Victorious FFB Season

So, if you'll permit me to brag just a little bit, I wanted to wrap up this fantasy football (FFB) season with the announcement that I won my league on NFL.com this year. Now, I know full well that Joe Posnanski said in one of his blog posts in September that the relationship holds: "My fantasy team = interesting; your fantasy team = boring." That rationale was exactly why I decided against making my blog just be about FFB, to hopefully broaden the appeal somewhat. I probably should include more articles here about FFB strategy both before* and during the season, and perhaps I will do so next season.

* I had designs on a very illuminating article about tactics to use while drafting in a live draft when most of the other team owners are going the auto-pick route, but couldn't get it written in time to be relevant.

For now, I just want to provide the summary of my performance, and remember: I did stay in a Holiday Inn Express last week! My team was named the Salarymen, and I used the band's logo up top for my icon. I could have used any number of photos available of actual salarymen in Japan for my logo, but the black and white logo looked best in the small format on the NFL.com website.

I ended the season with a 12-4 record (6-0 in my own Division), finishing with a six-game winning streak, meaning I was only 6-4 after ten games. I led the league with 1513 points scored, and the nearest competitor (the team I beat in the championship game) was 108 points back, even though I only led the league in scoring once during the regular season. I had the best record, best breakdown schedule against other teams, and most points scored, which meant I dominated the power rankings at the end of the season.

I did all this despite the fact I didn't have any top scorer on my team. To wit: I had the #4 (Jay Cutler) and #10 (Chad Pennington) QBs; the #7 (Maurice Jones-Drew), #10 (Chris Johnson), #18 (Pierre Thomas) and #38 (Joseph Addai) RBs; #8 (Randy Moss), #10 (Terrell Owens), #15 (Kevin Walter), #28 (Jerrico Cotchery) and #72 (Kevin Curtis) WRs; the #6 (Owen Daniels) TE; the #3 (John Carney) K; and the #4 (Eagles) Team Defense.

Of those players, the only ones I drafted and kept throughout the entire season were Cutler, MJD, Moss, Owens, Cotchery, and the Eagles. Yes, I do like to turn over my roster when needed. It never hurts to troll the waiver wire and make changes when a better player becomes available. Chris Johnson, obviously, was a huge find for me and I got very lucky there. I traded Willie Parker for Addai early in the season, but that was a wash for both teams involved in that trade. Mid-way through the season, I was ready to trade Moss, but no one wanted him at that time. Go figure!

The guys at NFL.com always provide a Coach Rating, which is simply a measure of how efficient a coach is when deciding who to start and who to sit during games. They take the highest scoring collection of players for a team based on the starter rules and actual points scored, and then compare your game points scored against that hypothetical maximum number of points possible in a given week. The result is delivered as a percentage and expressed as a Coach Rating. My rating for the season was a whopping 82%, good for only 8th in my 12-team league.

Another way of looking at coaching efficiency is to compare the player utilization statistics using the team scoring statistics available on the NFL.com website. For example, Cutler scored a grand total of 295 fantasy points this year, but I had him active in my starting lineup for only 237 of those 295 points. For Moss, I captured all 154 of his points, and likewise for T.O., I captured all of his 146 points scored for the season. Start your studs, as they say. For Chris Johnson, I played him for 127 of his 192 points scored; for MJD, I played him for 119 of his 195 points scored; and for Earnest Graham, I played him for 75 of his 93 points scored before losing him to Inactive Reserve (IR). I also kept the Eagles active throughout the entire season, capturing all 222 of their points scored.

In many regards, it's still better to be lucky than good. In the final, I won the game 116-87, despite the fact that my opponent had Donovan McNabb, Michael Turner and Brian Westbrook (#2 and #6 RBs, respectively), Mark Clayton, Larry Fitzgerald (#1 WR), and Antonio Gates (#4 TE, and had a big game on Sunday). The tables easily could have been turned if the Eagles had played a better game on offense against the Redskins. My opponent in the championship game also had a Coach Rating of 90%, which put him second in the league for the entire season.

So, now that college football season is over, and now that FFB season is over, it becomes time to settle back into that Barcalounger, and watch a few Bowl games and the NFL playoffs as a true fan again. When I say "few Bowl games," I mean FEW. I'll probably only really watch one or two of the big games on New Year's Day, including the Rose Bowl and the Fiesta Bowl. I will watch the BCS National Championship Game, just to see which team I despise wins. Is it possible for both OU and Florida to lose?! I can dream, can't I?

And then, of course, the NFL playoffs are absolutely riveting football, 95 percent of the time. Every once in a while, you have one wild card team that lays a complete egg in the first round (I'm thinking Miami against the Broncos a while back, but can't pull up the actual game score... who do you think I am, the Worldwide Leader in Sports?!), but usually, every single game is exciting because all the coaches and players understand one simple principle rules all:

WIN OR GO HOME.

'Nuff said.