Sarcastic Monkeys

If you want to make someone angry, preach to them. If you just want to bore them, talk about your fantasy football team.

Take heart, I’m just here to bore you.

I only participate in one fantasy football league. That’s probably one more than you and several less than most fantasy football players. It’s a fun, harmless — when no money is involved — and relatively easy activity. I know that serious players will take hours and hours to analyze and strategize for their teams. I’m not serious and I don’t have that kind of time. (Except when I’m on vacation, like now, and can wasted time writing about something only I care about.)

Time isn’t the reason I’m only involved in one league. It’s the matter of divided loyalties. Fantasy football involves drafting NFL players from various teams and compiling them to one team. This creates strange rooting interests. Take yesterday, for example. The team I root for, Detroit, was playing Green Bay for the division title. On my fantasy team, though, are two players from Green Bay. If I were to have more than one fantasy team, the rooting interests become even more complex.

All that prelude aside, the real point of this post was what happened with my team this season, specifically, how the draft compared with the actual results of the season. I’m not writing this for anyone’s edification but my own.

My draft was good, so I thought. Yahoo rated it an A+ draft. I got most of who I wanted.

In retrospect, my draft was not so good. Here’s who I drafted, round-by-round, and what the actual results were:

1. Adrian Peterson. That pretty much sums up my draft. Great first pick…or so we thought at the time. Contributed nothing before he was charged with child abuse and was subsequently dropped from every team, real and fantasy.
2. Le’Veon Bell. Best pick. 2nd only to Demarco Murray for running backs. Of course, Murray would be selected two picks later. Had my chance.
3. Randall Cobb. Another solid performer and the best WR available at that time in the draft.
4. Michael Crabtree. This is where actual performance vs. expected performance starts to leave the rails. Dropped him later in the season.
5. Matt Ryan. Decent. Ended the season as my starting quarterback. And got 12 points in a game in which he threw 2 interceptions and was held without a TD.
6. Victor Cruz. Pretty good until he got injured. Dropped.
7. Pierre Garcon. Bleh. I had him last year and didn’t learn. Those who don’t learn from their mistakes… Dropped.
8. Russell Wilson. Contributed a couple of times. Had an okay season. Still on my roster.
9. Pierre Thomas. Another player I drafted against my better judgment. Dropped.
10. Kendall Wright. Disaster. Dropped.
11. Jeremy Hill. Yuck. Dropped.
12. Delanie Walker. Nope. Dropped.
13. Cincinnati’s defense. Did well in many games. In the end, they didn’t end up on my roster, because I tend to go week-to-week with defenses in the last half of the season.
14. Eddie Lacy. He was my keeper from last season, whom I picked up as a free agent, meaning I could wait until the last round of the draft to add him in. A no brainer, and obviously, still on my roster.

There you go. 14 selections and only five are still on my roster. Must not have been a good season, right?

Actually, it was pretty good. I ended up in the top four in the regular season, making the playoffs, dropped the first playoff game and won the consolation game to finish third.

Hey! Wake up! I’m done talking about my fantasy team! Now, about your sin and bad attitude…