How We Saw Week 12

I was going to write here this week about Fantasy Football.  But, Jim implored me to spend the length of this column writing about how terrible of a quarterback Kerry Collins is.  An entire column – on Kerry Collins.  Of course, the only reason he wanted me to do that was because Jim was playing a fantasy football game against our friend, JP, who had the Tampa Bay Defense and who beat Jim on Collins’ third interception of the game.

Fantasy Football is an illness. 

Nothing stokes the fire of this illness more than victory.  Our friend, Brent, has spent the last three fantasy drafts running around the drafting table picking the cutest quarterback from Kansas City he could get his hands on, mocking the rest of us who had our noses in tomes of pre-season NFL analysis, chanting, “it’s only a game; it’s only a game.”  In past years, as he lost more games than he won, he spent much of the season laughing at the rest of us as we focused intensely on who we picked up, dropped, traded and started.  This year, by Week 8, he was 8-0, leading the League by two games, and putting in waiver claims for Paul Edinger and Matt Stover.  And it wasn’t because Stover has nice legs.

To sit yourself through three hours of a Bucs-Giants game simply because the guy you’re playing has the Tampa defense, you have to be sick. 

To worry about whether Ahman Green is going to get another three yards in the final minutes of a 20 point Green Bay victory, you have to have your priorities mixed up.

To sit and scheme all week about whether Derrick Mason or Joe Horn is the smart start in Week 6, to hem and to haw, to read about how Horn, playing at home against Chicago, is guaranteed a touchdown and 100 yards and is a “must start,” to listen to that advice and to see him score a respectable touchdown and 30 yards, only to watch Derrick Mason rack up 170 yards and three touchdowns and watch yourself lose your Fantasy game by 20 points when a start of Mason would have won it for you, so you trade Horn because you’re pissed and you start Mason every week hoping, praying, that he has another week like that one that you missed only to watch him flounder as half the state of Tennessee catches passes from Steve McNair . . .

It’s an illness.

The only thing that cures that illness is defeat.  When you’re winning, it becomes all-consuming.  You start worrying about whether Keenan McCardell stretched that extra ½ yard not because it could mean a first down but because, in your League, it’s one point every 10 yards at he’s at 99 for the game.  When you’re 2-6, you’d just rather see Tampa Bay win or lose.

When you’re winning in your fantasy league, your waiver acquisitions are carefully plotted and planned, looking into that crystal ball as the playoffs come near, wondering who might pull out a game for the ages against the Lions in Week 16.  When you’re losing, the waiver wire is a thing of the past.

Either way it is, at some point, fantasy football is the most frustrating exercise in futility into which any red-blooded American could venture. 

Try this one on for size.  All you had to do to guarantee victory this past week was start Anthony Wright at Quarterback.  For those of you who don’t know, he started for the Baltimore Ravens this week.  He threw for 319 yards and four touchdowns.  And, despite that incredible output this week, the Baltimore team quarterback is still rated last in most Leagues.  Instead, you started Peyton Manning who led you to your third loss of the season.

No doubt, someone in your League picked up Javon Walker after he had that two-touchdown game at Minnesota.  He probably started Walker for the next two weeks – when Walker totaled a whopping zero points.  He probably then sat or released Walker this week – just before he had another touchdown and 66 yards.

With all the research and preseason analysis so many people do before their draft, all they had to do was shock the hell out of everyone and announce:

“In the first round, I draft Ahman Green.
“In the second round, I draft Steve McNair.
“In the third round, I draft Anquan Boldin.
“In the fourth round, I draft Keenan McCardell.
“In the fifth round, I draft Darrell Jackson.
“In the sixth round, I draft Alge Crumpler.
“In the seventh round, I draft Matt Stover.
“In the eighth round, I draft Dominick Davis.
“And in the ninth round, I draft the Kansas City Defense.”

You could entered any draft ANYWHERE, made those announcements at the start of the draft, and the entire group would have voted unanimously to give you these players.  They would have taken your money, told you you were crazy, and stuck their noses back in their draft books.

You’d now be 12-0 with no chance of losing.

Better yet, consider the performance of some of the popular top-round picks thus far this season:

• You took Marshall Faulk with the third pick in the draft, but could have picked Marcel Shipp in the 15^th round and have been in better shape.
• You took Donovan McNabb with the 14^th pick in the draft, but could have picked Jeff Blake in the 14^th round and +30 in total points scored.
• You took a flyer on Jeremy Shockey in the third round, when you could have waited for the ninth round and drafted a more productive and healthy Todd Heap and still have a starting tight end.

With all this said, if anyone out there can tell me whether to start Kerry Collins or Brett Favre this week, you could save me the embarrassment of a Dolphins-like December slide.