Reading, Writing, and Reflecting

Earlier, I wrote about one of my fantasy football teams that was selected using Yahoo!’s auto-draft feature as I wasn’t available at the time of the draft.   After 6 weeks, my team is 2-4 with the second fewest points scored out of 12 teams.   The top 8 teams make the playoffs and at this point I would miss the playoffs.  So, the time is now to transform the team, and try to salvage the season.  This week, I made two major trades which I hope turns the tide and creates a winning 2nd half of the season.

Here again is the roster drafted by Yahoo! for me.

From this draft, I made a couple of immediate moves during the week preceding the season and after week 1.

• # 1:  Amazingly, Leon Washington was on the waiver wire at the beginning of the season, so I quickly dropped Shonn Green and added Washington as my top RB backup.
• # 2:  Using the TE depth of Cooley and Carlson, I traded Cooley for the Colts WR Anthony Gonzalez.  With Marvin Harrison retired, I felt that Gonzalez was primed for a big year with Peyton Manning and having depth of Cooley and Carlson, that was a position of strength that allowed me to move Cooley.
• # 3: Luckily for me, after a disastrous first week of the season, one owner dropped QB Matt Schaub of the Houston Texans.  I used my waiver ranking to claim Schaub and add depth to QB with both Romo and Schaub, two quality QBs I felt.   It has turned out that Schaub has had an excellent bounce back from week 1 while Romo has struggled, so Schaub has been my primary starting quarterback.

Unfortunately, my team has been hit with the injury bug in key positions during the first few weeks hampering the squad’s performance.

• Gonzalez went down in the first quarter of the first game of the season, out for up to 8 weeks
• Ladanian Tomlinson sprained an ankle in the first game of the season, missing several games.
• Marion Barber has also missed games at the running back position.  Leon Washington has had to start most games for me alternating between replacing Barber and Tomlinson depending on who was injured.
• Antonio Bryant, Anquan Boldin, and Kevin Walter all have missed games at the receiver position.

Basically, my starting line-up for the first six weeks has been the following

This line-up hasn’t performed well as I mentioned, currently out of the playoff hunt.    Looking at the line-up, my weakest points and biggest risks have been:

1. Wide Receivers-  Boldin has been injured and when playing, not performing to a #1 FF receiver level.  At the # 2 and # 3 WR positions, Gonzalez has not played and Bryant, Walter, and Evans have all played at backup levels.
2. Defense-  Tennessee’s defense has been terrible as witnessed by their 0-6 record.
3. Running Back-  With injuries to Tomlinson and Barber and only average performances by Leon Washington, my RBs have been only average and will be continually risky due to the potential for injury for Barber and Tomlinson.

Given that, I made the following trades and moves this week:

1. I traded Tony Romo and Lee Evans to acquire WR Dwayne Bowe of the Chiefs and QB Mark Sanchez of the Jets.  I basically wanted to get a # 1 WR and Bowe was a receiver I could get.  The only real depth I have on the team was QB and I looked around the league to see where I could trade Romo.  This particular team was starting Sanchez so I moved Romo to get Bowe.  Hopefully, with a healthy Boldin, and a returning Gonzalez, and adding Bowe, my receivers will be much better going forward.
2. I’ve been concerned with the health risk of Marion Barber along with the assertion from Cowboys owner Jerry Jones that Tashard Choice will be getting more carries.   While I did manage to pick up Choice off of waivers, I still didn’t feel that great about Barber.  I’ve traded Barber this week to acquire Saints running back Pierre Thomas.  I view this move more to be of even running backs, and the Saints have their own backfield issues with Mike Bell getting some goal line carries.  However, I felt with the high flying Saints offense, Thomas had more upside than Barber and the fact that I continue to maintain Choice in case Barber goes down as well as Washington, I’ve now got better running back depth and upside.
3. A couple of weeks ago I dropped the Tennessee defense and picked up the Cincinnati defense, which has scored some touchdowns and its secondary has had its share of interceptions.

After these moves, here’s the line-up I’ll be going with for the rest of the season.

I’m hoping with the addition of Bowe and Thomas, the return of health and hopefully vengeful running by Tomlinson and consistent health and performance by Boldin, plus the continued excellence of Schaub, this will be the line-up that pushes me to the playoffs.