Not My Fantasy

My quest for a fantasy football championship died last night, with a humbling 141-61 defeat in the playoff semifinals. The odds were against me, but I was hoping for a couple of miraculous 30-point efforts to help me pull off an upset.

Instead, what I got was my lowest point total of the season with 61 (previous low: 85). That's an average of less than 7 points per player. My high point man was Steelers TE Ladarius Green (12), who I picked up off waivers a couple of weeks ago. The three wide receivers I left on the bench outscored the three I had in my lineup by a total of 39-14, although that wouldn't have made a difference in the outcome. I get a chance next week to still secure third place, which would be quite an accomplishment considering my total points rank for the season is seventh out of eight teams.

You might be thinking, I don't care to hear about your stupid fantasy football team. But you aren't thinking that because you aren't reading this post. If a tree falls down in the forest and no one is there, does it still make a sound?

As usual, I didn't catch many breaks in the draft. I had the #7 pick in the first round and opted to use it on Texans WR DeAndre Hopkins, who had 111 catches a year ago with an unstable quarterback situation. Maybe I figured with Brock Osweiler coming on board this season in Houston, it could only improve the situation. Instead, I was burned by Brock, as Hopkins was a pretty disappointing fantasy player this year, only topping 20 points once (in week 2) in our PPR league. The next two players selected in our draft? David Johnson went #8 and will wind up as the top scoring fantasy player this season. Le'Veon Bell went #9 and despite missing the first three games is currently #6 in terms of total points.

I went for Rob Gronkowski with the #10 pick, thinking that being able to pencil in 15 points weekly at tight end would be a good move. I can't really fault myself for that logic, but he was only healthy for about four games this year. It hasn't affected the Patriots, who are inexplicably still the best team in the NFL even without him, but it sure didn't help my fantasy team.

In the third round I went for Chargers WR Keenan Allen at #23 overall. He was lost for the season with an injury in Week 1. Ouch. Then I went for Buccaneer Doug Martin as my first RB at #26. He was injured and missed about six games in a row and somewhere along the line I dumped him. If only I had instead snagged RB LeSean McCoy who went #30 or WR Mike Evans who went #32. Both players averaged 18+ fantasy points per week this year.

 

I took Raiders WR Amari Cooper in the fifth round. He was pretty good early on, but hasn't done much lately. I shouldn't be too frustrated with him - he was supposed to be my WR3. For some reason I decided to take Russell Wilson in the sixth round, as the fourth quarterback taken in our draft. Instead, I dumped him midway through the season. Why didn't I grab Drew Brees, who was the fifth quarterback taken in our draft, #50 overall. He's currently #2 among quarterbacks in fantasy points behind only Aaron Rodgers. Wilson is #17.

So you get the picutre. It's easy to draft after the season when you know how everything turned out. My point is that I didn't catch many breaks. Three of my top four picks made basically irrelevant by injuries, and the other never developed any chemistry with the new quarterback.

So I slogged through to the end with waiver pickups such as Jay Ajayi, Marcus Mariota, Martellus Bennett, Theo Riddick and Jamison Crowder doing just enough to help me get the #3 seed for the playoffs. It just wasn't enough to make me a viable championship contender.

Better luck next year, as they say.

The Quarterback Transition

I'm okay with the Broncos quarterback situation. It was time for Peyton Manning to retire. I'm glad he chose to retire a Super Bowl champion rather than try and last another year in the NFL at age 40.

And I'm glad Brock Osweiler is gone. Although I think he proved himself a capable professional quarterback over the course of his seven starts last year, he showed us his true stripes. Rather than humbly accept his role on the team and enjoy the ride to the pinnacle of professional football and be grateful for the opportunity to help a first-class organization defend their title in 2016, he chose to essentially extend his middle finger to the team that drafted and developed him for four years and take a big fat check and move down to Houston. Maybe he'll help tranform the Texans into an NFL power. Or maybe he'll fail to even surpass the modest accomplishments of Matt Schaub. No one really knows. But it's better that he's not here if he feels that entitled. Millennials.

The Broncos traded for Mark Sanchez, who was a high draft pick of the New York Jets all the way back in 2009. He won four playoff games in his first two NFL seasons, but the Jets lost in the AFC championship both years.  His career fell on hard times afterwards, and he is somewhat unfairly judged by a single play in a game against the Patriots in 2012. He ran into the back of his offensive lineman and the resulting fumble was returned for a touchdown. Unfortunately, the play took place on national television on Thanksgiving night. I wonder if the "butt fumble" would have gained such notoriety if it had occurred on a Sunday afternoon in mid-October. He spent the past two years playing for the Eagles and after they signed Sam Bradford to a big contract, he was traded to Denver for a conditional draft pick.

He has a fun nickname - "The Sanchise" - which doesn't really fit him anymore. He's brought a good attitude to Denver and seems genuinely excited to be here. I hope it works out for him - something along the lines of a Jake Plummer-ish renaissance. Perhaps a change of scenery is all that he needs - he's spent the past seven years playing in New York and Philadelphia in front of a bunch of angry, ungrateful jerks.

I was going to say that the New York and Philadelphia fans were also "hard to please" but unfortunately for him, that is no different than being here in Denver. We're just wrapping up a season in which the Broncos won 15 of 19 contests yet a lot of folks were unhappy with the caliber of quarterback play. Some of that is carryover from the championship teams which featured three current Hall of Famers on offense (John Elway, Gary Zimmerman, and Shannon Sharpe) and a couple of potential Hall of Famers in Terrell Davis and Rod Smith. Broncos fans got used to seeing a lot of points on the board and what Peyton Manning did in 2013 didn't help.

Another thing that doesn't help Sanchez is the fact that the Broncos spent a first-round pick on Paxton Lynch. Now, I don't know much about Lynch. I've never seen him play as I don't watch college football. I have no idea if he'll end up being the guy.

But I do know this: the very fact that Lynch will presumably be the backup means that Bronco fans will have no patience with Sanchez. Unless he goes out and passes for 3,500 yards and 30 touchdowns and puts up 30 points a game on a fairly regular basis, the Bronco faithful will be hollering for Lynch by the end of September. We can learn this from history. Back in 2006, the Broncos drafted Jay Cutler in the first round. Even though Jake Plummer won nearly 70% of his starts during his four seasons in Denver and nearly got them to the Super Bowl in 2005, the Denver media and fans could not wait to get Cutler on the field as soon as possible. Because they didn't think the offense was productive enough even though the Broncos were 7-4 when Plummer was benched. Cutler's "big arm" and ability to "make all the throws" were going to solve everything. It didn't, and Cutler was gone within three years.

So that's what you have to look forward to, Mr. Sanchez. I wish you all the luck, but history tends to repeat itself. Unless you play at a Pro Bowl level, you won't make it to the end of the season as the Denver quarterback.

A Rewatching of God's Army

Today we watched the film "God's Army" with the kids. They'd never seen it because - VHS. I hadn't seen it in years. However, I had much the experience I did when I saw it in the theater in Provo 16 years ago. I actually really like it and find that it relates very much to my own experiences as a missionary. Not all of it is realistic - the newest elder being picked up at the airport in a VW bus or the mission president without a suit jacket reaming out the brand new elder in a cluttered office or the baptisms in the ocean - but a lot of the characters and scenes in the movie ring true. It gets a little over the top towards the end but I guess you need some of that for drama's sake.

I did a little reading about Richard Dutcher afterwards. Much of the movie was autobiographical, from the troubled family life of the young elder to the spiritual experience in Carthage Jail of the black elder. He put everything he had into producing a movie depicting a story unique to the Mormon faith. I was aware that he had become disenchanted with the direction the Mormon film genre took in the years following the release of God's Army, and that his planned biopic of the prophet Joseph Smith never got off the ground.

Apparently he left the church in 2007 amidst doubts about the truthfulness of the LDS church. It seems ironic that God's Army became autobiographical in another sense for Dutcher after he lost his faith. One of the elders in the movie struggles with doubts as he becomes consumed with anti-Mormon literature. Some of the most powerful scenes in the film are when Dutcher's character confronts this elder about his behavior. He yells at him in a diner about trusting in the works of those who devote their time and energy to destroying the faith of other people and exhorts him to spend more time studying the church's material. Later he topples over a table in their apartment in a fit of rage after discovering that the elder finally gave in and deserted his mission.

So while many of the aspects of Dutcher's early life were portrayed in the more heroic characters in the movie, isn't it interesting that ultimately he became most like the faithless missionary in the film?

Guess The Location

These were taken February 2014 - what was about to be built here?