2023 Season

[leons1701]

Yup, there we go, HtH at it's finest. Finally put together a solid week, and lose by 15 points to the only team that performed better. I mean, this season was going nowhere anyhow, but yeesh, just keep rubbing it in.

[Basil_Bottletop]

If it's any consolation, with a mostly different team in my other league...I did the same thing over there too. This was my point-getting week. Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

[leons1701]

The more things change, the more they stay the same. Once again, we are in the era of "Stream whatever defense plays the Jets"

[leons1701]

With apparently still a slight glimmer of a possibility of making the playoffs, I'm supposed to be in a competitive matchup with #2 Nice TD's this week (margin, -6 pts). Calling it now, will lose by at least 30 points.

[leons1701]

Well, I was wrong. It was competitive, and if Tank Dell didn't break his leg early in the first quarter, that probably would have been a win. Heck, if Trevor Lawrence had finished the Monday night game, it would have been a worst an absolute squeaker. Of course, without Dell and probably without Lawrence, I wouldn't win another game, even if I was in the playoffs.

[Basil_Bottletop]

I went 8-6 in both of my leagues and got de-pants in the first round of both leagues. Merry Christmas!

 

[GleefulNihilism]

Bummer. As a Chiefs fan I can't say I don't understand it. We used to joke that their name gets changed to the Chokes when post-season starts.

[Basil_Bottletop]

I had a lot of overlap in my teams this year, and the Giants being historically terrible did not help my Saquan Barkley stock, neither did him missing several weeks. In my other league, I also had Nick Chubb. So my first two round picks faded quick. I thought I recovered nicely with some reliable middle-ground guys, but you really need a stable of 2-3 big hitters that rotate the hero ball fantasy chunks.

But there was still a chance I got the underdog win over the 1 seed in my other league but then Zack Moss went out early in a game he might have run for 100+ yards, and CMC put up 40 pts. Then again, the other guy had Pittman and he might have gone for 100+ yards too if he didn't get knocked out early.

I've heard people start saying that KICKER shouldn't be a position because it's such a feast or famine position. I'm starting to agree and not because in one league my kicker was a healthy scratch late on Sunday and I was up against Justin Tucker.

[Doby]

I'd advocated for dropping kicker in my main league (20+ year old league with childhood friends) for years now, but no one will listen. Even defenses are kind of dumb conceptually for me; you're taking an entire side of the ball and boiling down to a single position. My argument is that we don't use team offenses or team running backs, why use team defenses? We tried IDP, but that just turned out to be more work than most managers had time to keep up with.

I was fortunate enough to find a little luck this season, especially in the players I had overlapping between my two teams at various points throughout the year: Kamara, Montgomery, Kyren Williams, Mark Andrews...even though a few of those big names were hurt, when they played they usually showed up on the stat sheet. That made a huge difference.

I've always looked at the regular season as a game of mostly skill, where you have to pick up and drop the right players at the right time. The playoffs, however, is a lot more about luck as you just have to hope the guys you brought with you don't disappear in a lose-and-you're-out situation.

[leons1701]

Jerome Ford! Where the heck was that the rest of the season? I thought the Jets had a good defense at least, since it was the only thing between them and being about 3-12. I guess when Flacco is opening up the field vertically even our patched up line can throw a few key blocks.

[GleefulNihilism]

...Is now a bad time to mention I never figured out how our $100 waiver cash worked? lol

[leons1701]

Did you lose out on anyone you put in a waiver for? If not, well it didn't matter, so...

 

It's basically a budget to bid with. You can put a bid with any waiver claim you try to make (the way to do this is not exactly crystal clear, thanks Yahoo. It's kind of hidden at the bottom of the page IIRC), the bid only matters if someone else tries to claim the same player off waivers, then whoever bid the most gets the player. You pay your bid IF you get the player, whether anyone bid against you or not.

[Doby]

Hello, fellow managers!

I just wanted to say thank you to everyone for the great, competitive season. It's always fun to play in this league, and I'm looking forward to next year.

[Basil_Bottletop]

So last year I got really into the pre-draft stuff before my paid league and decided I was going to take it extra serious and try and win my mom's office pool (and a not insignificant amount of money). It's been a few years since I won it and I was starting to feel like a little bit of a phony continually losing to folks who only knew the names of the top 3 players on the hometown team plus maybe Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers.

Anyways, last year I got hit hard by the injury bug and just never really recovered. It was an anticlimactic ending to what I stupidly thought was an fairly easy payday.

In the spring, I was invited to a long standing baseball keeper league, replacing a guy who's been in it for 10+ years (and have had been in last place most of those years). It was a brutal uphill climb since my team consisted of some seriously leftover guys. I made the first pick just as Trae Turner hit that amazing game winning homerun in the World Baseball Classic (can you guess who I picked??) and then fell into a nice groove picking up some solid players while absolutely getting bailed out by my fellow drafters picking all of my favorite White Sox players...which saved me immensely because yeesh.

It was a struggle (see: Turner), but it was fun. I learned a lot of the everyday stuff about baseball fantasy that I'd forgotten since college. They even had a few long-standing nasty tricks that I had to learn about the hard way (or by being a wallflower during the proceedings).

So football season starts back up and I think I've found a nice balance between hardcore and far-too-casual. In both leagues I had a glutton of solid RBs and mid-tier fantasy point-getting QBs. The injury bug hit again on my first rounders but the position battles were interesting this year. I kind of punted on my kickers in both leagues and had at least one week where my guy was a late healthy scratch. To end up 8-6 in both leagues and make the playoffs was considered a win for me.

I think I enjoyed both football leagues a little less this year than I have in the past but for strictly personal reasons, one of which was watching some bad football on the field, watching my team's rookie QB go down, and some abysmal commentary lineups because we got the bottom of the barrel every week. But I suspect that aspect of things will change next year.

See everyone next year!

Edited January 3 by Basil_Bottletop (see edit history)

[leons1701]

Yeah, this year was not exactly fun for me either, at points I was seriously considering this might be my last year of fantasy football. Not surprising not having all that much fun when only two of my first six picks were still on my team by the midpoint of the season and both of them had missed at least a week. I did manage two very nice pickups, Puka Nacua and Tank Dell. Well, at least Puka worked out, Tank was amazing until he was hurt, that dude may well have a solid career ahead of him. I'm undecided on future fantasy, but who am I kidding, I'll probably be back here next year.