Don't miss your chance for football betting at BetUS.com. As America's #1 sportsbook, BetUS offers the most up-to-date betting lines & odds for all your betting needs.
Keyboard Quarterback: Blowing It Like 'Zona
Authored by Andrew Perna - 18th October, 2006 - 4:31 pm
Between 2002 and 2006, each school that came into the season ranked No. 1 in the nation ran the table in the regular season, but we've seen huge turnover in 07 and 08.
Jeff Risdon was actually into fantasy football back in the early 90s, and he quite a bit to say about how it has changed over the years and infiltrated the mainstream.
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!
RealGM Search
If you enjoyed the competition last week, when several games where decided by single-digits, then you must have loved what week six in the NFL provided for you. Eight games were decided by less than three points, and several NFL stars exploded for career days in both winning and losing efforts.
Three of the four winless teams were able to earn their first victories, with the Raiders standing as the only winless team left in the NFL. If your name is Terrell Owens, Steve Smith, or Travis Henry you had a great week, but if your name is Damon Huard, Steve McNair, or Carson Palmer you weren’t so lucky…
The Ultimate High
The Monday Night Football game for week six looked like a snoozer on paper. The 1-4 Cardinals would surely get trounced by the undefeated Bears and their rock-solid defense. Not so fast. The Cardinals burst out of the gates and took a commanding lead into halftime. Matt Leinart threw two first quarter scores, and it looked as though Arizona would pull off the upset of the season. Then in the second the Bears shockingly put up three defensive touchdowns, and Cardinals kicker Neil Rackers missed a field goal to win the game. It was quite possibly the greatest football game I have ever witnessed.
The Highest of the Highs
Henry Leads Titans Much to the chagrin of Redskin fans, Titans running back Travis Henry exploded for a career-high 178 yards against the Washington defense. The win was Tennessee’s first of the season, and rookie quarterback Vince Young’s first in the NFL. The Titans get to enjoy the taste of victory for two weeks, until they return from a bye and face Houston in week eight.
Brown Uses His Leg It took two Seahawk rallies for Seattle to down the division rival Rams on Sunday. St. Louis led 21-7 at halftime, and 28-27 with just seconds remaining in regulation. However, Seattle earned the victory with the leg of Josh Brown, who kicked a 54-yard field goal as time expired. The win gave the Seahawks (5-1) a half-game lead over the Rams (4-2), who are idle this weekend.
Owens and Holt Earn Hat Trick What a week it was for two of the NFC’s most prolific wide receivers. Dallas receiver Terrell Owens and St. Louis wide-out Torry Holt both hauled in three touchdown catches on Sunday, but only one came away with the victory. Owens three-TD performance capped off a 34-6 Cowboys’ win over the Texans, while Holt’s hat trick was all for naught in the Rams loss. Owens and the Cowboys were in dire need of a big game from the NFL’s biggest mouth. If Owens hadn’t had a good game this Sunday the city of Dallas would have surely heard about it.
Saints Keep On Marching A lot of people wondered whether or not the New Orleans Saints were for real, or whether they were just riding the rollercoaster of emotions following their return home to New Orleans all the way to a 4-1 record? Following the Saints 27-24 victory over the Philadelphia Eagles, I think it’s safe to say that the Saints are for real. John Carney’s 31-yard field goal as time expired gave New Orleans the victory, and a 5-1 record.
LT has Four Scores The Chargers win, and LaDainian Tomlinson posts 135 total yards and four touchdowns. That’s enough to lead even the Oakland Raiders to victory. ‘Nuff said.
The Lowest of the Lows Bengals Bungle The winless Tampa Bay Buccaneers weren’t supposed to get their first win of the season against the AFC powerhouse Cincinnati Bengals. Apparently no one told Buccaneers’ rookie quarterback Brad Gradkowski that. Charging towards the end zone with less than a minute remaining, Gradkowski kept his poise and hooked up with Michael Clayton for what would be the game-winning score. After the play was reviewed, and upheld, the Bengals had fallen to the hapless Bucs.
McNair Injured Through the first four games of the season the Ravens looked as tough as any other team in the league with their battle-tested quarterback and a 4-0 record. Now, heading into their week seven bye, they’ve fallen to 4-2 and may have to deal with minor injuries to Steve McNair for the rest of the year.
K.C. KO’ed in Pittsburgh Can you ever count the Steelers out? Last season they put together a winning streak for the ages just to make the playoffs, and they ended up winning the whole damn thing. This Sunday, facing what many people called a ‘must win,’ they did just that sticking it to the Kansas City Chiefs early and often. Willie Parker run for 109 yards and two scores, and Ben Roethlisberger had his best game of the season throwing for 238 yards and two touchdowns. The 45-7 win improved Pittsburgh to 2-3, they’ll look to claw back to .500 this week against the Falcons.
Miami Still Struggling Is there really a difference between Daunte Culpepper and Joey Harrington as far as the Dolphins are concerned? Losing to the Jets 20-17 on Sunday, the Dolphins fell to 1-5, and are virtually out of playoff contention in the competitive AFC. Neither quarterbacks’ stat lines look very impressive (Culpepper, 60.4 comp. %, two TD and three INT/Harrington, 63.1 %, with one TD and four INT), and stud running back Ronnie Brown is suffering because of it.
Oakland Has a Football Team? Heading into their Sunday Night Football match-up against the Denver Broncos, the Raiders knew that after wins by the Titans, Buccaneers, and Lions, they stood as the NFL’s only winless team. What happened? They lost 13-3 to the defensively intimidating Broncos, and fell to 0-5. At least the A’s are still playing…oh wait.
My Fantasy Diary… All good things must come to an end, and after consecutive weeks of fantasy success my teams struggled mightily in week six. My overall record was a depressing 3-6 for the week. The lone highlight of the week was earning my third straight victory in the Nichols College Fantasy Football League. The win got me back to .500, at 3-3, and came as a result of Anquan Boldin’s impressive MNF performance.
Down sixteen points to Team Riendeau heading into the Cardinals-Bears match-up, I was praying that the Chicago secondary would allow my last remaining player, Boldin, to put up the fantasy points I so desperately needed. After a first quarter touchdown pass from Matt Leinart to Boldin things were looking optimistic for my team, The Italian Stallions. But it wasn’t until Boldin caught a 15-yard pass late in the fourth quarter that I was able to officially taste victory. In the end Boldin racked up eighteen points, and I got a two-point win.
There wasn’t much else worth sharing with you about my horrible performance in week six. I got my behind handed to me on several occasions, and there was nothing I could do about it. I lost in the ever-important CBS East Coast Pigskin League, mainly because of Titans’ running back Travis Henry and his thirty-point fantasy effort. I lost by nearly forty points to the Springfield Isotopes, who put up a nearly insurmountable 120 points, this with Carson Palmer and Chad Johnson struggling against the Tampa Bay defense.
My only mistake was the benching of Seahawks’ receiver Deion Branch, who tallied 23 fantasy points with his two touchdown performance against St. Louis. It wouldn’t have mattered though. The Drew Crew only managed a measly 83 points, even with Philip Rivers’ impressive offense performance on Sunday. The bye week blues set in as I was forced to start Reggie Bush and Maurice Morris at running back because my starters, Joseph Addai and Fred Taylor, had the week off.
Thank god I’m in the more competitive of the league’s two divisions. I still just two games out of first place, which is held by the Cape Cod Clippers (4-2). Also, with playoff spots going to the top three teams in each division, I’m really just a division victory away from standing in playoff position…
Until I lose in week seven and go into desperation ‘must-win’ mode…
Strange Numbers Lead to Even Weirder Results… This week I decided to debut a new section of my weekly Keyboard Quarterback column. Here I’ll give you an outlook into the kind of numbers we may not realize exist, and you might be surprised with what you see…
LaDainian Tomlinson’s four touchdowns on Sunday were more than Tiki Barber, Cadillac Williams, Warrick Dunn, and Willis McGahee have had all season combined.
49ers running back Frank Gore is on pace to finish the season with eleven fumbles.
The Joneses’ (Julius, Thomas, and Kevin) have combined for 1,271 rushing yards this season.
Rudi Johnson is a better fantasy running back than Larry Johnson.
If Torry Holt keeps up this pace he’ll finish the season with nineteen touchdown receptions.
Saints receiver Marques Colston has more receiving yards than Javon Walker, Darrell Jackson, Reggie Wayne, and Larry Fitzgerald.
Jaguars’ rookie running back Maurice Jones-Drew has more touchdown receptions than Marvin Harrison.
Eli Manning has more touchdown passes than his brother Peyton.
So does Rex Grossman.
Robbie Gould has scored more points than any player in the NFL.
Atlanta’s DeAngelo Hall has more interceptions than nine teams do.
Got a weirder stat? Send it to…Andrew.Perna@RealGM.com
