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Keyboard Quarterback: Fantasy Miracles
Authored by Andrew Perna - 17th September, 2007 - 11:16 pm
While there isn't a real marquee matchup, Ravens vs. Colts, Panthers vs. Bucs, Bears vs. Falcons, and Chargers vs. Patriots are all pivotal games in the standings.
With John Herrera standing to his right dressed in black and appearing not unlike an undertaker, Lane Kiffin sat down at the podium for Sunday's postgame news conference.
Baltimore wants Flacco to be their QB of the future. But the Ravens feel they have no choice but to start him now because Boller and Smith are unavailable. Wrong!
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You know I’m an Eagles fan, but you may not know that I don’t hail from Philadelphia. What do I mean by that? Well, for one I won’t boo players who happen to still be on my team.
Donovan McNabb is the quarterback of the Philadelphia Eagles. He was during the Week One loss to the Packers. He remained the starter last night against the Redskins. If it was up to me, he’d remain the Eagles starter until he decides he doesn’t want to quarterback the team anymore.
Charles Barkley made a tremendous point while appearing on ESPN’s Monday Night Football broadcast last night. Up until last season McNabb was much more successful than Colts’ quarterback Peyton Manning. Donovan led the Eagles to countless NFC Title games and a Super Bowl just a three seasons ago. Before Indianapolis won the title last season, McNabb’s career had been far more successful, in terms of team success, than that of Manning.
McNabb has admitted that his knee is not 100% yet, but he’s still putting his leg on the line to try and win football games for the Eagles. I know Philly fans can be fickle, and their window of opportunity seems to be closing, but Donovan deserves to be cheered no matter what his record is this season.
The Downs The First Down…The NFC North Believe it or not, the NFC North has two undefeated teams and the Chicago Bears aren’t one of them. The Detroit Lions and Green Bay Packers are both 2-0 heading into Week Three. Green Bay has been led by a resurgent defense and an opportunistic offense. The Packers have held the Eagles and Giants to thirteen points apiece, an impressive feat considering the potent offenses owned by both. Detroit has relied on their offense, which has scored 56 points in wins over Oakland and Minnesota. That’s good enough for second in the NFC behind the Cowboys. The Lions may not win the ten games Jon Kitna claimed they would, but it doesn’t look like they’ll lose ten either.
The Second Down…The Saints The honeymoon is over for the New Orleans Saints. After enjoying a storybook 2006 season and becoming the preseason favorite to represent the NFC in the Super Bowl, the Saints have fallen to 0-2 rather quickly with embarrassing losses to the Colts and Buccaneers. New Orleans has their defense to blame. After giving up 41 points to the defending champions on Opening Night, they allowed Tampa Bay to score 31 on Sunday. The NFC South isn’t exactly the toughest division in the League, which keeps the Saints’ playoff hopes alive.
The Third Down…Bengals-Browns If you missed a single play during the Cincinnati-Cleveland game yesterday, chances are you missed some of the 96 points the two teams combined to score. Carson Palmer threw six touchdowns against a weak Browns secondary (including two scores each for Chad Johnson and T.J. Houshmandzadeh), but was not the star of yesterday afternoon’s Ohio shootout. Cleveland’s Derek Anderson threw five touchdowns to lead the Browns to victory. Some people would call Tampa Bay’s victory over the Saints the upset of the week, but I’d give this game the nod instead. The Bengals have one of the best offenses in all of football, so who would have predicted that the Browns could outscore them?
The Fourth Down…The Broncos The AFC West better be on guard. The Denver Broncos are 2-0, despite poor play by an offense dubbed as one of the conference’s best. Jay Cutler has more interceptions (3) than touchdowns (2), but has led the offense when it matters most, late in games. Cutler has developed a special relationship with number one wide receiver Javon Walker, connecting seventeen times already this season with two one-hundred yard games. With Cutler growing after each start, and Travis Henry racking up yards at a frantic pace, the Broncos look like a contender in the AFC this season. Having Jason Elam helps too.
The ‘Who The Heck’ Statline of the Week… Green Bay rookie running back DeShawn Wynn: 10 rushes, 50 yards and two touchdowns.
The Keyboard Prediction for Week Three The Pittsburgh Steelers will host the San Francisco 49ers this week, with two of the league’s toughest running backs on display. Willie Parker and Frank Gore will do battle, each having looked rather impressive in the first two weeks of the season. Gore scored two touchdowns against St. Louis this past weekend, just days after losing his mother. If that’s not tough, I don’t know what is. Look for these two guys to combine for 350 yards and three scores in Pittsburgh.
My Fantasy Diary… This shouldn’t have been a very easy diary to write after Week Two of the football season and the first week of the fantasy baseball playoffs. Heading into Sunday’s MLB action my Drew Crew were an astounding 50 points behind the Beerman Bombers. A loss would eliminate me from the league playoffs just seven days after the postseason began.
In our league a 50-point lead is considered insurmountable. The average team puts up about 200 points per week (I participate in a head-to-head league not the popular rotisserie format. I’ve been in roto leagues before, I enjoy head-to-head much better. Half of every roto league I’ve ever been in drops out midway through the season. No fun in my estimation). That means you should expect to score anywhere between 20 and 30 points each night. Not 70 or 80, which is what I’d need to pull off a win.
On any given Sunday I’ll leave the CBS Gamecenter of our baseball league open on my laptop all day long in hopes of pulling off a victory. Not yesterday. With plenty of football action on the tube, and the NFL version of The Drew Crew looking to go 2-0 on the season, I didn’t care to watch the inevitable become a reality. I was, however, keeping my eye on the teams involved in the AL Wild Card race, namely the Detroit Tigers (who were crawling closer and closer to my beloved Yankees).
Keeping tabs on the game I noticed that Curtis Granderson had hit a home run for The Drew Crew, good for him. My peripheral vision caught the scores of both the Braves and Cubs games. Both were winning comfortably, which meant that my pitchers Tim Hudson and Jason Marquis might be in line to collect valuable wins for my team. Even if they did big deal, right? It wasn’t until I noticed Carlos Pena, Adrian Beltre and David Wright had also clubbed home runs that I decided to check and see if The Drew Crew had a historic comeback in them.
Believe it or not, they did.
With the help of Tim Hudson’s complete game shutout, good enough for 25 points, the Crew scored eighty points en route to a comfortable ten-point win. I was alive. It felt like my team was on life support and Katherine Heigl had come and given me mouth-to-mouth. I had somehow bought myself another week of fantasy baseball. It was like Christmas, just without the awkward conversations with the cousin you see once a year.
After spending a majority of the day following the plethora of football games on the tube, I was now hooked on my resurgent MLB crew. In a twenty-minute span I’d pulled off an improbable comeback, but had neglected my football team. I had to check in to see how the pigskin Drew Crew was fairing.
The news was not good on the NFL front.
Heading into the Sunday Night Chargers-Pats game I was down by five points. The Crew had one player remaining, New England tight end Benjamin Watson. My opponent, The Woodpeckers, also had one guy left – Pats running back Laurence Maroney. I was cooked.
But my luck hadn’t run out just yet.
Tom Brady hit Watson on the Pats’ opening drive for a touchdown, and I never looked back. Although I did sweat a considerable amount during the second half with Bill ‘Belicheat’ looking to run down the clock, he gave Maroney quite a few touches. In the end, Laurence finished five yards shy of giving The Woodpeckers a victory.
The Drew Crew was 2-0.
As the owner and GM of The Drew Crew I have to thank the two-headed monster of Joseph Addai and Willie Parker. If the East Coast Pigskin League handed out Comeback Team of the Year awards, I’d be the early-season favorite.
My Fantasy Football Record for the 2007 Season: Week Two: 6–6
Week One: 8–4
Overall: 14 wins and 10 losses
