Week 5 Recap – Canton Heroes vs. Narnia Creations

I played Peyton Manning this week and he beat me almost single-handedly.  It happens.  We move on to the next week.

I knew Peyton was going to be in trouble against Dallas and my own QB, Robert Griffin III was on a bye week, so I needed a QB who could deliver in a shootout.  I ended up choosing Brian Hoyer.  If he doesn’t tear his ACL because nobody in Cleveland could teach him how to slide properly, I probably come out of this week 2-3 and 1 game off the playoff pace instead of 1-4 and 2 games back.  That Bills defense is exactly as bad as I thought they were, as evidenced by the fact that they gave up a 37-point game to a team whose quarterback tore his ACL on his team’s second drive of the game.  However, had I stuck with Geno Smith or Ryan Tannehill, I still could have won this week.  That’s just the way this season has gone the first five weeks, even when I gauge the situation correctly, I still end up on the losing end.

I also played the wrong Tight End this week.  Sunday morning, I decided that if the Colts were going to beat the Seahawks like I thought they would, they were going to need a big game from Coby Fleener, so I started him over Charles Clay.  End result, 11.2 for Clay, 1.5 for Fleener.  Judgment – BAD move.  I should have just slept in instead of waking up early and deciding to make that one line-up change.  I lost by 7.4 points.  If Clay is in instead of Fleener, I win by 2.3.  But those kind of what ifs, I don’t like to fall back on because the other guy always has guys on the bench that scored better than the guys that he played also, so if you get into that what if game, it only causes you more headaches.  The best advice I can give any of you and take myself is to not think that way.  Don’t dwell on it and move on to making your team the best it can be for the next week.

Speaking of which, my team is stacked full of great matchups this week.  ESPN projects my total at 113 points, but that could end up being very very light if Ray Rice and the Ravens run the ball like they did last week.  And they are playing Green Bay, so that’s not that much of a stretch so long as they don’t get bombed early by Rogers & Co.  They learned from the game against the Bills that no matter what the score is, throwing the ball 50 times and running it 9 times is never going to win you a game no matter how bad the other team is.  If the Ravens had committed themselves to giving the ball to Ray Rice against Buffalo, even when they were down 2 TDs early, they could have probably salvaged a win.  (I mean Bilal Powell did run for 120 yards against the Bills, they stink at defending the run.)  But instead, the Ravens played into their hands and lost by a field goal.  Lesson learned – Ray Rice got 27 carries against the Dolphins in Week 5 and 2 TDs.  Expect more of the same moving forward, my fellow Ray Rice owners because Mr. Harbaugh is not a stupid man.  He must have had a massive cerebral flatulation Week 4, but that isn’t going to happen again.

As for my team, look at what some of my key players have coming up.

QB – Robert Griffin III vs. Dallas, Chicago, Denver and San Diego the next 4 weeks.  The Bears defense is far from what it once was (as the Lions and Steelers both proved recently) and the rest of those teams have been terrible against the pass this year.  Sure, the Broncos will still get some interceptions and usually salvage a positive fantasy score (and usually put up double digits going into the 4th quarter until garbage time TDs drag them back down to the 9-10 point range for the week – I would know since they are my defense, though this week they just flat out sucked, Peyton not only killed the Dallas defense, he killed his own defense as well as they struggled to keep up with a pass happy Cowboy attack.)  But, back to RGIII, the only bad week he should have left on his schedule is Week 12 against San Fransisco (maybe Week 14 against KC).  Plus, he has Atlanta and the Cowboys again Weeks 15 and 16, which in this league are the last two weeks of the playoffs.

RB – Ray Rice vs. Green Bay and Pittsburgh the next two weeks, DeAngelo Williams against the Vikings and the Rams, MJD against the Broncos and Chargers.  All 3 of those guys returned to at least decent form this week and Ray Rice put my team on his back and would have carried us to victory if not for pesky Peyton and the game where nobody played defense.

WR – Randall Cobb takes on Baltimore (the team that gave up 7 TDs to Peyton) and Cleveland and has a pretty easy schedule against the NFC East and the rest of the NFC North the rest of the way.  DeSean Jackson of course gets to play everybody from the NFC East again and although he gets stranded on Revis Island this week, he’s got Dallas, Cleveland, Oakland and Green Bay coming up.  Greg Jennings and Cecil Shorts are both good plays this week against Carolina and Denver respectively, but they after that Jennings gets the Giants and his old team the Packers while Shorts gets San Diego next week (he plays the 49ers the week after that, so he’ll probably be on the bench that week although he gets lots of balls thrown to him regardless because the Jaguars are always throwing the ball because they’re always behind.)

My Broncos Defense gets to pick on Jacksonville this week.  They are projected at 9 points and while Shorts and Blackman will probably score high, the rest of the Jaguars (including MJD) probably won’t because Henne is going to throw interceptions gallore and MJD probably won’t get a lot of carries because the Jags will be down 3 scores by the end of the first quarter probably.

Here are the roster updates.  Brian Hoyer is gone because he’s out for the year and even if he wasn’t, he was just a one time only play while RGIII was on his bye.  Sebastian Janikowski is also gone, not through any fault of his own, but because Blair Walsh of the Vikings was sitting there and he’s averaging double digit points per week while kicking indoors for a team that has a very very strong running game and he already had his bye week.  You can’t do much better than that.  I also picked up Jonathan Stewart a week early since he is eligible to come back next week against the Rams (not that he will for sure), but since I have DeAngelo and have not been able to rely on MJD and Ridley continually, another option at RB was welcome over adding more WR depth like Terrance Williams of the Cowboys or Rueben Randle of the Giants who were my next two choices.

Updated Canton Heroes roster

QB – Robert Griffin III (my only QB from here on out barring injury or a very stupid dropped QB by my counterparts)

RB – Ray Rice, DeAngelo Williams, Maurice Jones-Drew, Stevan Ridley, Bernard Pierce, Jonathan Stewart

WR – Randall Cobb, DeSean Jackson, Greg Jennings, Cecil Shorts, Eddie Royal, Percy Harvin (IR)

TE – Coby Fleener, Charles Clay (Bye)

D/ST – Broncos

K- Blair Walsh

Even though I’m 1-4, I don’t feel like it this week.  This team is capable of keeping up with Rob’s 5-0 Alderaan Players (a name I gave him BTW) for the rest of the way so long as my Running Backs (Ray Rice in particular) don’t go back to putting up 2-3 points per week.  With the matchups my guys have going forward, we are still very much a threat.  The hard times are OVER.  Everybody else better beware.

Week 5 Box Score

Canton Heroes

– QB – Brian Hoyer – 2.1

– RB – Ray Rice – 20.2

– RB – Maurice Jones-Drew – 8.6

– WR – Randall Cobb – 10.7

– WR – DeSean Jackson – 19.2

– TE – Coby Fleener – 1.5

– Flex – DeAngelo Williams – 6.9

– D/ST – Broncos – -2

– K – Sebastian Janikowski – 12

Narnia Creations – 86.6

– QB – Peyton Manning – 35.2

– RB – Arian Foster – 11.8

– RB – Ronnie “Weaksauce McFumbles” Hillman – 5.9

– WR – Torrey Smith – 12.1

– WR – Andre Johnston – 3.9

– TE – Scott Chandler – 4.9

– Flex – Sidney Rice – 0.8

– D/ST – Ravens – 8

– K – Nick Novak – 4

Week 4 Recap – Canton Heroes vs. off alot

Another bad week from me.  Another week of underperforming running backs lands me with the lowest score in the league for the second week in a row.  It happens.

By the way, if anybody wants to know, I won the championship in four out of the five fantasy baseball leagues I played in this year.  I was in the third place game in the fifth league, but devoted my time to the other four and didn’t pay much attention to it and still ended up with a 5-5 tie, but lost the tiebreaker and thus ended up in 4th place there.  4 1sts and 1 4th – Yeah, I’ll take that every single year please.

Back to football.

Let’s start with Ray Rice, who granted we all knew was going to be limited due to his injury, but the entire Ravens running game was overly limited in that game against Buffalo, who had just given up over 120 yards to Bilal freakin’ Powell the week before.  The Bills defense is obviously a doormat, or if they aren’t they’ve got me fooled.  But even a blind squirrel finds a nut every once in a while and the Ravens pretty much stuffed a handful down their throats and helped them out this week.  The Ravens still only lost by a touchdown, but I have to think that if Ray Rice or Bernard Pierce either one is healthy for that full game (Rice’s hip and Pierce’s strained calf) that they don’t have to rely on the throwing game so much so early and then Flacco doesn’t throw the five interceptions that he threw and the Ravens score a couple of more touchdowns and win that game by at least two scores.  Despite those five interceptions and Rice only getting 5 carries and Pierce only getting four carries, the Ravens still only lost that game by a field goal.  The Bills are not that good a team and don’t get fooled by the obscenely low fantasy numbers the Ravens guys put up this week.  So, the fact that I played Ray Rice, expecting that even though he was limited, 40-50 yards and a TD or maybe even 2 TDs wouldn’t have been surprising at all.  Instead, he only got 17 yards.  He did almost get a touchdown catch at the end of the game, but Flacco must have thought he was throwing to somebody else because he threw it a mile over poor short little Ray Rice’s head.  Way to justify your big contract, Joe.  Your team was in a game they should have easily won, but because of you they were behind in the final two minutes and you lead them down to the red zone and have a chance to redeem yourself and you throw a 12-foot high pass to a 5’8” running back.  Get the ball down a little bit for Rice or throw it to somebody else.

Try as I might, I just can’t get Stevan Ridley on the bench and keep him there.  With Randall Cobb and DeAngelo Williams on their bye week, I was kind of forced to play Ridley at the Flex behind Rice and MJD as my lead two backs and Ridley actually outperformed them with his best game of the year so far (though he has set the bar incredibly low there).  So, things are a little more promising for Stevan Ridley, though it seems like everyweek somebody wants to jump on the bandwagon of one of his back-ups in the timeshare.  Last week it was Brandon Bolden, but he was a non factor.  This week, they’re jumping on LaGarette Blount because he managed to break a 47-yard touchdown run.  That’s what we call a lucky break.  Look at the rest of his stats for the game.  You take that one run away and he’s got 8 carries for 17 yards, barely over 2 yards per carry.  He’s not going to be fantasy playable.  He’s just eating up a spot on your roster that could be better used.  Hell, you’re probably better off with a back-up kicker than you are with Blount.  Unless you’re desperate or stupid, you’re not putting him in whereas while I don’t advocate holding two kickers, you would at least presumably use your second kicker and you should not be using Blount.  Even if Ridley gets hurt, that job goes to Bolden or Vereen if healthy.  Blount might get a bigger share in the run game this next week because of that lucky break making his stats look all pretty, but don’t expect more than that 2.2 yards per carry from him moving forward.

Now, you could notice that I’m 1-3 at this point and just disregard some or all of the advice above, but this is common sense stuff I’m talking about here.

To recap some of the roster moves I made over this past week, my trade for Robert Griffin III went through, so the Heroes wave bye-bye to Pierre Garcon and say good riddance to bad rubbish in the form of Jay Cutler via that trade.  Now, it’s RG3’s bye week, so I need a quarterback and since I’m up against Peyton Manning this week, I need lightning in a bottle and I can’t rely on Geno Smith after his terrible day against the Titans this week, so I’m going with Brian Hoyer and hoping the Browns / Bills game tomorrow night ends up being a shootout and I get proven right about how crappy that Bills defense is.  Don’t get fooled by the week they had against the Ravens.  Remember what they did two weeks ago against the hapless Jets’ offense which prompted me to add Geno Smith on the off chance he used that game for a launching pad for a hot streak (he didn’t).  But hey, that was before I had RG3.  After this week, unless he gets hurt, I shouldn’t need another quarterback for the rest of the season.

With that 2-for-1 trade going through, I had an empty spot on my roster, which I used to grab Percy Harvin, who should become the Seahawks #1 target for Russell Wilson rather easily once he’s healthy.  And since he’s hurt, I got to stash him on my IR slot and create another open space on my roster, which I used to grab Greg Jennings, who Fear the Roo made the mistake of dropping.  Unfortunately, I didn’t play Jennings because of the Vikings QB situation, but I knew that having Matt Cassel take over for Christian Ponder would be a beneficial move for Jennings.  I just wanted to see it in action for a week before I trusted him enough to plug him into the line-up.  He’ll probably be seeing plenty of playing time for the Heroes moving forward presuming that Christian Ponder doesn’t get handed the reins at QB again.

So, here is an updated look at the Heroes roster for Week 5.

QB – Robert Griffin III (bye), Brian Hoyer

RB – Ray Rice, Maurice Jones-Drew, DeAngelo Williams, Stevan Ridley, Bernard Pierce

WR – Randall Cobb, DeSean Jackson, Greg Jennings (bye), Eddie Royal, Cecil Shorts

TE – Coby Fleener, Charles Clay

D/ST – Broncos

K – Sebastian Janikowski

And so you all have the opportunity to laugh at my misfortune, here is my Week 4 Box Score.

Canton Heroes – 60.7

– QB – Robert Griffin III – 14

– RB – Ray Rice – 1.7

– RB – Maurice Jones-Drew – 2.8

– WR – DeSean Jackson – 3.4

– WR – Eddie Royal – 4.2

– TE – Coby Fleener – 13.7

– Flex – Stevan Ridley – 7.9

– D/ST – Broncos – 12

– K – Sebastian Janikowski – 1

off alot – 93

– QB – Tony Romo – 18.5

– RB – Adrian Peterson – 26

– RB – Alfred Morris – 7.1

– WR – Calvin Johnson – 10.4

– WR – Hakeem Nicks – 3.3

– TE – Tyler Eifert – 3.9

– Flex – Lamar Miller – 12.8

– D/ST – Bengals – 4

– K – Garrett Hartley – 7