wetbandit is much more solid injury-wise and his team seems poised to stay in it and try to win it this week: Adrian Peterson vs. Detroit? I'd buy that for a dollar. Dez Byrant, Ahmad Bradshaw and especially T.Y. Hilton all get very nice MUs this week, with Hilton having a heightened chance to go off on one of his explosions. Jimmy Graham also has a nice MU! Welker and Wilson could be iffy going, but I believe in Welker on the Broncos and I don't believe in the Panthers D. Between all this and the injury concerns for Sunrise, I have to go with Wetbandit.
Pick: Tuel Time (-13)
Team Scooter (-11, Scooter) vs. Norfolk and Chance (Twinkletoes)
Scooter is a team of ups and downs. On one hand, he has a ton of upside matchups: Sure, Cam Newton goes up against Seattle, but Vereen vs. Buffalo, Muscle Hamster vs. the Jets, Julio vs. the Saints, even Kyle Rudolph and the Steelers have keen matchups. But he has some downside: With Rbs falling, he has Shane Vereen as his RB2, which offers a lot of risk, even if Vereen will get increased PT with Woodhead gone. Amendola could also be held out for Week 1, forcing Nicks or Brown out there, which could be good or bad. But the team offers a lot of upside that is hard to ignore.
But Twinkletoes has some excellent upside too: It is hard to ignore Andrew Luck against the Raiders and both Lynch and Gore are strong runners who score TDs and have good MUs. Mike Wallace is also a big play guy facing a soft D and I like Golden Tate a lot until Sidney Rice comes back. Fitzgerald is iffy with Palmer at QB and the fact the Rams were actually okay at pass D last year, but he still has tremendous talent. And the Bucs D/ST gets an extremely soft MU against the Jets, who will be trotting out Geno Smith at QB. I think Twinkletoes is in line for a big day AND he is getting the points, so he is my choice.
I'm shocked that ESPN projects me to win by that large a margin. A lot of this has to do with the fact that Ahmad Bradshaw is projected to have 12 points versus Matt Forte's 8. This is crazy. No one would, or should, play Bradshaw over Forte, given the choice. All of ESPN's published rankers have Bradshaw more or less 10 spots lower than Forte, if not more. I'm certain that this is unquestioned among all other touts.
I've always thought ESPN's fantasy projections were hokey. From what I understand, ESPN assigns an integer of touchdowns to a player as part of their projections. They will not project or assign partial touchdowns, as Yahoo does. I think there's more folly in a model that purports to project the exact statistical outcome of an NFL game. It seems, to me at least, that a probabilistic model is far more realistic or useful.
With ESPN's method applied, you get these goofy situations where their projection system assigns 60 yards and a touchdown to Bradshaw and only 80 yards to Forte. Yeah, that's a plausible outcome, and I'll take the other side every time.
This is not to say that you should convert to Yahoo or any other system. I'm sure everyone has their own method of determining how to set a lineup each week. Regardless, ESPN's method seems far more imprecise. My argument is obviously not supported by math, detailed analysis, or even practical considerations of constructing a projection system, so if anyone wants to show me how I'm wrong and has some support, I'll gladly eat some crow.
Agreed, wetbandit. However, the yardage projections on ESPN are pretty decent. I'd say there's a 50% chance Forte gets between 70 and 90 yards if the projection is exactly 80 (which is pretty good if you think about it) - but integer touchdowns is a categorical policy error.
Fantasy football is a data-driven sport. We just have to teach the stats makers how to drive.
Yardage is much easier to project than TDs. TDs are statistically highly random, yardage not so much. I don't put much stock in how many points ESPN projects a player to score, but I do put a little bit of stock in how many yards it projects a player to accumulate.
Considering each game has a pretty big spread, I'll pick the underdogs for each. I think in week 1 each team is pretty balanced with the knowledge on hand so far. Of course there's some skill to drafting, but I don't think there's 25 points worth. Should we make a minigame where those of us who want to handicap the FF matchups can track our pick success?
Separate question: I sort of wish I'd joined a second FF league to smooth the typical FF variance, as I did the past two years. None was readily available this year. Anyone have any advice on a live-draft league I could join with players who generally won't go AWOL after week 1 and where it doesn't cost much to join, all prior to tonight's game?
So, mildly awkward mistake. I forgot to turn off the trade review period like we usually do. Are you guys okay with me turning that off? In previous years we've kept that off since it doesn't seem necessary when we all "know" each other.
Although we should be fine with just letting this one pass, because the only player in this trade that plays tonight (Moreno) was not going to get started by either of us I don't believe.
