Cutting-edge NLL and boxla coverage
The last weekend of regular season ball in the National Lacrosse League also means it’s the last weekend of post-season fantasy ball, which also means that AmyTBF will be going up against Corporal in the NLL Insider League’s finale… which also means, that the Insiders involved in the league this year were flat out abused by the trio of hardcore fans that participated in ‘09. READ MORE »
Although there’s been the odd glitch in the system (including good ol’ Tuts losing a week after having his points gutted after a trade made the following Tuesday), there is one thing we’re certain about…
AmyTBF is kickin’ our collective asses in NLL Insider’s Fantasy League and leading the standings with a dominating 9-1 record. After the jump, check out how our season of the NLL Insiders versus The Hardcores has played out. READ MORE »
This year NLL Insider’s fantasy coverage is gonna shift gears a bit.
Instead of going head-to-head simply between the guys and gals on staff, this year we invited a trio of fans off the boards to test their GM skills against the self proclaimed best in the bizz.
Off staff Lauren Ward, Ted Jenner (2008 NLL Insider Champ), Bob Chavez, Ty Pilson and myself will be pitted against none other than the mighty Corporal, all-knowing WINGS4EVER and lovely AmyTBF.
So after the jump, check out who drafted who and check back weekly as we track this year’s NLL Insider Fantasy League. READ MORE »
I am not here by choice. The words to follow do not come easily. Losing ain’t fun, especially when you know the fella who beat you for your National Lacrosse League fantasy title is a punk and is lovin’ every minute of it.
So, here goes. Congrats to you, Ted Jenner. You won. I lost. Fair and square. Then again, maybe it wasn’t. From what I understand, I advanced to our title game with the aid of a scoring glitch. In any case, I figured my team … “Steal Your Faceoff” … would be up to task if for no other reason it being a tiny tribute to one of my favorite bands of all time, the Grateful Dead. I figured the vibes honoring the late Jerry Garcia might be enough for me. Alas, it wasn’t, and Jenner and his “Bob McMahon’s Afro” team scored a 25.1-12.9 win in the final game of our league.
Welcome to the season’s final installment of the Fantasy Fix column.
Seems like the year just flew by, didn’t it? Now all we have to look forward to is the Ted Jenner victory party (see picture). And just so it’s clear, that little guy there is Paul Tutka. After all, it’s only reasonable to believe that they’re going to party together.
Anyway, to end our little ride, I wanted to switch it up from what I’ve been doing the past 16 weeks. Rather than me telling you which guy that I think will tear it up out on the carpet this week, which one won’t, and me ultimately being wrong on both, I wanted to talk about one of the biggest intangibles in sports, and truly one of the hardest things to quantify – Motivation.
Who’s gonna’ win the Champion’s Cup?
More importantly, who’s gonna’ take home the hardware in IL’s inaugural NLL fantasy league? I’ll have my picks for both a little later in the column, but for now, let’s discuss how I got to these conclusions.
I’ve been telling you all (fantasy) season that you’ve got to stock your roster with players on teams that are doing well. Yes, there are Dan Dawson’s (POR) and Blaine Manning’s (TOR) out there, but pretty much everyone else on the league scoring leader list is either on a team contending for the playoffs, or has already sealed up a spot.
It’s been an up-and-down season for the Albuquerque Isotopes, to say the least.
In fact, it was literally from penthouse to outhouse this past week, a shift that would not have The Jefferson’s looking quite so happy.
After defeating the top team in the league – Paul Tutka and his Seinfeldian Eight (The Van Buren Boys) in Week 8 – I dropped Week 9 to the worst team in the league, the winless wonder himself, Brian Shanahan, and now have almost no shot at continuing on into the playoffs.
Man, don’t I wish that were the truth.
Although I haven’t been able to string together even back-to-back wins since, well, all season, neither have most of the Insiders. Paul Tutka and Ted Jenner remain the outliers in our league, as the only guys able to put together multiple wins in a row.
And as a side note, I did try to find a photo of Will Ferrell from Old School, but couldn’t find a good one. Plus, like Ferrell’s career, I didn’t want the column to turn out like every previous one I’ve written, and I figured this lucky gent looked enough like him for people not to even notice.
The good news, however, is that I really don’t see a way that I can lose this week because I’m playing Brian Shanahan (0-8) with only two weeks remaining.
The bad news, somehow I got jobbed this last week with inaccurate scoring and dropped the week by only 4 points! Here’s to hoping that it gets figured out and I am able to put another ‘W’ in my back pocket. Unfortunately, if that doesn’t happen, I can’t make the playoffs, assuming I win a pair of weeks here to close out the season.
Stay tuned!
So I’ve been gearing up for several weeks to break the news to the rest of you fantasy geeks that fellow NLL fantasy Insider’s League player Paul Tutka has traded me San Jose star Jeff Zywicki for almost nothing.
Unfortunately (for me), I haven’t been able to talk him into accepting my unplayable benchwarmers for a Top-5 fantasy starter for the sake of having something to write about. Go figure!
The good thing however is that with the flurry of last second player swaps, the league amiably took care of me once again, giving me plenty of fodder for yet another week.
While most of these trades included numerous picks in the 2008 and 2009 drafts, for our purposes, actual players currently in the league are all we are worried about.
Let’s examine how these deals will impact your fantasy lineups.
Jim Mora would be proud…OK, maybe not.
Already into Week 8 of NLL Fantasy, it’s time to start thinking about how the role of the actual playoffs will begin to impact your roster of reverie.
Initially, in my first column, I took a little bit of heat from some Wingzone bloggers for recommending that fantasy participants draft primarily based on which teams they thought would do well.
Sure, I won’t contest that there are your occasional Dan Dawson (Portland) or Mat Giles (Chicago) out there, but on the whole, your leading scorers (i.e. top fantasy point-getters) are players on teams that will make the playoffs (see: Buffalo’s John Tavares, Athan Iannucci of Philadelphia, etc.).
This means that if you’re in position to make the playoffs in your league – the top two teams from each conference and the next two best records as wild cards – it’s time to really focus on getting guys that are playoff-bound.
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