GWJFFL 2008 - Week 1

Remember that the first game is Thursday night - especially if you've got any Redskins or Giants on your team.

Got drafter's regret? Got screwed by the auto-pick? Did something boneheaded like draft someone who isn't even on an active roster? A first round of waivers will process Wednesday night at 8pm EDT.

Schedule
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GWJFFL
(East Division Matchup)
01. Leaps Peeps
11. Baggas Titz

02. trowans BrownStains
05. Logan s Lollipop Mafia

(South Division Matchup)
03. Grumps Chumps
08. Blacksheeps PUP list

04. Old Mans Depends
06. This is KARMAs TEAM

(North Division Matchup)
07. Elliottxs Hammer
09. Minaseans

(West Division Matchup)
10. Legion and the p*ssycats
12. Stricniners

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GWJFFL2
(West Division Matchup)
01. The Spreading Pandemonium
06. Redhwk s ROFLcopters

(East Division Matchup)
02. Koolaid s Grape surprise
08. Jolly s Giants

03. My Grumps
07. phishposer

04. Standard Deviations
09. Nightmare's Heavies

(South Division Matchup)
05. 9th Ward Boyz
10. Pigpen

(North Division Matchup)
11. Lothar
12. kaostheory

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WCOFF Rules
Draft results: GWJFFL | GWJFFL2
Post-draft rosters: GWJFFL | GWJFFL2
League map: GWJFFL | GWJFFL2

What a frustrating draft. Between a furious infant, connection problems and EA's horrible draft software, I missed a few players I would have liked to pick up. It's also frustrating when *Legion* plays mind reader and takes my targets 1 pick ahead. I like my team, though, if they can stay off the IR.

I was shocked - shocked! - at how down people were on my pick of Reggie Bush at #22.

I would be down on it too in a non-PPR league. But I think some people haven't been number-crunching.

In our WCOFF scoring, Bush was the 11th highest scoring RB on the year last season. That's pretty decent for pick #22 (14th RB selected), but that doesn't even factor in the fact that he only played in 12 games.

In terms of points-per-game, Bush was 6th among RBs (and that includes Ronnie Brown's less-than-half-season at #2).

For a year in which he "disappointed", that's pretty good. A slow start last year kind of masked how good his fantasy numbers were later. His 17.65 points-per-game was less than 1 point below Adrian Peterson's 18.21 in 2007. (If you have a FleaFlicker account, you can browse last year's RB numbers here).

If you take receptions out, Bush plummets. The 73 points from receptions accounts for over a third of his total points. Those catches add up in a big way. In a non-PPR league, he was the 24th overall RB in 2007, and 19th in PPG. But this isn't a non-PPR league.

I think Legion should do a draft breakdown.

I'm going to do a breakdown of your forum presence.

Location: Fresno, California

Wrong!

X-Box Live

There's no hypen in Xbox!

Legion quote #30201

The asterisks aren't optional!

Looks like a losing season for Logan's forum tags...

*Legion* wrote:

I'm going to do a breakdown of your forum presence.

Location: Fresno, California

Wrong!

X-Box Live

There's no hypen in Xbox!

Legion quote #30201

The asterisks aren't optional!

Looks like a losing season for Logan's forum tags... :(

We are no longer related. I hate you. =(

Now fortified with useless, meaningless, preseason power rankings.

Luckily, EA will automatically calculate power rankings after week 1 so that's one less thing I'll have to keep up with. Woot!

That took way too long to finish. I vote to cut the roster to 15 next year and make the clock 60 seconds between picks.

Edit: Draft regrets... I have no idea how I ended up picking Brandon Jacobs in the third round. I wanted Colsten, who went a pick later (as he should have), but I was apparently in some sort of coma at the time, and when I woke up I had a Giants RB. Not horrible, but I do wish I'd done something different. Looking back at my sheet, I should have picked up Jamal Lewis or Laurence Maroney instead. Reggie Bush was also available, Legion

Number 8 my shiny metal ass. I'll be proving you wrong after this week.

And when did the schedule change? I was supposed to play Nightmare's Heavies just a day or so ago... No matter, Koolaid will go down just as easily.

I'd love to see a Legion breakdown as well, but I wouldn't wish that on anyone who wasn't incredibly enthusiastic about doing it.

Jolly Bill wrote:

And when did the schedule change? I was supposed to play Nightmare's Heavies just a day or so ago... No matter, Koolaid will go down just as easily.

The schedule had to be regenerated last night as it still had dropped teams (e.g. Gaald in GWJFFL and MaverickDago in GWJFFL2) in the mix.

trowan wrote:

That took way too long to finish. I vote to cut the roster to 15 next year and make the clock 60 seconds between picks.

Be sure to note that in the feedback thread at the end of the season.

What? Legion isn't breaking down our drafts? I'm upset.

Don't you think Shockey being there will cut down on some of the Bush receptions Legion? I think 22 was a good spot for him though, if he had come back around to me I would have taken him.

At the number 7 spot I took Brady in the first round and Owens in the second, not sure how it will work out this year, I have never drafted a QB or WR in the first two rounds before. I did manage to grab a couple of decent backs I think in McGahee and Brandon Jacobs but my RB bench is shaky.

That took way too long to finish. I vote to cut the roster to 15 next year and make the clock 60 seconds between picks.

I thought it went really quick actually. I had no problem with the time.

LeapingGnome wrote:

Don't you think Shockey being there will cut down on some of the Bush receptions Legion?

Eric Johnson had 48 catches last year, and Billy Miller had 27. There's plenty of TE catches for Shockey to inherit. While the numbers may go up, there's not a whole lot of room for them to soar. Shockey just taking all of the TE catches that were there last year would put him at a very high figure.

I'm also happy that Bush stayed in New Orleans for offseason workouts, instead of flying back to distraction-filled California.

I'm actually not in love with the idea of picking Reggie Bush. I wanted to take a top-flight WR instead. But when some people ahead of me did that and left Bush on the table, it left me no choice.

Wheres the legion breakdown of FFL2?
Come on sir.

I have drafter's amnesia. I don't know what the hell I was doing.

Drafting at the bottom is rough. I mean, if you're first, you at least can get the best possible player in the entire league to start with and then build around it.

Though you have two picks when it does come to your turn, psychologically, you're just already on a downward slope, even though legitimately, you don't have to be that down on yourself.

Larry Johnson I'm not completely sold on, but looking at the board, and going RB-RB for my #1 and #2, I felt that he was the best option to attach with Jones-Drew, who's got great upside and has Fred Taylor to keep him fresh.

My receiving corps I think could be better, but it also has a lot of potential - Bernard Berrian did excellent in Chicago when you consider their QB issues, and in Minnesota he could do some damage.

The problem was - so can Sidney Rice. I'm obviously putting myself in Bye week trouble by having them both on the team, but I have a feeling that one of them is going to shake out as being a major receiver who can put a lot of points on the board, so having Berrian and Rice to me is worth the risk.

McAllister I'm hoping will get back to being the grounder he was and put up some respectful numbers and balance out the risk of the Berrian/Rice combo. Santonio Holmes and Calvin Johnson will do their jobs, and probably not much more, so I at least don't have to worry about them, but my expectations are tempered.

Bironas is an excellent kicker and Vernon Davis is a great TE, and their backups for the bye weeks are passable, so I'm happy how I ended up in those positions.

trowan wrote:

That took way too long to finish. I vote to cut the roster to 15 next year and make the clock 60 seconds between picks.

The clock change I'm for, but cutting the roster - especially with the scoring standard and lineup setup we're using - I'm definitely against.

Logan wrote:

The clock change I'm for, but cutting the roster - especially with the scoring standard and lineup setup we're using - I'm definitely against.

In my opinion, a smaller roster would bring more strategy to the draft & blind auction process.

trowan wrote:
Logan wrote:

The clock change I'm for, but cutting the roster - especially with the scoring standard and lineup setup we're using - I'm definitely against.

In my opinion, a smaller roster would bring more strategy to the draft & blind auction process.

Whereas the fuller rosters can encourage trades. Why trade when you have sixty players who would've gotten drafted otherwise on the waiver wires?

Nah, the WCOFF rules have been worked on for a while and they do indeed work. It's not broken.

The clock change will make the draft go faster, which is only thing that I'd like to see different. However, next draft I would like to see us use a site that has a similar drafting experience as last year - where you can set your auto-draft to target certain positions in a certain round, instead of a single catch-all list.

*Legion* wrote:

By the way, if it's not obvious, I'm pissed at Blacksheep taking Eddie Royal before me.

It isn't because you ain't done a draft breakdown, yet. Dance, monkey!

trowan wrote:

In my opinion, a smaller roster would bring more strategy to the draft & blind auction process.

Not at all, it does the opposite.

Blacksheep had the foresight to draft Eddie Royal. Probably half of the people in our league don't know who Eddie Royal is, but he's entrenched himself as the #2 receiver in Denver. Because of the roster sizes, he was able to make that move. He will probably be rewarded for it.

Deep rosters create scarcity. When we played with smaller rosters, there was always half-decent WRs and TEs to pick up at any time. Nobody was rewarded for "seeing a guy coming" because nobody had room to put the extra guy on their roster. There's no room for "jars on the shelf" with a 15 man roster.

The smaller the rosters, the more talent left on the waiver wire that nobody else has room for, and the less a good player gets rewarded for doing their due diligence. Deeper rosters mean you need to be smart enough and diligent enough to build your team depth, instead of just hitting the waiver wire when you need someone and always having someone there.

By the way, if it's not obvious, I'm pissed at Blacksheep taking Eddie Royal before me. He was so far down EA's draft list that I figured very few people would even find his name.

I don't see how we could do a 60 second limit when some of the picks last night took 20+ seconds to go through. Also I think in the later rounds it did change to 60 seconds.

LeapingGnome wrote:

I don't see how we could do a 60 second limit when some of the picks last night took 20+ seconds to go through. Also I think in the later rounds it did change to 60 seconds.

Well, I agree with you on that, but that assumes we'd be using the same site, which I know I would be against. Hell, I'd even be for pitching in to pay for a service that does it right, you know?

But if we use EASports again, I don't see a 60-second clock full time, either. People's turns didn't even pop up for me until the clock was already at :55.

I don't see how we could do a 60 second limit when some of the picks last night took 20+ seconds to go through. Also I think in the later rounds it did change to 60 seconds.

Agreed. Unless EA improves their draft software next year (assuming Flea Flicker ignores our Blind Bidding pleas) I would actually rather *increase* the time to compensate for it.

Damn you people like to Female Doggo. There were some issues with the draft software but there was nothing major. In all honesty I think so far this is the best league experience i've had with GWJFFL the site is stable, the interface is usable, and the rules customization is top notch. Does anyone remember a couple years ago when we had to change sites after the season had begun because I believe it was Fox Sports site was so sh*tty?

As for the draft timer. I don't really think it's going to help all that much. I mean most of the picks were going through way before the timer was up anyway.

The one constant in GWJFFL seems to be there will always be a contingent of people that like to Female Doggo about where we decided to host the league.

Who is the Female Doggoy one again?

Seriously. No one here's saying it's a travesty. But every year we look at it and see what we can look for to make it better. Some people like different things, but calling it "Female Doggoing" sounds, well, Female Doggoy.

Disappearing queues is a problem that should be addressed. The lag on the clock is an issue that should be looked at, to see if we can't find a better one.

Grump picked the best site he could find with the features he wanted to make sure we got. Doesn't mean we don't try to see what to shop for next time around. Relax. It was all friendly discussion until just now.

Stric9 wrote:

There were some issues with the draft software but there was nothing major. In all honesty I think so far this is the best league experience i've had with GWJFFL the site is stable, the interface is usable, and the rules customization is top notch.

It wasn't bad, but the draft I held last weekend on FleaFlicker was a lot better, with the lone exception of not being able to change the draft timer during the draft.

I'm definitely looking forward to FleaFlicker getting those last few missing features by next year. It's clean and snappy, neither of which I would necessarily use to describe the EA site. But EA's site isn't too bad.

Seriously. No one here's saying it's a travesty. But every year we look at it and see what we can look for to make it better. Some people like different things, but calling it "Female Doggoing" sounds, well, Female Doggoy.

Sorry i'm still a little bitter about being pre-season rank 12 despite winning the title last year. You know what hurts the most is the... the lack of respect. You know? That's what hurts the most. Except for the... Except for the other thing. That hurts the most. But the lack of respect hurts the second most.

Jolly Bill wrote:

And when did the schedule change? I was supposed to play Nightmare's Heavies just a day or so ago... No matter, Koolaid will go down just as easily.

One free shot, but only because you're from Allentown

*Legion* wrote:

By the way, if it's not obvious, I'm pissed at Blacksheep taking Eddie Royal before me. He was so far down EA's draft list that I figured very few people would even find his name.

I used the search option

Actually, I like the larger rosters too -- in our other league with 16 players on roster, I hate not being able to stockpile strong candidates that I can stake claims on. In this one, I feel I went hog wild with Royal, Meachem, Slaton and even O'Sullivan and Rudi Johnson. I still remember having Anquan Bolden on my roster when he was a rookie and had him starting that first game where he introduced himself to the league in a big way. Robert Meachem I feel was a good late round flyer because Brees does toss the ball around a lot with Payton directing the fireworks show and I threw my lot in with Slaton for the Texans because if things continue like they are for that Texans backfield, he may find himself rapidly ascending the depth chart.

Truthfully, I'm a bit shallow at the RB position. Barber will be fine, especially knowing that even if he splits carries, his production from last year will be a good indicator of his 'basement' potential, which I like just fine. Having two rookies in McFadden and Forte were not what I was really looking for. The last rookie RB I had was a guy named LT, who performed very well through the first half of the season, but really looked tired for the second part of it. I'd much prefer rookie RBs on my team to get started rolling by about game 8 so they can be fresh and relatively 'unscouted' by other teams when the playoffs hit.