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| Photo courtesy of the Channel 4 News Team. |
Why?
No, it's not because he has to leave that sweet convertible and the sunny Florida skies behind so he can return to his real life in Washington, D.C.
It's because Poor Ryan lost his fantasy gem of a first-round pick.
Now, mock along with me: Aw, poor baby. Did his quarterback hurt his widdle headie, diving for the silly, willy end zone?
OK, enough baby talk. I do that enough when giving Craig fantasy advice.
Let’s talk about Week 5.
There were some interesting dynamics in the League this week.
We had Fear and Loathing edge Boyer by less than 2 points. We had the Toasters score just 71.7 points, and yet lose by only 7.1 points.
The Jammers and the Slackers didn’t play each other, but had they met up this week, the Jammers would have won by less than 5 points. Had World of Noise played the Thieves, he would have won by 0.2 points. And had the News Team played T-Money, he would have won by less than 2 points.
The last pair of teams is the Generals and the Attack, who were separated by about 10 points.
The scoring was all over the place this week, but it’s weird that everyone had a partner in crime with their score.
Not only are the scores bunched together in groups, but the JFL itself is bunched together. For the third straight season, we haven’t had a 5-0 or 0-5 team. We at least had one of the two, sometimes both, in the first four years of the JFL.
Right now, we have a bunch of teams within a game of each other at 3-2 or 2-3.
Among those teams are the Noise and Jammers, who both picked up big wins to get one step closer to .500.
Houserville, who made fun of the two franchises for being 1-3 prior to Week 5, moved to 4-1, but he did it with 79 points on the scoreboard, so there’s not much to brag about there.
His division rival, Fear and Loathing, also improved to 4-1 with a less-than-100-point score. Fear, Ville and Noise combine for 10 wins, which is three more than the next best division.
Meanwhile, the Slackers and Thieves fell to 3-2 despite big point totals.
Here are the Week 5 recaps.
Channel 4 News Team 150.2, Sunday Slackers 131.6
This fell a bit short of my prediction, but I wasn’t far off.
Combining for more than 280 points — 50 short of my prediction — the News Team survived a high-scoring affair, getting an extra 23 points on Monday night from Arian Foster to complete a comeback over the Slackers.
The News Team got double-digits from seven roster slots, including 34.7 from Aaron Rodgers, 22.8 from Brandon Marshal and 22 from the Rams defense.
Rodgers got most of his points (34.7) early before his offensive line decided at halftime that 30 minutes of work was enough for the day.
The Packers somehow imploded in the second half and let Andrew Luck — I’ll get to him later — pull off a great comeback on an emotional day in Indy.
For News Team, the points seemed to be enough, but then Brees went nuts, throwing for 370 yards and four TDs giving the Slackers a lead.
It could have been worse if Antonio Gates wasn’t among three skill positions to score single-digits for the Slackers.
With 2.5 points, Gates has 16.9 points on the season, ranked 31st among tight ends — hardly worth the fourth-round pick.
Why everyone continues to go after this constantly injured and often under-performing tight end escapes me. There are far better options out there, and the Slackers finally get that, putting Heath Miller into the lineup for Week 7.
Another player that will be Cedric Benson, who’s out for what looks like the season with a Lisfranc injury.
He had just 4.5 points when he went down and that really put the Slackers in a hole, because Ray Rice and Torrey Smith combined for just 16.4 points in that awful 9-6 Ravens-Chiefs game.
On the other side in that game, the News Team scraped out 16.7 points from Jamaal Charles alone, who is now the No. 2-ranked RB in the JFL. (And Schiavo’s League chuckled when I dropped 60 bones — that’s dollars, Dawson — on him in the auction draft.)
News Team is the one laughing now, boasting the No. 1 (Foster) and No. 2 backs in the game.
… Where have I read that before?
Oh, yeah. The NFC West Division Preview posted on Sept. 1.
“In my eyes, he's got … the best 1-2 punch at RB in the JFL …” it reads.
How about that?
At 3-2, News Team is second in the JFL in scoring with 631.1 points and looking ready to tackle another Super Bowl title.
Good thing he just bought a house, because he should have a man cave somewhere in there to display his trophy, well out of the line of sight of Crystal Nikish and out of the reach of little Ronnie.
World of Noise 118.7, Jawz Attack 81
This has to be embarrassing.
All the jokes dished out by Jawz, particularly about Jason Avant, and what happens?
He scores a Jason Avant against the Noise.
Eighty-one points was all the Attack got and the Noise cruised to a win, thanks to Marques Colston’s three-TD night and 32.9-point performance.
That’s two straight big weeks for Colston, who all of a sudden looks worth the keeper selection. Now, he’s ranked sixth in the JFL, but 56 points in two weeks will do that. We have to remember, he had 17 points in the first three weeks.
But at least with 17 points, he was better than Noise’s sixth-round pick, Robert Meachem, who in Weeks 2 and 4 caught no passes.
Finally, the Noise benched him and he makes three catches for 67 yards and two TDs.
All Craig and I could do was laugh as we talked on the phone after Meachem’s second TD.
Honestly, this guy would have been on the bench for all 12 teams in the JFL.
It’s just hilarious that I joked in the preview that Meachem would finally explode because he was on the bench, and it happened.
I’ll brag about calling Jamaal Charles and Arian Foster the Dream Team back in September, but I can’t brag about this one. This was just comical luck.
No, not Luck. I said I’d get to him later.
As for Jawz, luck wasn’t on his side. Big Ben was worth 11.4 points, while Maurice Jones-Drew scored 6.1 points, the highest total of five single-digit performances.
When that statement is applied to your fantasy team, you’re likely losing.
This is quite the step back for the Attack who thought he was on the right track, but now it appears that World of Noise is the one on track with the No. 1 QB in the game.
Real Houserville 79, Dottsville Toasters 71.7
Speaking of No. 1 QBs in the game, or should we say, the “Has Beens.”
That’s right, this year’s boy wonder, RG3 scored 5.2 points and then suffered a concussion. And it’s not like he left in the first quarter with 5.2 points. It happened in the third, so it wasn’t looking good for the Toasters.
But despite the poor point total — I’d say horrible, but on the Toasters’ scale, where he labels Rex Grossman’s negative-7 points as horrible, this was just poor — he still had a chance.
That’s because Joe Flacco wasn’t great either, scoring just 9.4 points.
Houserville’s boy wonder from last season, Cam Newton had just 10.2 points on the bench, so there wasn’t really a better option for him.
With two RBs on the bye, Houserville went to C.J. Spiller and Jackie Battle, who combined for 4.5 points, and he won this matchup because two of his WRs came through.
Percy Harvin remains the No. 1 WR in the game with 25.2 points, his fifth straight double-digit week.
Demaryius Thomas collected his fourth double-digit week, scoring 19.6 points with 188 yards receiving. He’s gone above the 100-yard plateau three times. He’d have some more points had he not fumbled for a third straight week.
The 44.8 points from the two helped secure the ugly win.
And to believe I was hyping this matchup in Week 4. They must hate me now.
T-Money 148.6, Graybill’s Generals 91.1
OK, Money Man. I admit it. I blew it.
But can you blame me? Kevin Kolb got you just 13.2 points.
I predicted that Eli Manning and Victor Cruz would have a huge day — and they did, scoring a combined 53.4 points — but that was pretty much if for the Generals.
He added 14.8 points from LeSean McCoy to complete the Trifecta of Untouchables on his trade block.
It’s just too bad no one else has stepped up to be trade worthy for him.
He needs someone or a few players to just come out of nowhere and impress the JFL.
Kind of like what happened for the Money Man.
Ahmad Bradshaw had his annual explosion, scoring 29.7 points, so we should expect him to disappear back into his hole like the space worm into the asteroid in Empire Strikes Back. (Shut up, Meg.)
James Jones had a big game with a pair of TDs, too, scoring 17.4 points, while Reggie Wayne went crazy with 30.8 points.
His effort on the game-winning touchdown was just amazing, and heart-warming considering the circumstances surrounding the game.
It was a big win, and with Tony Romo coming back next week, T-Money can hope that he never stares at another sorry Kolb performance in his starting lineup ever again.
Fear and Loathing 96.2, Team Boyer 94.5
This matchup was sad in that both didn’t reach 100 points, so lets focus on the reason why Fear scored two more points than Boyer — Andrew Luck.
It was the right week to make the switch. Vick scored 17 points fewer than Luck, and Fear would certainly be sitting in second place if he hadn’t made the move to the rookie.
With the rook, he’s in first place after an astounding 37.4-point performance against the Packers. He threw for 362 yards ands cored three total TDs to lead the Colts in a great comeback.
This is what Fear hoped for when he made the leap on draft day to look to the future, and he’s surely in a better situation than the Eagles.
He moved on to the future just in time to move to 4-1.
Meanwhile, the Eagles stuck with the past and wound up missing out of 4-1 with a disappointing loss to the Steelers.
Until Vick can figure out his turnover problems and mental mistakes, it may be Luck’s show for Fear and Loathing the rest of the way.
He’s certainly earned the consideration.
He’s now scored 30 or more points in back-to-back games, and 25 or more in three straight. He’s got seven TD passes, and two in each of the last three games.
With the Jets, Browns and Titans coming up, I expect Luck to be in the lineup for the foreseeable future.
Ah, it appears that Fear’s future is now.
Jimmy Jammers 136.1, Chinese Organ Thieves
Peyton Manning did all he could to lead the Thieves to victory, but Jay Cutler, Ryan Mathews, Julio Jones and Tony Gonzalez were all too much.
The foursome combined for more than 85 points, and the rest of the players on the Jammers squad filled in to give him 136 points.
It didn’t look great early in the 4 o’clock games as Jay Cutler had a slow first half, but he and the Bears exploded in the second half.
The Jammers’ also got a big performance from one of his two RBs who were drafted under the assumption that they’d have impacts after Week 3 or 4.
Ryan Mathews, who missed the start of the season because of his collar bone injury, scored 21.1 points Sunday night and looked really good.
The other back in that duo drafted was Rashard Mendenhall, who didn’t get the start for the Jammers, but he did get his first start of the 2012 season with the Steelers, scoring 16.5 points.
With Darren Sproles and Alfred Morris added into the mix, the Jammers has four top RB choices and will likely start three a week from here on out.
It’s kind of an odd sight from a team that has constantly gone with WRs over RBs.
Not this year.
His opponent, the Thieves, went with three WRs, but it was his two RBs who had the best days. Trent Richardson started the matchup off strong scoring 17 of his 19.8 fantasy points early in the game against the Giants, but the Browns got away from running the ball — even when the game was still close — and that hurt the Thieves. Had the Browns stuck with Richardson, he could have easily scored 30 or more points.
Even still, Richardson has been one of the best backs in the JFL, and if it weren’t for a 4.6-point performance in Week 1, he’d be right there with Charles and Foster. He’s had TDs in four straight weeks and hit double-digits in all four.
It’s early, but we may be watching the Thieves’ successor for Adrian Peterson.
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