ROUND 1 RECAP

The Fantasy Gods really let it be known that I have no place in the second season. A woeful 0 - 3 performance and, had I made it into the playoffs over Bernie, I would have suffered a torturous 153.3 - 152.2 defeat. I like to tell myself that I might have switched out Devine Deablo or Isaiah Likely if I was actually in the playoffs but history has shown that I probably wouldn’t have made the game-saving change.

So what the hell happened?!

PLAYER #14 vs MARK - PICK: PLAYER #14 / WINNER: MARK
If there’s a lesson that I ignore the most, it’s that matchups don’t really matter. I think that there are some more football-related matchup factors - for instance, Alec Pierce is notably better against defenses that play 2-high safeties - but the general matchup rankings don’t really make all that much of an impact (as evidenced by Isaiah Likely dropping a goose-egg against the worst ranked TE defense.) Jeff had the matchups but all signs pointed to his team being on a decline. I was correct about Travis Etienne blowing up against the Jets but nobody else on showed up. I was also mostly correct about Mark but Michael Wilson did better than expected and Eddy Pineiro was a late addition and OBVIOUSLY I would have picked Mark if I knew that he was employing a first-generation Cuban-Nicaraguan to take down the OC’s newest fascist regime.

JOHNNY vs BRETT
There was a pop punk band a while back called The Regrettes and they would absolutely record the theme song for this game as both teams left 70+ points on the bench. For Johnny, Emeka Egbuka farted out his eighth single digit performance in the last 9 games and Tet McMillan hit the rookie wall as well. Tony Pollard continued his campaign to be the most maddening fantasy player of the last few years although Brett’s Kyle Pitts might have cemented his #1 status on that front, dropping a massive 40.1 points while riding the pine.
Even though I picked the wrong team to win, I’m going to pat myself on the back on this because I did write that Johnny had “massive boom-bust potential… and this matchup could be much like their first game, which Johnny won by a mere 1.2 points.” Pretty amazing that their two matchups combined were decided by fewer than 2 points.
PICK: JOHNNY

COLIN vs BERNIE - PICK: BERNIE / WINNER: COLIN
I should have gone with my gut. I thought that Colin could pull off the upset and the plus matchups did pan out for his studs. Bernie’s Jayden Higgins gambit played out as I suspected and Philip Rivers didn’t hit Tyler Warren as often as I’d expected. Warren probably reminded Rivers of his eldest son and didn’t want him to get lit up by the grown men on defense. (It’s a six year difference but that’s much closer than Warren is to Rivers.) This was another reminder of the second and third lessons that I keep ignoring - Stud & Scrub is a championship-winning strategy and never bet against Colin.