The Wire – Page 3 – Must Be Sunday

The Wire: Week 6

…And we are back to our regularly scheduled Wednesday release date. Boy, last week was definitely something else. As I think Beans said in the GroupMe, “one of the worst weeks The League has ever seen.” Not for me, but I’ll dive into that in a bit. Not for Brent either, congrats on 6-0 and on beating my bid for the Dolphins defense by a dollar. I’ll need that $7 later since I used a good chunk of my FAAB this week elsewhere. Might as well get into it:

As you can see in the above table, the top three most expensive players this week scored less than their purchase price, albeit to a lesser degree than Week 5. I guess we’re learning. I failed to take my own advice and spent $21 on Ryan Fitzpatrick to make sure Kris couldn’t have him, which actually kind of worked. He ended up bidding only six of his sixteen remaining dollars on The Beard instead of going for another one of the options available. To be honest I’m surprised he would go against the Jets like that, but I guess the ‘phins were/are streaking and the Jets are gonna Jets regardless of who’s betting where. I happened to wake up on the earlier side to check the offers report and noticed Ryan Tannehill was a free agent, so I scooped him up too. This turned out to be much more helpful than the Fitzpatrick bid as it took almost 30 points away from the Norse Horse. In the end it might not have mattered, and the bottom line is I’m out $32 including the $11 I spent on Jason Sanders for a one-week streaming play. Just get Randy Bullock back and win this week Kris, hopefully you’ll be okay. I believe Jimmy G is available as well.

Max activated his future-telling powers and saw that I called him out for dropping a player at a different position from the one he was picking up because it made my stats mean less than they already do. In response to this, he grabbed Frank Gore (9.0) and said goodbye to his buddy Rex Burkhead (1.4). The $15 he spent could have been $6, but the N-diff (which works best for same-position transactions) came out to +7.6, highest of the week. Great job! Now go back and read every blog post you supposedly didn’t know about until a few days ago.

This guy Abie keeps pulling these great moves and still has most of his FAAB left, has he done this before? Just kidding we all have. I believe he’s had the STEAL OF THE WEEK distinction before, but this week it’s in the form of Mr. Travis Fulgham. Only five dollars for 16.5 points? That’s more than 3 points per dollar (yes, I’m an accountant). Abie also secured the rocket ship that is Chase Claypool for FREE after no one bid on him due to Brent’s psyche-out. I think I whiffed a smidge of Albany collusion there 0_0. He was also the first one on the waiver wire after the auction moves were finished, another example of early bird gets the worm (see “Tannehill”). With a tough matchup ahead, Abie better hope I’m begrudgingly writing good things about his moves next week. Let’s just see what happens though.

Speaking of AB, he’s going to the Seahawks! Don’t try and pick him up though, Kris beat you to it. Best of luck with that.

Last auction player I’d like to discuss is our dearly departed Vampire Hunter Alex. He had a perfectly efficient $6-for-6 picking up the Football Team’s D/ST, unfortunately it cost him the Cardinals D (14) who decimated the Cowboys on Monday Night. Alex also took a chance on Heisman runner-up J.K. Dobbins after Mark Ingram went down the week prior, dropping Adrian Peterson in the process. Brent scooped up AP last second for one Alexander Hamilton and came out in the green with 12.3 points. Dobbins disappointed with a 3.9, and even though he stayed on Alex’s bench it’s not a great look.

Not FAAB related, but Beans’ last-second pickup of Younghoe Koo for Robbie Gould gave him a +13 net point total, highest of the week. Wanted to say good job for that despite the loss. You also gotta respect the move for Andy Dalton despite no one else bidding on him and many better QBs being available. Might be time to work on the streaming strategy.

I’ve gotten some good feedback and suggestions on what people want to see from me based on my output. I got some things cookin’ that I’m excited about, and definitely continue to be open to comments. I’m always adding to the spreadsheet I use for these reports to deepen my insights, let me know if you want to take a look at the organized chaos so you can see my process and tailor your own suggestions. People helping people.

I’m gonna go have some dinner. I’m excited for this week’s matchups and the write-up it’ll produce. Until then, bid low, bid slow, and don’t spend it all in one place. This has been The Wire, go League, and stream Poppy on Spotify 🙂

I’ve included the net points of players who actually started (points of starting players minus points of the players dropped for them) next to Total Net Points

Th3 Wir3: W33k Fiv3

What’s hannenin’? It’s Friday, congratulations to all on surviving another week. You probably don’t quite remember what happened last Tuesday and how it played out this past weekend, so I’m here to break it down. In short: not too much. I have a few moves to talk about, you can take a look at the rest at the top and at the bottom, or just look through the Recent Activity tab on the League page. Here we go…

As per usual, the top of the auction list was comprised of players who don’t deserve nearly as much FAAB as we’ve put towards them. The offending owners this week happen to be Ryan and Brendan, and while I commend Ryan for finally using some of his bucks I’ll continue to point out that hardly anyone is going to be worth more than $20 or even 15. We’ve yet to see multiple $20+ offers on a single player, even after the massacre that was Week 2. Maybe next year we will come to our senses, it’s all about those small margins here.

Ryan’s top two pick-ups COMBINED for 1.1 points this week, which is super inefficient just off the bat, but supposedly there’s a method to this madness. He beat out Lebron, Kris, Brendan and Alex on those two offers, maybe one of them wants to trade? Another interesting play of Ryan’s week I’ll mention was the three card monte he was playing on the waiver wire. First, he added Gardner Minshew for Matt Ryan, then did a flip flop and dropped Minshew to get Ryan back (they have the same name lol), and finally decided he wanted to keep both of them and dropped Damiere Byrd for The Mustache. He picked him as the right guy to start as well, leading to his first win against some no-name team, nice job there.

Beans’ add of D’Ernest Johnson for $25 also seems pretty inefficient at first when you see he only scored 4.1 points the following week, but we may have to wait and see about this one too. With Nick Chubb out for multiple weeks and the Browns still gathering momentum, it seems hopeful that Johnson will get starter volume. Brent’s rival $14 bid made this pick a little more interesting, as did Brent’s win over Beans Corp. later that week. A little taste of defeat and some more injuries might cause one of The League’s iron horses to hit the breaks, but an easy upcoming schedule might be just what the doctor ordered. Stay tuned…

We’ve made it to the middle of the column, where I talk about who played the best free-agency ball of the week. This week’s winner has gotta be Alex, a man who certainly has his priorities in order when it comes to FAAB. He exchanged the Chiefs defense for the Cardinals for $10, which seems high for a defense, but the Cardinals put up a very solid 8 for the week. While that puts him in the negative in column K, his big win comes after factoring in the -5 points his former defense anti-scored, giving him a +13 N-diff, best of the week by a lot. Alex also swapped Cam Newton for Teddy Bridgewater, who put up a very respectable 20.8 and helped the Vampire Hunters go up 4-1. There’s something to be said about momentum here, and Alex has got it.

The receiving end of Alex’s beating this week happened to be Kris, who made the very solid move of bidding $3 on Justin Jackson after Austin Eckler went down (he’s great on Twitter, I really should’ve thought about getting him, but I’ll give you that for what I did to you this week hehe). His 11.1 point performance went to waste though since he ended up riding the bench, but this was a strategic move if I ever saw one. If Kris had a good quarterback this week, I’d definitely be nervous as our matchup approaches 😉

Another guy who made some good moves this week was our reporter friend Maxi Boy, who I found out sent Nick Saban a bunch of Matzo ball soup after the news broke that he tested positive for the Big C. Let’s focus on pro football for a second here buddy, capisce? He picked up Graham Gano (20) and dropped the Broncos D/ST (BYE), probably because he saw the Giants have had zero touchdowns thrown since Week 1. Good move. He also dropped Austin Hooper and picked up Justin Herbert (27.4), which also helped him win against the 0-5-but-still-hanging-around Andrew Vignali. Since the players you added and dropped are at different positions, the point difference stats don’t work as well and you get points docked in the competition to be the winner of the week. I don’t make the rules.

The biggest blunder made this week was Abie dropping Brandin Cooks (26.1) for Brandon Aiyuk (5.9), whoops. Now no one would ever do this, but leaving Cooks in the line-up and replacing Tyler Lockett or Amari Cooper with Emmanuel Sanders would’ve given you the win against Lebron. You probably already knew that though. We as a League can’t let Lebron get hot, especially after a different Lebron just became a The Champ. Tell me again why I couldn’t have Robby Anderson?

To wrap things up, I’ll talk a little bit about myself. I need lesson from Alex on how to pick the right defenses. You know the phrase, fool me once, yadda yadda yadda. The Cowboys defense fooled me once by getting -9 points a few weeks back, but they were playing the Giants this week so they couldn’t repeat that abortion, so I dropped the Broncos and picked the Boys back up (not to be confused with the Amazon Prime series, The Boys, which I still haven’t seen). Or could they? My fear of being fooled twice outweighed my risk-taking lizard brain and I went with the Saints, who got run up on by Justin Herbert and gave me a pitiful 2 points on my way to a tough loss to some intergalactic team.

Most of the other moves made leading up to the action on Sunday were due to COVID lists and some teams on Bye Weeks. Next week the Byes will really start coming into play, some of our budgets are getting low, and moves have already been made to take advantage of that. We’ll see how they play out in roughly 36 hours. Until then, bid low, bid slow, and don’t spend it all in one place. This has been Th3 Wir3, go League.

The Wire, Vol. 2: It Is Wednesday, My Dudes

Hey fellas, here we are again! We had another week of heroics and heartbreak, and I’ve made it my job to zoom in on the misfit players looking for glory and the owners who for better or worse spend their precious resources on them.

This week had some interesting developments; with the official introduction of COVID-19 into the NFL, players were being added and dropped but still secured on the “COVID IR” which has confused some but surprised none. Week 5 games seem to still be up in the air, so expect some more craziness in next week’s column (if the season lasts that long).

A few clarifications to the main table above since I changed it up a bit from last week:

-Column K’s difference is Dollars minus Points, pretty much a Bang-For-Your-Buck metric. Obviously QBs will generally have higher points overall and kickers less, but it’s fun to see who “wasted their money”.

-Column N’s difference is your opportunity cost for the player you dropped. It’s a less effective metric if the players are different positions or weren’t a starter, but it shows your future-predicting skills nonetheless.

Now that that’s out of the way, let’s get into it. The MOST EXPENSIVE player of Week 4 was also the BIGGEST BUST! Max obviously saw my hilarious tweet about Rex Burkhead and decided he needed to have him, spending one-fifth of his total FAAB bucks on the RB (no one else even bid on him). Cam Newton contracting the ‘rona probably didn’t help, but Brian Hoyer and Rex look so much alike there should’ve been some kind of connection. Unfortunately that wasn’t the case, and Max dropped a close close game to Kris.

The story of the defenses continues with Kris in Week 4, where he picked up the number 1 Colts (8 points for 8 bucks) in exchange for the Cardinals (-2), the positive 10 point difference being the second highest of the week. The Norse Horse also had one of the most favorable waiver adds with Randy Bullock, who kicked his way to 17 big ones for the Bengals and Dirty Mike and the Boys. I just realized there isn’t even anyone on your team named Mike, what’s with the name? McKinnon, maybe? I guess anything to forget the implication of “Boats and Younghoes”. This will be the first of many wrong predictions I’ll have made in this series, but it turned out that Kris’ early scrambling last week worked out in his favor, and I bet he’s pretty glad his $1 offer for Mason Crosby didn’t go through. More on that later…

The next matchup played out entirely on the auction block, no waiver moves from either (as you’ll see in the new “waiver summary” at the bottom). Brendan had two very solid and efficient pick-ups for $7 each: Alexander Mattison (7.7 points, didn’t start) and Rams D/ST (12). There’s nothing really special about these picks, and Beans Corp. is pretty unstoppable regardless so I don’t have much else to say. This series is about good waiver moves, not so much wins and losses.

The clear winner of the week’s waiver moves was Abie, and I’ll tell you why. A pretty efficient offer of $11 FAAB for the ever-reliable Cole Beasley, a perfectly efficient $6 acquisition of Mason Crosby–as a numbers guy I just love when that K-diff is 0–and the late STEAL OF THE WEEK in Mr. Tom Brady. Sadly, Abie decided to start Patrick Mahomes instead (who wouldn’t?) and ended up losing a pretty close game. On the bright side, he saved $10 on an offer for Justin Jefferson, the most saved this week. Look out for this guy, he’s still got 2/3 of his FAAB bucks, he’s gonna be quick on the mouse all season, and might make a late-season push once he mixes and matches the perfect squad.

Now we’re getting to the moments that some of us would rather forget. The match-up of two 0-3 teams is like a slow-motion car wreck: agonizing to look at but you kinda want to see how it ends up. This was the battle of the Andrews. Vigs got Jared Goff for $2, pretty solid right? In reality, the guy turned into Jared Goof (another typo from when I was writing his name back in that last sentence) this week against the G-Men. To make matters worse, Carson Wentz scored nearly 10 points more than Goff while riding Brent’s bench (more on that later). Poor performances from Darrell Henderson Jr. ($10) and Russell Gage ($5) added insult to injury in a loss that could’ve been avoided had Wentz, Jarvis Landry, and Damien Harris started. Let’s not dwell on it though, this is getting long.

Lebron didn’t have a much better week, having to drop his precious Big Ben due to COVID delays and picking up Joe Burrow, who didn’t do great fantasy-wise in his first NFL win. Something tells be the Bengals win was more important to him, I don’t know. The only offer Lebron made this week hit for Justin Jefferson, although he could’ve gotten the Vikings WR for $1 or $0. Gotta start being careful with your budget there! He also made the blunder of the week by letting go of Tommy B for Gronk, my notes for this transaction just say “oof”. Guess it didn’t really matter, because God was listening and gave this man a win anyway.

The last two games had next to no auction/waiver impact, but here’s a (hopefully) quick rundown: I picked up the Cowboys defense (if you can even call it that) in the second-worst blunder of the week. Brent added Robert Tonyan for no one and then dropped him for Carson Wentz, sounds like there’s trouble in paradise for Brent and Deshaun Watson 0_0. Tonyan dropped a quick 30-burger but it didn’t matter because of Austin Eckler’s injury on my side and the Cowgirls defense (that wasn’t a typo). Alex had some pretty low-stakes, low-dollar pick-ups in Auction, added and dropped Dalton Schultz who turned out to be a hot item, but his big move was grabbing the Chiefs D/ST for free. They scored 18 points and helped him defeat Ryan, who played around on the waiver wire a bit but kept a tight fist around his FAAB bucks.

That about wraps it up for Week 4! If you made it this far, I love you (but you probably already knew that). Someone should write a new column about trades, I was thinking about getting into them here but that’d be way too much content for one sitting. My advice: don’t pick up the Cowboys defense, and as always, don’t spend it all in one place. This has been The Wire, go League.

Next week: Ryan finally spends some FAAB bucks!!

…on two tight ends??

^Waiver Summary, only includes adds and drops, all $0 transactions. Ryan’s two moves actually netted to 0 (one got him 6.3 and the other lost him 6.3, which is think is really cool too.)

A (Hopefully) Weekly Column from Jack

Alright, alright, alright. Due to the unique nature of The League and our Free Agent Acquisition Budgets (that’s what FAAB stands for, who knew), I decided to run the numbers a bit and liven up the mid-week storylines so they don’t go unnoticed in the wee hours of Wednesday morning.

Introducing: The Wire. I’ll be taking a look back at the performance of the free agents who were picked up last week, speculating about the ones picked up this week, and analyzing everyone’s FAAB strengths and weaknesses. I’ll also dive a bit into those free agents who were added/dropped post-auction. Let’s begin with Week 3…

Boy oh boy, were there a shit-ton of injuries in Week 2. I think everyone had one of their first three picks go down with a multi-week or season-ending injury, and if it didn’t happen to you in this league it probably happened in another. The most sought-after player in The League on Wednesday, September 23rd was Devonta Freeman, the man who returned to the NFL to replace second-overall Giants star Saquon Barkley. I think everyone may have forgotten that the Giants are gonna Giant no matter who’s in the backfield. The big winner, or should I say loser in this case, was Kris, who spent a whopping $26 on this man (and that wasn’t even his biggest purchase this week). The one silver lining for Kris is that he decided not to start Devonta, who put up 1 point and is therefore the LEAST efficient pickup of the week. Kris also spent $27 on Jerick McKinnon and $15 on Dion Lewis who did not start and was dropped immediately, if you’re doing the math at home you know that Kris has not very many FAAB bucks left.

On the other side of the coin, we have Mike Davis. Now I don’t want to gas Lebron up too much, but he was the only person in The League to think of picking up the man who would replace number one overall Christian McCaffrey. Maybe it’s because the Carolina star’s injury isn’t season-ending like Saquon’s, maybe it’s because Mike Davis didn’t sign an emergency contract and was just kind of there already, kudos to you either way. This was actually one of the few position players who scored more points than FAAB bucks spent on him. Ultimately Lebron could not convert this smart spending into a win, as he did not start his new recruit and ended up losing a close game in which Davis outscored RB2 Kareem Hunt and Flex Devin Singletary. He also dropped Justin Jefferson who was quoted as saying “Thank God Almighty, free at last” and dropped a quick 27 on the Titans, only to be picked back up again by Lebron this morning for $10 (he actually beat Abie’s $10 bid in our first tiebreaker, don’t ask me how). I guess there are some things you can’t teach, better luck next week.

The biggest winners in the Week 3 auction, were interestingly enough the people who picked up defenses. Looks like I’m learning the names of some more defensive players because these guys are the real deal. The BIGGEST STEAL of the week went to Beans Corp. and their acquisition of the Colts D/ST for $7 and a whopping TWENTY-SEVEN points. Of course, playing the Jets didn’t hurt, but this defense was Beans’ second-highest scorer of the week in a very close game with Kris (see two paragraphs up). Brent also ditched the Bears and picked up the Bucs D for $3 and got 16 points for his trouble. Alex tried to sneak in with a $1 offer but had to stick with the Chargers, although I don’t think that would have affected the outcome of his matchup ;).

Speaking of the Vignali twins, they had quite a rough week of free agency. I love them to death and am forever grateful for welcoming us to their home on a weekly basis, but this got ugly, plain and simple. Andrew picked up Darrell Henderson Jr., who got 18.5 points sitting on the bench in a close loss and a drop to 0-3. Then, Russell Gage gave The Commush some negative returns (that was a typo but he’s Eddie Mush so I’m keeping it). Alex’s only pickup was his hero Rodrigo Blankenship, who for just a buck gave him a solid 11 points. He actually saved the most money on offers he didn’t get, so hopefully he’ll use that extra $17 wisely in the future. It looks like Alex also entered two identical offers of $5 for Devonta Freeman, which is weird but he definitely dodged a bullet there. The ugliness continued into the FA Add/Drops, with Alex’s pickup of the Chargers D/ST scoring 1 point less than the Seahawks who he dropped to make room, and Marquez Valdes-Scantling simply not showing up on Sunday. Andrew actually had a decent add post-auction with the Titans D/ST, giving him 13 points vs. the Browns’ 2, but it still wasn’t enough to get the win. If we didn’t love them so much, these two may have been better off ending their careers with The League as the Champ and the Top Scorer. Best of luck for the rest of the season.

You can see all of the auction results in the spreadsheet above, which is ordered a little more clearer than how ESPN puts it to show who bid on the same player(s) and the handy point total for the week of the pickup. I also included a FAAB bucks summary below, I didn’t include the remaining balance because ESPN only shows the current balances and subtraction is tough. Yes, I’m an accountant. I’m also hungry, so I’m not going to get much into Week 4’s auction without the point totals to show you all that you wasted your money again. Just based on the adds & drops so far today, I can tell you that Kris is in panic mode. We’ll see how that goes.

My advice: Spend your FAAB bucks wisely, pick whichever defense is playing the Jets or Giants, and don’t spend it all in once place. Ryan, you may want to start spending some of yours, buddy. Until next time, this has been The Wire.