News:

Week 2 might be most concisely described as “winners be winning and losers be losing”. I guess commish is the one exception in that I was able to limp across the finish line and escape winlessness. I certainly can’t take any credit for it but I’ll take the win none the less. Record wise, it’s early and these weird distributions will sort themselves out over time.

In the NFL, apologies to Jets fans and Rodgers owners. A lot of real and fake football plans (not to mention hopes) were dashed with that injury. Nick Chubb was another notable casualty and from what I’ve been told by people in the know, if you haven’t seen the injury, don’t. Apparently it is “Joe Theissmann level” or possibly worse. I took this person’s advice and have not seen it.

Random Thought of the Week:

Not really a random thought but I feel like it’s time for a brief rundown of the options available to a league for managing un-rostered players and a reminder of why we use the option we do.

When we first started the league 18 years ago, we had no waivers. If Nick Chubb gruesomely injured his knee, you could run to your computer and grab his backup. It was a foot race and the winner got the player. Even though this sort of free-for-all probably benefitted me, I suggested it was unfair to people who have a life outside of fantasy football. We switched to the system we have now.

Under “rolling waivers”, un-rostered players change from free agents to waivers when their games start and they stay there until some time Wednesday morning. During that waiver period you can make a claim for a player and you will be granted that player (or not) based on your waiver priority. When you make a successful claim, you go to the end of the line (priority wise) and everyone moves up a spot. On Wednesday morning, players not involved in waiver processing become free agents again and the whole weekly cycle repeats. The advantage of this system is that it’s simple and God forbid if you were out enjoying the sunshine on Sunday and didn’t hear about Nick Chubb until Sunday night or Monday, you still have time to decide if you want to make a claim and have a shot to get the player in question.

The third system available is a variation on ours and it’s called Free Agent Acquisition Budget (or “FAAB” for short). Rather than a rolling list of waiver priority, managers are given a budget of “fake dollars” at the beginning of the year and can make blind bids on any player, any week. If you are given $200 (the amount is unimportant) and really want Josh Reynolds, you can bid $199 for him (or whatever number you think will outbid everyone else). You will probably be awarded Josh Reynolds but then you’ll have $199 removed from your budget and have $1 left for the remainder of the season.

Many fantasy managers feel this is the best system because it adds another layer of strategy (managing your budget) but it gives an additional layer of control and flexibility. In any given week I can bid on every high priority target and in theory, I could win them all. I could also bid $1 on a player I don’t think anyone else will bid on instead of setting my alarm for 3:30AM and hoping they become free agents again.

What people like about FAAB is if a consensus “season-changing” player becomes available, everyone has a shot at them, depending on their available budget and bid. If you believe Josh Reynolds is the next Randy Moss, you can “go all in” with your chips and have as good a chance at him as anyone else.

In any event, I socialized the FAAB system when it was first made available on Yahoo but reception was luke warm to say the least. Still, that was years ago so if enough people want to try it next year, I’m down.

The last thing I’ll say is with respect to Neil’s argument in our chat that “no one stops anyone from picking up free agents” in the NFL. That is true. The trouble with that logic however, is free agents in the NFL are players who aren’t on an NFL team (eg. Kareem Hunt until yesterday). The vast majority of fantasy relevant players are on NFL teams, they just aren’t on fantasy rosters. In fantasy, part of the week all those players are “free agents” and part of the week they aren’t. Either way, comparing fantasy to the NFL (in this case) is apples and oranges.

Shark Move of the Week:

After my long diatribe on waivers and FAAB, I will keep this short. The shark award goes to Chloe (Scott) who managed to win almost in spite of his sit-start decisions. He had 131 points in his line-up and 173 points on his bench. I’m not exactly sure if that’s good or bad but I can tell you I’m glad we’re not playing in a best ball league…

Guppy Move of the Week:

I’m not really sure where to go with the guppy award this week. We all seem to be chasing points so far this year (benching the bad who then become the good and starting the good who instantly become the bad). If you’re 2-0, I guess you’re better at this than others. If you’re 0-2, you might need a support group for this sort of thing.

Smacktalk Award of the Week:

As a fan of tequila in general, I should have known what Tampico fibre was but I actually didn’t and now I do. Fantasy football is fun because you learn new things! I just wish I was actually learning something about fantasy football because that would be really helpful right about now. Anyway, thanks to the piper Neil knows a lot about Tampico fibre (and maybe drug cartels if he did some of his own research) but it doesn’t appear he has learned how to use his empty roster spot. One step at a time I guess…

Welcome to Fantasy Football Hell Award of the Week:

It’s never a good sign when you are struggling to give this award because there is an abundance of deserving winners. I can start with Jay who had to deal with Akers being a healthy scratch out of nowhere. I can only assume that guy is a complete headcase (Cam not Jay). The piper had a total of seven RBs on his roster that scored a total of 19 points – that ain’t good. As not good as those things are, I think this week’s winner has to be Brian, who lost his Chubb. Suffice to say that problem won’t last more than four hours and he will not have to consult his physician…