Gotham City Blues

This year, my coworkers and I formed a Fantasy Football League. The idea was created by my coworker Buddy Derrick, who ran with it, got coworkers involved, and it's been really fun to follow, on who's playing who, sprinkle in some fun trash talk & falling back into football.

Early on, my team, the Gotham City Rogues seemed to be a top 4 team, we were doing really well, and things were looking up. I had one of the top quarterbacks (Phillip Rivers), defenses (Minnesota), wideouts (Julio Jones), kickers (Adam Vinatieri), and at the time, one of the better running back pickups off the free agent wire in Isaiah Crowell of the Browns.

The record may have indicated 2-3, but the Big Ballers (still in the top 2) was just a solid team, with two epic performances by Cam Newton (30.82) & Matt Forte's surprise Thursday Night performance in Week 2 for 28.9 points; You take those two players out of the equation, we are looking at 48.9 points from that team, put in more average points by those two & you got yourself a close game. Lost a close game in Week 3, than followed by a league-record routing of 144-54 to 50.72 over Sara's Super Team, and things were looking really good for me.

I was disappointed in my close loss to Downtown Brown, because I felt I was finally going to get over the .500 hump, but I still had a lot of things to look forward in the future weeks to come. My offense for 4 of the first 5 weeks, had scored at least 95.32 points...

.... but the points just dropped off.

Those problems have been due to two major areas for me, my Wide Receivers & Running Backs groups have been so-so at best, with my only standout being Julio Jones.

One of my early blunders came in releasing Jay Ajayi. I took pride in drafting Ajayi as a sleeper draft pick earlier than most had on their radars... but early on, Ajayi fell to 3rd on the Dolphins' depth chart, while the Miami Dolphins' combined running game was practically non-existent. Ajayi's combined totals for his first 4 games was 31 carries for 117 yards (3.8 yards per carry).

Jay Ajayi's wild 7 weeks of action.

I happened to release Ajayi (Sept 14th) prior to his so-so first 4 games, he didn't get any NFL action until September 18th, so I released him in exchange for Washington's Matt Jones. My friend Buddy of the Big Ballers, who seem to have the most ridiculous luck, picked up Jay Ajayi on October 14th, prior to his huge October 16th explosion for 204 yards, he would become the 4th running back in NFL history to rush for back-to-back 200-yard rushing performances on October 23rd.

Jay Ajayi emerged as a Fantasy Football beast & into the wrong hands.

I would say my best free agent pickups would have had to be the Saints' Michael Thomas & my backup QB option in Tyrod Taylor of Buffalo.

Standings entering today (November 13th).

My team decided to take some good chances, in upgrading Eric Ebron (Detroit) at TE over the Pats' Martellus Bennett, swapping out similar kickers.. Adam Vinatieri had a bye week, and luckily Matt Bryant happened to be open. I'm getting to the point in the season. I picked up two up-and-coming wide receivers in Rishard Matthews (Tennessee) and Arizona's J.J. Nelson (who was just named Arizona's #2 WR this week). Plus a pickup of Davante Adams from Green Bay.

I'm going to have to get more clever from week to week, to get back into the top 4, I believe that it is possible to get back into the playoff hunt, but I don't expect to more than that.. so the goal is to get there. It will be a tough climb though.