News:

For some reason it feels like months ago I completed our draft lottery – perhaps owing to fact my summer vacation was a little later in the summer than usual. Regardless, we are back and underway for another year of football-related torment.

In NFL news, it’s much the same as any other year – injuries, hold-outs, suspensions and unsigned FAs hoping for vacancies. On the injury front, I continue to be a little perplexed by all the hamstring stuff that seems to come into camp or surfaces in camp and then lingers through the start of the season. It just seems to happen every year and I’m curious if someone with a sports medicine background could explain it.

The big injury stories now are the guys whose seasons are over almost before they began (thinking Dobbins and Rodgers). Rodgers may not have been the fantasy asset he once was but a lot of what was projected for the Jets’ offense was built on Rodgers being behind centre. At his age, this could be an injury that leads to him calling it a career. Regardless of what’s next for Rodgers, the value of those Jets receivers just dropped faster than Kadarius Toney can drop a football.

In Clan McDonald news, just a reminder that our annual meet-up for a Western Mustangs game is September 23rd. The game starts at 1:00PM so I’m recommending we meet up near the back of the Brescia-Huron parking lot somewhere between 11:30 and 12:00. We’ll have a couple of pops, conduct the trophy ceremony for last season and wander down to the stadium to see the purple machine do its thing. Hope to see you there!

Random Thought of the Week:

One of my favourite things during a fantasy season is the early performances of some players (good and bad), the shifting of depth charts it can cause and the way we all line up to place our bets on the waiver wire gold (or fool’s gold). There’s obviously some wisdom to keeping your powder dry if you have a high waiver priority but sometimes those potential league winners emerge right off the bat. It will be interesting to see what the Kyren Williams, Josh Kelleys and Roschon Johnsons end up being this season.

Shark Move of the Week:

The shark move of the week is often (but not always) a tough or slightly unconventional line-up decision that makes a big impact. Ideally the impact is a win in a tight contest but it doesn’t always have to be. For example, I got 42 points from the Cowboys DEF. That’s great but I was never considering benching them for someone else so it’s not what you’d call a shark move.

On that note, I don’t think we had a clear winner this week so I’m going to split the award between Ceilidh and Grid. Grid simply put up the kind of number that resembles mid-season form by the most competitive teams in any given fantasy season. His line-up was also essentially optimized, which means he left a mere 2 pts on his bench by starting PIT over KC.

Ceilidh I suspect had a difficult to call to make between Tua and Carr. Their projections were within a couple points of one another and one might be tempted to be a little gun shy of Tua against the Chargers but also of Carr on a new team. Tua proved to be the right choice and the difference between them helped secure victory.

Guppy Move of the Week:

I’m going to nominate myself here – not for autodrafting but for going into my pre-draft rankings and making some changes I actually thought would improve my autodrafted team. It didn’t work. I know Yahoo loves to give you two kickers and two DEF so I decided to put all but six kickers and DEFs on my “do not draft” list, thinking I’d get one of each and the other “decent” ones would get drafted by someone else. As it turns out, Yahoo just gave me two of each off my short list. Thanks Yahoo!

Smacktalk Award of the Week:

Thanks to Neil for getting us started this season and to Piper for chipping in. Grid’s score aside, Week 1 was not exactly our best work as a whole so hopefully the smack talk will increase along with the scores. I’m going to publicly pledge to be better this year in the smack department, especially since I should have some extra time on my hands after setting my line-up (aka “rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic”).

Welcome to Fantasy Football Hell Award of the Week:

I think it’s fair to say we’re all feeling a little heat from the brimstone right now. Looking at our draft results and our Week 1 results, I’m sure Neil would like to know what JT plans to do. I would certainly like to know what is going to happen with Kupp and Brian no doubt would like to see Kelce back on the field. Things don’t get a whole lot better with our second rounders like Adams, Allen or Garrett Wilson either. Suffice to say, you could fill a library with things we don’t know – like, what am I going to do with all these Tight Ends? I don’t know…