2013 NFL Week 1 "The Good, the Bad and the Funny"

We're eschewing the usual format of "the Good, Bad, and the Ugly" in order to shed light on some hilarious stuff that happens each week with the NFL and fantasy football in particular.

Good:

• Peyton Manning - About 50 points in most fantasy leagues and a new commercial where he claims that QB Sneak plays are "his thing". Awesome.

• Adrian Peterson - All Day busted out a huge run to start the game and added two more touchdowns to make the consensus #1 overall pick of each draft this year worth every penny.

• Anquan Boldin - Made me feel like a dumb-ass all day for not drafting him. Who the hell else is going to catch Kaepernick lasers? I forgot he was tight-end strong and wide-receiver fast. Green Bay sure did, too.

• Victor Cruz - The touchdown passes he caught exhibited toughness from a guy that still doesn't look that big. Victor Cruz takes a pounding and doesn't drop the football. If he was Megatron's size...he's probably be Megatron. Looks like he's still a threat for massive fantasy production. Last night, Cruz took a massive hit after a touchdown catch and hopped up into a salsa dance the next second. I love this guy.

• Brian Hartline - HOMER ALERT! Dolphins won yesterday, and Hartline matched his TD total from last year while going over 100 yards. This is excellent news for Dolphins fans and deep fantasy league players that skimped on wide receivers this year.

• TWO MONDAY NIGHT FOOTBALL GAMES! OMG! WTF!

Bad:

• Clay Matthews - His non-ejection was ridiculous! A clearly out-of-bounds neck tackle on a QB and instigating a shoving match seemed like a pair of personal fouls to me, and I'm pretty sure that would warrant ejection in the new-look NFL. I like Matthews' intensity, but I feel like a less popular player would have gotten the boot.

• DirecTV website (via Madden 25 deal) - This bad boy went down for nearly the entire first half after looking so promising in my living room at about 12:55. If it was my account we were using, I'd have been pretty pissed, but instead I went with good ole streaming videos full of pop-up ads. Hopefully this is fixed by next week, or some people's heads might explode.

• Pittsburgh Steelers - Pittsburgh lost Pouncey and two other starters for the year, and barely managed a garbage-time touchdown after really struggling to move the ball against Tennessee. If not for the other three teams in their division losing in Week 1 as well, Steelers fans would have a lot to worry about. Hey, at least the Pirates are winners this year!

• Stevan Ridley - I drafted this dude really high in a few leagues and felt robbed watching Shane Vereen play mistake-free football en route to the numbers I expected from Ridley. Vereen broke a bone in his wrist, so Ridley gets another chance this week to make good in the Hood(ie), but if he drops another turd in Week 2, I'm selling. 

• David Wilson - Same thing with David Wilson. Two fumbles led to him bench-warming the majority of last night's game vs. the Cowboys, and after Andre Brown went down, I thought I had a true fantasy steal. Like Ridley, he's going to get another shot, but I assume that any fumbles will lead to benching and an overall destruction of Wilson's fantasy value.

• Jacoby Jones commercial - Didn't see it 500 times in a row this Sunday while watching the aforementioned DirecTV website? Just replay this video all day today and you'll get the Sunday Ticket experience.

Funny:

• Three Safeties - Three safeties happened within a few minutes of kickoff, and apparently this hasn't happened in one week since 1999. Last year, only 13 safeties occured all regular season.

• The Jets won! - Somehow, the seemingly worst team in football won a game with Geno Smith looking competent and Rex Ryan coaching 'em up at the very end. Let's not worry about the dumb-ass play by the Bucs at the end of the game...this was a totally unpredictable result.

• FARVA! - I'm pretty sure this is Farva of Super Troopers fame on this Windows 8 Tablet ad. See for yourself, and let me know if I am seeing things.

• Jaguars being so terrible - Chad Henne played. 'Nuff said.

Hit me on twitter @it_is_elliott or in the comments section.

Three 2013 NFL Fantasy Draft Observations

In a world of fantasy gurus and Top 10 lists, I’m looking to bring something to the fantasy discussion beyond simply quoting predictions and point averages. In the past week, I've completed five fantasy drafts ranging from cash-based live drafts to an experimental auction/FAAB format and have seen some trends that I find interesting.

1.       People freaking out over running backs

I haven’t seen a single draft list that didn't start with at least five or six RBs, and a few have had only one or two non-RBs listed in the top 15. I personally drafted a RB with each one of my initial picks (including paying $41 for Stevan Ridley in auction format) because some serious values at WR and TE were coming in the second and third rounds. You almost can’t draft any other position because of the available talent in the later rounds at FLEX/QB/WHATEVER and the dearth of talent at RB beyond the first 15 picks.

However, people seemed to keep leaving sure-fire studs on the board in lieu of drafting the next best RB. In my humble opinion, this was a total freak-out move. I’m sorry, but you can’t tell me that the historically volatile Mike Shanahan backfield forerunner (PUN INTENDED) Alfred Morris is going to be a better contributor ON AVERAGE than an elite WR available at the same position. Same thing goes with most second-tier RB1s.

 In one league, I was able to bracket picks at the end/beginning of a draft like this:

First Pick (#1 overall) – Adrian Peterson (Who’s more deserving than AD? Doug Martin? Beast Mode? Arian Foster? Get real.)

Second Pick (#16 overall) – A.J. Green, WR of awesome talent.

Third Pick (#17 overall) – Jimmy Graham, #1 TE by leaps and bounds and any other cliché distance .

A.J. Green is an absolute beast, and Jimmy Graham THIS YEAR at #17? Keep reading, please.

2.        Here’s why that was an absolute steal: TE is the position with the biggest drop-off from elite talent to mediocre talent.

I’ll just say it again, so those who bargain-shopped their TE slot can feel even worse about their draft:

TE is the position with the biggest drop-off from elite talent to mediocre talent.

Don’t believe me? I planned to go into this further in another article, so I’m just going to be quick here. I would say with confidence that Jimmy Graham is a much larger upgrade than the next available TE, and after that, the difference is even more severe. Here’s the skinny:

Jimmy Graham’s projected points in 2013 (according to Yahoo!):               179

Rob Gronkowski’s projected points in 2013:                                              158

The next best (T. Gonzalez, J. Witten, V. Davis):                                         140, 134, 119

Gronk is slated to score about the same amount of points per game as Graham, but probably won’t start in a full role and would be an obvious roster hole for at least the first week. After that, we’re looking at three players that will likely score at a much lower rate. Those players are getting you approximately 70% or less of the weekly production that one of the two elites would give you.

For comparison, here’s the top five RBs and their respective projections:

Peterson                                                                                                     266

Foster                                                                                                         254        

Spiller, Martin, Charles                                                                                239, 237, 229

Obviously, Peterson and Foster are safe picks (barring injury) and the next three are pretty close to each other in terms of projected points. The drop-off after the top five is pretty negligible, however. You have to go all the way down to the #15 RB (Frank Gore at this point in history) to get to a point of 70% production.

This doesn’t mean that Jimmy Graham in the first round of a 10-team league was a steal, either. Running backs that project up to 90% of the production of the OVERALL BEST PLAYER AVAILABLE are still draft-able late in the first or early in the second rounds. Taking Graham this early would take you out of the top running backs AND at least one #1 WR, and there’s no guarantee he wouldn’t have been available in the second or third round. In hindsight, I would have taken him third round every single time.

3.       Auctions are 156 times better than snake drafts.

I have started an auction league every year since reading a Bill Simmons mailbag entry about auction superiority. Quite simply, it kicks ass. Instead of having to watch the same troupe of first round picks, each fantasy manager gets to nominate a player and then bid an imaginary (or real) amount of money depending on a ton of criteria. The bidding wars and strategy involved with such wide-open auctioning are constant; the second-guessing and well-wishing after the draft are even worse than before. I’m not here to explain the rules, but I can tell you first hand that everyone goes crazy for an auction once they try it. It’s even more addictive than telling your normal friends about meaningless fantasy stats! I recommend doing this with your boring-ass work league as soon as possible.

I noticed a bunch of other things, but some of those are either covered by ESPN or other professional writers. I’m available for discussion about 14/6 of 24/7 in a week at @it_is_elliott on Twitter or in real life somewhere in Chapel Hill, NC. Any angry rants or questions are welcome in the comments section.