Yoda
12-21-11, 06:27 PM
MoFo Bowl IV
A fine matchup, if I do say so myself. The top two seeds in the finals; seems about right. Let's take a look at both teams: how they got here and what might happen in the big game.
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Big Damn Heroes (10-4)
Jay is the Patriots. The Patriots are Jay. He started five Patriots in the Semifinals, for crying out loud. He says he basically drafted them as a goof, but he's ridden that goof all the way to MoFo Bowl IV. Some of it's not too goofy; Brady and Welker are both studs in this format. The big reason he's here, let's face it, is Rob "Regronkulus" Gronkowski, probably the breakout star of the season. Jay took him in the 10th round even after taking Aaron Hernandez in the 6th, and while both had value, it's Gronk that has emerged as the super-duper star, particularly given that several elite tight ends have been inconsistent (Gates, Finley) or downright bad (Clark).
He's been helped along by a sporadically brilliant Vincent Jackson (he nabbed him along with James Starks when he sent me Roddy White...ooh, now they face off! Subplot!) and, in particular, Reggie Bush, who's enjoying a huge second half resurgence into fantasy relevance. It's difficult to overstate how important this is; before Bush's emergence, his RB position was a massive black hole. He's still very iffy at RB2, but Bush's run in the second half is the reason this team transofmred into a borderline playoff team into a finalist. He was a very big get, particularly for a team that desperately needed a little stability at the position.
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11 Angry Men (11-3)
When will you people learn?! You don't have MoFo fantasy championship games without me. I've been in all four MoFo Bowls and all three of the fantasy baseball finals, too. 7-for-7, suckers. If Jon Gruden were here, he'd bark something stupid about intangibles and then say "Chris Bowyer just wins fantasy football games." IT IS MY DESTINY. Embrace it. Yes, I can feel your anger. It gives you strength. Give in to it; strike me down. Yesss....
Sorry, got a little Palpatine-y there. Happens whenever I think about Gruden. Back to the season recap: this wasn't my best year point-wise, but it was my best regular season at 10-3, my second #1 seed, and my fourth straight year as one of the top two seeds. I'm kind of a big deal. People know me. I have many leatherbound books.
But it was not easy. Nay! After dealing for White, Nicks, and Maclin, there was nary a hole in the lineup...and then the news started to break. Matt Schaub gone for the season just days before the trading deadline. AP and Maclin both missing multiple games right down the stretch, as we're fighting and clawing for Byes. Things really started to fall apart...
...but Tebow's been an adequate replacement, I managed to pick decent subs elsewhere, and I was gifted a Flex to replace the struggling Maclin when Murray went done, having taken a flyer on Felix Jones just in case exactly such a thing happened. It all seems to have worked out again. Huzzah.
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The Matchup
So, that's what happened. What happens next? Here are the matchups; after each name, in parentheses, is the player's opponent along with their rank in points given up at that position to opponents. 1st is the most points allowed (good matchup) and 32nd is the least (worst matchup):
QB
Tim Tebow (vs. BUF, 10th)
Tom Brady (vs. MIA, 11th)
WR
Roddy White (vs. NO, 8th)
Hakeem Nicks (vs. NYJ, 30th)
Wes Welker (vs. MIA, 11th)
Vincent Jackson (vs. DET, 9th)
RB
Adrian Peterson (vs. WAS, 21st)
Frank Gore (vs. SEA, 17th)
Reggie Bush (vs. NE, 16th)
James Starks (vs. CHI, 18th) or Danny Woodhead (vs. MIA, 25th)
TE
Jason Witten (vs. PHI, 23rd)
Rob Gronkowski (vs. MIA, 19th)
FLEX
Felix Jones (vs. PHI, 12th)
Jabar Gaffney (vs. MIN, 3rd)
As you can see, there are very few great matchup, and only a couple of particularly bad ones. Most are lumped more or less around the middle.
Yahoo's projections are always pretty goofy, but for what it's worth they've got us in roughly a dead heat, with Jay favored by 4 points, mostly on the strength of their projections for Welker (20) and Gronk (17). Yahoo also expects Roddy (18) and Jones (just under 17) to have big days. It's projecting all of my seven non-kicker/non-defense starters to put up solid, unexciting totals, in fact: it thinks all of them are going to score between 12 and 18 points.
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Prediction
The matchups favor Jay (though only slightly, I'd say), but most of his guys are coming into this game playing well, and several of mine are wobbling. Normally, my goal here would be to stay within shouting distance at QB and TE, keep it about even (or make up a little ground) at WR, and then dominate at RB. And most of the time, that'd probably work. But Reggie Bush just played the game of his life, and both AP and Gore have been nagged by injuries, turning my biggest strength into something I can barely say I even have an advantage in. The timing is really awful.
I've checked five different fantasy analysis sites, and every single one of them makes Jay a favorite. And Yahoo is by far the closest; the others foresee victories by anywhere from 14 to 34 points. That's a big deal.
So, my prediction is that Jay wins this thing. My only real reasons to hope, I think, are as follows:
1) Jay's Patriot-centricity means only one game has to be unusual to derail the entire thing. It's not as if four or five elite guys all have to breakdown independent of one another. One big game out of that Miami defense, and I'm probably cruising.
2) The analysis had me as a similarly huge favorite (perhaps huge-r) in MoFo Bowl II, and I ended up losing that one.
Anyway, don't forget that most of the games this week are on Saturday. Roddy White and John Kasay go Monday night, though. Hopefully I'll have kept things close enough by then to make for some last-minute excitement.
I'll be traveling to North Carolina tomorrow morning to spend Christmas with the in-laws, but I should have some Internet access, so I'll be around, if not quite as around as normal. If I don't get to talk to you guys before then, Merry Christmas! :)
A fine matchup, if I do say so myself. The top two seeds in the finals; seems about right. Let's take a look at both teams: how they got here and what might happen in the big game.
-
Big Damn Heroes (10-4)
Jay is the Patriots. The Patriots are Jay. He started five Patriots in the Semifinals, for crying out loud. He says he basically drafted them as a goof, but he's ridden that goof all the way to MoFo Bowl IV. Some of it's not too goofy; Brady and Welker are both studs in this format. The big reason he's here, let's face it, is Rob "Regronkulus" Gronkowski, probably the breakout star of the season. Jay took him in the 10th round even after taking Aaron Hernandez in the 6th, and while both had value, it's Gronk that has emerged as the super-duper star, particularly given that several elite tight ends have been inconsistent (Gates, Finley) or downright bad (Clark).
He's been helped along by a sporadically brilliant Vincent Jackson (he nabbed him along with James Starks when he sent me Roddy White...ooh, now they face off! Subplot!) and, in particular, Reggie Bush, who's enjoying a huge second half resurgence into fantasy relevance. It's difficult to overstate how important this is; before Bush's emergence, his RB position was a massive black hole. He's still very iffy at RB2, but Bush's run in the second half is the reason this team transofmred into a borderline playoff team into a finalist. He was a very big get, particularly for a team that desperately needed a little stability at the position.
-
11 Angry Men (11-3)
When will you people learn?! You don't have MoFo fantasy championship games without me. I've been in all four MoFo Bowls and all three of the fantasy baseball finals, too. 7-for-7, suckers. If Jon Gruden were here, he'd bark something stupid about intangibles and then say "Chris Bowyer just wins fantasy football games." IT IS MY DESTINY. Embrace it. Yes, I can feel your anger. It gives you strength. Give in to it; strike me down. Yesss....
Sorry, got a little Palpatine-y there. Happens whenever I think about Gruden. Back to the season recap: this wasn't my best year point-wise, but it was my best regular season at 10-3, my second #1 seed, and my fourth straight year as one of the top two seeds. I'm kind of a big deal. People know me. I have many leatherbound books.
But it was not easy. Nay! After dealing for White, Nicks, and Maclin, there was nary a hole in the lineup...and then the news started to break. Matt Schaub gone for the season just days before the trading deadline. AP and Maclin both missing multiple games right down the stretch, as we're fighting and clawing for Byes. Things really started to fall apart...
...but Tebow's been an adequate replacement, I managed to pick decent subs elsewhere, and I was gifted a Flex to replace the struggling Maclin when Murray went done, having taken a flyer on Felix Jones just in case exactly such a thing happened. It all seems to have worked out again. Huzzah.
-
The Matchup
So, that's what happened. What happens next? Here are the matchups; after each name, in parentheses, is the player's opponent along with their rank in points given up at that position to opponents. 1st is the most points allowed (good matchup) and 32nd is the least (worst matchup):
QB
Tim Tebow (vs. BUF, 10th)
Tom Brady (vs. MIA, 11th)
WR
Roddy White (vs. NO, 8th)
Hakeem Nicks (vs. NYJ, 30th)
Wes Welker (vs. MIA, 11th)
Vincent Jackson (vs. DET, 9th)
RB
Adrian Peterson (vs. WAS, 21st)
Frank Gore (vs. SEA, 17th)
Reggie Bush (vs. NE, 16th)
James Starks (vs. CHI, 18th) or Danny Woodhead (vs. MIA, 25th)
TE
Jason Witten (vs. PHI, 23rd)
Rob Gronkowski (vs. MIA, 19th)
FLEX
Felix Jones (vs. PHI, 12th)
Jabar Gaffney (vs. MIN, 3rd)
As you can see, there are very few great matchup, and only a couple of particularly bad ones. Most are lumped more or less around the middle.
Yahoo's projections are always pretty goofy, but for what it's worth they've got us in roughly a dead heat, with Jay favored by 4 points, mostly on the strength of their projections for Welker (20) and Gronk (17). Yahoo also expects Roddy (18) and Jones (just under 17) to have big days. It's projecting all of my seven non-kicker/non-defense starters to put up solid, unexciting totals, in fact: it thinks all of them are going to score between 12 and 18 points.
-
Prediction
The matchups favor Jay (though only slightly, I'd say), but most of his guys are coming into this game playing well, and several of mine are wobbling. Normally, my goal here would be to stay within shouting distance at QB and TE, keep it about even (or make up a little ground) at WR, and then dominate at RB. And most of the time, that'd probably work. But Reggie Bush just played the game of his life, and both AP and Gore have been nagged by injuries, turning my biggest strength into something I can barely say I even have an advantage in. The timing is really awful.
I've checked five different fantasy analysis sites, and every single one of them makes Jay a favorite. And Yahoo is by far the closest; the others foresee victories by anywhere from 14 to 34 points. That's a big deal.
So, my prediction is that Jay wins this thing. My only real reasons to hope, I think, are as follows:
1) Jay's Patriot-centricity means only one game has to be unusual to derail the entire thing. It's not as if four or five elite guys all have to breakdown independent of one another. One big game out of that Miami defense, and I'm probably cruising.
2) The analysis had me as a similarly huge favorite (perhaps huge-r) in MoFo Bowl II, and I ended up losing that one.
Anyway, don't forget that most of the games this week are on Saturday. Roddy White and John Kasay go Monday night, though. Hopefully I'll have kept things close enough by then to make for some last-minute excitement.
I'll be traveling to North Carolina tomorrow morning to spend Christmas with the in-laws, but I should have some Internet access, so I'll be around, if not quite as around as normal. If I don't get to talk to you guys before then, Merry Christmas! :)