Three weeks all in one...

It’s baaaack!! Yes, the Sacred Sundays Blog finally resumes in Week 3 of the 2010 season! Two reasons for the late start this year: 1) Only nerds do things on time, and 2) I’ve been busy working on my new book entitled “Fantasy Football Advice I’ve Learned From Jens”. Unfortunately it’s only a page and a half long. HA HA! What do you know Jensy!!!

We have a lot of ground to cover, so without further adieu, let us begin…

Week 1 started right where Week 17 ended last year – with Timmy’s Lords of Lumberg whooping everyone’s ass! Timmy’s was the only team to break into the double digits, registering an even 100 points. Meanwhile, my Scottish Rebels posted what would be a really good nine holes of golf, but is unfortunately a really bad fantasy football score…32. Not one of my active players scored in the double digits, and two of my active players scored zero. I stress the word active because my bench probably set a record for best bench. More on that later…

Week 2 saw a very tight battle for the Weekly High Score, but ultimately it went once again to Mr. TPS Report – The Lords of Lumberg!! In spite of only getting 1 point from Brett Favre, Timmy still managed to post 96 points just edging sprouts by 1. Sprouts score was notable because 69.4% of his score came from just two players…Matt Schaub had 32 points and the Pittsburgh defense rang up 34 points!! Week 2 also featured Round 1 of the “What Do You Know?!?!” Bowl, which was won handily by the Coors Light Drunk Guys 80-60. Lastly, Week 2 had a tie-game between Frito Pie and the Midnight Maulers… I only mention this because in year’s past it is always interesting how tie games can end up coming into play when determining playoff spots.

Things got going a lot better scoring-wise in Week 3, with three teams breaking into double digits!! There were 97 more points scored than compared to Week 2 and 199 more points than compared to Week 1. SOFA KING GOOD led the way with a big 122 points to take the Weekly High Score Prize!! Way to go Cap’n!! After three weeks of intense competition, the Hand brothers are the only two undefeated teams remaining. Odd how they both have also won all of the Weekly High Score prizes… there must be a correlation between scoring a lot of points and winning games… hmm… interesting.

This week I’ll preview an entirely new fantasy football stat that I’ll be tracking this year, push for the demise of the screen pass, and give out three Best Bench awards. But first, some observations from the first three weeks:

They Came To Play:
Arian Foster, RB – Scottish Rebels – 44 pts (Wk 1) – Foster made quite the splash in his NFL debut going for 231 yards and three touchdowns. All while firmly planted on my bench.
Matt Forte, RB – Scottish Rebels – 33 pts (Wk 1) – The bulk of Forte’s points came from an 89-yard touchdown catch that was a thing of beauty. Forte finished with just over 200 yards and two touchdowns. All while firmly planted on my bench.
Peyton Manning, QB – Frito Pie – 32 pts (Wk 1) – Peyton passed for 433 yards and three touchdowns, yet the Colts lost to Houston. Weird.
Javid Best, RB – Lords of Lumberg – 43 pts (Wk 2) – Best was the best in Week 2. Too bad the Lions defense is as porous as the roof on the Superdome because their offense actually has some talent.
Jason Snelling, RB – sprouts – 35 pts (Wk 2) – Snelling had the game of his life and netted a total of 186 yards and three touchdowns. I say “game of his life” because in that one game he equaled 21% of his yardage from last year (872 yards) and 60% of his touchdown total from last year (5).
Matt Schaub, QB – sprouts – 32 pts (Wk 2) – Schaub passed for an amazing 497 yards and 3 touchdowns. He’s good.
Adrian Peterson, RB – Lords of Lumberg – 34 pts (Wk 3) – You knew AP would blow up at some point, so why not against the Lions?
Anquan Boldin, WR – Tailgate Approved – 32 pts (Wk 3) – After three weeks, it’s Anquan Boldin 46, Larry Fitzgerald 26. Come on, you know everyone’s watching that.
Michael Vick, QB – Scottish Rebels – 32 pts (Wk 3) – Here is the second highest scoring player in fantasy so far (with 75 points), second by only 4 points to Peyton Manning. Trust me I am just as shocked at that stat as you are…I’m just glad he’s a Rebel! Oh yeah!!

Just Plain Bad
Miles Austin, WR – Lords of Lumberg – 2 pts (Wk 3) – After starting off super hot (20 pts in Week 1, and 14 in Week 2) Austin became little more than a decoy against the Texans.
Chris Johnson, RB – sprouts – 2 pts (Wk 2) – Pittsburgh actually held Chris Johnson to only 34 yards rushing and 19 yards receiving. (He also lost a fumble). Pretty remarkable considering in his other two games he had 142 and 125 yards respectively.
Maurice Jones-Drew, RB – sprouts – 2 pts (Wk 2) – It’s not the MJD looks bad, it’s that Jacksonville just looks bad. My prediction – Jacksonville will have a top 5 pick in the 2011 NFL Draft.
Steve Smith, WR – Midnight Maulers – 2 pts (Wk 3) – With the quarterback situation in Carolina, it’s actually pretty amazing that Steve Smith even managed to score this many points.
Pierre Garcon, WR – Scottish Rebels – 1 pt (Wk 2) – Rookies are always hit or miss, and… wait he’s not a rookie? Dang…
Felix Jones, RB – American Bad Ass – 1 pt (Wk 2) – For the season, Felix Jones has been outscored by Daniel Fells, Rashad Jennings and Mike Goodson. I will mail a bright, shiny penny to anyone who knows what team any of those players play for, without looking it up.
Brett Favre, QB – Lords of Lumberg – 1 pt (Wk 2) – Favre’s current QB rating is 60.4. If he throws a couple more picks, he might be the first player in NFL history to be as old as his rating.
C.J. Spiller, RB – Frito Pie – 0 pts (Wk 1) – Rookies are always hit or miss, and this one was definitely a miss.
Mike Sims-Walker, WR – Scottish Rebels – 0 pts (Wk 1) – I just don’t understand.. did he marry Herschel Walker’s daughter and take her name?
Owen Daniels, TE – Scottish Rebels – 0 pts (Wk 1) – Two active players in my line-up netted zero points. Suck me.


Take a Pass on the Screen Pass
The last time I witnessed a successful screen pass was probably sometime in the mid-nineties. By successful, I mean a screen pass that resulted in more than the standard yard-and-a-half gain that has become ubiquitous with screen passes today. Seriously, a screen pass will work if you are coaching against an eighth grade defense, but not in the NFL. NFL defenders have been defending against screen passes since they were in the eighth grade, and they’re not falling for it anymore. The best thing a team running a screen pass can hope for is that the clock runs out on the quarter before the ball is snapped so the quarterback can go over to the sideline and talk his coach into calling a real play. An offensive coordinator who calls a screen pass is basically saying “I am no longer following a game plan…I am just selecting plays at random,” because there is no excuse for purposefully calling one of these plays. Screen passes need to die a quick death, and go on the football strategy trash heap along with the Wishbone and Run & Shoot.


Political Rant
With the November elections looming, there is a very important issue going on in Washington regarding the tax rates that will go into effect in 2011. In 2002 George W. Bush signed legislation that cut taxes across the board for all taxpayers. In order to get these tax cuts passed through Congress, Bush cut a deal with Democrats that established an expiration date for the tax cuts. That expiration date is 12/31/2010. If Congress does nothing, everyone’s tax rates will go up. Let me state that again, if Congress does nothing, everyone’s tax rates will go up.
Now this brings us to the debate on Capitol Hill… The Republicans want to extend the current tax rates for everyone (no exceptions) and make these rates permanent. The Democrats want to extend the tax rates only for those making less than $200,000 per year, but revert high earners back to the old (much higher) rates. Currently Republicans are filibustering the attempt by the Democrats to impose this massive tax increase. Our president who is out on the campaign trail (doing what he does best) is going around stating that Republicans are “trying to block a tax cut for the middle class.” As explained earlier, there will be no tax cuts for anyone. All the Democrats’ plan will do is keep exactly the same rates in place this year as next year for the lower income brackets. There are no “tax cuts” being blocked by Republicans.
Also, our president has mentioned that extending the tax rates for individuals making over $200,000 per year will “cost us” $700 billion. But what does this actually mean? If a business announces that something will cost them $700 billion, that means that they will be forking out $700 billion dollars of money that they already own or will have to pay back. That is a true cost. But when our government says that continuing these tax rates will “cost” $700 billion, all that means is that they (the government) won’t receive $700 billion in extra tax revenue! There is no “cost” here. And considering how the government spends money, any amount kept out of their hands is a good thing.


Quarterback plus Receiver Pairing
Over the past several seasons, I’ve tracked kicker rankings and compared actuals to pre-season projections. My analysis has unequivocally shown that trying to predict kickers is useless and pointless. This season I am going to analyze the effect of having on your fantasy team a quarterback paired with a receiver from the same team. For the purposes of the analysis, a receiver is defined as any position that can catch passes from the quarterback (wide receivers, runningbacks or tight ends).
So far this season there have been 19 instances where a quarterback has been paired with a receiver in our league. Next week I will release the preliminary findings and formulate a hypothesis about this strategy.


Best Bench(es)
Week 1 nearly had an historic event… Had Shonne Green scored more than 8 on my bench (he actually scored -1) I would have had a situation where all of my bench players outscored my active players. Basically that means that any change I would’ve made would have been the correct change. As it stood, I could have improved my point total by 79 points with 6 (yes SIX) roster moves… A. Foster for D. Williams (38 pts), M. Forte for S. Jackson (25 pts), K. Orton for C. Henne (7 pts), Chicago for Dallas (5 pts), R. Meacham for M. Sims-Walker (3 pts) and P. Garcon for D. Jackson (1 pt).

Week 2 had a very rare occurrence as well, with Timmy’s Lords of Lumberg taking both the high score prize and being the Week’s Best Bench. Timmy could have improved his score by a very nice 55 points with only two roster moves: J. Best for J. Charles (37 pts) and M. Ryan for B. Favre (18 pts).

Last week saw pretty decent team management from everyone, as evidenced by the higher scores. In the end, the Week 3 Best Bench went to the Midnight Maulers. Jamie could have added 29 points to his total with four roster changes: B. Edwards for S. Smith (12 pts), L. Tomlinson for R. Brown (9 pts), G. Olsen for C. Cooley (7 pts) and Carolina for Baltimore (1 pt). But don’t feel too bad Jamie, even with those changes you still would’ve lost to Lumberg by 2 points.


Okay, we have three weeks in the books, but frankly it feels like we’ve only just begun! Get those waiver claims in, and get ready for Week 4, the first week with byes…

THE LORDS OF LUMBERGS ARE CHAMPS!!

Congratulations TIMMY!!! You are the 2009 Scared Sundays Champion!! And what a way to do it too, claiming the high score of the week in the process… that is big time football!! And congratulations to Jamie also for coming into the playoffs as the 6^th seed, yet battling all the way to a second-place finish.

Now that that’s out of the way, I believe an explanation is in order… This column has endued a big decline in the number of posts recently, and for that I must apologize. Basically staffing hours for Sacred Sundays Blog, Inc have been cut way back due to overtime at Banfield Inc, where I do the bulk of my writing. I’ve been working two jobs there for several weeks, which has eaten up all my free time at work plus really made me not feel like getting on the computer at night…

But this week’s column was going to be colossal since it was for the Championship Game! Rachel is out of town, so I was going to get home from work as early as possible and have a lot of time to write a good long column. But then Snowmageddon hit Portland. Let me just tell you…Portland city residents go insane when it starts snowing, and Portland is ill-equipped to handle white, fluffy precipitation that piles up on the ground. It took me 4 ½ hours to get home from work… a trip that normally takes me 35 minutes. Suffice it to say, that really cut into my writing time tonight… lol! So all I have for this week are a couple quick items, and the final money tally:

FINAL STANDINGS

1. Lords of Lumberg
2. Midnight Maulers
3. SOFA KING GOOD
4. Coors Light Drunk Guys
5. sprouts
6. Tailgate Approved
7. Frito Pie
8. American BadAss
9. Scottish Rebels
10. Joe’s Pats

(Remember that the draft order will be that order in reverse.)

FINAL MONEY WINNERS

1. Timmy - $175 = Championship, plus Three Weekly High Scores (6, 12, 16)
2. Russ - $100 = Four Weekly High Scores (3, 8, 11, 15)
3. James - $80 = 3^rd Place, plus two Weekly High Scores (5, 13)
4. Jamie - $75 = Runner-up, plus one Weekly High Score (2)
5. Jens - $50 = Two Weekly High Scores (9, 10)
6. Shawn - $25 = One Weekly High Score (1)
7. Joe - $25 = One Weekly High Score (4)
8. Jerry - $25 = One Weekly High Score (7)
9. Rachel - $25 = One Weekly High Score (14)

KEEPERS

Once again this year, keepers will have to be declared by one week after the NFL draft. But this year each team will have the option to keep up to 2 keepers, but can elect to keep only one or none. Also this year, the draft pick forfeited for a keeper in next year’s draft will be the round the player was selected this year. (Keepers from this year count as a first or second round pick, and any free agent pickups count as a 15^th round pick.)

So that concludes another fantasy season… I can’t believe it is over so quickly… I will send all of the money winners an email to confirm mailing addresses. Also, I’ll send out email updates when we get closer to the keeper declaration date.

Until then, Happy New Year!!

What a game!! Sprouts squeaked out a 1-point victory (109-108) over the Midnight Maulers to claim the high score for the week! Sprouts was able to overcome the 30 points that Ricky Williams scored for the Maulers, and with big games from Matt Schaub, Wes Welker and Chris Johnson, sprouts has now amassed the best record in the league (7-4). Well done Russ!! That match-up just goes to show how important schedules are, because the Midnight Maulers outscored everyone else in the league this week, yet lost. Ouch...

In other news this week, we have only two more regular season games until its playoff time so I'm going to dedicate the majority of this week's column to playoff scenarios.


Playoff Rules:
-Six teams will qualify for the playoffs.
-Playoffs will run in Week 14, 15 and 16.
-The top two teams in each division automatically qualify, and two additional wild card spots are awarded.
-The top team in each division will receive a bye in the first round.
-Wild cards are not division dependent (i.e. Both wild card teams can come from the same division).
-During the playoffs, all teams are still eligible to win the Weekly High Score Prize.

Tiebreakers for Division Playoff Spots:
1. Overall record
2. Division record
3. Head-to-Head record
4. Points scored
5. Coin flip (initiated by Commissioner)

Tiebreakers for Wild Card Spots:
1. Overall record
2. Head-to-Head record
3. Points scored
4. Coin flip (initiated by Commissioner)

Team-by-Team Playoff Scenarios
Remarkably, with only 2 weeks to go no team has been eliminated from playoff contention. Because of that, the wild card spots are still completely up for grabs, so the scenarios spelled out below apply only for divisional playoff spots.

- Sprouts - Win one of two remaining games, OR two losses from Tailgate Approved PLUS one loss from each of Lords of Lumberg, Midnight Maulers and Coors Light Drunk Guys.

- Frito Pie - Win one of two remaining games.

- SOFA KING GOOD - Win one of two remaining games.

- Tailgate Approved - Win both remaining games, OR win one remaining game PLUS one loss from Lords of Lumberg.

- Lords of Lumberg - Win both remaining games, OR win one remaining game PLUS two losses from Tailgate Approved PLUS one loss from Midnight Maulers.

- Midnight Maulers - Win both remaining games PLUS two losses from Tailgate Approved PLUS one loss from Lords of Lumberg.

- Coors Light Drunk Guys - Win both remaining games PLUS two losses from Tailgate Approved PLUS one loss from Lords of Lumberg PLUS one loss from Midnight Maulers.

- American Bad Ass - Win both remaining games PLUS two losses from Frito Pie PLUS two losses from SOFA KING GOOD.

- Scottish Rebels - Win both remaining games PLUS two losses from Frito Pie PLUS two losses from SOFA KING GOOD PLUS one loss from American Bad Ass.

- Joe's Pats - Win both remaining games PLUS two losses from Frito Pie PLUS two losses from SOFA KING GOOD PLUS one loss from American Bad Ass PLUS one loss from Scottish Rebels.

As mentioned before these scenarios only apply to qualifying for one of the two divisional playoff spots in each division. There are multiple scenarios for each team to grab one of the wild card spots. So it is extra important in these next two weeks to make sure you have your best line-up in the game.


BEST BENCH
Speaking of having your best line-up in the game, I seem to have a real aversion to doing this... For the second week in a row, the Best Bench goes to -- My Scottish Rebels! With three roster moves this week, I could have improved my point total by a very nice 45 points... Eli Manning for Tony Romo (20 pts), Greg Jennings for Roy Williams (18 pts), and New Orleans for Dallas (7 pts). By the way - If anyone wants Roy Williams, he will be on the waiver wire Wednesday morning...


Two more weeks! Let's do this!!

Two is better than one!!

Congratulations Jens!! With the high score this week, Jens became the first team to post back-to-back high scores since Joe's Pats did it back in Week 7 & 8 in 2007! So it has been over two years since this feat was accomplished! AH SCHLEGA!! Nice pullova!!

Speaking of Joe's Pats... Joe was the most unlucky team this week, as he scored the second highest points (109), yet lost to Tailgate Approved's 113 points. Ouch!


Ten weeks of football have been played, so only three weeks remain until the playoffs begin... The playoff rules are the same as last year:
- The top 2 teams in each division automatically qualify for the playoffs
- The top team in each division receives a first round bye
- Two additional wild card spots are awarded to the next two best teams. Division affiliation does not matter for wild cards.
The standings are still so close that I started running through some scenarios and went cross-eyed, so I'll wait until next week to try to start speculating which teams will make it and which won't.


My apologies for the short write-up this week... I'm in the process of transitioning to a new position at work and in the meantime I'm doing two jobs, so I've had little to no extra time. But I will leave you with this week's Best Bench...

... which goes to Yours Truly! My Scottish Rebels could have improved by 29 points with three roster moves: Reggie Bush for Pierre Thomas (18 pts), Roy Williams for Greg Jennings (10 pts) and Mike Sims-Walker for DeSean Jackson (1 pt).


So there are no more bye weeks, and only three weeks left until it's PLAYOFF TIME!!! Get ready for Week 11!!

New Mexico here I come!!!

Week 9 is Tailgate Approved!

Shezow! Pappow!!

Congratulations Jens! Tailgate Approved is the Weekly High Score Champion for Week 9 with 121 points! Everything finally came together this week for Jens, as he outscored even the next closest team (Joe’s Pats) by 22 points to become the 8^th different team this year to claim a high score prize. Couple interesting notes about Jens’ victory: 1) Out of three quarterbacks, he started his lowest scoring one (C. Palmer – 13 pts), leaving K. Warner (30 pts) and J. Cutler (28 pts) on the bench, and 2) This is the first Weekly High Score for Jens since Week 15 2007 (12/17/07) when he got the high score with only 91 pts! What do you know?!?!

There are only four weeks of the regular season left for fantasy, but the playoff picture is still as unclear as it was in Week 3. Six teams have four wins, two teams have five wins, and the top team has six wins. The top team is Rachel’s Frito Pie, who is currently on a 3-game winning streak, and with a record of 6-3 has a higher winning percentage than any male-managed team. That’s the polite way of saying that Frito Pie has completely emasculated the entire league…

So this week I show some respect to Chad Ochocinco, make my (hopefully) final check on defenses, and could I actually have some words of praise for the federal government? More below. But as always, some quick player observations:

AIN’T NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT!

• Michael Turner, RB – Scottish Rebels – 32 pts – Turner completely dominated the Redskins porous defense, and scorched them for 166 yards and 2 touchdowns! Oh yeah!
• Kurt Warner, QB – Tailgate Approved – 30 pts – Warner somehow managed to throw 5 TD passes against the Bears at Soldier Field. That’s an impressive feat for anyone, let alone Father Time.
• Jay Cutler, QB – Tailgate Approved – 28 pts – If it’s any consolation, Jens, I would’ve picked Palmer over Warner and Cutler as well. Seriously, I would never have predicted this one…
• Chris Johnson, RB – sprouts – 27 pts – Chris Johnson is averaging 6.7 yards per carry, which is the highest ever in league history through nine weeks.
• DeAngelo Williams, RB – American BadAss – 25 pts – Williams is hitting his stride lately, as over the past four games he has scored at least 18 points per week, and is averaging 23.5 ppg over that same period.

WORTHLESS STEAMING PILE OF COW DUNG…FIGURITIVELY SPEAKING

• LaDainian Tomlinson, RB – Midnight Maulers – 2 pts – LT is averaging barely over 7 points per game, and has only broken into double digits twice this year.
• Roddy White, WR – SOFA KING GOOD – 2 pts – This was Roddy’s first week without a touchdown since Week 3.
• Heath Miller, TE – Midnight Maulers – 1 pt – Roethlisberger found everyone but Miller on Monday night. Over the past two weeks, Miller has only scored 4 points. Yuck.
• Torry Holt, WR – Coors Light Drunk Guys – 1 pt – Holt has yet to score a touchdown this year.
• Ryan Longwell, K – Coors Light Drunk Guys – 0 pts – Okay, I’m not going to mock Shawn for leaving a kicker in his line-up who was on a bye. Nope, I am going to mock Shawn for having a kicker on his bench score 14 points while his active kicker was on a bye!!! Oh!! Burn!!

OCHOCINCO ES MI HEROE

Anyone who can get a respected sportscaster like Al Michaels or Jim Nantz to say a ridiculous word like “ochocinco" will forever have my comedic respect. So for that reason, Chad Ochocinco, you are my hero.

THE MOST ANTICIPATED MOVIE OF THE YEAR ISN’T DUE OUT UNTIL NEXT YEAR

Hopefully some of you caught the preview for next summer’s best movie – Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time. It begins with the tagline “The most anticipated movie of the year…”, but only it is not due to come out until May 28, 2010! That is over six months away (198 days to be exact), and more importantly not until the next calendar year! So are they saying that it is this year’s most anticipated movie, or are they predicting that it will be the most anticipated movie next year? Do they somehow already know every movie that is going to be released next year? Also, who out there has been anticipating a Prince of Persia movie? Have gamers really become that powerful of a marketing group?

As for the movie itself, I believe that it will fall somewhere between Transformers and The Fast & The Furious in terms of horribleness. There is simply no amount of special effects or hot female co-stars that can save this movie. For those of you who think that this might be a good movie, do not forget – It is based on a video game! Here is a link to a list of all the movies ever made that are based on video games (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_films_based_on_video_games). That list is a veritable “What’s What” of crappy movies.

Bonus hot chick picture. I stumbled across this gem earlier this week, and simply had to share. I think I might become a Tampa Bay fan…

HOW TO NOT PICK NFL GAMES

I am in an NFL pool at my office where all you have to do is pick the winning teams from each game each week. Not picking against the spread, just simply picking the winners. Sounds easy right?

I’ve been doing horrible (my record is 75-41 and I’m tied for 25^th place), so I have been trying to come up with any sort of method to predict the winners. This week I picked my winners based on which team’s defense has scored the most points in Fantasy. My thought was that if a team’s defense is scoring a lot of fantasy points, then they must have also been beating up on their opponents pretty good.

Did my theory hold up? Yeah, not so much. My record for the week was 6-7. Had I simply picked the home team in every game, I would have been 9-4.

Lesson learned – How a team’s defense is doing in Fantasy has little to no impact in the outcome of their games.

New theory for this week– The team with the better fantasy QB wins the game. I will report back on the results next week.

POLITICAL RANT

A Kindler, Gentler D.C.?

Recently, an announcement came from Washington D.C. that Attorney General Eric Holder had directed federal prosecutors to back away from pursuing cases against medical marijuana patients who are in compliance with state marijuana laws. Put aside for a minute the fact that this announcement deals with the legalization of marijuana, which is an entirely different debate. The important thing that I wanted to point out with this announcement is what a huge victory it is for state’s rights! The federal government is willingly backing off of an issue and letting the states decide how they want to deal with it.

That is how the founders of our country wanted it to work. They envisioned a small federal government that would only get involved to settle disputes between states. The states themselves would handle the governing of the people. That way, if you didn’t like the way things were going in your state, you could move to a different state that governed in the way that you preferred. All too often now it seems that Washington is dictating the direct governance of the people. It was refreshing to see one finally go to the states.

DEFENSIVE UPDATE

In Week 1, the Philadelphia Eagles scored an amazing 43 points. At that time, I predicted that it would take the worst defense at least five weeks to score that many total points. Now after nine weeks, the bottom defense has finally broken the 43-point barrier! The Jacksonville Jaguars came into their Week 9 match-up with only 40 total points (a dismal 5.7 ppg), but somehow managed to hang 7 points on the Chiefs this week! Go Jags!!

ENJOY THE MUSICAL GENIUS OF YOKO ONO

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VR6P3mBlkHY

She makes Alvaro Dominguez sound like Luchiano Pavarati.

BEST BENCH

It was a total runaway this week! With an incredible 62-point improvement, the winner of the Best Bench is – the Midnight Maulers! Jamie needed almost a complete roster overhaul to get to that total – 5 roster moves in all: G. Olsen for H Miller (24 pts), Tampa Bay for Philadelphia (22 pts), B. Roethlisberger for D. McNabb (8 pts), R. Williams for L. Tomlinson (7 pts) and E. Royal for S. Smith (1 pt).

So Week 10 is upon us, and this is the last week with any teams on byes. Only the Giants and Texans are off. Only four weeks left until the playoffs!!!

Week 8 In Brief

Eight weeks into the season, and the standings are still wide open. Almost everyone moved a position this week except for the two division leaders, Frito Pie and Lords of Lumberg! Both of those teams have records of 5-3, but only hold 2-game leads over the bottom-ranked team in each division. That’s right, the bottom-ranked teams in each division are only 2 games out of first place. Unbelievably tight! So there is still a lot of football to be played!

Speaking of football—Congratulations this week go to sprouts, who showed that they were the only team that could break 100, and logged very nice 115 points!! With the victory this week, sprouts becomes the first two-time winner this year. Well done Russ!

Just a quick update this week as my normal writing time has been interrupted with meetings, conference calls and TPS reports. Stupid work, always gets in the way of the important things. So we move on to the observations:


PLAYERS I WISH I HAD ON MY TEAM

* Chris Johnson, RB – sprouts – 38 pts – Chris Johnson is what you would call a home-run hitter. When he goes off, he goes off big time! Remember Week 2 when he piled up 48 points? Yeah, so this was just a mediocre game for this guy…

* Maurice Jones-Drew, RB – sprouts – 32 pts – Russ managed to have the two top scoring players for the week on his team! Reminds me of Jamie George circa 2005.

* Ryan Moats, RB – Free Agent – 32 pts – Three touchdowns for this guy after coming off the bench to replace Steve Slaton. Looks like we may have a runningback controversy…

* Aaron Rodgers, QB – American BadAss – 28 pts – Well, at least Rodgers won the fantasy point battle against Favre…

* Brett Favre, QB – sprouts – 25 pts – …but not by much.

* Matt Forte, RB – Scottish Rebels – 24 pts – I’m going to use this section to conduct an experiment… Greg Jennings really sucks. He probably doesn’t deserve to watch the NFL, let alone play in the NFL. (I will report next week on the results of my experiment.)


PLAYERS I NORMALLY END UP WITH ON MY TEAM

* Brandon Marshall, WR – Frito Pie – 2 pts – After a three game stretch where he scored 45 points, Marshall has only managed 6 in his last two games.

* Anquan Boldin, WR – SOFA KING GOOD – 2 pts – Hey Anquan, if you are hurt don’t play. Because if you play, James might be expecting you to score more than 2 points.

* T.J. Houshyourdaddymandzadeh, WR – Midnight Maulers – 2 pts – How about that Cowboy defense shutting down the Housh?! They might have a playoff game in them yet…

* Torry Holt, WR – Coors Light Drunk Guys – 1 pt – Honestly, until I was scanning Shawn’s roster this week, I thought that Torry Holt was out of football. In a way, by playing for Jacksonville he kind of is…

* Mike Sims-Walker, WR – Scottish Rebels – 0 pts – You have got to be kidding me! You cannot be serious! Twice I have had Sims-Walker in my active line-up and twice he has scored me zero points. Unbelievable.

* Steve Slaton, RB – Lords of Lumberg – -1 pt – So how does a runningback end up with a negative point? All you have to do is only gain 10 yards, lose a fumble and get benched for the remainder of the game. Oh, it’s simple!



DEFENSE UPDATE

As you know, the Philadelphia defense went off in Week 1 and scored an unbelievable 43 points. The challenge at that point became to see how long it would take the lowest scoring defense to break through the 43-point barrier. As of last week, two defenses remained below that mark: Tennessee and Jacksonville. As of this week, one defense remains: the Jacksonville Jaguars.

After playing in 7 games, the Jaguars have only scored a total of 40 points. That is an average of only 5.7 points per game! However, they do play the Chiefs this weekend, so I’m giving them a pretty decent chance of scoring 4 points.



IT IS NATIONAL “CHECK YOUR SMOKE DETECTOR BATTERY” WEEK

So you know, go ahead and check the battery in your smoke detector.



BEST BENCH

It’s like that old saying, “You gotta dance with who brought you.” Seriously, what was I thinking playing Mike Sims-Walker and Marshawn Lynch ahead of Greg Jennings and Matt Forte?! There must be a reason that one of those guys was my keeper and the other one was my first round pick… So this week, the award for best bench goes to: the Scottish Rebels! I could have improved my total this week by 35 points, with three very simple line-up changes— M. Forte for M. Lynch (20 pts), G. Jennings for M. Sims-Walker (14 pts) and New Orleans for Baltimore (1 pt).



Only two more weeks of byes! Get ready for Week #9!!

Week 7 Apercu

Seven for seven. Seven weeks and seven different Weekly High Score Champions. The level of parity that we are seeing in the league this year is spooky. I guess it is fitting that Halloween is this weekend. Timmy leads the way with five victories after barely edging out sprouts by one point, and eight teams currently stand with three victories each. Also, only 73 points separate the highest scoring team, the Coors Light Drunk Guys (638 pts), from the lowest scoring team, my Scottish Rebels (565 pts).

Speaking of my Rebels… BOOYAH!! My boys finally put it all together, and led by big games from Tony Romo, DeSean Jackson and the Saints defense I broke the 100-point barrier for the first time this year!! Hey now!! Those three players accounted for 60% of the 126 points I scored this week. So that means that the only teams yet to be the Weekly High Score Champion are: American Bad Ass, Tailgate Approved and Frito Pie. It would not surprise me to see one of these teams on top for Week 8. Just preferably not Tailgate Approved. LOL! What do you know, Jensy?!?!

We are now more than halfway through the fantasy regular season, so it is time for some mid-term grades. The grades are based on overall team management, keeper performance, and just my overall impression. More below. Also this week I’ll check in on defenses and get back to some political ranting. But first, some quick observations…


THAT IS HOW YOU DO IT!
- Miles Austin, WR – Lords of Lumberg – 32 pts – For the second time in as many weeks that he has played, Austin is the top point scorer for the week. (The Cowboys had a bye last week.) In those two games, Week 5 & 7, he has tallied an amazing 72 points! This week, he had only 6 catches, but racked up 171 yards and 2 TD’s!
- Carson Palmer, QB – Tailgate Approved – 29 pts – Palmer smoked the Bears for 5 TD’s in their 45-10 rout. Never thought I would be reporting about the Bengals routing the Bears. Strange times…
- Ricky Williams, RB – Midnight Maulers – 27 pts – You would’ve thought that there was a bong waiting for Ricky in the end zone with the way that he was running! He had 3 TD’s and 80 yards on only 9 carries, an impressive 8.89 yards/carry and 0.33 TD’s/carry.
- Cedric Benson, RB – sprouts – 27 pts – Benson rushed for an impressive 189 yards against his former team (da Bears) and is your current NFL rushing leader, with 720 yards! (33 yards ahead of Adrian Peterson).
- Tony Romo, QB – Scottish Rebels – 27 pts – Romo’s big day can be attributed to a magical man by the name of Miles Austin, see above.
- Vernon Davis, TE – Lords of Lumberg – 27 pts – I heard that on Monday Alex Smith dedicated a song to Vernon Davis, The Flamingos “I Only Have Eyes For You”. Seriously, did Smith complete a pass to anyone but Vernon Davis?
- Shonn Greene, RB – Free Agent – 26 pts – Leon Washington broke his leg, and Greene filled in like a champ, racing for 144 yards and 2 touchdowns. Anyone need a runningback?


WTF?!
- Steve Breaston, WR – Frito Pie – 2 pts – Breaston was averaging just over 80 yards a game coming into this week, but only managed 23 yards in spite of more playing time due to Boldin’s injury.
- Visanthe Shiancoe, TE – American Bad Ass – 2 pts – Not much space for Visanthe this week against the Steelers defense.
- Hines Ward, WR – Coors Light Drunk Guys – 0 pts – Ward had a streak of 168 games with a reception coming into this game, and barely kept it alive with one catch for 3 yards. That is significantly less than you would expect from a guy who was leading the NFL in receiving.
- Brent Celek, TE – Tailgate Approved – 0 pts – This guy was such a non-factor that there aren’t even any game notes about him on the Yahoo site.
- Kellen Winslow, TE – SOFA KING GOOD – 0 pts – He had only two catches for nine yards. Jet lag maybe?
- Chicago, DEF – American Bad Ass – -1 pt – For two weeks in a row, Jason has managed to have a team on his active roster score negative points.


MID-TERM GRADES
Lords of Lumberg – Record: 5-2-0, Points Scored: 619, Moves: 13
Timmy has the league’s best record and has scored the third most points. His keepers are awesome (Peterson and Slaton), and at this point he is in the driver’s seat! Best move: Adding Miles Austin.
Grade: A

Frito Pie – Record: 4-3-0, Points Scored: 594, Moves: 2
Rachel has made the fewest moves of any team, yet leads the North Division standings. Having Peyton Manning as a keeper has been huge, but it looks like the risk/reward trade-off of having Brian Westbrook has become more risk than reward. However, having LeSean McCoy ready to fill in was a very smart move.
Grade: A

Coors Light Drunk Guys – Record: 3-4, Points Scored: 638, Moves: 4
Shawn has scored the most points in the league, yet somehow has a losing record. Twice he has lost to the Weekly High Score Champion (Week 4 vs. Joe’s Pats and Week 6 vs. Lords of Lumberg). So that is just more bad luck than anything else. His keepers are looking brilliant (Brees and Wayne), and I don’t expect that he will stay will a losing record for long.
Grade: B+

Tailgate Approved – Record: 3-3-1, Points Scored: 606, Moves: 10
Jens has one of the best WR duos with Andre Johnson and Larry Fitzgerald, but Steven Jackson needs to step it up and play like a keeper. Also, it’s probably getting to be about time to move Kurt Warner to the bench.
Grade: B

Joe’s Pats – Record: 3-4-0, Points Scored: 621, Moves: 12
Conventional wisdom says not to load up too many players from one team, but that goes out the window when you’re talking about Tom Brady, Randy Moss and the Patriots Defense. Joe has ridden those three to the second most points scored in the league thus far.
Grade: B

Midnight Maulers – Record: 3-3-1, Points Scored: 586, Moves: 4
On paper, Jamie’s keepers look as good as gold. On the field, however, not so much. Tomlinson has yet to score more than 10 points in a game, and Gore has been battling injuries since Week 3. However, if these two guys get healthy, the Maulers will be dangerous.
Grade: B

American Bad Ass – Record: 3-3-1, Points Scored: 582, Moves: 8
Jason carries the dubious distinction this year of having the lowest weekly point total, coming in Week 5 when he only put up 36 points. That hurts. But so far Aaron Rodgers has been a quality keeper, and DeAngelo Williams has put up some big numbers despite being on the Panthers.
Grade: B-

sprouts – Record: 3-4-0, Points Scored: 583, Moves: 6
Russ has the top scoring QB (Schaub) and the 2nd place RB (Benson), and still has Maurice Jones-Drew and Chris Johnson. But unfortunately, he also has T.O. who makes Matt Forte look like a 2006 version of LT. However, sprouts can put up some big numbers and is a team that you don’t want to have to go up against.
Grade: B-

Scottish Rebels – Record: 3-3-1, Points Scored: 565, Moves: 13
Matt Forte is a bust. Period. My tight end has outscored him by 30 points. The best move I have made so far this season was moving him to the bench.
Grade: C

SOFA KING GOOD – Record: 3-4-0, Points Scored: 572, Moves: 16
James has the most waiver/add-drop moves of any team, yet is tied for the bottom record. However, he is still only one game behind the North Division leader. Of James’ 16 moves, his best was adding Mario Manningham and dropping Patrick Crayton, but he might want a do-over on dropping Carson Palmer for Ahmad Bradshaw.
Grade: C


DEFENSE UPDATE
There are still two defenses, after seven weeks of play that have not broken the 43-point barrier set by the Philadelphia Eagles in Week 1. They are the Tennessee Titans (42 pts) and the Jacksonville Jaguars (39 pts). And to show that NFL has a sense of humor, those two teams are slated to play against each other in Week 8. It could get ugly.


SO HOW CLOSE ARE THE STANDINGS?
Several times I have mentioned how close the standings are this year and just how unprecedented it is to have so many teams with identical records (or nearly identical) at this stage of the season. Compare that to 2007 when there was quite the divide by this point:
Midnight Maulers (6-1)
Scottish Rebels (6-1)
Joe’s Pats (5-2)
American Bad Ass (4-3)
Coors Light Drunk Guys (4-3)
Sofa King Good (3-4)
Killer Load Toads (2-5)
Chief Dredd (2-5)
2 Fantastic (2-5)
EarthWindFire (1-6)


POLITICAL RANT
“Corporations don’t pay taxes… Individuals pay taxes”
Lately there has been a lot of talk from politicians about going after health insurance company profits and using those proceeds to pay for the healthcare reform. Oregon senator Ron Wyden (D) is particularly in favor of this approach and in a recent interview said “We need to hold these insurance companies accountable.” The only problem is that corporations don’t pay taxes…individuals pay taxes. Any increase in corporate taxes is passed along one way or the other to individuals. Don’t believe me? Here is a real-life example:
Currently we pay for an individual health plan for Rachel from Blue Cross/Blue Shield. This plan was purchased on the open market, as Rachel’s job doesn’t have any health benefits. The monthly premium we pay for her plan is $143.00. In the mail yesterday I received a notice from Blue Cross/Blue Shield that the premium had been increased to $183.00 per month. A letter included explained the increase. Here is an excerpt:

Governor Kulongoski signed HB 2116 into law August 4, 2009. HB 2116 creates, among other things, a tax on medical insurance premiums as partial funding for increased access to healthcare. Effective October 1, 2009, the bill calls for health carriers to remit one percent of the ‘gross premium amount’ paid by their insured members to the State of Oregon.
Funds generated by the premium tax will help expand healthcare access for the uninsured, including the expansion of the Oregon Health Plan to 35,000 uninsured, low-income adult Oregonians, as well as 80,000 uninsured Oregon children through a new program called “Health Care for All Oregon Children.” What this means for you is, premium bills will be adjusted to reflect the addition of the tax beginning with bills due for October 2009.
Sincerely,
Bonnie Hass
Director, Customer Service

So you can see that these narrow-minded politicians thought that they would be taking money away from the “greedy” insurance companies, but all they are doing is forcing the insurance companies to increase their rates to consumers. Along with meeting their normal expenses, corporations have margins that must be maintained in order to meet shareholder and board member goals. As taxes go up, corporations have to find new ways to maintain their margins. This is done either by increasing prices to consumers or cutting expenses. (Btw – “Cutting expenses” is corporate speak for “cutting jobs.”) See, corporations don’t pay taxes… individuals pay taxes.
Now, on to these “obscene” profits that are supposedly being made by corporations… In spite of what politicians would have you believe, corporations do not just sit on mountains of cash. That would not make good business sense. Quite the contrary—corporations use excess cash to grow their own businesses, through the hiring more employees and the building new factories or offices. Or if internal growth isn’t the goal of the corporation, they use excess funds to invest in standard investment vehicles (stocks and bonds) or to directly invest in another company. All of these activities have direct positive benefits to the economy and to society. But as taxes go up on corporations, the ability for them to engage in any of these activities dwindles.
The end result of increases in corporate taxes are: higher prices to consumers, no pay raises to employees, no new job hires, or worst of all, layoffs. Who suffers in any of these scenarios? The individual!! The normal tax-paying American!! That is where the brunt of any tax increase is felt. Corporations don’t pay taxes… individuals pay taxes.
Don’t be deceived. When you hear your politicians talk about going after “obscene” corporate profits, tell them to go fuck off. What they are really talking about is increasing YOUR taxes, and taking more of YOUR money. Bottom line about tax increases – Money is freedom. The more money you have, the more freedom you have to do what you want to do. Tax increases take money from you, and thus take away your freedom. Don’t let politicians steal your freedom under the guise of corporate taxes.


FUN WITH SPELL CHECK
When running spell-check, the suggested replacement for “Ochocinco” was “Chicano”. I don’t know why, but I found that to be quite amusing.


BEST BENCH
Not even close this week… When you have the top scoring player overall on your bench and the top scoring tight end on your bench, odds are you are going to have the best bench of the week. So this week’s Best Bench goes to…. The Lords of Lumberg!! Timmy could have improved his point total by a solid 55 points this week, with three roster changes: M. Austin for D. Bowe (25 pts), V. Davis for T. Gonzales (24 pts) and C. Ochocinco for W. Welker (6 pts).


Week 8 is another tough week with six teams on byes, so make sure you have your rosters set!!