The Dawn of A New Season

And it begins!  The 9^th season of the Sacred Sundays Fantasy Football League!  For a little trip down memory lane, here are the teams from the 2005 (inaugural) season:

Hindenburgs (now defunct)

Midnight Maulers (still going strong)

Chief Dredd (now Channel 4 News Team)

Goldschlager Chupacabras (now defunct)

EarthWindFire (now BoomGoesTheDynamite)

Coors Light Drunk Guys (still rockin' it)

Big White Scary Monsters (now defunct)

Scottish Rebels (now Butkus’ Dick)

SOFA KING GOOD (back to the original)

BadAss (now American BadAss)

Seven teams from that first season are still going strong, three still under the exact same name!  That is pretty impressive. 

Here were the keepers from the end of that season for those seven teams:

SOFA KING GOOD – Tiki Barber, RB and Eli Manning, QB

Coors Light Drunk Guys – Clinton Portis, RB and Edgerrin James, RB

Chief Dredd – Larry Johnson, RB and Marvin Harrison, WR

Scottish Rebels – Rudi Johnson, RB and Terrell Owens, WR

Midnight Maulers – Ladainian Tomlinson, RB

EarthWindFire – Shaun Alexander, RB and Steven Jackson, RB

BadAss – Steve Smith, WR and Domanick Davis, RB

This shows a couple things:  a) James’ love affair with Eli goes way back.

b) Only three players above are still even in the league – Eli Manning, Steven Jackson and Steve Smith.  How quickly things change…

c) Jamie only had one keeper, because he only needed one man—LT!!  (Jamie basically had Ladainain Tomlinson on his team for all of his productive years.  Kinda like how Frank Gore is for him now.)

d) Clinton Portis!!?! – I mean, this guy was freaking great back in those days!  Absolute Fantasy gold!!

e) And of course, one of my first ever keepers had to be T.O.  Good times!

The draft this year only took about an hour and twenty minutes, but that was still enough time for Shawn to put down four beers (F’N’A!!!), and plenty of trash to be talked.  Here are some of the memorable moments:

Best Background Comment – “That was a mistake.” spoken by one of Louis’ kids after Vandelay Industries selected Antonio Gates in the 9^th round.

Best CYA Moment – After selecting Ben Roethlisberger in Round 11, James was repeatedly asked “Was that a mistake?” and “Did you mean to make that pick?”  To which he replied “I will NEVER admit to that.”

Best Personal Request Made to the Vegas Boys – “Please, just FaceTime us one stripper nipple.”

Best ‘It Was Meant To Be’ Moment – A timeout had to be called to undo SOFA KING GOOD’s selection of Fred Davis, only to have Fred Davis auto-selected for him 3 rounds later.

Best Unknown Player Selection – Joe’s Pats, selecting Zach Sudfeld, (NE – TE), in the 13^th round.  (Honestly, I had 47 tight ends ranked on my research sheets and I had not heard of this guy.  Well done Joe!!)

Best Pick That All Teams Will Wish They Had Made Before He Did – Channel 4 News Team, selecting Anquan Boldin (SF – WR) in the 10^th round.  Seriously, how did everyone let that guy slip to the 84^th pick of the draft?

Here are some stats and notes from the draft:

Players selected (including keepers)

QB’s = 21

RB’s = 42

WR’s = 43

TE’s = 20

DEF’s = 15

K’s = 9

Teams with 5 RB’s = Channel 4 News, sprouts, American BadAss

Team with the most QB’s = Vandelay Industries – 3

Team with the most TE’s = sprouts – 3

Team with the fewest K’s = Channel 4 News – 0

The Round of the Wide Receiver = Round 4… eight WR’s were chosen (including D. Thomas as a keeper).

The Round of the Tight End = Round 6…five TE’s were chosen.

DRAFT GRADES - RANKING

Yahoo! already assigned draft grades to each team, so I figured that I would rank teams from 10 to 1 in terms of how I thought each team did and based on some analysis of all the draft picks.

In establishing draft rankings, I looked at three areas: 1) Keeper Value, 2) Draft picks vs. Yahoo! ADP, and 3) Overall feel of the team.  Keeper value and draft pick value both looked at the cost of each pick versus where those players are being selected on average in other Yahoo! drafts.  For Instance, Demaryius Thomas is being pick on average at #23.3, and as a keeper cost the 32nd pick, so he scores as a +8.7 for American BadAss.

As far as keeper ranking, here are how the teams stacked up:

1) Butkus' Dick - +201.4

2) BoomGoesTheDynamite - +153.4

3) sprouts - +89.4

4) Channel 4 News Team - +12.2

5) SOFA KING GOOD - +7.7

6) American BadAss - +3.5

7) Vandelay Industries - -5.5

8) Joe's Pats - -25

9) Coors Light Drunk Guys - -25.1

10) Midnight Maulers - -107.7

(The thing that hurt the Midnight Maulers was having Greg Jennings as a 2nd round keeper.  Jennings is being drafted on average at pick 91.6, versus the cost of the 15th pick in our draft).

For the remaining draft picks, I assigned a modified variance value to each.  The modified variance takes the overall variance value and subtracts the number of picks between their actual pick and the team's subsequent pick.  (Basically, if a player is chosen as the 25th pick in the draft, but has an ADP of 32, that would look like a reach, because the player was selected 7 spots too early.  But if that team's next pick was not until the 36th pick, then that was actually a good pick because, theoretically, the player would have been selected before they were able to pick again.)  Under this modified variance value system, here are how the teams ranked on the draft picks that were made (these numbers exclude keepers):

1) SOFA KING GOOD - +129.9

2) sprouts - +109.2

3) BoomGoesTheDynamite - +79.7

4) Coors Light Drunk Guys - +67.3

5) American BadAss - +39.1

6) Butkus' Dick - +28

7) Vandelay Industries - +26.2

8) Joe's Pats - -1.7

9) Midnight Maulers - -24.3

10) Channel 4 News Team - -146.2

(Ch. 4 was hurt by drafting the Chiefs D which is way down on the list, and by taking Dexter McCluster, who appears to have only been drafted on two teams, Timmy's and Dexter McClusters' mom's team.)

So, after taking all of that madness into consideration, and probably putting way too much time, effort and analysis into it, here are my preseason rankings for this season:

10) Midnight Maulers - Wide receiver production could be an issue for the Maulers, but if Reggie Bush clicks with Matthew Stafford, that could more than make up for shortcomings.

9) Joe's Pats - It is hard to go against any team with Tom Brady leading the way, but Joe neglected RB's too long and ended up with Darren McFadden, Shane Vereen and Daryl Richardson backing up LeSean McCoy.  Richardson could end up being the real deal, but there is definitely cause for concern here.

8) Vandelay Industries - The league rookie had a good draft, that netted the 49er Defense and Antonio Gates as a back-up TE.  (That's right, as a back-up TE).  But runningback depth will definitely be an issue, as his only bench RB is Montee Ball.

7) Channel 4 News Team - Durability is the question here -- Can Jamaal Charles and Arian Foster be healthy for the whole season?  If that answer is a yes, then this is your championship team right here.

6) American BadAss - By adding Eddie Lacy to go along with Aaron Rodgers to his roster, ABA has all but assured himself that any TD scored by the Packers will net him points. 

5) Coors Light Drunk Guys - Shawn nabbed a lot of good picks in the late rounds (Steve Smith, Lance Moore, The Law Firm), and has the Brees-Colston connection working again this year.  If the Saints regain 2011 form, this will be a very good combo.

4) SOFA KING GOOD - The King probably has four of the best starters you can have in Calvin Johnson, Roddy White, Marshawn Lynch and Steven Jackson.  Those are just steady starters, week-in week-out.  Quarterback could be a weakness here, but James has his trusty ally in Eli Manning.

3) BoomGoesThe Dynamite - Boom is strong at RB, and TE and has one of the biggest home-run threats in the league with Colin Kaepernick.  I have no doubt though, that Jensy will find a way to screw up his title defense.

2) sprouts - For the first 10 rounds of the draft, Russ made great picks -- CJ Spiller, MJD, AJ Green, Gronkowski-- his starting line-up is about as good as you can get.  Depth could be an issue, but for now, this is a scary team to match-up against.

1) Butkus’ Dick – This is surely the kiss of death to rank my own team #1, but I couldn’t honestly justify any other position.  My line-up is chock full of superstars, and my back-up roster would make a solid starting line-up!  Mark my words – This is the year I rise from the ashes!!!

HERE’S A COMMENT SPOKEN BY NO PERSON EVER

“Oh dang it!  They accidentally put an extra slice of bacon on my cheeseburger…”

DRAFT PROGNOSTICATION

As promised, I made a prediction on the first SIX rounds of the draft… yeah, pretty ambitious, I know… but a worthy endeavor none-the-less.  There were 14 keeper picks in the first 6 rounds, so there were a total of 46 picks to be predicted.

Let’s start with the good stuff:  My picks were exactly correct for 11 of the picks!  That is a 23.9% accuracy on predicting the future!  Booyah!  Those picks were:

#1 – Adrian Peterson – Butkus’ Dick

#7 – CJ Spiller – sprouts

#10 – Trent Richardson – BoomGoesTheDynamite

#11 – Ray Rice – BoomGoesTheDynamite

#14 – AJ Green – sprouts

#21 – RG3 – Butkus’ Dick

#30 – Victor Cruz – BoomGoesTheDynamite

#39 – Dwayne Bowe – Channel 4 News Team

#40 – Andre Johnson – Butkus’ Dick

#41 – Seattle – Butkus’ Dick

#59 – Jordy Nelson – Channel 4 News Team

The first 4 picks were pretty much a given, but check out how I nailed 4 of my first 5 picks!  The only reason I wasn’t 5 for 5 was that I missed on my pick of Dez Bryant because I had Vandelay Industries taking him at pick #17.  And how about nailing pick #59 in the sixth round for Channel 4 News Team?!?  The Unimind is as strong as ever!

There were an additional 6 players selected where my prediction was only off by 1 or 2 spots:

Matt Forte – I had pegged at #23 to SOFA KING GOOD, went at #24 to Vandelay Industries.

Brandon Marshall – Predicted at #26 to Midnight Maulers, went at #27 to sprouts.

Roddy White – Predicted to go #36 to Joe’s Pats, went at #38 to SOFA KING GOOD.

Darren McFadden – Predicted to go #46 to Midnight Maulers, went at #45 to Joe’s Pats.

Jason Witten – Predicted #52 to American BadAss, went #51 to Boom.

Greg Olsen – Predicted #56 to Joe’s Pats, went #55 to Midnight Maulers.

So that’s 18 players where my prediction was off by no more than 2 spots… a 37% accuracy!

Also, here are the players that I thought would be drafted, but did not get taken in those first 46 picks:  San Francisco, Chicago, Houston, David Wilson and Giovani Bernard.

My predictions for the season now:  James will complete the most trades, Timmy will have the most waiver moves, and Shawn will win the most Best Bench awards!  Haha!! 

In any event, it’s gonna be a hell of a good time…. so:

ARE YOU READY FOR SOME FOOTBALL!?!?!?