A Couple Fantasy Football Weeks

It's all over the map, you guys.

The Bubby Bristers (league with friends), record: 3-1

This is going well--so well, in fact, that I'm starting to get (arrogantly) chafed that I even lost the one game I've lost. I'm leading the league in points and my one loss was to the last undefeated team, so I'm optimistic going forward.

Week 3

helmet sticker: Drew Brees, 24.6 points (in, of course, his only real-life loss.)

helmet un-sticker: Osi Umenyiora, 0 points (which is how he tricked me into dropping him before this week's game, in which he recorded four tackles and three sacks. [insert angry growling noise])

Week 4

helmet sticker: Antonio Gates, 26.4 points. MAN that guy is good.

helmet un-sticker: Jeremy Maclin, 1.4 points. (Mike Sims-Walker scored nothing at all, but that's my fault for taking a flyer and picking him up this week. All on me.)

The Fightin' AJ Hawks (random internet dude league), record: 2-2

This is going way better than it should be. My team is a random collection of guys who perform unpredictably, I have so little depth that most of my bench this week was either on a bye or inactive due to injury, and I can never find anybody promising to pick up because the rest of the league members have already savvily snapped up the good sleepers. So the fact that I'm at .500 is really pretty great. In fact, if I finish the season with just those two wins, I'll consider it a relative victory for my fantasy football dignity.

Week 3

No idea. Can't get ESPN's atrocious fantasy setup to tell me what my players' Week 3 scores were. This interface makes me so angry, you have no idea.

Week 4

helmet sticker: Terrell Owens, 28 points. That performance single-handedly lifted me to victory.

helmet un-sticker: Darren Sproles, -1 point. Yes, he was on my bench, but I can't get over what a hideous, horrible pickup he was for me in the draft.

The Larry Fitzjerries (girl league), record: 0-4

You guys. It's so bad. It's so. bad.

My team is bad. The surprise auto-draft (which, yes, I'm still annoyed about, and no, the commissioner never apologized for) gifted me with the Broncos' third-best WR, Green Bay's injured running back, San Francisco's highly-touted disappointment of a WR, and Buffalo's wildly uneven rookie RB. And in a 12-team league (although, yes, that's a handicap shared by everyone in the league), there aren't a lot of useful free agents to be had.

My decisions are bad. I "won" the Brandon Jackson waiver sweepstakes after Ryan Grant went down, and he hasn't really helped me. I picked up Mike Sims-Walker (yes, in this league, too) on the off-chance he'd have a big week. I picked up Legedu Naanee, probably just because his name is fun. And of course, I dropped Cutler for Kevin Kolb (while making fun of the girl who dropped Kolb for Sanchez, which now seems like a really good idea), then automatically chose Cutler again after Kolb got injured/revealed himself to be a bust. (He's a bust, right? Or are we seeing how he does next week?)

And my luck is bad. I'm leading the league in points against. This week, I needed a big week from Cutler--which he had had the three weeks previously--to win. That didn't happen. The week before, my guys played decently but my opponent got 32 points from Anquan Boldin. In Week 2, my starting WR, Devon Aromashodu, who'd had a great first week, was inexplicably and entirely cut out of his team's game plan. Stuff like that.

So here's my question: at what point should I consider my team so irredeemably bad that I stop even trying to win? Here's my next question: if I'm going to lose on purpose, what's the greatest way to go about it?

Plenty of people, I am told, get disenchanted with fantasy football and just stop paying attention, stop making roster changes, etc. So that's out. Too unoriginal. I've also heard of people purposely trading away or just dropping their best players to create havoc in the league. That's more intriguing from a revenge angle, but does it go far enough?

I'm thinking I could drop all my dudes (except for the ones on the do-not-drop list [boo!], that is Desean Jackson, Frank Gore, and Antonio Gates--although maybe I could trade them?) and replace them with super-terrible dudes. Picture it: starting Tim Tebow at QB. Filling the rest of the roster in with fourth-stringers--maybe A) guys who are known to be terrible B) guys with funny names (I could keep Legedu Naanee) or C) guys all from the same team. For example, if I wanted to run with the Tebow idea, I just pick up every possible Broncos player from the waiver wire, so I'm starting a literal football team as my fantasy team. Of course, this would be funnier if I picked a worse team, like the Bills or the Browns. (The Browns are intriguing because I could implement another phase of the plan by trash-talking uncontrollably, and I could make message board posts saying "CLEVELAND REPRESENT!" and so forth.)

So! I'm mostly joking, of course, but just in case . . . suggestions?

And, oh right, Week 3

helmet sticker: DeSean Jackson, 22.1 points

helmet un-sticker: Brandon Jackson, 3.9 points

Week 4

helmet sticker: because it would be repetitive to give it to Antonio Gates again, Demaryius Thomas, 15.3 points

helmet un-sticker: with one interception, one lost fumble, and a grand total of 42 passing yards, let's give it up for Jay Cutler! -1.32 points! He is who I thought he was!

My Second Week of Fantasy Football

It went better! I now know what it feels like to win at fantasy football.

I really do think I made a mistake in signing up for three different leagues. It's hard for me to keep straight all the guys I have (and how much I care about them, based on how much I like the league I own them in) and all the guys I'm playing against, so I get confused about who I'm rooting for. The only time I can really keep straight who I need to do well and who I need to do badly is on Monday, when there's only one game left to go. This Monday was particularly nice and neat: Frank Gore and Drew Brees were playing each other. I needed both to do well because I have Brees in one league, Gore in another, and Brees and Gore in the third. And they both came through for me.

The Fightin' AJ Hawks (FPL League)

If it were so rude, I'd just drop out of this league, not least because it's done through ESPN, and their interface is terrible. I don't care what Matthew Berry tells you; play fantasy football through Yahoo instead. Anyhoo.

My weak-on-paper team did very nicely for me this week, giving me the second-highest point total in the league. Going into Monday, I was up ten with Drew Brees to go; my opponent had San Francisco's defense. I felt comfortable with it, and that turned out to be justified. Victory!

Helmet sticker: Jahvid Best, 40 points. Forty!

Helmet un-sticker: Felix Jones, 1 point. But hey, that's on me for starting--and drafting--him.

The Bubby Bristers (People I Know League)

This is the league where I own Brees and Gore so I triumphed easily over my husband. In the interest of martial harmony, I have kept the "In your FACE"s to a minimum.

Helmet sticker: Just to spread them around, Knowshon Moreno, 17.8 points.

Helmet un-sticker: Greg Jennings, 3.6 points. Why does Rodgers keep throwing to this "James Jones" character?

The Larry Fitzjerries (Girl League)

Going into Monday, I had Gore left to play, and a virtually insurmountable 31.38 point deficit. Then Frank Gore had a huge game--almost huge enough. I lost by (roughly) three. If only MNF had gone to overtime, I would have been undefeated in Week 2. Oh well.

Helmet stickers: Frank Gore, 28.8 points and Jay Cutler, 29.83 points. Oh, did I mention that I went crawling back to Jay Cutler after Kolb got concussed? I did. Had to.

Helmet un-stickers: Legedu Naanee, 1.4 points, and Devin Aromashodu, 0.0 points. C'mon Jay, you couldn't throw it to Aromashodu once?

Bubby, Larry, and A.J.

As of last night, all three of my fantasy drafts are over. I think I did OK? Possibly?

The Larry Fitzjerries

As I shared with you, my all-girl autopick-draft league got off to a rough start. Luckily, one of my co-league members (the girl I'm playing in Week 1, no less) dropped the Eagles' new QB, Kevin Kolb, for Mark Sanchez. I questioned that decision, but without looking a gift horse in the mouth. I, in turn, dropped Jay Cutler and picked up Kolb. He's a little risky, since he's inexperienced, but he should throw quite a bit in the Eagles' offense without throwing it to the other team as much as some quarterback frat daddies I could name.

The Bubby Bristers

This one had a real draft, with people I actually know, and is easily my favorite league. Also, I think we're going to play for money. ($10 apiece, because we are high rollers.) I was pleased with how my draft went. I got Drew Brees at QB and Frank Gore at RB. My receivers are kind of in the high-risk/high-reward vein (Calvin Johnson and less so, Greg Jennings), but I think they'll work out. The toughest part about this league is that we're doing Individual Defensive Players, and nobody knows defensive guys that well. We all knew enough to avoid taking Darrell Revis while he was holding out for a better contract . . . and then I plucked him off the waiver wire this morning after I saw that he's signing on Monday. I'm crafty!

The Fightin' AJ Hawks

This one was the auction draft with dudes from the message boards at Football Pros Live. I have heard over and over that auction drafts are way more fun, interesting, and creative than regular drafts and in short, that once you go auction, you never go back. Based on my experience, these are all filthy lies.

I'm not blaming the people I did the auction with at all--they're all strangers, but they were perfectly nice and even helpful, since I mentioned I hadn't done an auction before. And to be fair, I should have studied more and done some mock drafts. Bidding on each player went too fast for me to feel like I was keeping up, but the entire auction collectively took forever. It didn't help that (I think?) I spent to much money early on some guys (particularly Drew Brees and Andre Johnson), so then I had to sit around for round after round, waiting for prices to come down to where I could afford the rest of my roster. The end result looks OK, I think (although I haven't looked very hard at everybody else's teams), but actually doing the auction was some of the least fun I have ever had. I am now going to tell you something sincerely: I can only think of one dentist's appointment I've ever been to that was less enjoyable than that draft. Never again will I do a fantasy football auction.

I was going to put my rosters (as they stand now) at the end of this post, after a break, but then HTML and I got into an ugly screaming match and I gave up on that notion. My rosters are now, therefore, on their very own page--Fantasy Stuff. I guess I could keep my win/loss records and such updated over there, too. Why not?