As football season comes back around each year like clockwork, DMC rouses up the masses for a bit of competitive fantasy football. With over 20 people interested in playing this year, we had to make some adjustments. We learned in the past that not everyone will set a line up each week. In fact, some will not set a lineup on any week. Still, seasoned players and newbies alike are both welcome to play, so this time around we made a serious league for those who know what a bye week is and how to set a line up, and a fun league for those who want to learn (and eat pizza).
Most fantasy football fans would argue that your lineup is the most important aspect of your team, but we would like to posit that choosing your team’s name is equally important. Cats took the lead as the most popular team theme this year in the fun league with both a “Team Cat_Lady@aol.com” and “Team Meowly”, which is no surprise since cats can be very ferocious animals. The serious league let their fun side show with Belieber4ever, and their DMC spirit with team DMChampion.
Thoughts from the Fun League
So it's the draft. Wait, what does RB mean? BN? The fun league needed a bit of a fantasy football 101 before starting the draft. Many of us fumbled our way through setting a full team while others just trusted auto draft. Team Cat_Lady@aol.com took a different approach and drafted her team based on how funny she found their name. Her starting lineup includes Jerricho Cotchery, Boobie Dixon, Brad Smelley, and Crocket Gillmore.
In a week 1 upset, Team Cat_Lady@aol.com blew away the competition thanks to outstanding plays by Boobie Dixon and Bishop Sankey. This somehow happened again in Week 8 with a .2 point lead over Unmitigated Disaster. Team Dumb Luck is hanging on to that luck with a 10-0 record and looks to be the favorite this season. Newcomers Team Jessica and Team Meowly could give him a run for his money in the playoffs. Despite an excellent first week, Team Cat_Lady@aol.com is solidly at the bottom along with Team Deborah and Superbowl Someday, whose disparate chances of winning and enthusiastic outlook remind us of several Chicago sports teams.
As a newcomer to fantasy football, I figured I could just let my team ride out the season and watch them win. I was so wrong. Player after player started getting injured, and then bye weeks started popping up. What is a bye week?! I caught on quickly and learned that if I put the players with the most predicted points in, I would (probably) win! Weeks 1 and 2 were also pretty quiet on the waiver and trade front since many of the teams didn’t even know they existed. Trades are few and far between but the Fun League has started learning about adding and dropping players.
Thoughts from the Competitive League
DMC’s serious league is filled with 14 people. Going into the draft, DMCers knew that talent would be stretched out thinly across all teams, which added to the importance of finding good players in the middle to late rounds of the draft. Finding a sleeper near the end was a great way to get a jump start on the season. Three running backs currently in the top 15 for the position were taken in the late rounds: Devonta Freeman, Dion Lewis, and Danny Woodhead. Devonta Freeman, taken in the 10th round, is the number one player in fantasy so far this year! A great late pick by Project Mayhem. Two top quarterbacks were taken late as well: Andy Dalton and Tyrod Taylor. The pickup of Andy Dalton, who currently has the second highest average points per week for quarterbacks, may have saved Tacocorp’s season. Tony Romo was originally quarterbacking that team. Yahoo’s automated system ranked the drafts of CGV’s Team and Belieber4ever as the two best. Belieber4ever and N Riverside Broncos were projected to win their respective divisions.
The league is split into two divisions: Soda and Pop, each consisting of seven teams. The Wheeling Mooninites, led by Aaron Rodgers and Julio Jones, is currently leading the Soda Division with a record of 5-2. Turn Down for Watt is leading the Pop division, also with a record of 5-2. Turn Down for Watt’s best players so far have been Deandre Hopkins and Superman, Cam Newton. As for the teams Yahoo projected to have good drafts and to do well… they are in 11th, 13th, and 14th places, with a combined record of 5-16. We won’t mention their team names here, but they are listed in the previous section.
The Second String, boosted by the trade for Devonta Freeman and the draft pick of Tom Brady, is one of the front runners of the league. If these two players, the top two in the league so far, can keep it up, The Second String is poised to make a run deep into the playoffs, and is our pick to take home the title.
Overally, we're having a great fantasy season so far. It'll be really fun to see who wins - and whether or not some of the fun league champions move up into the serious league next year!
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