NFFL Week 4 recap
Easily our most active week. Here we go…
Arbo 99, Concannon 97Ooof. I set my own tone for a crap week by bungling up the WR3 position and end up with the cadaver of Andre Johnson going for his second straight ‘Duke Johnson’ by being ineffective in the flex spot. And if that was not quite good enough, all of those snide little remarks about aforementioned Duke come back to bite HARD as the Browns RB goes for 17 points, essentially doubling his season total.
A good showing from the coach- outside of Stafford, who forced a sweaty Monday night with his eight point dud, many players began to contribute at expected levels. If Jackson and Robinson can bring a little more consistency at WR- Arbo should be able to continue the positive results of the past couple of weeks.
Malinn 85, Bye Week 46Wiseman undergoes a radical overhaul, trading away several players to turn his LUCK around. No go here as the three of his four WRs combine for ZERO ZERO ZERO points.
That about sums it up but worth pointing out that Malinn did well to limp to a W here with Weeden at one of his QB slots. Will the fake DeMarco Murray from last year please stand up?
TMac 87, Nemo 80
Another tough one for the commish as lack of clarity and the resulting confusion in our rules leads to an opportunity to essentially choose a winner in this matchup. More on this later.
TMac will need more from Foster than he got in this one- three points and many reports that he still looked a bit banged up. But with Gronk out, a W is a W and a returning Cutler continues to give him options.
Aside from this week’s controversy, the injury situation with Lynch needs to be resolved very quickly as the bye weeks will serve to expose a lack of general depth. The injury to Reed and the ongoing struggles from Calvin Johnson are additional causes for alarm here.
Sean 88, #1 Thompson 81
Thompson responds to being top of the league by falling rather tamely to his first loss. This team will go as the ATL boys go, apparently, and with Julio Jones going to the injury list this week, it may be going downhill soon here at Thompson HQ. Marquess Wilson quietly posted a good line and may be a sneaky second half option emerging here.
Well, how about that Beth Isreal sponsored outfit this week? Ginn picking up two receiving TDs seems a bit fluke-like but I guess anything goes when half of your salary cap is out. The Picks-Patrick trade paid off nicely this week as his 15 points proved invaluable and the recent contract extension for Curran’s Dion Lewis is promising news going forward.
If no official power rankings are released this week- Sean is the defacto #1 thanks to his status as the highest placed team coming off of a win in the prior week.
Tighe 105, Curran 84
The preseason top two square off and yet the result is almost an afterthought after the excitement of week four. With the Patriots on bye, Curran was essentially trying to hold down the fort but Tighe’s week leading total proved too much. And by that, I mean first ballot HOF Devonta Freeman.
Jeremy Hill was finally up for it and his three touchdowns are encouraging. However, his role is clearly reduced and it may be time to reassess the early engraving of Curran’s name on the trophy. Subpar games from Brown and Evans highlight that it is too early to panic, however, and like mentioned always difficult for Curran during the Patriots bye weeks.
Lee 93, DFlam 90
To no one’s surprise Lee wriggles his way to another W. Despite being generally poor so far, the ability to grind out W’s with his injury list will be invaluable and look for the performances to begin matching the results shortly as players return.
A tough luck season continues for Flam- just one TD scored among seven position players underscores the point. Since last November, Beckham has failed to reach at least 9 points in two games- both this year. Reaching for stats? Perhaps, but it has been a slow for his highly rated WR trio and perhaps that stat best summarizes it.
Trade and waiver analysis
*Malinn trades QB Andrew Luck, WR Sammy Watkins, a fire extinguisher, and a 2016 3rd round pick to Wiseman for QB Ben Roethlisberger, RB LeSean McCoy, WR Randall Cobb, and a 2016 4th round pick
If last week’s deal was a ‘big one’- well, I’m not sure what this one is. Wiseman hedges his bets a little bit here by scooping up Watkins for potential future keeper use but I am not sure that is enough to offset the 2015 value acquired in the deal for Malinn. Given that, I think the odds favor Malinn to be on the preferred half of this swap in a season’s time.
In all likelihood, the trade will end up hinging on McCoy’s performance. Malinn can skate by on his RB corps for now but a McCoy resurgence might propel him forward for a belted top-four chase. I also like Cobb as the season moves on with the likelihood that the other options in GB take the pressure off as they develop.
The Luck/Big Ben thing might be a wash shortly with the way the injuries are making an impact- I am not sure who I prefer for the rest of the year.
Watkins is a guy who I would bet on having a top-20 WR season in the next three but I just cannot be sure I want to be the guy sitting around hoping he stays healthy to cash in. This was a steep price to pay for him so Wiseman is surely thinking he has found his star man to build around as this season continues to roll downhill.
Comments on the active player rule
I wanted to make a couple of comments about the inactive player rule and why I chose to rule the way I did this week.
First, the most relevant point that I took into consideration was- how is the rule written today? As we have applied it since we originally agreed on the rule, the only call available by our rulebook was to leave Ivory out and not consider any replacements unless they kicked off after Lynch was formally ruled out.
Once this was decided on, there were only two avenues that would allow me to reconsider. First is the ‘unanimous vote’ rule we have in place. If everyone in the league agreed to change the rule- we can make the change. I did not see this support on the email chain and therefore did not seriously consider this option.
The second was whether to make a ruling based on it being favorable to the league. In this case, having TMac’s support was important and I gave it serious thought before making a decision. There were two major reasons why I decided to leave things as they were based on how we wrote up the rule originally.
First, the rule we have in place now is a measure that reversed a change forced upon us by Yahoo when we moved our league onto the internet in the mid-2000s. This change, of course, was the roster locking for ‘default’ settings of starting players who were inactive or on their bye week. Making this change for this week would take us away from the spirit behind the original rule change.
The second factor I considered relates to the ‘idea of the league' posts I have sent out sporadically over the past couple of years. One of the more entertaining, if not most entertaining, element of being involved in such a strong league is the process of watching your own players play games and keeping track of the scoreboard as the game is being played. We have never allowed negative scoring because this would remove that element from the game to some extent- points on the board could come off the board. Allowing a player to have points added in a lump sum at the start of a late kickoff due to a player in the latter game being ruled ‘inactive’ would have a similar effect- instead of watching a player accumulate those points, they would simply be tacked onto the scoreboard. I felt that this kind of ‘scoring’ would detract from our enjoyment of the game- instead of rooting for our players to gain yards and score touchdowns, we could instead descend to a place where we were rooting for our players to be ruled inactive.
I did not want to begin in that direction once any season had started and therefore chose to use Sproles as a stand-in due to his having kicked off after the declaration of Lynch being inactive. This does not necessarily close off the discussion of this rule for the future- however, I do think we must keep it in place for this season and give it a full review alongside a vote in the offseason if we do want to make the adjustment.
As always, any misinterpretation of the rulebook is entirely my fault and a reflection of the poor job I have done in cataloguing everything we have agreed to play by over these many years. I am sorry for the problems caused as a result of that this week and I hope we can keep our patience in this upcoming period of time while I make an effort to compile everything into a single document.
Week 5 preview
One o’clock games
Chessman v #1 Sean / Arbo v Tighe / Nemo v Curran / TMac v Thompson
Decent slate of 1pm games this week, actually…
Asian Bowl- Concannon v Lee
Both teams sit at 3-1 here and a win would create some welcome separation atop the standings. Lee looks to welcome Ellington back into the mix but it is likely the Charles-Bell duo which will dictate things. There is some serious MNF potential here with Allen/Bell lined up and there is some serious karma clashing- the Commish having ridiculed Lee constantly in this space, Lee having longingly dreamed of starting Gurley in his backfield since he set foot on campus in Athens, GA.
Game of the week- Malinn v DFlam
Nothing specific here- just a good matchup brewing with Flam projected at 101 points to Malinn’s 99. These teams have been linked since Malinn’s high-jinks at the auction saw Murrany and Winston swap jerseys and trade talks continue to the extent that Flam will tolerate Malinn’s texting. Flam is a little dependent on Arizona while Malinn trots out Mariotta for his first action- both teams are 1-3 and need this one badly to keep pace with the top four.
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