Fantasy & Reality: Weather, wipeouts and taking a knee

December 18, 2007

If Mother Nature played Fantasy Football, she’d name her team the Trophy Stealers. She wouldn’t check her lineup until late in the year when she’d go with a bunch of low-end, bottom-of-the-barrel starters and somehow knock off the top team in your league. It would be completely unfair. In Week 15 of the 2007 season, she’d probably start Cleo Lemon and play against the team that had Brian Westbrook — and win by five points.

More on Westbrook in a bit. First, shall we talk about the weather?

All week long, we heard the questions from jittery Fantasy owners: Should we sit (insert player’s name here) because he’ll be playing in bad weather?

There are two schools of thought when it comes to Fantasy Football and watching the skies: One says to start your studs regardless of the conditions. The other says to factor the conditions heavily into your lineup choices. Me personally? If there’s something that’s going to potentially impact the stats of a player on my Fantasy team, I won’t ignore it.

The thing is, both schools were right in Week 15, depending on the game.

In Cleveland, the driving snow and wind made it nearly impossible to throw the ball effectively. You can tell in the stat book. It helped the running backs, but not the receivers or quarterbacks. Waiver-wire king Derek Anderson was reduced to nearly nothing, which put a damper on Braylon Edwards and Kellen Winslow’s numbers. And on the other side of the ball, Lee “Mr. December” Evans posted numbers like it was September. Not their fault, because it’s hard to have an effective passing game on a snow-covered field.

But don’t tell that to the Jaguars or Steelers. Although David Garrard and Ben Roethlisberger combined to go 33-of-66 passing for 343 total yards, they still threw for three touchdowns each in similar conditions to that in Cleveland. Heinz Field was a muddy mess, and the snow was coming down and sticking, but that’s no excuse for the Steelers defense, which didn’t sack Garrard once and couldn’t seem to get any kind of footing compared to Jacksonville (the Jags also dominated the time of possession). Once Pittsburgh got behind, Roethlisberger got going, and one thing led to another and the two teams totaled 51 points. However, it should be noted that the wind wasn’t as strong in Pittsburgh as it was in Cleveland.

Or New England.

How many of us lost in the Fantasy playoffs because Tom Brady handed off like a Minnesota quarterback? It was a solid plan by the Patriots — run to negate the wind as well as kill the clock and gash the opponent. Heading into the game, there was still some doubt that the Patriots would do such a thing. Laurence Maroney was seemingly in the doghouse, the Jets are the team’s arch-rival and that Patriots offense seemed so confident that they would try to throw often even in the windy conditions. They were in five-wide formations at times, but when push came to shove, New England was running the ball. And it was a good thing for them, too, because the Jets’ secondary came to play.

The lesson learned here is that when inclement weather is expected, take it into consideration. One astute Fantasy owner and football maven I know (we’ll call him Junior) actually benched Brady this week — and probably won his playoff game because of it. And if you benched Roethlisberger or Garrard, you did the right thing. It just didn’t work out for you.

But what about games where there was no inclement weather. Just inclement play?

For two weeks, Terrell Owens has been invisible. This week, Tony Romo was very visible — and very awful. Aside from continuing to be the catalyst of the “Jason Witten For No. 1 Fantasy Tight End Movement,” Romo couldn’t complete a toss of his jersey into the locker room hamper. He was 13-of-36 passing with three interceptions, and there was as much snow in Dallas as there was in Acapulco. Was it a case of the Cowboys getting edgy with the playoffs drawing near (remember, they almost lost at Detroit last week)? Did Romo have a Jessica Simpson hangover (she was at the game in her pink Romo jersey and it’s suspected that the two are dating)?

Either way, Romo cost Fantasy owners big, and there was no way anyone was benching Romo coming into Week 15. Nor was anyone benching Joseph Addai against the Raiders, but he still found a way to total 77 yards (Oakland RB Justin Fargas had 89 rushing yards). Antonio Gates? One catch, eight yards. Thanks for coming out, ‘Tonio.

Now if you benched Brian Westbrook, you’re practically a genius.

It was late in the Eagles-Cowboys affair. Philly was winning 10-6 with just over two minutes to play. Westbrook broke free for what turned out to be his second longest run of the day — and most controversial. As Westbrook ran in open space seemingly for a touchdown, he stopped at the Dallas one-yard line and took a knee.

You could almost hear the Fantasy world GASPING. Eschew a touchdown?! That’s not acceptable in the world of Fantasy Football, is it?! My cousin Evan, a Westbrook owner, sent me an IM that effectively read “What the fuuuuuuuuuudge was that?!?!”

Evan’s going to lose his playoff game. And there are a lot of Evans out there this Monday.

To Fantasy owners, it was a disgusting, selfish, stupid act. Had Westbrook gone in the end zone, the Eagles would have been up 17-6 with two minutes to play. The game would be over, right? It’s a no-brainer.

Or so you think. In reality, Westbrook made a heady, selfless, prideful play, guaranteeing that the game would be over and a win for the Eagles. With no timeouts left, Dallas was forced to watch Donovan McNabb take three consecutive knees (it cost him three rushing yards, by the way) before the clock hit zero.

Fantasy Football is a game of stats. The stats say Westbrook didn’t score a touchdown. It’s one of the darnedest things I’ve ever seen, and any Westbrook owner has the right to be ticked off. But that’s the crazy nature of this challenging, fun game.

If you had told me that a Fantasy team starting Tom Brady, Joseph Addai, Rudi Johnson, Terrell Owens, Randy Moss, Antonio Gates, Jeff Reed and the Steelers DST would be crushed by a Fantasy team starting Sage Rosenfels, Jamal Lewis, Aaron Stecker, Roydell Williams, Anthony Gonzalez, Tony Scheffler, Mason Crosby and the Chargers DST, I would have laughed at you. And you could have told me that at 1 p.m. ET on Sunday and I’d still be chuckling like Santa Claus.

Like the weather, Fantasy Football proves to be tough to pinpoint. There are some cases when it’s clear as day that a player’s going to do well, and others where it’s a cloudy outlook. But unlike the weather, lightning strikes far too often. Hopefully, not everyone out there got shocked by the stormy results from Week 15.
Fantasy & Reality

Quick observations about the misconceptions (Fantasy) and truths (Reality) during the week’s action.

Fantasy: Denver’s running game is a lock to succeed. Last Thursday was a bad, telling sign for the Broncos’ short-term future as they not only couldn’t gain significant yardage on the Texans, but ran only 18 planned rushes vs. 39 pass attempts. Did Mike Martz go to Denver and no one tell us? And you’d think that the Broncos would get their running game back on track in Week 16 at San Diego, but the Chargers throttled Kevin Jones on limited tries this week. And speaking of under-utilized running backs on terrible offenses …

Reality: The Lions are the biggest mess in the NFC. Detroit started out 6-2 and everyone was ready to hand them a playoff spot. Since then: Six straight losses, and I can point to their lack of commitment to their run game and their over-commitment to a pass attack without its best weapon and with a quarterback whose arm is tired after nearly two years of chucking the rock. How in the world can they ignore Kevin Jones?! Last week he ran over the Cowboys, this week he gets fewer touches (six) than Marty Booker (eight). Defensively, the Lions aren’t much better. This team is going to finish 6-10.

Fantasy: Miami’s not going to win a game. As much as I want to credit the Dolphins for a good game, this win was more Baltimore giving the game away than anything else. Brian Billick’s decision not to go for it on what would have been the last play of the game was bright at the time, but should have been chanced considering the team’s state of mind (I would have called a Troy Smith bootleg run/pass option). A win would have given them a mental boost. Instead, the eventual loss gives them no faith and no hope in their last two games. They’re gonna play out the string now. Sure, they might have lost the game on running an all-or-nothing try in regulation, but at least they would have tried to win the game instead of push for a tie and overtime! And no, Billick should not be fired.

Reality: New Orleans is better without Reggie Bush at running back. If their two-game, post-Reggie winning streak is any indication, the Saints’ offense performs much better without a versatile dancing machine taking a pounding 15 carries a game. Bush is a phenomenal talent, but a rare one. He has to be left to cause havoc along the edges and in the deep zone. Aaron Stecker is stepping up in the Deuce McAllister role, providing a (surprising) power running attack to boost the Saints. Just imagine where they would be if they had inserted Stecker sooner.

Fantasy: The Titans will run all over the Chiefs. Actually, that was somewhat true — between LenDale White, Chris Brown and Vince Young, the Titans totaled 149 yards on 36 carries. Their gameplan was to run, run, run. It’s just that Young was able to connect with Roydell Williams for a couple of touchdowns. A tough loss for the Chiefs, who were very up for this challenge — a credit to Herm Edwards.

Reality: Fantasy Playoff ties have a built-in tiebreaker: Seeds. If you tied in your league this week (or last week, or next week), the most fair tiebreaker I can think of is playoff seeds. Why else do we have them? (Oh yeah, to determine who plays who.) Because there’s no overtime in Fantasy Football, if you’re the No. 4 seed and you tied the No. 1 seed, you should lose based on the No. 1 seed’s higher standing, which is only because he had a better regular season. Makes sense to me.
Future watch

A quick pre-offseason glance at non-playoff teams. Hopefully this will be of interest to those Fantasy owners out of their league’s playoff race.

• What’s happened to the Bengals? T.J. Houshmandzadeh is playing hurt, the defense has been lacking for much of the season thanks to a depleted LB corps, and the team is probably sick and tired of failing to meet any of their expectations. If the Ravens aren’t the AFC North team to “blow up” this offseason, the Bengals might be.

• One game I didn’t mention above having poor weather conditions was Seattle, but the Seahawks have more problems than dealing with blustery winds. Mike Holmgren went off the proverbial deep end when discussing his running game after losing at Carolina, virtually calling out Shaun Alexander’s horrible play. The last running back to go from league MVP to Fantasy mega-bust like this was Terrell Davis, but at least Davis’ problems stemmed from major injuries. Alexander has had injuries, but not of the same ilk. The bottom fell out really fast, and it’s no surprise that it coincided with Seattle giving him a huge contract extension after his 2005 season.

• Kurt Warner’s blow up at the coaching staff was a surprising sight to behold — and one that he can completely defend. Angry with his constant turnovers, offensive coordinator Todd Haley reportedly said something not so nice to the vet. Warner went off a la Jeff George, though he didn’t get the June Jones heave-ho. Warner is the first Cardinals quarterback to throw 20 touchdowns in a season since Neil Lomax, and if it weren’t for him, they might not have been talking playoffs in the desert (Matt Leinart had two touchdowns in the team’s first five games; Warner had four). Fantasy owners need Warner’s arm too — without it, Larry Fitzgerald and Anquan Boldin aren’t as appealing.

• The Falcons played like a team that had their hearts stomped on for the third time in a year. Chris Redman threw 15 passes and completed four of them to Falcons and two of them to Buccaneers. The lone bright spot was Jerious Norwood, who had 73 rush yards on nine carries, both team highs, in spite of losing reps dealing with an injury that sidelined him for a bit. If I’m Arizona in Week 16 or Seattle in Week 17, I get ready for a big, big game against a team that’s ending 2007 a few weeks early.

• To the reader who wanted me to retract my statement on the Falcons taking Brian Brohm: You’re absolutely right. Brohm won’t sniff Atlanta now. If I’m Rich McKay, I do whatever I can to get Darren McFadden next April. He’s the best, most exciting player coming out (or expected to come out), and he’d re-energize a fan base that has lost a lot of reason to celebrate over the last five months.

McFadden was a second-round pick in our early 2008 mock draft, by the way.

• To the reader who wanted me to eat crow on Fargas: I’m chewing. Tastes awful. Fargas was a real talent at USC and a Combine workout wonder, so I bought into him his rookie year. In turn, he stunk for the next four seasons, totaling two touchdowns. Suffice to say, I’m surprised at Fargas’ play this season. It is worth noting two things: One, he’s getting the chance to succeed, which is more than he could say previously, and secondly, he’s in a contract year. Just some things to keep in mind. And also, I have no idea how I will ever find a way to recommend him in Week 16 at Jacksonville.

• Congratulations are also in order for Marc Trestman, the new head coach of the Montreal Alouettes of the Canadian Football League. Trestman is an offensive guru I consider to be one of the sharpest out there. Now I have a reason to follow the CFL.

• One final congratulations — to Brett Favre. An offseason ago, I predicted doom and gloom for him thanks to a rebuilding Packers offense, and he indeed stunk. I was toying with the idea of calling him the breakout QB for 2007, but felt it would be too flip-floppy to call a guy a bust one year and a breakout the next (I instead went with Jon Kitna … that worked out well). All he’s done this year is break both of Dan Marino’s lofty career records for touchdowns and passing yards, and led the Packers to a 10-2 record and a shot at home-field advantage throughout the NFC playoffs if Dallas can’t get its act together. The question for us becomes, what do we do with him in Fantasy play next year if he comes back?

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