Wednesday, January 30, 2008

Week 2 of Last Season

Going into Week 2, I still felt really good about my team, but I knew there were a couple of places where I might have trouble down the line. My biggest concern was at QB. All of the pundits were saying that Rivers should do well this week, but I just didn’t have confidence in him. As a result, I decided to go with Schaub. The reason I went against the grain was that I had been watching Schaub for the past few years as Mad Dog Michael Vicks back up and I knew he would excel if he could only get the chance. As the sole QB in Houston, I knew his time had come and he should be primed for a big game.

More important, I believed I had enough solid players at RB & WR that it would hurt me too much if Schaub faltered or didn’t have the week I hoped for. I was projected to get 68+ points, which was enough to beat my competitors projected stats. But I have to admit that I went into this week far too confident than I should have been, although hindsight is always 20/20. The problem I was about to run into was the juggernaut that is New England this year. See my opponent in week 2 was Belicheck’s Hoodies, a team filled with players from NE, which I mistakenly thought meant I would have an easy win. Heck even yahoo thought I would win, projecting only 60 points for my NE laden competitor.


Obviously, yahoo and I were wrong. My NE heavy competitor trounced me without mercy, racking up more than 100 points. I had solid performances from a number of players, and I really thought I had chosen well with my draft and my roster for this week. Since I didn’t feel like I made any errors in judgment during the second week, I felt I had no recourse left to me but to curse the Fantasy Sport gods for the outrageous luck my opponent had. I mean really, he had 4 spots filled with players from the same team and it added up to 50+ points. How often can that happen in a season?


At the same time, I was starting to wonder about the remainder of the season. I saw the NE game, and they looked amazing. I don’t think I have ever seen a team play like that before, which left me wondering what would happen if this continued… Even though it was early and I was still trying to tweak my roster, this loss really shocked me. I thought I had a solid performing team. Yet I wasn’t even in the match up. Looking at my team, I couldn’t imagine any way of matching a 100 point game. Strangely, I remember thinking that I would have to find some big performers if I was going to be able to compete. With that in mind, I knew that a bunch of my bench men were going to change. I also had to find a better K.

And here, I should point out that this kind of drastic thinking was a major mistake. While I had a couple of guys I could move, it really was too early in the season to start thinking about drastic changes. I DID have a solid team, and it DID put a solid number of points (79+) for my league, and that was more than the 1st week. While switching Ks may have been a good idea in hindsight, I was only 1-1. Barring a season ending injury or a simply horrible draft, you should never even consider making drastic changes to your team until the 3 or 4 week at the earliest.

There were some bright point to acknowledge. Both my QBs did stellar. My starting RBs did solid. My WRs flip flopped, but still I felt confident. Todd Heap gave me an outstanding day, which is exactly why I picked him. Despite my fluke of a loss, I still thought my team could take me all the way.

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