So what, who cares: Another fantasy update

Your author is hard-pressed to think of something that can cause an immediate loss of interest quite like hearing about someone's fantasy team. Having friends and co-workers recite their rosters with no real purpose other than to gloat about conquering leagues you're not involved in seems quite banal and pointless, no?

That said, the author knows full well that you the dear reader probably also couldn't give two shits about whatever fantasy team he's gone and created after so many years of taking that road less traveled where non-participation seemed cooler. Now the author has multiple fantasy teams, and while he tries mightily not to bring those into the other posts here on BMC that you might actually read, every once in a while, if for no other purpose than to help him remember who he had on such teams in a given year, he likes to keep a recorded entry of how he's done.

This is one of those times. Your non-interest in the remainder of this post is understood.

NOTE: Blogger's being a dick about some of the spaces between paragraphs, and I'm not in the mood to fuck with it too much. Apologies for spots where this might look kinda like crap.

After five weeks of football and less than a third of the way through the season, I've already matched my entire win total from last season in each of my two fantasy leagues. So barring a dozen straight weeks of colossal letdowns (which isn't entirely impossible), I can call this year—if nothing else—an improvement.

I had briefly risen in the "Tumblr league" but am now back in the No. 4 spot I occupied the last time I did one of these fantasy updates. As you can see (all graphics are still enlargeable by clicking on them), half the league sits at 3-2, so it's still a tight race at this point. I've already beaten two of those three teams ahead of me in the standings, but haven't yet played the guy in that top spot. This coming weekend, I get to play that guy in ninth place at the moment—who made perhaps the most baffling fantasy roster move I've seen yet by picking up Detroit quarterback Shaun Hill and dropping Vince Young in a week when the Tennessee QB has been heavily hyped as a guy to start. I don't understand the logic behind that one at all, but maybe he's on to something that I (and basically every fantasy pundit out there) is not aware of.

When it comes to the moves I've made over the past two weeks, Tennessee tight end Bo Scaife was already on my team for a brief tenure before being dropped—and now added once again this week. But I'm hoping that the biggest additions I've made in the recent weeks prove to be the pickups of Brandon Tate, Michael Bush, and—now with Jermichael Finley done for the year?—James Jones. I'm having a harder time finding guys to drop when the time comes on Tuesday morning to start lining up my hopeful adds for the week, so perhaps my roster is finally starting to become a little more locked in for the year. Of course, I have no backup QB, kicker, or defense at the moment, so that should create a little turmoil when the bye weeks come up in the near future.

In Week Four (left), I got a victory thanks in large part to Jay Cutler being massacred by the Giants defense. Indeed, the rough night for the Bears QB effectively pulled nearly 10 points off the board for my opponent. I was also helped by a good week from the Packers defense (20 points) and LaDainian Tomlinson (27.5 points).

Of course, the following week (right) my three starting wide receivers collectively amassed 10 total points, and the result was another loss for me. That one stung a bit too since my opponent started the injured Darren McFadden (and earned nothing), but got an astonishing 28 points out of an Arizona Cardinals defense that I'm quite certain won't put up that kind of number again for the remainder of the season.

Back over in the Yahoo league, I'm 3-2 over there as well and also in fourth place. The difference over in that league is that we still have both an undefeated team and a winless one too. My upcoming game is against that sixth place team that's also 3-2, and according to the projected totals for the week, I'm supposed to lose. Of course, those projections are always suspect, so we'll see how that works out.

As I've mentioned before, with two more teams in the Yahoo league than the Tumblr one, the players are a little harder to add and drop with the comfort I feel in the 10-team league. Still, I can only really kick myself for some of the moves I've made so far in this Yahoo league.

As you can see, I'm still constantly toying with different wide receivers—to the point of making four moves for that W/R/T spot over the past two days alone. Whereas I'm feeling pretty comfortable with my Tumblr league roster and could see much more minimal activity in the coming weeks, I just don't know that I'll ever be satisfied with my Yahoo team's makeup.

Another huge difference between my rosters for the two leagues is that my Tumblr team's roster does not have any player I can't drop, whereas my Yahoo team has four such players that are on the "Can't Cut List." One of those happens to be Larry Fitzgerald, the Arizona wide receiver who has surely been missing Kurt Warner more than anybody this season, and another is Dallas tight end Jason Witten, who had put up pretty weak numbers until last week—when I didn't play him, of course.

Anyway, back in Week Four (left), the bro-in-law once again squeaked by me—this time by a mere three points, whereas last year it had been just five. So I guess that means that next year, it will be real frustration when I lose by a single point. Seattle tight end John Carlson didn't do shit for me, but I'm really pinning that loss on Oakland wide receiver Louis Murphy for getting me absolutely nothing.

I bounced back in Week Five (right) with another win to put me back above .500—and most of the credit for that win goes to my opponent for apparently failing to adjust his roster and thus starting a pair of running backs who both had the week off. Still, my team was the second-highest scoring of the week, so I feel confident that I could've hung with anybody.

But thanks to getting such a weak performance from my opponent, I was able to earn a special honor for the second time this season:

In other fantasy sports, the baseball season came to an end and thanks to heavy non-participation, I indeed secured another trophy for my Yahoo profile by finishing first:

As you can see, I had the most moves in the league. Only a couple guys were on my team from the start of the season to the finish, but here—for the sake of posterity—is the entire list of guys who were on my roster at one point or another:

Yeah, thanks for nothing, John Buck.

So no more baseball, but guess what?!?!

Fantasy basketball draft this Saturday. Get excited. Or don't. Considering it's another Tumblr league with a couple chicks I'll be looking forward to exchanging trash talk with, I know I certainly will be.