2017 Champion - Agent P

The 2017 VP3 Fantasy NFL Champion: 

Agent P

With a score of 107 to 73 Agent P completely whipped Doof's Playinators. A stunning game to Gurley, 39.6 points - it's pretty much impossible to beat that. The other positions pretty much balanced out, although a -1 to the Jaguars DEF for Doof was terrible. Gurley did the damage to Doof, just as he did to the Tennessee Titans.

Taken in the second round of the draft, Gurley finished the season with 319 points, over 60 points more than the next RB. Over two games better than 2nd place!

Backing up Gurley, Agent P also boasted the number 4 RB in the league, Melvin Gordon. Gordon was the first round pick and put up 217 points. Agent P's 3rd and 4th round picks weren't great, TY Hilton and Isiaih Crowell. Her 5th round, coupled with the RBs, pretty much carried her over the Championship line: Russell Wilson. Wilson finished first in QBs with 327 points, 33 points up on 2nd place.

Congratulations to Agent P: 10-4 season, top 2 players, Championship winner.

Third place

Breesus beat Bradylessbrothers for third place this season, 67-56. Congrats on another fine season!

2017 Championship Game

(1 v 2) +
(2014's 3 v 4) +
(Evil scientist v secret agent platypus) +
(Dan v Tanja) =
2017's pinnacle of rightness

Doof's Playinators v Agent P in

The Battle of the Tri-State Area

If you've never watched Phineas and Pherb the Doof v Agent P thing probably makes no sense.
If you've never watched Tanja and me argue about something, this rivalry probably makes no sense.
But for those in the know, this is huge!

Agent P

Since Week 9 Agent P has averaged 114 points per game, dropping below 100 only twice and losing only one game. Agent P scored over 130 three times! These consistently high scores make sense when you see her gun players: Russell Wilson, Melvin Gordon, Todd Gurley and Tyreek Hill. And these players were all picked up in the draft. In Wee 8 Agent P made the move from the Patriots D to the Ravens and the following week started moving Kickers around. But the core four didn't change, they didn't need to.
Agent P finished the Regular Season at 10-4, two games behind Doof and two games above BB.

Doof's Playinators

Since Week 9 Doof averaged 98 points per round with a low of 76 and a high of 114. Doof''s win in Week 7 against Agent P was the start of an 8-game winning streak in the regular season that propelled the team to a 12-2 league-leading record and first place in the League standings.
In the Semi-Final Doof was 25 points up with one game to play and confidence was high. A monster game to Breesus's Freeman reclaimed those 25 points, but it was not quite enough and Breesus fell 1.5 points short of another Championship appearance.

Head-to-head

The projection Thursday morning is Agent P (94) over Doof (89).
Agent P and Doof met only once this year, in Week 7 with Doof taking the W: 136-93. Huge games to WR Cooper and QB Wentz and another big game by the Jaguars DEF put Doof over 130 points for, I think, the only time this year. Russell Wilson was typically great as was Gurley, but the rest of Agent P's team a bit ordinary.
In 2016 the two teams met only once, also in Week 7, where Agent P won 67-56.
And way back in 2014 Doof and Agent P met in the 3rd place game, with Agent P winning 97-72.

3rd Place Game - Bradyless Brothers v Breesus King of the Drews

It's 3 v 4 in the final battle for 3rd place for the season. Both teams have ups and downs this year, stars and busts. Breesus is projected to win, 95-80.
These two teams met only 2 weeks ago, with BB winning 107-98. The win put BB a game up on Breesus and ensured the 3rd place in the standings.
This is the third year in a row BB has made it to the Championship Round, although the last two years BB was playing for the Championship, winning it all last year against the Lighties.
Breesus finished in fourth place last year, losing the Third Place game to Doof. In 2015 Breesus missed the playoffs altogether, after winning it two straight years.

2017 Regular season - over

After 14 short weeks the regular season is now over; on to the play-offs.

Riding an 8-game winning streak, Doof finishes the season on top with a 12-2 record. The combination of Carson Wentz, Le'Veon Bell and the Jaguars DEF was pretty unstoppable. Now Wentz is gone for the season with an ACL, which screws me over(!) and probably also the Eagles.

Agent P lost the final round but still finished at 10-4, two games ahead of third place. Wilson, Gurley and Gordon were her Big 3. In never-underestimating a good Kicker, Agent P's Zurlein put up 160 points, tops among Kickers and 22 more than the next best.

At 8-6, Bradyless Brothers will play Agent P in the semi-final. Dak Prescott did not have the season he was supposed to have for the Cowboys, nor did McCaffrey, Jackson or Thomas. It's tough when your best player is the TE, who put up great numbers... for a TE.

Three teams finished with a 7-7 record, with the only one making the play-offs. Only three teams recorded a winning season (greater than .500) - indicating the weird, injury-plagued, weird-performing season that was 2017.

Breesus will play Doof in the semi-final. Breesus tried various QBs, including Derek Carr, Jared Goff, Deshaun Watson and finishing the season with Case Keenum. No one saw that happening at the draft! A stand-out on the team, Hopkins had a great season at WR.

The Farn's and Lighties both finished with a 7-7 record. In his first year, Goonbags dropped the final game of the season to end 6-8. After a scintillating 3-0 start, Endless dropped a lot of games before bookending the season with a 3-game win streak to finish at 6-8. After a woeful start to defend his 2016 Championship, US Forces finished in 9th position at 5-9. Marcy never quite got it together, 2-12.

Flicking through the Player lists shows that the top-four teams fields most of the top rated players per position. Agent P ended with 2 of the top-3 Kickers. Agent P had the top QB, Doof had 2 and 3. Agent P, the 1 and 5 RB's, Doof number 2. At WR, Farn's had the top-WR with Antonio Brown, nearly 30 points higher than Hopkins at 2, and 60 points higher than Keenan Allen at 3.

What does this tell us? Winners have the high ranked players. Surprise!

To Farns, Lighties, Goon, Endless, Forces and Marcy: thanks for playing another year! I hope you had fun, even though your season didn't end as planned way back at the draft.

To Agent P, BB and Breesus: this is the year of the Doof!

Week 4

After 3 games, want to guess who's on top of the standings?

We all love some good trash talk at VP3; I don't recall it coming with props before. Now THAT is confidence!

Bradylessbrothers has the opportunity to burst Endless's bubble this week. I'd like to say BB could cut the tall poppy down, but of course Endless hasn't qualified for that yet - The  Gardener award requires defeating someone with a 4 win streak. So, if Endless wins this week, then Marcy could cut her down in Week 5. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Endless is riding high on the back of her rookie running back, Kareem Hunt. 40, 23,24 is an awesome way to start a career. If Endless wants to sell those commemorative balls she's going to need help, with only two other players scoring about 10 points last week. Good thing she played Breesus, who only had one player above 10 points. Ouch!

Breesus, meanwhile, sits in second place, along with literally half the league, at 2-1. Week to week fluctuations in the early stages of the season are keeping team close, but the scores are all over the place. 

Agent P put up a league high 132 points in Week 3, after a middling 82. BB did 115, after 65. US Forces increased to 110, but still lost in a close one, and lives in the basement with Marcy at 0-3. Which is somewhat amusing, but not for them, as their Week 3 scores would have beaten over half the league, except in the games they played. 

Good news for US Forces and Marcy though, they play each other this week! It's projected to be a close one, 96 vs 94. Matt Ryan v Aaron Rogers, Crosby v Gostkowski, Odell Beckham v himself. 

Week 4 could start seeing some teams separate. Goonbags and Agent P, both 2-1, can open up a two-game lead over Farns and Lighties, both at 1-2. Breesus and Doof, both 2-1, will be playing to stay at the top of the standings and not sink into the middle of the pack. 

I hope you're all having as much trouble as I am setting your roster for this week. My god. 

AFL Grand Final

Our thoughts and prayers go to Richmond Tigers this week, may they win the big one and not disappoint me as usual. I'm looking for tears of joy, not rage. But if they are tears of rage, our thoughts and prayers go to the Tigers fans - may they all travel or Adelaide and burn the city to the ground. Thoughts and prayers.

GO TIGES!

Post-draft contemplation, pre-game day

Draft lunch was another great event. Nervousness, fixation on phones, Graham's hurry-up offense. There was some food, too, I think, but it seemed to get in the way of the Draftin'.

I'm pretty satisfied with my overall draft, although Kris thinks I blew it again by not getting a good QB earlier. I said that was Agent P's fault for stealing Russel Wilson but she waved that off. She was also critical of my overall, traditional strategy of WRs and RBs early and Ks and DEFs later. Sure, Brady or Rodgers would have been nice, but I wasn't extending to take Brees in the 3rd (#snigger).

The Draft Recap gave me a B - much better than last years C-, which I suspect is a nice way of saying "you really sucked, man".

Some of the RBs and WRs slipped from their ADP over 30-40 and got picked up later - that helped. The Recap didn't like taking QB Winston at 62 instead of 107. It gets so judge-y.

How'd everyone else do?
http://fantasy.nfl.com/league/1233112/draftresults

2017 Draft Lunch

The 2017 VP3 Draft Lunch:

Wednesday 6 September
12:00-1:30pm
Imperial Hotel, Melbourne

Draft starts at 12:30 sharp.

Be ready:
*draft day plans
*NFL Fantasy app installed, logged in, ready
*smack talk

New coach and draft advice

My fellow coaches,

I'd like to welcome our new coach to the 2017 VP3 league: Goonbags (aka, Kristian).

Goonbags enters as part of the DHHS ICT cabal, joining the Illuminators, Farnsworths, US Forces and Bradylessbrothers. Monday's are going to be tense over there!

Goonbags faces an intra-cabal match-up in Week 1, facing off against last years Champion, Bradylessbrothers. I expect the smack talk to come thick and fast, and also predict some outside mischief coming from the Lighties.

Let the games begin!

Draft advice:

Make sure you have your NFL Fantasy app loaded, logged in and ready to go for Wednesday. I recommend running through a Mock Draft before then, just to make sure the technology is working like it's supposed to. It will also re-familiarise you with Players names, positions, etc. 

Here's a short list of what I'm reading at the moment. Remember, the final games of the pre-season are today and each team has to cut its roster from 90 to 53 tomorrow. These guides may change between now and next Wednesday as players may get injured, cut or move around the league. 

ESPN (http://www.espn.com/fantasy/football/):

http://www.espn.com.au/fantasy/football/story/_/page/17RanksPreseason200PPR/2017-fantasy-football-ppr-rankings-top-200

http://www.espn.com.au/fantasy/football/story/_/id/20315267/pick-pass-cheat-sheet-your-fantasy-football-draft-day-fantasy-football-2017

http://www.espn.com.au/fantasy/football/story/_/page/FFLdraftkit2017/fantasy-football-draft-kit-espn-2017-rankings-mock-drafts-strategy-sleepers-more

NFL.com (http://www.nfl.com/fantasyfootball?icampaign=fty-nav-hp):

http://www.nfl.com/fantasyfootball/story/0ap3000000837547/article/final-fantasy-football-analyst-ppr-mock-draft-of-2017

http://www.nfl.com/fantasyfootball/story/0ap3000000836400/article/matt-harmons-2017-tiered-fantasy-football-rankings

http://www.nfl.com/news/story/0ap3000000832890/article/ranks-11-sleepers-for-2017-fantasy-football-drafts

-Doof's Playinators

2017 Coaching change

My fellow coaches,

The 2017 season sees our first coaching change for several years. 

I am very sad to say that Zim's Doomydooms won't be playing this year. While details are scarce, it is rumoured that Zim's absence is due to galactic disturbances and a weird little boy called Dib. 

Zim brought a love/hate to the League. A love of the NE Patriots saw her roster Patriots-heavy, and a loathing of Manning's, Eli and Peyton, saw it devoid of Giants and Broncos players. Stats often played secondary roles to those she enjoyed watching, or hating. Why start a player she didn't want to play well? Competitive drive meets a love of the game. Zim's best season was 2014 when she finished 2nd in the regular season but then lost the Championship Game to Breesus.

Zim's place in the League has been filled, coach and team name to follow shortly.

We wish Zim/Kris all the best in her future fantasy coaching roles.

2016 Champion - Bradylessbrothers!

Bradylessbrothers went on a three-game winning streak to win the 2016 Von Pepperstein III Championship.

A loss to the US Forces in 2015 was a clear motivator for BB, entering 2016 with a chip on his shoulder and a can-do attitude. Eschewing a traditional draft strategy BB took an aggressive approach: TE Gronkowski in the first round and Rodgers in the second. Few players remained from that draft: Rodgers, the highest scoring QB for the season, Blount, taken with pick 14 and Murray, taken in the 3rd. The rest were free-agent acquisitions through the season.

The campaign was close to derailing when the Champ faced off against Breesus in Week 14: win and in; loss and who-knows? Maybe no play-offs. Win it was. And then another against Breesus the week after. The two-time Champ was out and BB was squaring off against intra-office rival, the Illuminators.

BB's hopes were riding on the shoulders of his QB, Aaron Rodgers.  Rodgers and his Packers were struggling and needed to win the last 6 games of the season to have their own play-off hopes. So Rodgers went to work, winning those six games and taking BB along for the ride. A mighty 38 point game from Rodgers versus a middling 18 from opposition QB Drew Brees all but turned off the Lighties. A complementary 23 from Baldwin and 17 from Blount sealed the deal.

Congratulations to BB for a great season and a great Championship game!

Von Pepperstein III will return in 2017, a mere 240+ days to go. I hope to see you all again then.

*Apologies for taking far too long to write this post.