Fantasy Football

Our season of randomness continued yesterday as the Dolphins beat the Chargers, the Bengals almost beat the Cowboys (who aren’t nearly as good as everyone wants them to be), the Eagles manage to lose another game by less than a touchdown and the Packers lost to the Falcons. How did all this effect the fantasy week? In one word: Adversely. It is hard enough to win a season of fantasy football, but we might have a three-way tie for first place that will be decided by total points.

It seems that since the league itself has incorporated so much parity, that has trickled down into the fantasy ranks. Shit, we started out 0-4 on the season, and with a potential win tonight we still have a shot (not just a statistical shot, but a practical chance) to make the playoffs. I guess that is the difference between fantasy and reality: we can still make the playoffs and St. Louis is already almost guaranteed to finish as last in their division, despite it being the weakest division in football. Sill, this is unusual and frightening. Hopefully things will even out, and start to make sense at some point.

That’s not to say that we weren’t right about a few things, but I think the NFL has reached a point of parity that there isn’t any coming back from. I mean, the two best teams in the league (Giants and Titans) have experienced significant losses and have some noticeable deficiencies at the moment, but if you were to pick two teams to make the playoffs, those would undeniably be the two common consensus picks. This goes to explaining why the leading point scorer on your team was Sinorice Moss.

Your fifth leading scorer for week five from where he is best known: College.

Or wait, I’m sorry. He wasn’t on your team. He wasn’t on anyone’s team. You know why he wasn’t on anyone’s team? Because he is the Giants fourth wide receiver. I know Burress didn’t play and that obviously factored into this, but when the ball is spread around as much as it currently is on seemingly every NFL team, you can’t really assess anything with a consistent degree of accuracy. You are just as likely to have a big week with Steve Breaston and Kelly Washington on your roster as you are with Larry Fitzgerald and Hines Ward. Unless you play quarterback, there is very little separation from one player to the next. My roster is probably the best example of this, I am currently winning my week by 25 points without my 2nd (Braylon Edwards was on bye), 3rd (Colston is still out with injury) or fifth round (LenDale white is rendered obsolete) draft picks on my starting roster.

Just look at the running back situation currently in the NFL. At the moment, we have at least seven rookies starting or getting ample playing time in Chris Johnson, Kevin Smith, Matt Forte, Felix Jones, Steve Slaton Darren McFadden & Jonathan Stewart; Rashard Mendenhall was a permanent fixture in the Steelers lineup pre-injury, not to mention Michael Turner leading the league in rushing in his first season starting. Even if you can predict all of this taking place you can’t realistically expect to draft accordingly. I’m not sure if you would deem this progress or regress. What it is, however, is the current state of the NFL.

Personally, I blame Mike Shannahan. His bullshit running by committee approach has seemed to spawn all of this and now star playmakers are used as distractions as frequently as they are used to make plays. This season is an anomaly in its severity, but the trend of random good and bad performances is here to stay for the foreseeable future.