Cheap League

Earlier today (August 24th) I had the draft for my cheapest league. It is a 12 team, $20 buy-in, 0.5 point PPR, snake draft, 1QB, 2RB, 2WR, 1TE, 1Flex, 1K, 1DST, 6BN. This league is a "keeper league" in the sense that each manager keeps only one player from the year before at one draft round better than the previous season. Two years ago, I drafted Demarco Murray on a whim in the 11th round. With Felix Jones getting hurt that season, I kept him last year in the 10th round and this year in the 9th. This might seem like an epic bargain, but the reality is that each team in this league has one player of similar value at a ridiculous round. (This is often the case with taking a stab at rookie players.) My team:

QB: Cam Newton

RB: David Wilson

RB: Demarco Murray

WR: Calvin Johnson

WR: Andre Johnson

TE: Jared Cook

Flex: Eric Decker

K: Matt Prater

DST: St. Louis

BN: Josh Freeman

BN: Chris Ivory

BN: Andre Brown

BN: Mike Williams

BN: Justin Blackmon

BN: Zach Sudfeld

What I love about this draft:

-My receiving corps is unbelievable. Calvin has the potential to go 10/140/2 each week. Granted, he won't do that all season, but you have to love the best receiver in a pass-heavy system. 

-I scored  Cam Newton in the 5th round. I'm a firm believer that - this year especially - one should not reach on a quarterback. The disparity between the best QB and the 12th-best QB isn't nearly as great as the best at other positions and the last starter at other said positions. Nonetheless, I watched as round-by-round all of the "big name" quarterbacks went off the board but Cam stayed put. He was actually my #1 QB on my board in PPR format. If he rushes a ton this year, he could be an absolute steal.

-Justin Blackmon. Sure, he's suspended for a few games. But when he comes back? If Henne replaces Gabbert, defenses will have to plan around MJD (on a contract year) and Cecil Shorts coming off of a breakout 2012 campaign. This could open up the field for Blackmon and he could be an elite receiver.

-Sudfeld. See my prior post.

Dislikes:

-My running back corps. Demarco is sure to get a lot of receptions, but will he stay healthy all year? Who knows. David Wilson has so much potential (he had a heck of a game tonight) but what happens when the Giants get to the goal line? How many goal line TDs will be sniped by Andre Brown? Sure I also drafted Brown (mostly as insurance) but I'm not going to do a committee in my backfield. Ivory is a nice piece because he is a starter and will get plenty of touches, but it's the Jets offense and he is unproven as a the sole guy. I like that he gives me flexibility in the event that Demarco gets hurt and/or the Giants go committee, but still, no one wants Ivory to have to start week-in and week-out.

-Andre Johnson. He's getting old. Can he still be productive? He had a great season last year in terms of receptions and yardage, but he rarely found  the end zone. Can he turn that around? Who knows. I'm fortunate to have a ton of depth at WR, so if AJ gets hurt I can integrate Decker/Williams/Blackmon more consistently. Still, I took him high in the draft. At that spot, you want your players to turn out.

Looking at the starting lineups of other managers in this league, I really like how my team turned out. If I avoid the injury bug, this could be a solid unit that will be a force to be reckoned with in the playoffs. 

Empire League

Well, it's that time of year again.

FANTASY FOOTBALL.

Last night (Friday, August 23rd) I had my first draft of the year. It was for my "Empire League." This league is a $100 buy-in. There are 12 teams, standard scoring, auction draft, 1QB 2RB 2WR 1Flex 1TE 1K 1DST 6BN.

Unlike other leagues, at the end of the season, only half the pot is paid out. 1st: $350 2nd: $150 3rd: $100. The other half of the buy-in goes to the "empire pot." In order to win the "empire pot" a manager must win in back-to-back seasons. Hence, the minimum the "empire pot" can be is $1,200 assuming that the same manager wins the championship in both year 1 and year 2. (For example, if no one wins back-to-back until year 9 and year 10, the "empire pot" is worth $6,000!)

Part of the strategy of this league is drafting a winning roster. The other part is drafting young players that are skilled and can lead your team in the future.

My team shook out as follows: (the age of the player is included in parentheses)

QB: Matt Schaub (32)
RB: CJ Spiller (26)
RB: Eddie Lacy (22)
WR: Larry Fitzgerald (29)
WR: Randall Cobb (22)
TE: Jimmy Graham (26)
F: Torrey Smith (24)
K: Dan Bailey (who cares)
DST: New England (irrelevant)
BN: Josh Freeman (25)
BN: Chris Ivory (25)
BN: Jonathan Franklin (23)
BN: Kenny Britt (24)
BN: Rueben Randle (22)
BN: Zach Sudfeld (24)

Will this team win this year? Probably not. Do I have a young core to contend consistently for the next 3 to 5 years? Absolutely.

Notes about the draft:
Originally, I wanted to target Trent Richardson as my franchise player. He is just 22, an elite running back, and presumably has many years ahead of him as the starter in Cleveland. CJ Spiller was nominated about 6th overall, and I had him going for about $57 on my board. As the bidding slowed down, I kept bidding on him because he was being undervalued. Suddenly the bidding stopped altogether and I got him for $49. It was at that point that I had to readjust my drafting strategy (and budget) entirely. I suddenly shifted from being able to afford a crappy tight end to having enough money to draft the best tight end possible.

I had no interest in drafting Larry Fitzgerald, but he was another instance in which the bidding suddenly stopped and I was stuck with a player going for strong value. Am I high on Fitz? No. Do I think he will do better with Palmer as QB? Yes. Was he worth the $23 I paid for him? No doubt about it.

What I love about this draft:
-I love that I have great bench depth. Ivory is a viable bye-week filler, and if Lacy (or Franklin) don't pan out, at least I have a majority-of-the-touches running back to fill in. Britt was an absolute steal at $4, and he could easily compete with Torrey to be my starter at flex. If Britt is finally healthy and lives up to his potential, I could have a very dynamic receiving corps.
-Zach Sudfeld. I'm so high on this guy. If Gronk is injured for the foreseeable future, Sudfeld will get all of the reps at TE and could put up huge numbers. Even if Gronk is healthy, Sudfeld has been so impressive in pre-season that there are rumors that the Patriots may be going to two-tight end sets to include him in the passing game. Sudfeld could absolutely be a key player for my team.

Dislikes:
-Rueben Randle. Will he emerge as a viable threat? Who knows. I'm basically banking on Nicks being hurt as some point in the season.
-The Schaub/Freeman carousel. I knew going in that quarterbacks would be way over valued. (Rodgers went for $69(!!!!) and Brees, Brady, and Manning all for $40+. Just incredible.) For this reason, I chose to wait it out, get good core players later, and take a lower-level QB. Both Schaub and Freeman are viable starters, but they won't put up game-changing numbers.

I don't view this as a championship-contending team in 2013. But could it win back-to-back seasons sometime within the 2014 - 2017 time frame? Barring injuries, I think it is plausible. Here's to hoping.

I didn't know I was looking,

but I found the best cat videos on the interwebs. Really good production value on these bitches.

I can die happy

For those of you who aren't gigantic nerds,

last week was E3, the Electronic Entertainment Expo. It's a huge event held in L.A. every summer, and historically, it's the event where Sony, Microsoft and Nintendo reveal their new consoles and all of the publishers talk about their upcoming games. For me, it was a week of watching streams on twitch.tv and video game trailers on Youtube.

If you've been on Reddit in the last week, you probably saw lots of posts praising Sony and the Playstation 4, and lots hating on Microsoft and the Xbox One (which I think is a pretty shitty name for what it's worth). This is because Microsoft is forcing you to connect to the internet at least once every 24 hours as a DRM feature. This has a lot of people pissed/baffled because even if you only play offline single-player games, you still have to have an internet connection to play them. And while Microsoft was saying, "fuck you, if you don't like it, buy an Xbox 360," Sony was saying all the right things (and taking some shots at Microsoft) and brought in a console that has better hardware and costs $100 less than the Xbone. None of this really matters to me because PC Master Race.

What I was most excited for was the game releases. There were a few that I'm pretty excited for. The game that probably caught the most buzz was Titanfall. This is a game that is being developed by the former heads of Infinity Ward, the developer that made COD4: Modern Warfare, the best game in the COD series, and the game that 90% of first person shooters have been trying to copy for the last 6 years (including all the ensuing COD games). It's a game that involves playing as the pilot of a mech as well as outside the mech with all kinds of crazy jetpack parkour. Basically, it looks like a crazy, fun, fast-paced game and the best part is that it's not a sequel. In other awesomeness, the game that gave me the hardest boner was merely teased in a 30 second trailer, but oh my god, this is basically what I've been wet dreaming about for a couple of years now. That's right, Star Wars: Battlefront is being rebooted and is under development by DICE. I can't even tell you how many times I played through the original Battlefront game on Playstation 2, and to this day I still play Battlefront 2 with a couple of my buddies (usually paired with a stiff rum and coke). But what makes me most excited is who is making the game. DICE is the maker of Battlefield and for a decade now, they have been a leader in gaming technology. Their Frostbite 3 game engine is probably the best game engine in terms of physics, environment destruction, particle effects and lighting. Battlefield 3, a 2 year old game, is still considered to be among the games with the best graphics. Basically, I'm super excited to see what they can do with an amazing game concept with amazing graphics. I wouldn't be surprised if Battlefront is game of the year when it comes out a couple of years from now. While there were some other cool games in the adventure and rpg genres, I'm not going to go on and on about them. And I'm not going to go into EA Sports' 'incredible' new dribbling technology. Finally, there was one game that had me soaking up every tidbit of information I could find, and that was Battlefield 4. Those of you who know me know that I play a craptonne of Battlefield 3, so of course I'm going to be interested in this particular sequel. What DICE did at E3 was pretty awesome. They set up 66 gaming PCs (!) at their "booth" and let convention goers play a round of the multiplayer while they streamed the whole thing and had commentators use the new spectator mode feature to show off the gameplay. They also had a few competitive players and big-name Youtubers on to do interviews. Basically, it looks like they're bringing in a lot of the features that BF3 players have been asking for. They're bringing back the Commander position from previous titles like BF2 and BF: 2142. The commander is something that one player on the server can volunteer to be. As commander, they get an overview of the map and try to organize the team into an effective combat unit by giving squads different attack and defend orders. The commander also has the ability to do things like call in artillery strikes and drop supplies for the people on the ground. In addition to bringing back the commander, they've upped the squad size from 4 to 5 players and made several other gameplay tweaks, such as increasing the destructibility of levels (seriously, you can bring down a skyscraper) that people have been asking for. While some people are bitching "hurr durr it's the same game, why isn't this DLC, this is just Battlefield 3.5," I'm just glad that they're making some good tweaks to an already great game, and I'll happily pay full price and get it day one. Considering how many hours I've put into BF3, I know it'll be money well spent.


TL:DR
E3 was last week. Here's what happened:

WHAT THIS BLOG REALLY NEEDS

I recently adopted a cat (well..."recent" in terms of "blog update recent") and have found great things to do with him. I mainly post videos on Facebook, but this one was just too gosh darn controversial to post.

Is it animal cruelty? Or the greatest use of a cat ever? I'll let you decide.

Presenting: Superman cat

The Silly Adventures of Mr. Mochi

It's been over a month since anyone has posted to the blog. I kind of feel like we need a really strong post to get this thing back on its feet again.

Yup.