Horseshoes and horsesh*t

 

I'd always thought the above quote was uttered by Orioles' lefty Dave McNally but it turns out to be much older. No matter, it certainly applies to fantasy football as much as it does pitching. Want proof? I got bunches of it. Check this out:

That's a screen grab of part of our standings thru six weeks. The Flyers are 5-1, the Sticks are 1-5, a four game difference. Now look at Points For (PF)..the Flyers have scored only TWO more points than the Sticks. Two points over six weeks. Now go to Points Against (PA)...Flyers have had 522.5 scored against them while the Sticks have had to overcome opponents who tossed up 682.5 points. For the math-challenged that's 160 points, almost 27 points per week. Is it any wonder the Sticks are where they are? 

The Legends are even worse...they have scored only eight points less than the Flyers but their PA differential is 227! That's THIRTY EIGHT points per week. And on and on it goes. There are two things you can't control in Fantasy Football, the schedule and your opponent's score. Sure you need to draft well, pay attention during the season and submit a 'smart' lineup...but even if you do that there is no guarantee it's going to pay off. 

Luck goes both ways. This past week I made what I thought was a really good move. I picked up Deon Jackson of the Colts for $5 when it was announced that Taylor and Hines were both very much long-shots to play. I had him in my starting lineup...or so I thought. He name is written on my scratchpad right here on my desk with a star that means he's 'in'. But apparently I failed to push 'submit' or something because come Sunday I checked the scores and saw he had points on my bench! 

Which leads me to the awful Monday Night Football game just past. If you watched (and I can't imagine why you would have, Denver is awful, and boring) you saw Melvin Gordon (my starter) spend most of the game scratching his nose on the bench and Mike Williams (Jack's starter) get shut down almost totally. The result is my three point lead melted to 2.5 at the end of regulation. But the Rams extended the game into tortuous overtime.My lead was down to one when Williams hauled in a pass in overtime. My rookie mistake didn't hurt me due to dumb luck.

This and that... I read somewhere today that fantasy scoring is down 15% so far this season. I don't know about that but it was sure off this past weekend. I guess part of it was the first round of byes. Only two teams scored over 100 points. In the first five weeks we had either six or seven break that barrier every week... no time for much more this week. I'm trying to clean up some past seasons webpages and download the stats I want to keep before this all goes sideways.

The great Neil Finn and Crowded House. A song I never get tired of.

 Brooks, one of our former owners, stops by with my pretty little pixie!