Fantasy Football

As I understand it there are two different types of popularized salary cap leagues: One played with real money in which the market dictates each players value. And the other with fake money in which multiple teams can acquire one player, and that players stock either rises or falls with each passing week depending on performance. If the players stock rises, you can trade him out of his increased value or keep him on your roster.

If it wasn’t obvious from the intro, I joined a salary cap league with the latter. I would have been willing to do join a pay league, but it is through my Chiropractor with a bunch of strangers, so my input was expendable. (I am twenty-six and go to a chiropractor on a weekly basis while surrounded by geriatrics and whiplash victims. With any luck a picture of me will never make a public website, but you should be able to assume that I have a body of an eighty year-old man.)

But within the confines of the rules I am confined too, I like the change of pace. Basically, we all start out with $50,000,000 of fake money, we have to fill 12 roster spots (three receivers, three running backs, two quarterbacks, a defense, a tight end and a kicker) all of whom start and we have an unlimited number of transactions before the first week of the season. Meaning, if I bought one player then thought better of it, I can sell him and acquire someone else with the newfound available cap space.

Given the prices of the players, this is all a lot more difficult then it sounds. Basically, you want to buy low and sell high, or at least relative to how you think they will perform against their peers versus where they are priced at. For instance, I bought Ted Ginn for $2.15 million. If he pans out and becomes an elite receiver, his stock will rise potentially to that of a Chad Johnson who’s worth $5.25 million (I have no idea what the degree of fluctuation is like). I can then either stick with Ginn or trade him out for a better receiver or an upgrade at another position.

While a traditional fantasy league ironically is more akin to starting a business, the salary league is like solving a weekly puzzle. You are just trying to procure the best pieces to sufficiently complete it. You could, in theory, have the top twelve scorers every week if you play your hand right. This of course is highly unlikely; but is ultimately the goal. For the hell of it, here are the players I took for my twelve spots.

Quarterbacks
Drew Brees: $8.5 million
Matt Hasselbeck: $ 6.75 million

We went high on quarterbacks because we feel like out of the three major positions, the elite quarterbacks are more reliable than the elite players at running back or receiver. We still might swap out Hasselbeck for Matt Schaub ($5.35 million) and upgrade at wide out. You will see why in a minute.

Running Backs
Brian Westbrook: $9 million
Julius Jones: $5.52 million
Jonathan Stewart: $4.8 million

We bought pretty high with running backs to, and we expect this portion of our roster to have a much higher turnover rate than any other. But you have to have an arsenal of players and we feel like Jones and Stewart, while priced a little higher than we would like to see relative to their peers, we are still getting a bargain price for how their seasons will turnout. We were torn between Stewart and Mendenhall, but since Willie Parker will probably eat up a lot more early carries than DeAngelo Williams we went with the Oregon alum. Of course, we drafted Brandon Jackson in the seventh round last season, so it is best not to listen to us.

Receivers
Jerricho Cotchery: $5.25 million
Ted Ginn: $2.15 million
Bryant Johnson: $1.15 million

This is where it gets dicey. Because while I over-indulged at quarterback and running back (particularly quarterback), we looked for value at receiver. Cotchery will have a huge season that will land him in the top ten for receivers. We are certain of this. Ted Ginn is the top wideout and return man on a Miami Dolphins team that can only improve. It is with Bryant Johnson we feel like we are playing roulette because of how anemic the Niners offense has been since Jeff Garcia left town. Still, it’s only for a little over a fiftieth of our cap so it isn’t much of a gamble, plus we like that he will be starting with a new team with a new offensive coordinator (Mike Martz) and potentially a new quarterback in San Fran.

It's probably not a good sign that of the first twenty images on a Google image search for Ted Ginn, 14 of them he is in OSU garb.

Tight end: Jeremy Shockey, $3.3 million
We are mulling this one over still, but we initially bought Tony Gonzalez and sold him to upgrade at running back.

Defense: New York Jets, $2.35 million
This will probably change every week for us based on match ups. The Jets week one opponent? Miami. It kind of contradicts our Ted Ginn pick, but we’re alright with that.

Kicker: Mike Nugent, $1.2 million
Whatever. He has looked bad in the off-season but we expect him come around. This is also dependent on match-up but won’t change as much because it is blind luck.

After doing an overview we realized how monolithic our selection of players is. Essentially, if he isn’t on the Jets, Seahawks, Saints or our favorite team, or didn’t go to Ohio State, then his name is Bryant Johnson or Jonathan Stewart. This will probably hurt us, but it is for fun and experimental so we really don’t give a shit. We are still tinkering with this team and fully expect it to blow up in our face.

Back with something you might actually care about later.