Week 11: Wash-up

Well, that was a crazy week of football. The Saints got hit hard, the Falcons are on the top of the AFC South standings with only 4 wins, the Packers and Patriots had massive wins over good teams, the Texans new QB threw his first TD pass to a defensive back (JJ WATT FTW!), the Manning Bronco's lost to St Louis, the Eli Giants nearly beat the 49ers despite throwing 4 interceptions and Adrian Peterson has finally been suspended for the rest of the season for child abuse (recommended reading).

JJ Watt on a back-shoulder fade
This is a defender!

And that all translated into some weird stuff in VP3 football. After watching Seattle and Philly get monstered on Monday I was sure, sure!, that both Zim and I were well and truly cooked this week. Open up Fantasy at about 11pm Monday night and WTF? Both wins?! How does that happen?

Lighties (95) def Farnsworth (59)

I called it, the Lighties needed players not called Peyton Manning to step up and they did. Peyton had a terrible game, 15 points!, but Brown, Donnell, Crabs and the 49ers def all put up decent numbers and got the job done. And this email thread happened:
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Lighties to Farns and Doof:
"I forgot to mention ...."

Farns:
"I blame J Cameron that slacker."

Doof:
If only someone had had the goodness of heart to alert you to the fact that Cameron was likely out with concussion...

"The Farn's will need to change the TE (injured) and Kicker (bye) position to be in with a chance,"

-Dan, 14 November 2014

Farns:
*sheepishly walks away from PC*
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BAM!

Breesus (112) def US Forces (78)

The King of the Drews is back to his winning ways, easily dispatching the General who has taken a pounding the last 4 weeks, dropping 4 in a row and slumping to outright 8th. An almost typical team from Breesus, good numbers all the way down the list until the Defence: 30 points. From the Packers? Damn! But look at the Forces, Luck only 19 points, Ball 0 because he was injured, Reed, Fitz and Johnson all basically nothing.

Zim (92) def Marcy (89)

Gronk happy dance

The Doomydooms were well down on their previous average but, like Breesus, had just enough players put up good games to scrape by. Look at the QB - 4, Ingram - 9, Tate - 4. Instead, Lynch 12 in a poor game from him, Nelson, Gronk, Maclin and the Bills. Gettin the job done. Marcy picked her least worst quarterback for Week 11, which was a good reversal of fortune, and that QB scored nearly 5 times the points of Zim's QB! But Cam, Lacey, Jeffrey and Randle weren't enough to cover the rest of the slackers, including a -3 from the defence. Ouch!

Gronk taking the defence with him

Bradylessbrothers (74) def Agent P (59)

Weird, weird, weird game this one. Roethlisberger v Rivers in a snooze fest. Two on-fire QBs that in the past two games have barely walked it in, more like crawled it in. Mike Evans had a monster game for BB with 31 points, but that was 20 points higher than the next best player. On either team! Jordan Matthews and the Cardinals Defence again did quite well, on Agent P's bench, for the second week in a row.

Doof (69) def Endless (68)

Another weird game here. Thank the frozen gods of the north for Aaron Rodgers who had an awesome game Sunday afternoon and covered my sorry team. Endless's Charles was not quite good enough to take the points and so the Road to the Championship (tm) continues. I took two lessons from this game:
1) never get fantasy advice from Zim
2) never start a Patriots Running Back. Let me explain.

1) The Zim factor:
Zim and I spent a little while on Friday night working through my team, for some unknown reason. Her suggestions were entirely solid, in theory:
Why start Marshall? DJax has the better match-up. Stupid.
Why leave Vereen on the bench? His match against the Colts is genius. Stupid!

Both good points, and the casual insults really drove the points home. Change, change. Gametime: OMG STOP THROWING TO MARSHALL YOU STUPID CUTLER! OMG THROW TO JACKSON YOU STUPID RG3! OMG, STOP PLAYING GREY, BELICHECK, PLAY VEREEN, WHY DO YOU ALL HATE ME????

2) The Patriots RB curse:
There is a well known truism in NFL Fantasy that the head coach of the New England patriots, Bill Belicheck, hates fantasy football coaches and will go out of his way to screw them over. Case in point, Patriots @ Colts. Vereen, the starting RB, is ready for a big game against the Colts that have been giving it up. *Start Vereen* What happens? Friggin' Belicheck starts Jonas Grey in his 3rd ever game and Grey runs for 201 yards and 4, count em FOUR, touchdowns. 40 points. WTF? #200ShadesOfGrey was seen on twitter. From no one to instant franchise record holder. And Vereen? A piddling 7.7 points

You want to know why Grey was able to post 40 points? Because I started Vereen. Mr Grey, you're welcome.