As Woody Allen said, the heart wants what it wants. So, why are you here?

Fantasy Football: Week Two Preview

Oh, I completely forgot to mention the name of my fantasy team last time. We're "The Yardbirds." Can you feel the excitement yet? You'll get there.

I mentioned yesterday to a co-worker that was in my office at the time that I was getting all wrapped up in my fantasy football team. He looked at me pathetically and said "that's sad." Fortunately for my psyche, this guy is about the most boring man alive, so I actually took it as a positive and moved on.

Alright, here's my Week One lineup. I cut out all the statistics and narrowed it down to just fantasy points earned. Those positions marked "BN" are the people I benched for the first week:


So, that's a total of 275 points... that's not so good. What's worse, I'm playing "Throw Down In Motown," who garned 297 points last week, tops in our league. Still, my major problem was that I didn't start the right players - if I'd started Moss, Pennington, and Harrington, I would have garnered 308 points, which not only would've won me the game but would've put me above "Motown." Ah, well, as AVI pointed out last point, "woulda, coulda, shoulda." Let's move on to next week.

Here's "Throw Down in Motown's" lineup for this week, which does not bode well for me. Not only did he destroy everyone last week, he also bolstered his lineup for this week's matchup against me. If he'd rolled this lineup out last week, he would've made 310 points:


The worst part about it is that there's no reason his team shouldn't get even better this week. Leinart had an off game, so did Colston, why shouldn't they bounce back this week?

So this week is the ultimate test of my fantasy team. I'm going to apply the lessons I learned from last week:

Lesson One: Start your best players if they're playing. Don't try to figure out if their
injury is serious enough to hold them back - if they're playing, play them.

Lesson Two: Don't worry too much about matchups. If it's a toss-up between two players,
pick the one with a better matchup, sure. But don't bench a good quarterback against a
good defense. He's still a good quarterback, regardless.

So let's see how I end up doing. Here's my lineup for Week Two:


If I'd rolled this lineup out in Week One, I would've had 344 points. 344 points! That's so incredible I have to go back and check my math.

Yup, 344 points. Wow. But then, there's no reason to assume this team will do anywhere near as well this week. McCown and Pennington are both uncertain to play this Sunday, which means I might be starting Harrington and Losman again. And it's certainly unlikely that Burress, Moss, and Miller will have games anywhere near as good this week. Still, Chicago's defense should bounce back, and so should Fred Taylor. I feel pretty good about where all of this is going.

Stay tuned.

posted by Ben Wyman @ 11:21 AM