My First Season In Fantasyland (Part Two)

I watched the Coleman Isms (or Isms, as I sometimes refer to them) go out and have a good first week, whipping the OmegaPsiPhi Dogs by nearly 70 points! Hey, this might not be so bad! My initial starters were Tom Brady, Beanie Wells, Fred Jackson, Larry Fitzgerald, Davone Bess, Dallas Clark, BenJarvus Green-Ellis, Nick Folk, and the Jets Defense. Brady racked up a 53-point game, what with 517 yards passing! Everybody else on my team did pretty well, except for Dallas (no Peyton Manning) Clark and Fitz, who had a mild 62 yards receiving and no touchdowns!

Having failed to acquire any Chargers via trade, I went to the list of available players (otherwise known as the waiver wire) and set out to "improve" my team. First of all, Ryan offered me Tashard Choice for Ronnie Brown. Done. I then waived Choice, Deji Karim, and Jason Snelling, adding my first Charger, Jacob Hester, and two Arizona Cardinals (my eight-year old son's favorite team), Early Doucet and LaRod Stephens-Howling.

My newly-configured team then went out and dismantled the Walking Dead. Brady came back after his big debut week with a 41-point effort (against the Chargers, dang!), Fitz played like Fitz and got 25 more, the Jets defense checked in with 33 points. Even Dallas Clark got me 9 points! But, my eyes lit up as Fred Jackson had his second straight impressive game, this time with 30 points. I had offered Jackson up as trade bait in part of my effort to get a Charger or two, but I had to rethink that strategy, as after two weeks, Jackson (and not Peterson, Foster, Jones-Drew, etc.) was the #1 fantasy running back in the league! Even though the Dead scored 50 more points than the Dogs had the previous week, the Isms still beat them by almost 30 points. In fact, the 184 points my team racked up in Week 2 was the best by any team in the league, all year!

I had noticed that this was a very quiet league. No one was using the chatter box. So, I called out all of the other owners, declaring that I obviously had the best team and could not be stopped. I even invited all of them to just put my name on the championship trophy, right there and then! Amazingly, I only got a couple of responses to my rant! This would have to be the quietest fantasy football league on record, I guessed...

One of my fellow players (Jon of the Black & Gold) soon offered me a package of players (but no Chargers) for Fred Jackson, but I turned him down. It was at that point that a light bulb came on in my head and I realized that I would need to have players ready to replace my starters whose NFL teams were having their bye week in upcoming weeks. I made a flurry of roster moves to ensure that I would have backups at every position, at the ready. Hester, Stephens-Howling, Doucet, and Braylon Edwards had to go. In their places came Jeff King, Denarius Moore, Preston Parker, and my replacement token Charger, Nick Novak. I figured no one would have picked Novak up that early in the season. He turned out to be a very good pickup.

The Isms struck again in Week 3, beating Team RamRod by about 22 points. I would have scored more, but my schedule got busy and I missed the fact the Beanie Wells was made inactive for that week by the Cardinals. I wouldn't make that mistake, again! Brady got 37 more points, as he was absolutely on fire early in the season, and Jackson showed I'd made the right move by getting me 22 more points. Denarius Moore had 13 points in his first week as a starter, about a point more than Fitz!

Jon and I finally made a trade. He sent me three players (Santonio Holmes, Devin Hester, and Ryan Grant) for BenJarvus Green-Ellis. Holmes would be my new starting receiver and Hester, my new utility player. To make the deal work, though, I had to drop Denarius Moore and Marcell Reece, whom I'd just picked up after waiving Preston Parker. The Isms juggernaut rolled on, as I flattened Commisioner Ryan's H-Bombers by almost 90 points! Brady had an ordinary week, with only 226 yard and two TDs, for just under 20 points, but Beanie Wells went off for almost 35 points, Devin Hester sprinted to 20 points, and the Jets defense did everything and pulled down 42 points! I was looking awesome!

More roster moves preceded Week 5, as I looked for a running back who could spell both of my starters. I dropped Ryan Grant for Stefan Logan, then dropped Logan for Cadillac Williams. It was hard to stop the Coleman Isms, though, as they scored almost twice as many points as did Bolt Man in our matchup. Brady was again under 20 points (I guess he was human, after all...), but Fred Jackson continued to astound, bagging 28 points, while the Jets defense added 26.

The first byes to affect the Isms were in Week 6. Cadillac Williams would start for Beanie Wells, and Davone Bess would start for Larry Fitzgerald. It was more of the same in that week's game, however, as I beat the Highlanders by almost 70 points! Tom Brady was just an ordinary QB, again, with about 18 points, but Fred Jackson nabbed 28 more, the Jet defense had 36, and Devin Hester put up 35 big ones! Even Santonio got 12 points that week, but he would soon be a major source of frustration. The Isms were now 6-0!

Week 7 marked the midway point of the 13-game fantasy regular season. (It is wise for fantasy commisioners to avoid the NFL's Week 17!) Little did I know it, but my six weeks of euphoria was about to come to end. I welcomed back Wells and Fitz, but this was the week that Tom Brady and Fred Jackson had their byes! I promoted Nick Novak to starting kicker over Nick Folk (a good move), but then the bomb dropped. Jason Campbell, who had played very well for Oakland for most of six weeks, was announced as out for the season! I had to scramble for a new QB, first adding the Raiders' backup, Kyle Boller, then replacing him at the last minute with the Chiefs's starter, Matt Cassell. I also replaced Cadillac Williams, who'd sustained an injury, with Tim Hightower and swapped out TE Jeff King for Jake Ballard.

None of it mattered! I'd been averaging 150 points per game, but this time I came in at just 56.44 points, losing to the Wildcats by nearly 35 points! The only double-figure points came from the NYJ defense. Devin Hester had 8 points, as did Hightower in his starting debut, but Dallas Clark got a big, fat zero! Fitz had 7, Wells had 4, Santonio had 2.4. But, that still beat the putrid output of Matt Cassell, who passed for 161 yards, 0 touchdowns, and 2 interceptions (and still beat the Raiders, 28-0!). Add in a loss of two yards rushing, and Cassell came in with a whopping 2.24 points! That was 2.24 points more than a dead man!! I vowed that afternoon that, as soon as I could do it without hurting my team any further, Matt Cassell would become Matt Cassualty!

I couldn't put Brady and Jackson back in my starting lineup fast enough! Jake Ballard was also promoted to starting TE over Dallas Clark. Frustrated, I finally cut the unproductive Davone Bess and added Michael Jenkins. And, wouldn't you know it, Tim Hightower sustained a season-ending injury during Week 7, so I cut him and added Kendall Hunter, who at least gave me stability at backup RB the rest of the season. For Week 8, I would have to do without Devin Hester and the New York Jets defense, as they had their bye week. I started the Tennessee Titans "D," and they brought in almost 23 points, which is not bad. I still lost to the Fox Hounds by 12.5 points, though, because Tom Brady (about 17 points) had turned into an average QB, Michael Jenkins got only 3 points in his start for Santonio Holmes, and Kendall Hunter got even less than that (2.6) in Hester's spot! After 8 games my once-awesome 6-0 record had fallen to 6-2. Things were definitely heading in the wrong direction.

I wondered if maybe, just maybe, I had boasted too soon!