Football is Here!

I love baseball.  I really do.  I check scores and boxscores daily and my family gets tired of me dragging them to minor league games in the summer.  I follow the blogs and collect baseball cards in the summer.  But my passion is football.  Now that the NFL season officially starts tonight, I need to break my back-to-school induced blog hibernation for some football card celebration.

This year I got tired of playing in public fantasy leagues that fizzled out before season's end, so I got a group of my colleagues together at school, hoping that we could keep each other on track.  We had our draft last week, and I have to say it was the strangest draft I've ever been a part of.  First of all, I drafted second, which hate.  I had to wait 21 picks between my own picks and I just watched players that I was targeting fly off the board.  Second, there was little to no "conventional" draft strategy, so the mock drafts I did to test out my rankings and ensure the players I wanted would be available turned out to be useless.  For example, there was a run on quarterbacks in the 4th round, so much so that after I picked second in the 3rd round, by the time my next turn rolled around, I was the only team without a quarterback.  Eleven quarterbacks gone before pick #45.  I'm not very pleased with my roster, but we'll see how the season shakes out.  Here is my 2017 fantasy football team, the Myopic Chihuahuas.

QB: Andrew Luck

Yes, I figured he would be out for Week 1.  But I didn't have much choice at QB by the time I selected one.  I tried to pick up a Andy Dalton as a stopgap backup, but he went to the team right in front of me.  So I ended up with Tyrod Taylor for the time being.  What hadn't been released at the time of our draft last week was that Luck could miss multiple games.  At any rate, I drafted him to be my starter and all I can do now is hope that he returns soon and stays healthy.

RB: Le'Veon Bell and Doug Martin

Drafting #2, I was fortunate enough to land a player like Bell.  I'm anticipating a big year for him.  Martin is suspended for the first three games, but I drafted him to be my RB2 in the 9th round, so I think I got some good value for him.  While the rest of my league was stocking up on QBs in the early rounds, I was filling out my roster with other players, and I picked up Kareem Hunt to fill in while Martin is out.  I don't own a Hunt card that I can show yet, though.

WR: DeAndre Hopkins, T.Y. Hilton, Emmanuel Sanders

Receiver turned out to be the strength of my roster.  All the time I was waiting to pick, quarterback and running backs were disappearing from the board.  Some of the second tier running backs are guys that I don't trust, so I passed on them when I had almost back-to-back picks in Rounds 2 and 3. I opted for Hopkins and Hilton in those slots instead.  I picked up Sanders in Round 5 (after Hunt in the 4th), and then added Brandon Marshall later.  I took a flyer on rookie Corey Davis in the late rounds, and I think he could step up and have a big year.  I'm happy with my receiving corps.

TE: Tyler Eifert

I'm excited for Eifert.  I'll think he'll have a big year and be one of those tight ends who produces week in and week out.  I usually get frustrated with the position, but this year I think I have a player who I can just plug in and not worry about.

Defense: Cincinnati

Going back to the Bengals here, but not for long.  I selected Cincinnati because I thought they had the best Week 1 matchup of all available defenses.  I usually stream my defenses week-to-week, so who knows who will fill this slot by season's end.

K: Steven Hauschka

My kicker is Steven Hauschka, who is usually pretty reliable.  Except he's no longer a Seahawk; he calls Buffalo home now.  I don't stream my kickers as much because I usually don't find enough point difference between available kickers for me spend my time trying to prognosticate who will end up with one more extra point than the other guy.  I just hope Hauschka works out for me.

Bench:
Tyrod Taylor, QB, Bills
Kareem Hunt, RB, Chiefs
James White, RB, Patriots
Danny Amendola, WR, Patriots
Corey Davis, WR, Titans
Brandon Marshall, WR, Giants

I'm not super happy with my team, but I should be okay.  Right now, I'm projected to make the playoffs, but just barely. That unexpected early run on quarterbacks may really hurt me unless I can pull off a trade.  At least I'm not my boss, who joined our league and drafted a team projected to finish 1-13.  Ouch.  Let the fun begin!