The Diamond Dozen Draft Report

Yes, another fantasy football draft report. I am in a total of five leagues but the two I will write reports on are the ones that I am in with my lovely co-writer Michael Stanton. This particular league is one that started last year with nine senior guys and Dathan Wong. I happened to win this league for reasons that relate to me being a god. My team name last year was the Diamond Dawgs and therefore I have christened the league, The Diamond Dozen. This season we lost two members from the previous season but gained four more bringing us up to a 12 team league, hence “Dozen”. The cast of clowns that are in the league are as follows.

Dickson Slayers-Jeff Helling
Team Takeoff-Jordan Coutts
Team Hatcher*-Michael Hatcher
Straight Cash Homie-Myself
Shoe In-Famous Skyline Baseball Player, Nate Litka
Bush’s Other Son-Caleb Clearman
The Wrong Dynasty-Dathan Wong
Lew Crew-Famous Skyline Basketball Player, JT Lew
He Hate Me- Michael Stanton
Akshaya-Dixon Liang
Casino Squad-Will Han
Yellow Fever-Andrew Yoon
* Indicates Best Team Name

I’ll give you a little history lesson on each of the members’ time in The Skyline League last season. I won the league riding Jamaal Charles, Ray Rice, Roddy White, and whichever QB was starting that week for the Detroit Lions. Truly a magical display of fantasy football ability and I have sold the rights of the story to Disney. Orlando Bloom is playing me in the movie. 

The resemblance is uncanny

The team I beat in the championship was Akshaya who was only competitive in that game due to a 5TD performance from Josh Freeman in which seemingly every pass he threw went to Akshaya’s Tight End Kellen Winslow Jr. Who is a soldier. The New England Patriots award for best regular season went to Team Takeoff, who had on his team Mike Vick, LeSean McCoy, Maurice Jones-Drew, Larry Fitzgerald, Brandon Lloyd, Mike Wallace, Dwayne Bowe and Reggie Wayne. Takeoff averaged around 200 points a game before losing to Akshaya in the semis. Takeoff’s borderline illegal roster was thanks in part to The Wrong Dynasty’s more than borderline stupid trade which sent Vick and others to Takeoff in exchange for Jahvid Best in company. Yikes. Shoe In, who was appropriately named, “getDaT4Peat” last season, was a Shoe In to get less than 4 wins after the draft was over last season. In rounds 3 and 4, 4Peat took Matt Schaub and Tom Brady, with the hopes of trading one of them. They both were on his roster at the end of the season. The Lew Crew had a less than spectacular season and tried to organize the dreaded drop and add trade loophole after our league’s trade deadline. This is the same guy who in fantasy basketball will trade anyone on his team for an Asian-born player. Bush’s Other Son had Arian Foster and Andre Johnson, but could not overcome the fact that Jay Cutler was his QB. A truly sad story. Dickson Slayers set his starting lineup a grand total of once last season and thus had Adrian Peterson on his bench basically the whole year. The other four players weren’t in the league last year, including Stanton, who for him this is his first PPR League. A social experiment to be sure. Now to this year’s craziness.

The draft began at 7PM Pacific Time, which according to newly established Pittsburgh Resident and owner of Akshaya, Dixon Liang, is 4PM Eastern Time. Go figure. But with myself at the fourth pick I wanted to get either Ray Rice or Jamaal Charles, not wanting to take Arian Foster and his hamstring issues. The first round went as follows: Vick, Peterson, Charles, Rice, Foster, McCoy, Chris Johnson, Mendenhall, Andre, McFadden, Rodgers and then Michael Turner. This came with the suggestion that I rename Turner to, “Michael Turner and the Six Passes he will Catch All Year”. If Maurice Jones-Drew can have seven names so can Turner. I was happy to get Rice and even happier to get Hakeem Nicks in the second round as I feel an elite WR and an elite RB is the right way to go in a PPR league.

At the time of the draft, pre Chris Johnson getting his money, The Wrong Dynasty’s selections of Johnson followed by 2011 Guaranteed Bust Award recipient Peyton Hillis met a chorus of laughs from many. Especially from Wong’s Skyline Finance Club co-president, Dixon Liang. Liang would find much of Wong’s draft comical. Some of his draft highlights were taking Ryan Matthews followed by Plaxico Burress, then taking Cam Newton and Terrell Owens (who is currently eating popcorn with one knee in Dallas somewhere). Wong routinely claimed he had things to do and thus taking over a minute for each of his picks was completely acceptable. Taking awful players is unexcusable, however.

Gonzaga’s finest, which is like saying “Tiger Wood’s Classiest Mistress”, Jeff Helling of the Dickson Slayers had an entertaining draft on several levels. While being on autopick for most of the draft, he took a kicker in the 9th round, which is more of a sin than going to Oregon. After getting Mike Vick #1 Overall, Helling did as best as he could to make his team awful. He will start DeAngelo Williams and LeGarrette Blount week 1 at RB. Should be fun. But Helling was unleashing a tirade of expletives at everyone who said anything throughout the draft. After telling the owner of Lew Crew to quote, “grow some balls”, Lew Crew responded with the single greatest comeback I have ever heard. Ever. It deserves it’s own paragraph.

Lew replied with, “suck my tooth bitch”. This blog is a family show but I still had to say it. I checked with Yahoo! and it came out as the #1 four-word series ever entered into a draft chat box.

Other draft highlights included repeated mentions of former NFL stars as sleepers in this year’s draft. Priest Holmes, Rudi Johnson, Marshaull Faulk, and Terrell Owens were all mentioned. The sad part being that Wrong Dynasty actually took Owens. Casino Squad’s back to back selections of Marshawn Lynch and Sidney Rice were more than questionable. Having multiple Seahawks on the same team is a recipe for disaster, just ask Pete Carroll. My selection of Matt Ryan in the 7th round followed by the string of expletives from Shoe In who had Ryan dialed up as a pick was certainly a good moment as well.

My team in this league is more than a handful. I like it a lot. I managed to get Ryan late and got Brandon Marshall and Ahmad Bradshaw to accent Rice and Nicks. Bradshaw is not even a guy I like but a guy that magically ends up on my team in every draft that I am in. I love having Jahvid Best as my flex guy. He will push 60 catches (PPR anyone?) in Detroit’s air it out offense and is only backed up by Maurice Morris in the Lions’ backfield so as long as he stays healthy he should receive plenty of touches.

I couldn’t leave you all without giving a quick ranking of the teams in this league. The rankings on the League of Ordinary Gentlemen Draft Report caused quite the ruckus and I expect nothing less for this league.
12. Casino Squad- Counting on Seahawks to perform is like counting on Seahawks to perform. Not good.
11. Dickson Slayers- If 2011 per-game Michael Vick is 2010 per-game Michael Vick, the Slayers will be competitive despite being awful everywhere else.
10. Yellow Fever-Michael Turner and Shonn Greene are his top two backs. Michael Stanton had more catches in flag football last year than those two will this season.
9. The Wrong Dynasty- For the sake of comedy if nothing else. Having Peyton Hillis and Marques Colston on the same team is too much to overcome.
8. Akshaya- Even this team’s namesake would be worried about this team. Antonio Gates and Ryan Grant are question marks that could turn into exclamation marks.
7. He Hate Me- That last line was straight cheese. But my co-writer has very iffy running backs and perhaps the worst tight end situation in da league.
6. Shoe In- Arian Foster’s health is a legitimate concern at this point and having Joe Flacco at QB is a problem within itself.
5. Bush’s Other Son-Has a really dumb team name.
4. Team Takeoff- The combo of Peterson and Brees is going to score a whole lot of points by themselves. Stevie Johnson getting close to his ’10 numbers is huge.
3. Team Hatcher- If healthy, the running back combo of Charles and Gore is good enough to go deep. Austin Collie’s per game averages last year put him in the top 5 at receiver and Hatch needs that to win big this year.
2. The Lew Crew-Pretty good WR’s with Reggie Wayne and Roddy White. Schaub should throw a ton this year if Foster doesn’t get back. RB’s very weak though.
1. Straight Cash Homie- There is a lot of parody in this league as there really isn’t a clear favorite. So why not put myself at #1? SCH is very deep and Ray Rice is ready to explode.

That’s it folks. Another draft in the books. A lot of fun to be had over the next 17 weeks.