Ray's Fantasy Football Notebook 2012: Season In Review

{Current Mood: Anxious}

So,

Now that my fantasy football regular season is officially over (I compete in a playoff league and my points league runs through Week 17), I can finally look back and reflect on what was, in many ways, a lost season… but a season that wound up teaching me how to play the game.

I’ve been involved in fantasy sports since 2004 and this was easily the worst year I’ve ever had across the board. Fittingly, this followed a 2011 season that was easily my best season across the board.  

In 2011, I made it to five out of a possible six championship games, led a league in points with my first three draft picks (Andre Johnson, Darren McFadden, & Matt Forte) missing significant time, won two out of five possible championships, lost two more championship games by a combined 11 points (one of which was by a single point which kept me from a repeat), and had the worst break of my career which cost me first place in my big money points league.

But what did I really learn from all of that?

In hindsight, I found that, for the first time in my fantasy sports career, I really learned nothing from my success.

2012 saw me make the playoffs in two of my five leagues. Everyone made the playoffs in one league while I actually earned my spot in the other one, which happened to be the points league where the head to head playoffs don’t matter as much as total points in the final standings and when it comes to determining draft order.

In the two leagues where I lost in the title game by 11 combined points, I missed the playoffs thanks to some horrible draft day decisions that cost me more so in this year than in any other year.

Oh yeah, and I finished in last place in a league for the first time in my life: a league that my father and I won in 2011.

So where did it all go wrong?

Let’s start at the beginning:

THE DRAFT

Two years ago I decided to start using a highly-complex and arguably effective value-based drafting strategy that took all the fun out of drafting and made it, as well as the draft preparation, more like a full-time off-season job.

The strategy brought me some success in 2011 but I also completed an absurd amount of trades that all wound up benefiting me.

And besides, value-based drafting doesn’t work when you refuse to follow your gut and deviate from the plan every once in a while when you have the chance to draft a potential difference-maker like Peyton Manning, Matt Ryan, or RG7-4.

I know hindsight is 20/20 but when you, for whatever reason, decide that Michael Pick (credit: walterfootball.com) or Tony Romo are better options than the aforementioned QBs, you really need to re-evaluate your strategies and find out what the hell is wrong with you.

(Side Note: I’m not just saying this as a Giants fan and I know Romo did pretty well statistically this year, but if you’re a non-Dallas fan and you draft Romo for any reason at all, you deserve whatever comes to you. And if you draft Romo WITH RG7-4 on the board AND knowing full well that he has the same bye week as your other QB… well, you get a microcosm of my 2012 fantasy season. Sure Griffin got picked five rounds later, but he was my next highest rated QB)

Sure I had Vick and Romo ranked somewhat highly heading into the season, but this brings me to the next pitfall I encountered that worked for me last year but backfired in my face for the majority of 2012 before I woke up, tried to stop the bleeding, and had somewhat of a turnaround even though it was a little too late to salvage my teams in most of my leagues.

BEING A RANKINGS WHORE

This is probably the biggest sin you can commit in any fantasy sport. And if there was a hell that you could go to for committing such infractions multiple times, I would be spending my entire 2012 off-season there.

In 2011, I subjected myself to rankings to a great deal of success. I let it determine starting lineups as well as trades. I figured if this (one) set of rankings felt that a player not on bye wasn’t good enough to start for my team, that they were expendable. This thinking helped land me land Jordy Nelson in a trade three days before Kenny Britt was lost for the season due to injury (Irony Alert: I traded away Tony Romo in the deal. Some people just never learn). That trade helped me rocket my way up the standings with a chance to win it all entering Week 17.

Unfortunately, Ranking Whoreism (new word alert) caused me to make a trade for Tim Tebow in the same league. And I fell so madly in man-crush with Tebow and his potential that I benched Matthew Stafford for him in Week 17 based on the notion, brought to me by my rankings, that Tebow and Demaryius Thomas (who I benched Jordy Nelson for) would have to play the entire game while Stafford and Jordy weren’t locks to play more than a series.

Yeah, this actually happened.

Long story short, and you already know this if you read my manifesto, Stafford and Jordy outscored my entire starting lineup from my bench and I lost out on the elusive league championship because of it.

You’d think I would’ve learned from that debacle.

Unfortunately, I subjected myself to the will of the rankings again this year with far less success. A 5-0 start between five leagues gave way to a stretch where it took me almost a month to win five more games combined.

I realize that I had never been confident enough in my own ability to NOT be a rankings whore. My line of thinking was that I needed to follow the advice of people who make a living out of giving out fantasy football advice. I was always afraid that if I deviated from their rankings, I would get burned for it and look like an asshole. Naturally, I started doing much better once I began trusting my gut. But by then, I had already dug myself some holes that were too deep to crawl out of.

In some respects, I did deviate from the advice of some people I used to rely on because of the way that my rankings from other sources were set up. This would explain why, even though I knew it was a terrible idea, I drafted Robert Meachem in the eighth round of one league without a good explanation as to why.

This would also explain the pre-season man-crush I developed for one Ryan Mathews.

Common sense, past experience, walterfootball.com, and my gut all told me that drafting the man with the glass clavicles was a terrible idea. My rankings told me otherwise. Of course I found reasons to justify it, but I was still skeptical.

Would you be shocked if I told you that the three leagues I failed to make the playoffs in were the same three leagues that I drafted Mathews in (once in round one with Tom Brady still on the board in a league where my QB play was the death of me, once in round two, and once with the first pick of round three)?

Yeah, I didn’t think so.

NOT A COMPLETELY BAD TIME

Believe it or not, there was some good that happened to me this season.

I managed to draft C.J. Spiller in all five of my leagues. Four of the five leagues are keeper leagues. This makes me happy. I also managed to draft Kyle Rudolph in four leagues. He was on and off but with the crap we got at the TE position this year (at least compared to 2011), I could’ve done a lot worse. I had a number of good draft and free agency finds in every league I was in.

I also began what I attempted to turn into a weekly league preview/results/somewhat-general-advice notebook of sorts for my past season’s endeavors. A combination of a late start, fear of upsetting those who hold the power of karma in their hands, and general business at the workplace after Hurricane Sandy (I work for a roofing and siding company) kept me from continuing once Week 6 rolled around.

For those who followed my work and were disappointed that the notebook entries ceased after a little while, you need to find better ways to occupy your time.

Don’t take that personally because I’m attempting to start it up again next season and would like readers because I do feel that I can offer either halfway decent advice for free, based on my own experiences, or possibly a good laugh as I tell you why I’ve fallen deeply in man-crush with someone who will undoubtedly be next season’s Ryan Mathews.

Anyway, here’s a quick little review of how I fared in each of my five leagues. Will try to keep it as short and sweet as possible but since I don’t have a limit on how much I can write, I can’t promise anything.

1) MONTOYA’S LEAGUE (12 teams, non-PPR, 2 QB, 3 Flex) (The Dayman) (8-5) (2nd place in Division 2) (6th place overall) (2nd in total points)

A 5-0 start gave way to a 3-5 finish where I found myself tied for the second best record in the league but, because this is the only league I’m in where the tiebreaker is head-to-head record, I wound up in sixth place overall even though I was second in the league in points. Of course this led me to a second round playoff collision with the one guy whose team I thought was my biggest threat after the draft.

Predictably, my reign as league champion was ended thanks to my decision to cut Dennis Pitta three days before he went off for 25 points. I had Kyle Rudolph and Martellus Bennett on the team and hadn’t played Pitta in weeks so I figured it wouldn’t hurt to pick up David Wilson for him. I lost by 18.

Naturally, this was the only week of the season where I received nfl.com’s “Hunger Foul” award for losing with the most bench points: a running theme for me in every league except this one to that point in the season.

This was the one league where I kind of winged my picks since my draft strategy, which requires you to do a lot of calculations in between picks, went out the window when everyone decided to make their picks in three seconds or less.

Not that this explained why I selected Mike Wallace in the fourth, for which I still have no good explanation other than “he was the highest rated WR left on my sheet who should’ve been much further down the rankings due to his holdout had I not been such a rankings whore.”

(Note: When I would hear something about certain players in the offseason that would lead me to believe that they were capable of having a breakout of sorts, I put an asterisk next to their name on my sheet. It had worked very well for me in the past… except for the fact that I went way too far overboard this year with the asterisks. Some guys would get asterisks in one league and not in another for a bevy of different and irrational reasons. It explains why I drafted guys like Vick and Wallace in the only leagues that I gave them an asterisk for on my sheet. Dumb. Just. Dumb)

I still came away with some good players such as Shady (third overall pick after Rodgers and Foster who I prayed would fall to me. With the experiences I’ve had in this league to that point, I was actually banking on that happening), Jamaal Charles, Victor Cruz, Matt Ryan, Kyle Rudolph, CJ Spiller, Reggie Wayne, & Lance Moore.

Of course, most of these guys burned me in my playoff loss (7.90 combined points from all those players not named Matt Ryan and Lance Moore) as did my free agent pickup of the year in Danario Alexander (goose egg). Shady did it to me from the injured list and Spiller did it to me from the bench. Yup, David Wilson against Atlanta went in over Spiller against Seattle. Go me. Not that Wilson was a bad play but Spiller had been matchup-proof all season and every time I benched him, he always seemed to produce. Dumb.

And, naturally, they did this in between my two highest scoring weeks of the season: a 209.26 point performance in my first round playoff game (The high score for the season. And I was one of two people to break 200 points on the year) and a 195.50 point showing in my consolation bracket match (third highest point total of the year).

Even though this league didn’t pay out any money, I would’ve liked to win because I was the defending champion. Also, I’m kind of upset about losing being that I was the only owner to be consistently active in picking up players during the playoffs and found that Seattle’s defense had cleared waivers in the days leading up to my first round playoff game and subsequently got me 52.70 points. 

I also am not happy about losing a playoff game in which I had Seattle’s defense and got 41.40 points from Russel Wilson who I picked up as a free agent late in the season and wound up playing against the guy who drafted him in this situation. I thought this was ironic since I had been trying unsuccessfully to trade for Wilson all season.

Being able to snag both Wilsons, DX, Knowshon Moreno, AND Seattle’s defense when they were all at their hottest should’ve brought me to a championship out of principle. But that wouldn’t have taught me anything now would it? Lesson: Don’t bench CJ Spiller the guys that got you to where you are, especially if they’ve proven they’re matchup-proof and will finally be getting the bulk of the carries.

Of course I would’ve won if I had left Spiller in and benched Charles for Knowshon, but these kinds of things are impossible to predict. But if Wilson had a huge game and I won, I would’ve looked like a genius. It’s all subjective depending on the situation. The fact that I would ever bench Spiller for any reason, especially considering it had burned me almost every time I did it throughout all five leagues this year, means that I deserved to lose on principle.

Other things that bugged me: Every team made the playoffs and I had to face a team that was 3-10 in the first round. I’m all for eight playoff teams in a 12-team league but you have to make people earn their stripes. I would’ve been uber pissed if I lost to this 3-10 team. I’m also not a huge fan of non-PPR leagues as this is the only one I am currently in.

I’m undecided as to whether I’m coming back to this league next year. I may do so if only for the laughs it brings me and the relative ease I find in getting the players I want off waivers since no one else in this league does it consistently. The fact that I’ll look like a bitch if I quit after losing the championship may also influence my decision.

2) CONVICKS (10 teams) (This Guy) (6-8) (8th place overall) (9th in total points)

Technically I finished in seventh since I won my seventh-place game in the consolation bracket. Naturally, I also put up my highest score of the season in that game. The only person I finished higher than in points was the last place team that went 2-12 (one of their wins, of course, came against me. The other came against the guy who won the championship. Go figure). Being second in points against didn’t help matters either. 

The fact that I won my Week 1 game with the second lowest score of the week was a huge red flag for what was to become perhaps the most embarrassing year I’ve ever had in my six years in this league (and there have been some bad ones).

You can easily begin and end the argument for my failures with the fact that I drafted Michael Vick in the seventh round with Peyton Manning and Matt Ryan still on the board. But then you can’t make fun of me for drafting Ryan Mathews in the first round with Tom Brady available or the fact that I took Greg Jennings in round two.

Looking past all of that, the rest of my team was somewhat solid with guys like Doug Martin, CJ Spiller, Julio Jones as an eighth round keeper, Jeremy Maclin (kind of), Marques Colston, & Kyle Rudolph. If Jake Locker hadn’t gotten injured twice, he could’ve been a solid backup option.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t escape mediocrity this season. I also couldn’t escape a series of unfortunate events that led to my downfall. Such events included:

-Losing three games on the bench and finishing two games out of a playoff spot (though my point total was so low that I would’ve had to win all three to make it in).

-Suffering the second most lopsided defeat of the season in Week 4 via the final score of 160.06 to 67.34. Not even Colston’s 30-plus bench points could save me from embarrassment. Oh, and my point total in that game was the lowest anyone recorded all year. And everyone I played got me at least 1.70 points. Go me. I actually recorded three of the season’s four lowest point totals: a truly remarkable accomplishment.

-Suffering the closest defeat of anybody in the league with a Week 9 loss via the final score of 152.72 to 152.68, four-hundredths of a point. I lost in spite of Doug Martin dropping 55.20 points on Oakland. Of course, when you bench CJ Spiller against anyone for Ryan Mathews against anyone, you deserve whatever you get. But seriously, this shit just isn’t fair.

-Watching helplessly as the championship game was decided between teams that put up the two lowest point totals for that week while you record your highest point total of the year and the second highest of the week. 

Next year will be interesting being that I have the third pick in the draft and a choice to make as to who will be my keeper between Doug Martin (Round 5) and CJ Spiller (Round 10). I would say that I can’t screw this up but you never know what can happen in this crazy hobby of ours. A lot of it is going to come down to luck, but the right choice here can really set me up nicely for 2013. After all, the guy who won the league this year drafted at #3 (Just saying).

3) KIRBY’S ALL STARS (12 teams) (Powdered Toast Man) (6-7-1) (3rd in Kel Division) (8th place overall) (5th in total points)

I drafted Tony Romo. The end. I drafted Tony Romo with RG9-6 still on the board. The end. I drafted Tony Romo with RG9-6 still on the board AND with the knowledge that Romo and my keeper, Matthew Stafford, shared the same bye week.

The thought that literally went through my head was that I could trade either Romo or Stafford before Week 5 for a viable replacement. Of course, they both sucked throughout the first part of the year and I was left trading NEITHER of them for Jake Locker who wound up being injured by the time Week 5 rolled around. AND I missed out on the chance to have RG9-6 as a keeper. Fantastic.

Once again, I was second in points against. This was one of the many lowlights from this season that also included:

-Losing my Week 2 game by the score of 167-162 with my optimal lineup and my opponent having points on his bench.

-Suffering my worst loss of the year in Week 4 via the score of 180 (fifth highest point total of the season) to 92 in the fourth biggest blowout of the year.

-Suffering one of the league’s two ties a week later after a stat correction bumped me up only one point to tie instead of the two I needed for a win. I’m now 0-1-1 after stat corrections in my time in this league. I lost this one on my bench.

-Finishing the year 6-7-1 when 8-6 could’ve gotten me into the playoffs. The two bench losses, the Week 2 stinger, and the tie all screwed me.

-Being one of seven teams to record multiple sub-100 point games on the year.

-Tying for the league lead in losses by 60 or more points (three).

-Being one of four teams to suffer a defeat of 80 or more points.

-Putting up the third highest score of championship week from the outside, looking in (although I still would’ve lost).

There was some good though too, such as:

-Giving one team both an 89-point loss (third biggest blowout) AND a 108-point loss (second biggest blowout) in the same season.

-Being one of two teams to win a game by 100-plus points.

-Putting up a season and league high 203 points in Week 16 (consolation bracket, of course) and being the only team to break 200 points this year. 

-My uber-steal of Ryan Mathews in Round 2. Drafting Megatron at #6 overall, Madden Curse be damned.

-CJ Spiller.

All in all, a subpar year in a league where I made it to the championship game in the previous two seasons.

Oh, I also drafted Robert Meachem AND Ronnie Brown.

The end.

4) BALLBUSTERS (12 teams) (Sizzlers) (4-9-1) (4th in “Death Division”) (12th place overall) (10th in total points)

For the first time in my career, I finished in last place in a league and it wasn’t even close. All this despite the fact that I drafted Peyton Manning, CJ Spiller, Kyle Rudolph (to an extent), and was able to protect Ray Rice. Only I could accomplish such a feat.

Besides the fact that we have the #1 pick and can use our ninth round pick to protect Spiller, I really can’t think of any good that came out of this season. Let’s consider the facts:

-My dad and I are the only team in league history to finish in last place the year after winning the league. All the more painful considering last year was the first time we ever even made the playoffs.

-We were, for the third consecutive league recap, second in points against.       

-Three times this season, somebody won a game with a score of 68 points. That was the lowest score recorded in a win. One of those wins came against us.

-We were one of three teams to record a tie. Fittingly, ours came in the final week of the season. We scored exactly one point less than our opponents over our last two regular season games. And the one-point loss came against the guy who predicted we would miss the playoffs entirely and that he would win our division. Both of those things happened.

-We were one of four teams to record the low score for the week more than once. We accomplished this feat three times.

-This included, in the consolation round, a 29-point performance. None of our players were injured or pulled from the game at any point. 29 legitimate points. Needless to say, that was the low score of the year and, quite possibly, the lowest score recorded in league history. We lost by 73 points, the biggest blowout of the season.

-We were one of only two teams that failed to break 100 points in any game.

-We’ve been in this league since 2007 and have never once recorded the high score for the week.

-This one hurts the most. In the regular season, we failed to win 10 games. Nine of those games could have been wins if we had played our optimal lineup. The way this league is structured, with basically three flex positions in eight starting spots, you’re bound to leave some games on your bench. But this is along the lines of the utterly absurd.

5) CCFFL (14 teams, points league w/ head to head games) (The Houston Oilers) (7-6) (5-1 in the AFC) (2nd in the AFC) (4th place overall with 1,721 points)

Last season, I watched helplessly as Matthew Stafford and Jordy Nelson put up 50 and 35 points respectively from my bench as Tim Tebow and Demaryius Thomas cost me a league championship.

This year, I put up a season-high 128 points in Week 17 with my optimal lineup and recorded my third weekly high score which vaulted me into fourth place overall on the season. I wound up leapfrogging the team that opted to protect AJ Green in round eight over Julio Jones in round six (which I felt was a mistake) which allowed Jones to fall to me in round two. Green outscored Julio this year but I won more money as a result of finishing in the top four so suck on that KGB’s not a big loss in that regard.

Recording three weekly high scores after drafting a bust in the first round (Greg Jennings – 12th overall) and getting the second highest weekly score once as well as the third highest score three times was very instrumental to my fourth place finish. Of course, the team that won it all had five weekly wins and drafted Ryan Mathews in the first round (ninth overall) but I still think what I did was pretty impressive.

In my last four years in this league, I’ve finished fourth (2012), third (2011), fifth (2010), and second (2009). This is one of two leagues I’m in every year that I have yet to win. I would say I’m due to finally break the glass ceiling and win it all in 2013, but I’m also due to have a crappy year being that I haven’t finished in the bottom half of the league standings since 2008.

I have a bevy of options as it relates to my keeper for 2013. The rules are that you can’t protect someone two years in a row or anyone drafted in the first round. But whoever you keep has to be on your Week 17 roster. If they went undrafted, all you have to give up is your final draft pick.

My viable options are Julio Jones (Round 2), Trent Richardson (3), Peyton Manning (4), CJ Spiller (7), Danario Alexander (undrafted), Vick Ballard (undrafted), David Wilson (undrafted), and Terrelle Pryor (undrafted). A lot of this will be determined by what happens in the off-season but, with the option to trade people from your Week 17 roster to other teams to protect in exchange for draft picks, I could potentially walk into the 2013 draft with a lot of early picks.

Where I got killed this year was at WR. Julio was my only viable option for most of the year and he was very streaky in finishing 12th among WR’s for this league’s scoring system (PPR with a point per 20 yards). For the rest of the year, in a league that starts three receivers, I was switching between Greg Jennings, Kenny Britt, and Denarius Moore (with the occasional plug-and-play bye week/injury filler scrub). And once I picked up DX, I was usually too stubborn to bench one of the other three for him so I left a lot of points on my bench there.

The call to draft Peyton in the fourth round, even though I had Matthew Stafford as a ninth round keeper, worked out nicely for me once I decided to start benching Stafford after Peyton outscored him from the bench enough times. Richardson took a while to get going and whether the Bills were smart enough to correctly utilize Spiller usually was the difference between a good week and a bad week in a league where too many bad weeks will cost you any realistic shot at winning.

I was streaky early in the season, had the high score in Weeks 11 and 12 (with the two lowest weekly winning scores: 110 and 119), but three crappy weeks in a row after that killed any realistic shot I had of winning the league.

Danario Alexander was on my bench for two of those weeks which included a 23-point performance in Week 14 and was IN my lineup to put up a goose egg in Week 15. David Wilson was also on my bench with 23 points in Week 14 and in my lineup with five points in Week 15 over CJ Spiller. And yes, I made that mistake in all five leagues.

IN CONCLUSIONS

I really have nothing interesting left to say since this took a lot of time to research for all four of the views it’s going to get everyone who has made it to the end.

I will definitely continue to update all interested parties with all my fantasy happenings because not only can you potentially learn something, but I can potentially learn something through the art of teaching/advice giving/telling stories about my fail moments.

Until we meet again which will probably be tomorrow when I write another conspiracy theory,

Deuces,

-Ray-