Beer
With a six-team bye week, I find myself without the services of WRs Greg Jennings and Reggie Wayne and TE Ben Watson. This is a shallow league, but one where each team must carry, at all times, 5 WRs.
Fortunately, the two on my bench are WRs Bomb Berrian and Andre Johnson. At TE, Ben Watson has been a big disappointment so moving Jets TE Chris Baker into his spot won't have any discernable effect over the production I have gotten in the first five weeks.
I'll send K Josh Brown back into the starting slot and sit the Eagles' David Akers. This could certainly work against me, but I must carry two kickers. With eight teams, that means every team faces this issue.
Last week, I had the misfortune to run into Donovan McNabb. In a league that awards bonus points for TD length and 300 yards passing, I had little chance after his 87-yard TD pass.
I lost 115-120 to the team with the most points scored so far. I am second.
Interestingly, a team in this league has yet to have his starting QB throw or run for a TD in any of the first five weeks. Needless to say, he is in last at 1-4 and 360 points. Another team is 0-5 with 439 points, the next fewest.
In my deepest league by far (16 teams with a 7 man reserve), I find myself in a real bind. I have to sit RBs Chester and Fred Taylor and WR Greg Jennings due to the bye, but my reserve WRs include Troy Williamson and Matt Jones also on byes.
This compelled me into the free agent pool for a WR and a RB. In order to fit two more players I needed to drop two. Those were QB Andrew Walter and D/ST Cleveland.
That side of the decision was easy. It was who to pick-up that was harder. With the pool consisting of nothing but back-ups who don't play, I was fortunate to have starting Miami WR Marty Booker get injured. This made rookie WR Derek Hagan an "easy" pick-up.
RB was tougher. I would have taken RB Mack Strong on the chance Mo Morris continued to be ineffective for the Seahawks, but he had been taken earlier in the week. I gambled on Raiders RB Justin Fargas. Maybe Lamont Jordan is lackadaisical and gets benched for a bit?
I have no expectations of winning this week. My opponent has RBs Tiki Barber and Kevin Jones starting with Frank Gore at W/R. My corresponding starters are Cadillac Williams, Justin Fargas and Derek Hagan.
Yahoo! 12
Not a lot of bye week damage with this team. So little that my one move was to start WR Andre Johnson and sit WR Chris Chambers, who is not on a bye.
Surprisingly, I do not have a single player who is on a bye. I haven't looked but that can't be a good sign for next week's six-teams bye, can it?
Thank God for the W/R spot, but, even if it was a 3rd WR, I'd have still have had Chambers to start there!
Yahoo! 10
I messed-up last week with my moves. From some reason I did not pick-up K Jay Feely and drop WR Darrell Jackson. I thought I had. I blogged I had, and then I checked Monday morning and saw I did not get Jay Feely's 4 Fgs and an XP.
I lost 55-57.
This is the first of the four leagues that is done for 2006. My team is 0-5.
Regardless, I am still making moves. This week's byes have WRs Greg Jennings, Reggie Wayne and Troy Williamson (no big deal!) unavailable along with RB Chester Taylor.
With three WRs unavaiable and three WRs to start, I was 'forced" to drop QB Daunte Culpepper and pick-up WR Wes Welker. Surprisingly, he was the best available in even this shallow 10-team league.
I dropped Daunte Culpepper and picked-up Wes Welker.
Left Foster on bench in favor of the match-ups Ronnie Brown vs the Jets and Cadillac Williams vs the Bengals over Foster vs Baltimore