blonde NFL Fantasy League 2019/20

Week 1 Report - The Big Kick Off

So, after all the research, tactics and strategy that go into the blondepoker Fantasy Draft, Week 1 is now in the books and, with some sharply contrasting fortunes in this week's matchups, managers will be looking back at the debris with a diverse range of emotions. Time to dig right into the Week1 recap:

Results:
Stapleton Atheists 150.18 - Longy's laughable losers 122.28
Vegas Venoms 58.70 - Budd Dwyers Disciples 67.68
B Side's 100.42 - Virgin Autopicks FTW 97.32
PancakeBlock 130.02 - The Tifosi BlackHearts 87.42
Arkansas Gravediggers 109.08 - MANAGER RETIRED 101.10
Robbies Gould en Shower 100.18 - Landry's Losers 99.74
Teddington Tailgators 119.70 - Bobby1's Broncos 90.86
Sheriff's Stars 65.22 - Johnny Football's Autograph 93.46

Camel (1-0) 150.18 - Longy (0-1) 122.28 - It seems natural to kick things off with our defending champion, Camel, and his team sure did kick things off in style against the unfortunate Longy, who put up the 3rd highest score of the week and still found himself chalking up a loss. Welcome to Fantasy NFL, Mr Long! Sadlly for him the writing was pretty much on the wall after the Thursday Night game, thanks to a certain Mr P Manning, who equalled the NFL record of 7 Passing TDs to rack up a monstrous individual score of 46.28 points, which may well prove to be a season-high individual score. However, the majority of Camel's mostly-geriatric team also contributed big scores. In particular, anyone watching the GB-49ers game on Sunday will have wondered whether Anquan Boldin was the only 49ers WR on the field, such was the proliferation of passes sent his way. In the end, the bagel from James Jones at WR didn't matter, as the monster score of 150.18 sets a challenging target for the highest score of the season (it was bettered by only 2 scores last year, to put it into context).

Speaking of records, Longy's total of 122.28 would have been good enough for 2nd place in last year's highest losing score rankings, just to highlight his bad luck. Led by Camel's love-child from last season, Colin Kaepernick, with 30.68 points, and the Eagles' pairing of McCoy and DJax, Longy's team demonstrated that it will be a tough one to overcome this season. He can count himself extremely unlucky to be going into Week 2 at 0-1.

sharplea (0-1) 58.70 - LeKnave (1-0) 67.68 - If the above game was spectacular in terms of it's scoring, then this one was the polar opposite, and the overwhelming feeling from reviewing it is that LeKnave truly does run like God at times! His winning score of 67.68 points may well prove to be an unbeatable total in the 'Lowest Winning Score' category for the season. Only two players on his team managed to top double figures, Welker and his much-maligned QB pick, Carson Palmer! The scores elsewhere in his roster will be a cause for concern, particularly the fact that his injury-plagued bench only scored 6.2 points. Dave can expect to see better days from the likes of MJD, Chris Johnson and Dwayne Bowe, but he didn't need them this week.

Sharplea was Camel's pick as the favourite, post-draft, but his team showed nothing to justify this. Russell Wilson and DeMarco Murray were his only starting players with double figure scores, but his top 2 scoring players were sitting on his bench. Putting Julian Edelman in the starting line-up would have changed the result of this matchup, but I doubt that many people had the foresight to predict his Week 1 contribution of 19.90 points. A disappointing start to solo-management for Adam, that's for sure!

Nakor (1-0) 100.42 - ForthThistle (0-1) 97.32 - This one turned out to be a really intriguing matchup, with the teams close in scoring for virtually the whole weekend. In the end, Nakor sneaked a narrow win and the key difference came down to the overlooked position of Kicker. There's an argument that Kickers in Fantasy NFL are 'much of a muchness', and it's generally true that it's difficult to predict kicker performance year on year. The exception to this is when the team your kicker plays for completely fails to give your guy any opportunities to score points. Step forward, the Jacksonville Jaguars, who once again put faith in Blaine Gabbert's hands and were rewarded with two points, from a safety! Given an average performance from the kicking unit, ForthThistle would have won this matchup. He'll be kicking himself for that one! [/pun] Other than that, the debutant's team put up a respectable score, albeit with an uncharacteristically quiet game from Tom Brady. Rivers for Brady would have also delivered a win, but surely impossible to envisage the respective scores before the weekend.

Nakor, on the other hand, did what he always seems to do - chalk up another win quietly under the radar. His team performed unevenly, with Luck and Cobb in the starring roles, but just did enough to sneak over the 100 point mark, which proved to be enough for the win.

TightEnd (1-0) 130.02 - The Sicilian (0-1) 87.42 - Hold onto your hats, people! Tighty is popping up in the record books, and in the 'good' categories for once! It didn't take very long after kickoff on Sunday for everyone to suddenly wish they'd had the No1 pick after all, when Sky started to show repeated footage of AP's early TD run. By the time the game had ended, he'd added two more scores, racking up 29.1 fantasy points in the process. Not content with that, but all the players on his roster who I don't generally like to have on my team also performed well - Romo, McFadden (who survived Wk1!) and Fitzgerald added nearly 50 points between them. In the end, his team scored 130.02 points, good enough for the 2nd highest score of the week and a comfortable win over The Sicilian.

Sicilian's fantasy debut was a tough baptism as a result. Rodgers and Witten did as expected, but there were too many single digit scores elsewhere for him to be competitive. Eric Decker was no doubt the most frustrating among this. While Peyton's supporting cast generally ran riot, Decker was left with a paltry 3.2 pts on the day. It's no reason to panic, but a great example of the exasperation that Fantasy NFL can cause. Thankfully, he appears to be hooked already!

Tal (1-0) 109.08 - Horneris (0-1) 101.10 - Score one for the funky Grandmaster tactics! Tal's unconventional draft strategy paid instant dividends in a hard-fought tussle with Horneris. Tal's score was boosted by big contributions from Brees, Vereen, VJax, Vernon Davis (catching whichever passes from Kaepernick that didn't go Boldin's way) and Legatron. He'll be disappointed with the output from Woodhead and Jaquizz Rodgers though, particularly in light of Vereen being placed on short-term IR this week and being ineligible to return until Week 11.

Horner, if anything, had a more frustrating time of it as the near 30-point output from Cruz was largely undermined by sub-par performances elsewhere. Newton was mediocre, C.J Spiller largely anonymous and Isaac Redman was simply disastrous. Given his bench contribution of 3.5pts, he seems to have few immediate options to change things around, albeit Spiller and Newton will start to contribute soon enough. Perhaps he needs to 'unretire' his team name to give his team a kick start?

ChipRich 100.18(1-0) - Marky147/LEXUS (0-1) 99.74 - Last season's holder of the narrowest win title (a sneaky 0.16pt win), ChipRich, put in a very strong contender for this season's title with this 0.44pt win over Marky147 and LEXUS. The key to the victory was that he did a better job of picking the optimum team, with only Fred Jackson for Steven Ridley (benched mid-game following fumbling issues) offering any signifcant improvement to his score. Contrast this with Marky's team, where selecting one of Dalton, Cameron or the Law-Firm in the starting line up would have potentially changed the result. Is Marky already regretting his choice of roster-bitch this season? Is the franchise soon to undergo Cowboy's-esque interference from the top? Time will tell. In the meantime, Rich can confidently challenge LeKnave for the 'runs like God' award in the Shrewdie House.

rinswun (1-0) 119.70 - Bobby1 (0-1) 90.86 - A bit of a surprise result here, perhaps, with newcomer Ollie comforably seeing off the wise-old NFL head that is Mr Quayle. It's no surprise that he was aided in this quest by the likes of Jamaal Charles, Jordy Nelson and AJ Green contributing big scores. Eyebrows were raised, however, by a strong performance from Eli Manning against the Cowboys (albeit in a losing effort). Whilst not quite on the same scale as big brother, Peyton, it's the highest score I can remember him putting together in some time.

Phil, on the other hand, is already looking to trade his starting QB, Matt Ryan, although in truth, there was nothing he could have done in terms of changing the line up to have made a difference to the overall result. Credit though for running with the unproven Jared Cook at TE, and being rewarded with 24 pts, and Eddie Lacy did enough to demonstrate he'll be a decent contributor of points over the season.

Sheriff (0-1) 65.22 - Linux (1-0) 93.46 - And so to the grand finale! The highlight of the weekend for 15 managers appears to be the car-crash performance of Sheriff's Stars who, through a combination of bad team selection, and even worse performance on the field, threatened to set an all-time low score until a surprisingly good real-life performance from his beloved Eagles helped to avoid the ultimate humiliation. The week did not start well when waking up to news of Julius Thomas' 23 pt haul on Friday morning, which proved to be the first big contribution to the starting roster ultimately being outscored by the bench. Thankfully, Camel had some consoling words of support on the thread to ease the pain. There then followed a surreal experience during the Sunday games where I kept having to check whether the Java app had crashed again, as my score never progressed out of the mid-20's over the entire evening. Unfortunately, everyone else's scores seemed to be working fine. Bill Belichek managed to fool the Fantasy world into expecting Zach Sudfeld to play more than a handful of snaps (albeit the one's he did play resulted in a hamstring injury instead of actual points). Worse still, anyone following the Jags game would have thought Cecil Shorts had picked up an injury due to the fact that he had scored no points going into the 4th quarter. As it turns out, only an injury to Blaine Gabbert (sadly, not fatal, for the Shorts-owning community) resulted in Chad Henne taking over and giving him a handful of receptions in garbage time. Still, at least I had David Wilson and Dez Bryant to restore some respectablility to proceedings in the late game. What's that you say? 0.1pts combined, a benching (for fumbling issues) and an injury scare for Bryant?

Linux must surely have loved watching the crap-tacular extravaganza unfold, and it made several sub-par contributions from his own team irrelevant to the final outcome. In truth, the 28 pt gap given by Demariyus Thomas was enough to kill the tie, as it took until Monday Night Football for this single performance to be matched by the so-called Stars. Linux will wish that every game week proves to be as easy as this one!

So, that's the week 1 recap and, ultimately, all we've learned is how unpredictable a single week can be in the NFL. (Actually, we also learned that a chirping Camel is far, far, far more unbearable than the complaining version!) There were a whole host of early picks and big-name players who failed to produce for various reasons. If I'd offered anyone a starting lineup of Cam Newton, Spiller, Ridley, Megatron, Bryant, Gonzalez, Roddy White, David Wilson, Sudfeld, 49ers D and Prater for the week, then I'd have had my hand snapped off. As it turned out, they'd have given you a score of 46.2 pts last week (almost an all-time low, and would have been beaten by all 16 actual teams' scores). Injuries aside, however, I'm pretty sure you'd still take the same team again in Week 2!

Speaking of which, week 2 is almost upon us, so it's time to hit the send button on this monster of a report (I'm now seeing the true downside of a 16 team league!)

YTD Records:

Highest Team Score: (2012 Record: 166.80 - B Side's - Nakor)
1) 150.18 - Stapleton Atheists (Week 1)
2) 130.02 - Pancake Block (Week 1)
3) 122.28 - Longy's laughable losers (Week 1)

Lowest Team Score: (2012 Record: 40.28 - Ruxin's Ravens - Linux)
1) 58.70 - Vegas Venoms (Week 1)
2) 65.22 - Sheriff's Stars (Week 1)
3) 67.68 - Budd Dwyers Disciples (Week 1)

Lowest Winning Team Score: (2012 Record: 64.76 - B Side's - Nakor)
1) 67.68 - Budd Dwyers Disciples (Week 1) vs Vegas Venoms
2) 93.46 - Johnny Football's Autograph (Week 1) vs Sheriff's Stars
3) 100.18 - Robbies Gould en Shower (Week 1) vs Landry's Losers

Highest Losing Team Score: (2012 Record: 137.52 - Bobby1's Broncos - Bobby1)
1) 122.28 - Longy's laughable losers (Week 1) vs Stapleton Atheists
2) 101.10 - MANAGER RETIRED (Week 1) vs Arkansas Gravediggers
3) 99.74 - Landry's Losers (Week 1) vs Robbies Gould en Shower

Largest Winning Margin: (2012 Record: 86.50 - Dr Mantis Toboggan MD - Horneris)
1) 42.60 - PancakeBlock (Week 1) vs The Tifosi Blackhearts
2) 28.84 - Teddington Tailgators (Week 1) vs Bobby1's Broncos
3) 28.24 - Johnny Football's Autograph (Week 1) vs Sheriff's Stars

Narrowest Winning Margin: (2012 Record: 0.16 - Robbies Gould en Shower - ChipRich)
1) 0.44 - Robbies Gould en Shower (Week 1) vs Landry's Losers
2) 3.10 - B Side's (Week 1) vs Virgin Autopicks FTW
3) 7.98 - Arkansas Gravediggers (Week 1) vs MANAGER RETIRED