Sunday, March 15, 2009
just wondering
i'm tired, i'm still wearing a tie, and i just finished some cake. i really like cake.
march mfa challenge
new game this year. in order to qualify, you must:
be a college of some type
have a team in the men's and/or women's ncaa tournament
have either:
a. accepted me to your mfa program
b. failed to reject me thus far
elimination comes when either:
1. your men's and women's teams are both eliminated (or were never in the tourney)
2. i receive notification that you rejected me
current participants:
maryland
virginia commonwealth
ohio state
tennessee
(list is preliminary, and may include erroneous entries)
any questions?
be a college of some type
have a team in the men's and/or women's ncaa tournament
have either:
a. accepted me to your mfa program
b. failed to reject me thus far
elimination comes when either:
1. your men's and women's teams are both eliminated (or were never in the tourney)
2. i receive notification that you rejected me
current participants:
maryland
virginia commonwealth
ohio state
tennessee
(list is preliminary, and may include erroneous entries)
any questions?
Monday, March 9, 2009
buried under the dunes
i opened the refrigerator last night and found dozens of empty eggshells. the eggshells were piled in loose pyramids, monuments to chickens i'd never met and dishes someone else had cooked. for a moment i stood there, not thinking of the energy pouring from the chilled shelves or the whirring of the machine. i just thought of my own life, unready to be cracked open and poured into a skillet.
ten millionth
since there are so many articles about arod, i'm going to pretend to write about him and go off on a total tangent instead. i've never owned him, and clearly this isn't the year to try...unless you think you can nab a great replacement late. seems like it's always harder to get awesome guys now than it is later in the year. i played in that super competitive league last year, starting right after the all-star break, and managed to pick up huff right as he heated up. thing is, no one else grabbed him. closers were the ones getting taken on rumor alone, which makes sense as saves are a rare commodity. biggest mistake i made was to assume grabbing a set number of closers (3 i think) in the draft was enough. i soon loaded up on as many part-timers as i could, but made the mistake of judging rumors too much in some cases. it's stupid that i had feliciano on my team at one point but didn't bother with jensen lewis right when he got his first save...because i certainly thought about it.
with all the excitement about drafts right now, it's easy to overlook one thing. while it's crucial that you start your season in a strong position, there's always the chance that injuries you never could have forseen will take your team down. thus, the following question. are certain players definitely more durable than others? i wonder if any of us know enough to answer this. if it's just a matter of their having had a clean record of health, then chances are randomness catches up to them and that we cannot truly count on them as rock solid healthy guys. if, however, the issue is one of willingness to play through and perform despite pain, then guys who can do this have to be considered worthy of a level of extra consideration. most likely certain players fall into each of those categories, and knowing who they are may be impossible. thus, to even the advanced fantasy player, a decisive element of luck plays into the game. this is most true in head to head leagues, where yearlong dominance will not help you should you lose key players in august or september.
with all the excitement about drafts right now, it's easy to overlook one thing. while it's crucial that you start your season in a strong position, there's always the chance that injuries you never could have forseen will take your team down. thus, the following question. are certain players definitely more durable than others? i wonder if any of us know enough to answer this. if it's just a matter of their having had a clean record of health, then chances are randomness catches up to them and that we cannot truly count on them as rock solid healthy guys. if, however, the issue is one of willingness to play through and perform despite pain, then guys who can do this have to be considered worthy of a level of extra consideration. most likely certain players fall into each of those categories, and knowing who they are may be impossible. thus, to even the advanced fantasy player, a decisive element of luck plays into the game. this is most true in head to head leagues, where yearlong dominance will not help you should you lose key players in august or september.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
luck has it, i wasn't finished yet
more free advice at a time when you don't need it.
the terrible thing about keeping extra kickers and defenses on your bench is not just that they're so easily replaceable. it's the opportunity cost; those bench slots can do a lot more for you than just provide alternatives when your defense has a bad matchup. kicker is absolutely the worst position to double, and if you carry two kickers for more than one week a season, i just don't know why you're even reading this. i could argue that you don't even need to keep a kicker over his bye, but that might not be the worst offense in most circumstances. i did drop lance moore on his bye, i think, to keep a bye week kicker. the worst part is, my plan was to pick moore up again after the bye had passed. that is where you're in trouble. if you have a player who's already shown signs of breaking out, a player you want on your roster later in the year, do not keep a kicker over that guy.
the kicker/defense problem is only one example of how you can mismanage your bench. in many leagues that i have been, the trade market is far from efficient. unless you're playing with people you know will make a lot of moves, do not horde talent at one position expecting to deal it for something else. i was in the lucky position in one league to draft romo (early) and cutler (late). before romo's injury, i lucked into an even better situation by flipping him and hines ward for brees and sjax. i made it look like a grab for an underperforming rb, when what i really wanted was to swap for brees' more atrractive fantasy playoff schedule. yeah, that's right, after week 2 i was looking at the playoffs. somehow the move was attractive enough to my trading partner that he snapped it up immediately, helping me avoid the bad luck of romo's subsequent injury. in most leagues, you can't get that deal done, and you can't get much for cutler. i managed to finally deal him and ginn for colston, but i already had wayne, marshall, and bowe starting for me at wr. back to my point, however: while getting a cutler late in the draft as your backup is great, you can't draft people you don't need and hope that you can flip them for something you want. that's just wasting your bench space.
here's the real issue: your bench can be like an investment portfolio. you should be looking for values and high potential options late in the draft, but looking for people that will help your team, not trade bait to help someone else's. besides providing security if someone goes down, the bench should be where you stash people you are counting on to improve as the season continues. to some extent, you should trust the talent in stronger portions of your starting lineup to keep you out of trouble. concentrate your late round longshots on positions where you sense weakness. i finished third in league where my customized autodraft strategy backfired and left me with a bench full of backup nfl qbs. not backups for my team, backups in real football. of course, my starting lineup was stellar: mcnabb at qb; peterson and jamal lewis at rb; wayne, andre johnson, and boldin at wr; and clark at te. i happen to strongly dislike mcnabb, so i did two things to fix my qb situation, which i saw as my clear weakness. first, i picked up warner, who was rumored to have the inside track on the cardinals' job (and who was stellar late in the '07 season). the fact that he went undrafted makes little sense, but i saw weakness and made a grab. then, since i can't stand mcnabb anyway and he had the same bye as warner, i traded him for cutler. end result: i was as set at qb as every other position.
running back was my second glaring weakness; i looked at the hype and early returns, grabbing slaton and chris johnson. in this ppr format, slaton outscored ap and chris johnson was close to his level. hoping to grab depth, i shopped peterson before the season, trying to trade down at rb and land a receiver. no one was biting, so i kept him, as he was clearly not valued high enough around the league for me to bother trading when i only needed bye week guys. i took desean jackson as my fourth receiver, hoping he would pan out and knowing i didn't need to make a deal just to make my bench look better. i dropped clark early, not wanting to keep an injured te on my bench, and picked him up again when he was healthy. it might seem crazy to give up your seventh round pick for nothing, but te is generally a low reward position, so i hate investing two roster spots on it. with what soon proved to be quality depth at rb and qb, i could have dealt someone, but i had no real needs. sure, my juggernaut of a team lost in the semifinals, but that's going to happen. it also didn't matter that lewis failed to deliver fourth round value, because i made the right waiver picks at rb. maybe the wr early, many rbs late strategy is a pretty good one.
the terrible thing about keeping extra kickers and defenses on your bench is not just that they're so easily replaceable. it's the opportunity cost; those bench slots can do a lot more for you than just provide alternatives when your defense has a bad matchup. kicker is absolutely the worst position to double, and if you carry two kickers for more than one week a season, i just don't know why you're even reading this. i could argue that you don't even need to keep a kicker over his bye, but that might not be the worst offense in most circumstances. i did drop lance moore on his bye, i think, to keep a bye week kicker. the worst part is, my plan was to pick moore up again after the bye had passed. that is where you're in trouble. if you have a player who's already shown signs of breaking out, a player you want on your roster later in the year, do not keep a kicker over that guy.
the kicker/defense problem is only one example of how you can mismanage your bench. in many leagues that i have been, the trade market is far from efficient. unless you're playing with people you know will make a lot of moves, do not horde talent at one position expecting to deal it for something else. i was in the lucky position in one league to draft romo (early) and cutler (late). before romo's injury, i lucked into an even better situation by flipping him and hines ward for brees and sjax. i made it look like a grab for an underperforming rb, when what i really wanted was to swap for brees' more atrractive fantasy playoff schedule. yeah, that's right, after week 2 i was looking at the playoffs. somehow the move was attractive enough to my trading partner that he snapped it up immediately, helping me avoid the bad luck of romo's subsequent injury. in most leagues, you can't get that deal done, and you can't get much for cutler. i managed to finally deal him and ginn for colston, but i already had wayne, marshall, and bowe starting for me at wr. back to my point, however: while getting a cutler late in the draft as your backup is great, you can't draft people you don't need and hope that you can flip them for something you want. that's just wasting your bench space.
here's the real issue: your bench can be like an investment portfolio. you should be looking for values and high potential options late in the draft, but looking for people that will help your team, not trade bait to help someone else's. besides providing security if someone goes down, the bench should be where you stash people you are counting on to improve as the season continues. to some extent, you should trust the talent in stronger portions of your starting lineup to keep you out of trouble. concentrate your late round longshots on positions where you sense weakness. i finished third in league where my customized autodraft strategy backfired and left me with a bench full of backup nfl qbs. not backups for my team, backups in real football. of course, my starting lineup was stellar: mcnabb at qb; peterson and jamal lewis at rb; wayne, andre johnson, and boldin at wr; and clark at te. i happen to strongly dislike mcnabb, so i did two things to fix my qb situation, which i saw as my clear weakness. first, i picked up warner, who was rumored to have the inside track on the cardinals' job (and who was stellar late in the '07 season). the fact that he went undrafted makes little sense, but i saw weakness and made a grab. then, since i can't stand mcnabb anyway and he had the same bye as warner, i traded him for cutler. end result: i was as set at qb as every other position.
running back was my second glaring weakness; i looked at the hype and early returns, grabbing slaton and chris johnson. in this ppr format, slaton outscored ap and chris johnson was close to his level. hoping to grab depth, i shopped peterson before the season, trying to trade down at rb and land a receiver. no one was biting, so i kept him, as he was clearly not valued high enough around the league for me to bother trading when i only needed bye week guys. i took desean jackson as my fourth receiver, hoping he would pan out and knowing i didn't need to make a deal just to make my bench look better. i dropped clark early, not wanting to keep an injured te on my bench, and picked him up again when he was healthy. it might seem crazy to give up your seventh round pick for nothing, but te is generally a low reward position, so i hate investing two roster spots on it. with what soon proved to be quality depth at rb and qb, i could have dealt someone, but i had no real needs. sure, my juggernaut of a team lost in the semifinals, but that's going to happen. it also didn't matter that lewis failed to deliver fourth round value, because i made the right waiver picks at rb. maybe the wr early, many rbs late strategy is a pretty good one.
i'm so in love with pancakes
is it possible that jay cutler might end up as a qb bargain again next year? he's been brutalized in the press for not winning, which has absolutely no bearing on his fantasy value, but could affect his draft position. the whole issue with his coach possibly looking to replace him with cassel might even be overplayed. if you had a chance to trade for a guy you just won 11 games with, wouldn't you look into it? i think that has nearly no bearing on how much you like your existing qb. face it, cutler is not peyton manning. if josh mcdaniels was taking over the giants and there was a chance of sending eli somewhere and coming back with cassel, he would have taken it. well, maybe that's just because eli's not worth it. the guy won a super bowl. trent dilfer also won a super bowl.
what round would you need to take cutler in for him to be considered a bargain? the sixth? i suppose he's not a tremendous bargain there, unless you expect him to take another big step in his development next year. i think you have to consider brees, manning, brady, romo, warner and possibly rivers as the guys who should be drafted before him. i'd have to look more closely at the numbers, but i'm not even incredibly happy about taken warner and especially rivers before cutler. i suppose i would prefer whichever of those three fell to a lower slot. if it was warner, i would want a very good backup.
depending on who's waiting for a qb in your league and how you're doing overall, i'll take cutler over roethlisberger, because again this is fantasy not reality. perhaps the pittsburgh line will protect him better next year, but he still hasn't been a guy who throws for a lot of yards. that's never good; the one nice thing about a jay cutler is that you'll get good yardage points even when the td numbers aren't astronomical. i tend to think of rivers as a td-only guy also, but he threw for a lot of yards last year. problem is, people were drafting him relatively high in '07, got disappointed, and then watched him have a career year in '08. i'm not sure i want to be the guy paying with the expectation of a repeat performance. still, i was irrationally afraid of him last year; he was going in the 10th round in leagues i was in and i had no interest in him as a backup. as for other qbs out there, i don't want mcnabb, i don't know where to take cassel, and if you're wondering about the other manning, rub your giants super bowl pennant for good luck before you draft him in the third round.
let's take a minute to discuss draft strategy. while it's become controversial to stick with running backs as your top draft choices, i think they are the safest high draft picks. if your guy goes down and you're stuck with his backup, it's generally the running back position where the greatest value is preserved. there are times when someone steps up and does great at qb or wr. however, you can't keep a matt cassel on hand in case every tom brady goes down. look at how long it took cassel to become a valuable fantasy commodity. as someone who drafted derek anderson in one league, i can tell you that he was not a viable starter in the early going. perhaps if you believe cassel can happen again, you find a boring/reliable backup and, when your big qb pick goes down for the season, stash his backup for a solid six to eight weeks, no matter what. that's great if your team is stable enough that you can afford the bench spot. you don't have to pull stunts like that with rbs. in recent years, backs have routinely stepped in to fantasy relevance in their first couple of games in a featured role. anecdotally, it seems wide receivers can do well when they have a great qb and especially when they're stepping in as the second option. wide receiver seems tough to predict; didn't it seem obvious hixon or someone would step up for the giants?
of course, you don't want a pointless rb in a high slot instead of a standout wr or qb. you could even argue that in leagues with safer playoff formats (i was in one where 8/10 teams made it), you might not even want to draft an rb before round 5 or so. start the year with a quality platoon guy or overlooked starter, add a couple rookies, fill your bench with rbs on teams that have good systems, and get a top qb and 3 wrs with your first 4 picks. that's a workable strategy in a lot of situations. the picks would still need to fall your way, and i can't really say who i'd want to take in rd 1. btw, i'm tempted to take hasselbeck late (11th rd?) if he's available and my starter is rock solid, but there could be better options i haven't thought of yet.
finally, is anyone else waiting for the chevy volt to generate mass anger? what happens when the battery life claim - 40 miles - turns out to be like all these macbook batteries that are quoted at 5 hours? i've owned 2 powerbooks and a macbook in the past 6 years, and you can safely get a couple hours plus on a charge. what happens when the volt turns out the same way? 20 miles all electric doesn't sound that great to me. even if it's 40 at the outset, how long before the aging battery is down to 50% of its original performance? maybe this whole battery thing is a genius move by car companies. they've made cars more and more reliable, so that you can get 100,000 miles out of even lower quality vehicles (hi neon). now, with hybrids and all-electric vehicles seen as the future, the inevitable battery life issues that will come up could either help sell new cars quicker or just lead to some fat maintenance bills.
what round would you need to take cutler in for him to be considered a bargain? the sixth? i suppose he's not a tremendous bargain there, unless you expect him to take another big step in his development next year. i think you have to consider brees, manning, brady, romo, warner and possibly rivers as the guys who should be drafted before him. i'd have to look more closely at the numbers, but i'm not even incredibly happy about taken warner and especially rivers before cutler. i suppose i would prefer whichever of those three fell to a lower slot. if it was warner, i would want a very good backup.
depending on who's waiting for a qb in your league and how you're doing overall, i'll take cutler over roethlisberger, because again this is fantasy not reality. perhaps the pittsburgh line will protect him better next year, but he still hasn't been a guy who throws for a lot of yards. that's never good; the one nice thing about a jay cutler is that you'll get good yardage points even when the td numbers aren't astronomical. i tend to think of rivers as a td-only guy also, but he threw for a lot of yards last year. problem is, people were drafting him relatively high in '07, got disappointed, and then watched him have a career year in '08. i'm not sure i want to be the guy paying with the expectation of a repeat performance. still, i was irrationally afraid of him last year; he was going in the 10th round in leagues i was in and i had no interest in him as a backup. as for other qbs out there, i don't want mcnabb, i don't know where to take cassel, and if you're wondering about the other manning, rub your giants super bowl pennant for good luck before you draft him in the third round.
let's take a minute to discuss draft strategy. while it's become controversial to stick with running backs as your top draft choices, i think they are the safest high draft picks. if your guy goes down and you're stuck with his backup, it's generally the running back position where the greatest value is preserved. there are times when someone steps up and does great at qb or wr. however, you can't keep a matt cassel on hand in case every tom brady goes down. look at how long it took cassel to become a valuable fantasy commodity. as someone who drafted derek anderson in one league, i can tell you that he was not a viable starter in the early going. perhaps if you believe cassel can happen again, you find a boring/reliable backup and, when your big qb pick goes down for the season, stash his backup for a solid six to eight weeks, no matter what. that's great if your team is stable enough that you can afford the bench spot. you don't have to pull stunts like that with rbs. in recent years, backs have routinely stepped in to fantasy relevance in their first couple of games in a featured role. anecdotally, it seems wide receivers can do well when they have a great qb and especially when they're stepping in as the second option. wide receiver seems tough to predict; didn't it seem obvious hixon or someone would step up for the giants?
of course, you don't want a pointless rb in a high slot instead of a standout wr or qb. you could even argue that in leagues with safer playoff formats (i was in one where 8/10 teams made it), you might not even want to draft an rb before round 5 or so. start the year with a quality platoon guy or overlooked starter, add a couple rookies, fill your bench with rbs on teams that have good systems, and get a top qb and 3 wrs with your first 4 picks. that's a workable strategy in a lot of situations. the picks would still need to fall your way, and i can't really say who i'd want to take in rd 1. btw, i'm tempted to take hasselbeck late (11th rd?) if he's available and my starter is rock solid, but there could be better options i haven't thought of yet.
finally, is anyone else waiting for the chevy volt to generate mass anger? what happens when the battery life claim - 40 miles - turns out to be like all these macbook batteries that are quoted at 5 hours? i've owned 2 powerbooks and a macbook in the past 6 years, and you can safely get a couple hours plus on a charge. what happens when the volt turns out the same way? 20 miles all electric doesn't sound that great to me. even if it's 40 at the outset, how long before the aging battery is down to 50% of its original performance? maybe this whole battery thing is a genius move by car companies. they've made cars more and more reliable, so that you can get 100,000 miles out of even lower quality vehicles (hi neon). now, with hybrids and all-electric vehicles seen as the future, the inevitable battery life issues that will come up could either help sell new cars quicker or just lead to some fat maintenance bills.
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