Fantasy Football Player Rankings Rant

All these major sites, who host hundreds of thousands fantasy leagues (ESPN, NFL, Yahoo, CBS...), should definitely have an application on their site that allows the owner to UPLOAD an Excel (or Works) spreadsheet, which converts into your player rankings. No, not every person who plays
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fantasy football is gonna spend the time to create his or her own spreadsheet (player list), but I guarantee for as many who do, there are probably the same amount who have one that someone else created for them.

Nevertheless, most people who play, and want to win, rank their players at the particular site prior to their draft, right? And it is those people - who have spent their time preparing - who deserve to save a few hours of their time by not having to drag & drop (or click up & down) 150+ players into a particular order.

Why is this not already a thing? We go apply for jobs, and sites instantly read our resumes, and not only show you the resume, but they take certain fields of information, and place that information where it is needed into their application!

C'mon... this is 2013 already!

Attn: ESPN.com Fantasy Football, NFL.com Fantasy Football, Yahoo Fantasy Football, and CBS Sportsline Fantasy Football

/Rant

Fantasy Football is Right Around the Corner!

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That's why my posts have been very limited lately. I'm utilizing a lot of time preparing. Just letting you know so you don't think I quit posting at all. No worries!

Football Is Almost Here!

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My Perfect Week

I've only done it one other time in 17 years of NFL picks. Yeah it's pretty rare. I don't remember many perfect pick 'em weeks happening, although I suspect there were probably several for this week-7. Kudos to me!

Drafting a Fantasy QB Early

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This was a cool graphic I found - making the point that most fantasy football owners who drafted top QBs early are likely to be losing this season.

Updating this graphic with week-3's stats, Rodgers had about 8 in week-3 against the Seahawks. In week-3 of 2011 (and I have no idea why this is N/A in the graphic to begin with), Rodgers had about 24.

So the graphic is, in fact very accurate - in that if you drafted a top-5 or top-6 QB this year, you are likely not winning much so far this year.

I tried to get Cam Newton in most leagues, but I wound up getting Michael Vick. After the season I had last year (waiting a long time to draft a QB) I wasn't about to do it again. Trying to get Vick was still pretty early (probably 6th or 7th QB drafted), and he's got 9 turnovers through 3 games. The league in which I have been starting Romo is 3-0.

If you waited for a QB this season (unlike most seasons) you are probably doing very well.

Are You Kidding Me?

Yahoo fantasy football

So yeah, this week I lost by 0.06 & 0.12 in two separate leagues. I guess that's your argument for fractional points, since I probably would've won with non-fractional points. Still.. what is this, like 1 yard?

Fantasy Football is Ever-Changing

...and I'm about to pull my hair out.

Every year it gets further and further away from the way it was back when I began playing.. in about 1996. Back then you could comfortably draft a decent QB, two studly backs, and two good receivers, and could count on them to produce week-in and week-out. Of course there are gonna be bad weeks here and there. And of course once in a while (maybe a half-dozen times a season back then), someone you'd never heard of would go nuts because he got the chance to do so.

Miami's Reggie Bush had a monster game today (Source - Rhona Wise/AP)


Let me show you something.

If you had fielded this line-up this week:
QB - A.Dalton CIN
RB - A.Brown NYG
RB - J.Battle SD
WR - D.Amendola StL
WR - D.Avery IND
FLEX - L.Miller RB MIA
TE - B.Myers OAK
K - J.Tucker BAL
D/ST - SEAHAWKS
(comma)

...using a normal PPR scoring system, you would've beat the guy who fielded this team this week:
QB - A.Rodgers GB
RB - D.McFadden OAK
RB - C.Johnson TEN
WR - A.Johnson HOU
WR - L.Fitzgerald ARZ
FLEX - B.Marshall CHI
TE - A.Hernandez NE
K - D.Bailey DAL
D/ST - PATRIOTS

...by a score of 181-41.

Yeah you know Andy Dalton, and you've heard of Amendola, and Jackie Battle, but what about the other guys? Does anyone even use Tucker this season? Anyone outside the state of Washington brave enough to use the Seahawks this week? Isn't it time to declare that CJ2k, or whatever he's called, is no longer a stud? How many of you started Reggie Bush this week?

Did anyone other than me look at an available Patriots defense on the waiver wire, and start drooling upon realization that they're hosting an Arizona Cardinals team with their back-up QB? Granted Skelton's not a superstar, but Kolb is still the "back-up". This is also a team that has had trouble running the ball for what, 6 years now (including their Super Bowl team)? And no one wins at New England, right?

Did anyone else, like I did, see "Patriots win by 15+" -vs.- "any other result" on ESPN's Streak For The Cash today, and still think it's a lock, even given the 15 points?

Did anyone else, like I did, have Antonio Gates on their roster, and no back-up? I mean the guy's almost always on the injury report, and how many games has he missed in his career, 2 maybe?

I'll not even mention Vick's SEVEN turnovers in 2 games. OK maybe I just did.

I know how to make fantasy football better, but most traditional FFL-ers aren't gonna like it. The way most leagues have evolved is adding more owners. Hell, I saw some 20- to 24-owner leagues when signing up this season. That's all fine and good if you want one or two studs, and you have that many good friends. I still prefer 10 teams, or 12. Each owner has several studs, and the NFL team depth stays pretty even.

I say starting rosters need to expand - again. A lot of leagues now start 2 QBs. I still am not a proponent of this. Why? Because there are still only 32 starting QBs. What has continued to change in this league each year without fail is the amount of players who are being used at RB and WR. And yes, even TE now too.

I remember when we started 1-2-2-1-1-1.. 8 roster slots. Then a few years later someone noticed that teams' 3rd WRs were having good games, and a 3rd WR was added. Then to help even-out their scoring, or to counter drafting urges, there was a FLEX put in so that 5th RB or WR could be just that.. either.

Perhaps it's time to graduate to 1QB - 3RB - 3WR - 1TE - 1K - 1D? Maybe even two TEs, but starting that 6th RB/WR each week might be fun!

50 Years of Fantasy Football

~An ESPN Video



Andy Mousalimas celebrated an anniversary more monumental than a wedding or a birthday. It was the 50th anniversary of his first fantasy football draft.

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He's mentioned in Wikipedia's "American Fantasy Football" article in the history section. I think we all have to thank this man and his buddies.

My Team

After 8 Mock drafts and 3 weeks of preparation, this is my main team:

Forte RB
Murray RB
A.Johnson WR
Vick QB
Gates TE
Gore RB
DJackson WR
VJackson WR
Redman RB
Boldin WR
Palmer QB
DWilliams RB
GLittle WR
Gonzo TE
Detroit D/ST
Prater K

I had the 10th pick in a 10 team league.

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On vacation Mon 27th - Wed 29th. Great posts will resume when we get back. See you then!

Fantasy Players Need More Options when Ranking Players!

The image is tiny on purpose. (It's not my point for you to look at it.)

The sooner that fantasy football sites allow its owners to upload a .txt file (or .wpd, or similar) of their player rankings list -- the better. The only option is to drag and drop each of about 150-200 players in your own order, and if you use a personal list that you've spent a lot of time compiling, it's worse than if you are lazy and want to use whatever list there is available to you! It really sucks to spend two hours ranking players at Yahoo, which is otherwise a

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VERY good free site for fantasy football. Even the site I pay $150 for my 14-year league has no better option.

Online fantasy football has been around now for how many years? 14? 15? Why can't they figure out this part? With all the other improvements each host site makes every year, I keep waiting for this one, but it never happens, and I'm challenging them NOW.

Huge sigh!!

And end rant.

Fantasy Football is Almost Here!

Posts just might be a little slower than usual this week. The NFL season starts in 2 weeks, and I'll be drafting most of my teams this week. So I've been doing a bunch of player stats & research.. and stuff.

Don't worry, though.. I'll still find some good stuff! As always, I thank you for coming!

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Back to the Grindstone Tomorrow

Alright I've taken a couple days off, and if you include a lot fewer posts last week than usual, it's been more than a couple days. Fantasy football is just a few weeks away, and most of my free time has been spent making my player-lists, and doing related research. The sucky part is I found out last night I have the last pick. Yeah, I know, it's good and bad, but I had hoped for pick 3 through 5 or somewhere in there.
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I've also been enjoying these Olympic Games more than I usually do, too.

Anyway I'll be resuming usual posts tomorrow! Thanks for visiting!

FFL

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Well I Made it to the Leaderboard

...but then I missed my next pick to go to 16-straight. So close, but yet so far.


Click to enlarge!

My previous best was 12 (twice). Started out being really picky, and then when the streak gets longer & longer, you can't help but be even more picky. Then you get towards the end of the month, when the contest ends, and realize you're gonna run out of days. So on a day in which I didn't feel very confident in any of the possible props, I decided to go with "Syracuse winning margin" over "Connecticut 3-pointers made". The Orange won by 2, but UConn had 6 threes. Sigh! I was pretty confident they'd win by 10-15 or so. Oh well..

ESPN's Streak for the Cash challenge, in case you want to play..

NFL Bye Weeks Are Coming

I just realized this, and thought I'd pass it on for what it's worth.

The bye structure is different this season than in most previous ones, and I don't know why - other than all the possible lockout ramifications. Instead of starting at week 5 with 4 teams per week, then a couple weeks with 6 teams on bye, wrapping it up at week 10, this is how it is this season.
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The odd & interesting thing is there are no byes week-10:

Wk-5: 6 teams (CLE, DAL, STL, MIA, WAS, BAL)
Wk-6: 6 teams (DEN, TEN, KC, ARZ, SD, SEA)
Wk-7: 6 teams (BUF, CIN, NE, NYG, PHI, SF)
Wk-8: 6 teams (ATL, CHI, GB, OAK, NYJ, TB)
Wk-9: 4 teams (DET, MIN, CAR, JAX)
Wk-10: NONE -- wtf?
Wk-11: 4 teams (HOU, IND, NO, PHI) ..and DONE!

Thanksgiving falls in wk-12, so I'm not sure what's so special about wk-10, but hey if they're gonna spread it out more like this, they ought to spread it out even more, I say.

32 ÷ 4 = 8 Eight weeks, 4 thru 11, four teams each!

Or why not bunch 'em up? 32 ÷ 8 = 4 (duh) Four weeks, 6 thru 9, eight teams each?

Fantasy struggles either way. The ideal scenario for fantasy football is NO friggin' byes, but for some reason the NFL feels the need to give every team a week off - even though it is at a different time of the season for most of them. Which begs the question - what is the reason for the bye weeks anyway? Hmm...

Fantasy football would obviously be more "slammed" with the 2nd of those two options. For those four weeks fantasy teams would be scrambling to add/drop half their roster perhaps, and the result would suck... but it would "get it over with" in a much more concise period of time. The first idea provides fantasy teams to not be bogged down by a bunch of substitutions at one time, but it would simply stretch out the period of worrying about bye weeks a lot longer.

We all hate the bye weeks and must deal with them - or must we?

Fantasy Football 2011: A First Look

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All these teams are making tons of moves, and yet a crappy team - like the Bills - do nothing. OK very little. Lots of new young QBs in the league.. Who do the Raiders have? Just J.Campbell & K.Boller. Ouch! And who are their WRs? The same ones you remember from the last few years, except now Jacoby Ford is ahead of all of them. Ford-Murphy-HeywardBey-Schillens -............

Ndmunkong Suh and Nick Fairley - together? OMG.. I feel sorry for Detroit's opposing QBs.

#1 projected RB: A.Foster -- #1 projected WR: A.Johnson -- Wut? It'll never happen, not this year.. not this team.

The Cincinnati Bengals' #1 WR is Jerome Simpson. Who? #2 WR is rookie AJ Green. Goodbye Carson, Ocho, TO, ...and fans. Wait - We got Cedric back..

Chiefs have now given Matt Cassel tons of good targets to throw to. With Charles in the backfield, this offense could be even better than they were last year. Go look at their WR corps now.

Ochocinco - if he ended this coming season as the #1 fantasy WR, would you be surprised?

Panthers got J.Shockey AND G.Olsen?? Bears now have only K.Davis as an adequate receiver. Saints will be just fine with J.Graham.

Could Seahawks fans be any more upset? Sidney Rice is a great add, but WRs don't do very well with bad QBs. I smell 30 carries a game for Lynch, with which he likely won't live up to the expectations he foreshadowed in last year's playoffs.

Cowboys? Who knows... My team could go 13-3, and they could go 6-10.

Are You Ready For Some Football?

Posts will probably be somewhat limited for the next few days. It's fantasy football draft preparation time, baby! Don't worry - my main draft is Friday night, so it ain't like I'm gonna be missing for weeks.

In the meantime, scroll back a little (if you haven't already).

By the way, here's the first image that comes up on a Google image search for "fantasy football": (I kid you not!)





















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And even better, here's #2:


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Sundays

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You know Sundays are usually a day off from/for most things. Most people are planning some of the most important things that need to get done for the upcoming week - at home - doing what they usually do on Sundays. Sometimes it's an extension of what they did on Saturday, or even a part of the whole plan for the weekend. Sometimes this plan involves being away from home.

But it's always true that there are a lot of places & businesses closed for a lot of the day. There's no mail. You get a lot fewer emails, so checking email takes no time at all. Fewer people are on Facebook, because well, there are fewer people on Facebook. Except for maybe an hour of the day. The "primetime" of the weekend? At least of Sunday. The evening provides the catch-up most people need.

A lot more websites don't publish any new content, compared with what most of them post all 6 other days of the week.

Of all of the worst 2-dozen hourly segments of TV broadcasting, probably more than half of them occur on Sundays. (4am to 5am 7 times is big too, but that's a different post.) Think about it. This is not to mention re-runs & infomercials, and even less important news!

City traffic is always the best on Sundays. Non-city traffic can be rough on Sundays because everyone who'd be driving around in the city during the week, they're all driving around somewhere else - on Sundays.

So for most of the year, Sundays are really the "least important" day (or better stated the most "laid back" day) of the week. And it should be. A ton of people commit several hours of their week for church.. A lot commit serious time to be with family or significant others.. on Sundays. There's a lot of golf tournaments having their final rounds, but golf's unique in that each week throughout 9 months of the year, it always peaks on Sundays.

So even when you might be loving your Sundays because of a lot of what I've just said, things change and now you may love Sundays for a different reason. Suddenly come late August or so, Sunday is now the "most important" day of the week. The day will now matter a whole lot more compared with other days of the week. OK wait..

The next 23 or so weeks is gonna kinda revolve around FOOTBALL. Yeah, when you're a big football fan, and routinely play fantasy football each year, the week changes a little bit! I love it.

Saturday is now the day that used to be Sunday.

Fantasy Football Stats of the Month

Five weeks in a row now, the Bengals have shut down their opponent's #1 WR. Look it up.

Kurt Warner has played all 16 games in only 3 seasons of his career. In all 3 of those seasons, he took his team to the Super Bowl.

Steven Jackson is a great talent on a horrible team - trade him now.

BigBen is a fantasy starter - Deal with it.

TO is not.

If you haven't grabbed Jeremy Maclin by now, then shame on you - now is the time.