The first week of Fantasy Football is always interesting. It is where you kind of get an idea whether you have drafted well or made irreversible boo-boos. Well as far as the NJ Rookies are concerned, there are storylines within storylines. That is what makes the first week more freakin fun ...
Some of the match-ups to look forward to!
1) Husband v/s Wife (NJ v/s MJ)
As if there aren't enough complications already, imagine going up against someone who has bet your child's nickname in a game of fantasy football. That is what we will get when the always smart-n-savvy Niral Jhaveri takes on arguably the best drafted team this year! It will be interesting to see who comes out on top. Although ESPN predicts Meghna as the winner, history shows that you can never really count out the commish. Either Niral loses in the first week, or he becomes the reason why his wife got off to a bad start this season as well ... either ways Niral, you lose!
2) Finalist v/s Finalist
For Saumil & Prashant, this year starts exactly as the last year ended ... playing each other. Saumil, no doubt, does not have the services of a certain running back from Philly. He is still hoping it does not get in the way of his habit of winning against Prashant. Prashant on the other hand would be glad that he has gotten his chance to exact his revenge in the first game of the season. ESPN analysts are going with the safe pick on this one predicting a win for the Champion of 2008. The year has changed ... let's see if the fortunes have too!
3) Kothari v/s Kothari
Fantasy Football does seem to be cruel ... pitting husband against wife and now brother against sister. The rookie Kothari takes on the sleeper Kothari. Because Ali had a decent first half of the season last year without having to ever log in and change his team, it seems as though he is relying on the same tactic this year too. (I might be proved wrong on this one ... we'll wait and see) Shirin's first test comes against someone every little sister dreams of emulating and beating. After suffering through all the dadagiri at the hands of her elder brother, will Shirin be able to beat him out in her very first game and thus have something to brag about for the rest of her life? If I were Shirin and I won, I'd take every chance to remind Ali of that! ... If I am Shirin's mom, I am very nervous right now. I am just hoping that the two of them keep it clean and no one gets hurt!
4) Rookie v/s Rookies
Aaah! Here is a fun, no pressure battle. Both teams are managed by Rookies and no matter who wins or loses, it will be an enriching experience for both. Devashree will take on the first of her 13 CHORS this weekend while Shilpi & Jimit will have a chance to work on their dynamics together as a team without worrying about having to play an established player this week. Jimit - Here is a clue ... if you ever are at disagreements with Shilpi about who to drop and who to pick, just wait until after 11 pm. She'll be fast asleep by then anyways! Devashree. I will miss you calling people CHOR 100 times during your first sunday of fantasy madness. ESPN analysts predict a win for the Naik ... sigghhh everyone loves a hero!
5) Unexpected Winner v/s Unexpected Loser
Exactly a year earlier, people raved about Darshini's team. It was the best draft ever! Valmik was a rookie ... unsure of exactly what was going on. It seemed to be a no brainer who would come out on top in this contest! What ensued was a perfect example of why games arent played on paper! Darshini scored only 27 points and basically found out what a wretched year she was going to have ahead. Valmik rocked the house with the most points scored and went on to the postseason in his rookie year. ESPN analysts have retained their trust in Darshini even after the drubbing of last year. Let us see if Valmik proves them and everyone else wrong two years in a row.
6) Vishal v/s Murtaza
After all the excitement surrounding the other 5 matchups, does anyone really care about this one, except Vishal & Murtaza?
I thought so.
All the best everyone!
Wednesday, September 9, 2009
Tuesday, September 8, 2009
The morning after ...
168 players were drafted last evening. How well each of us drafted might only be clear once the season gets underway but what I wanted to see was from the NFL teams perspective, what do the NJ Rookies like? Are there some NFL teams that we prefer over the others? We will look closely at this aspect of the draft this week.
First, let's start with a quiz: Based on the fact that our rosters need us to start 2 WRs, 1 RB and 1 RB/WR and based on the fact that WRs and RBs do tend to be the most popular picks in a draft, considering sheer numbers alone, who do you think got drafted most? WRs or RBs and by how much? Answer is at the end of the article.
So, getting back to analyzing if indeed we do love some teams more than others. There are 32 teams in the NFL and there are 168 draft positions. 5 seconds alone with a calculator and you will come to a conclusion that if all teams were created equal, we'd draft 5.25 players per team. More realistically (since some teams are better than others), about 4 - 7 players from each NFL team would have been drafted. So what happened? I found out that this assumption was almost true. MOST NFL teams had between 4 and 7 players drafted.
Out of the ones that we did not, there were 3 teams which we all clearly loved to draft from. Any guesses? All 3 of these NFL teams had 8 players from their team who we liked. The answers are:
1) Vikings (Favre, at 40, is still god damn popular!) (2RB, 2WR, QB, DST, K, TE)
2) Eagles (LOL! No doubt. Except for Niral, I think all of us are closet Eagles fans) (2RB, WR, 2QB, DST, K, TE)
3) Chargers!!! (this one surprised me as well!) (2RB, 2WR, QB, DST, K, TE)
Oh and here is another interesting tidbit: Other than the 3 teams above, the Chicago Bears were the only team which had a player drafted in every position. (There are 6 positions: QB, RB, WR, TE, DST, K). None of the other 28 teams had a "full" draft. Interesting shit eh!
So who did we not like. Turns out, we don't really like a lot of teams. 5 to be precise. So from the 5 teams below, we only picked 2 players each! Thats a total of only 10 players from these 5 teams!!!
1) STL
2) SF
3) Oak (Other 4 teams on this list have a RB and WR drafted ... Oak has a RB and TE ... so we have not picked even a single WR from Oak ... something to think about!)
4) Det
5) Cle
So if you are unhappy with your team and want to change a player or two, you should definitely look at the teams above since you literally have their whole roster available to chose from. One good example is Josh Cribbs -- undrafted!
Here is the complete list:
Number of players -- Teams
-------------------------------------
2 -- Cle Det Oak SF StL
4 -- Cin Jac KC Mia TB Was
5 -- Atl Buf GB Hou Sea
6 -- Bal Den Ind NO NYJ Pit
7 -- Ari Car Chi Dal NE NYG Ten
8 -- Min Phi SD
Before we go, let's take a more high level view.
We were actually quite consistent in picking from conferences and divisions.
We picked 82 players from AFC and 86 from NFC (pretty even ... although I would have thought AFC would beat out the NFC).
In AFC (East, North, South and West) we picked 22, 18, 22 and 20 players each respectively (again, consistent here too.).
In NFC, we botched it a little bit. Again we picked 22 players from NFC North and South which is fine ... but since we live on the East coast and watch a lot of NFC East games, we drafted 26 players from the NFC East and being so far away from the West and not as exposed, we chose to go with only 16 players from NFC West.
So that's it for this week. Congratulations to you if you have read this far. If Meghna & Niral help me set up the DB and the Front End and if you guys help me throughout the season by entering some data, I promise you lots more of these mindless stats! ... oh and I'd like to say one more thing -- I think I am falling in love with Pivot Tables in Excel! LOL
Cheers!
Murtaza
PS: The answer is WR! ... Out of the 168 players, we drafted 52 WRs and 49 RBs. Rendezvous with a calculator again and find out that 60% of our total draft strength are either WRs or RBs.
First, let's start with a quiz: Based on the fact that our rosters need us to start 2 WRs, 1 RB and 1 RB/WR and based on the fact that WRs and RBs do tend to be the most popular picks in a draft, considering sheer numbers alone, who do you think got drafted most? WRs or RBs and by how much? Answer is at the end of the article.
So, getting back to analyzing if indeed we do love some teams more than others. There are 32 teams in the NFL and there are 168 draft positions. 5 seconds alone with a calculator and you will come to a conclusion that if all teams were created equal, we'd draft 5.25 players per team. More realistically (since some teams are better than others), about 4 - 7 players from each NFL team would have been drafted. So what happened? I found out that this assumption was almost true. MOST NFL teams had between 4 and 7 players drafted.
Out of the ones that we did not, there were 3 teams which we all clearly loved to draft from. Any guesses? All 3 of these NFL teams had 8 players from their team who we liked. The answers are:
1) Vikings (Favre, at 40, is still god damn popular!) (2RB, 2WR, QB, DST, K, TE)
2) Eagles (LOL! No doubt. Except for Niral, I think all of us are closet Eagles fans) (2RB, WR, 2QB, DST, K, TE)
3) Chargers!!! (this one surprised me as well!) (2RB, 2WR, QB, DST, K, TE)
Oh and here is another interesting tidbit: Other than the 3 teams above, the Chicago Bears were the only team which had a player drafted in every position. (There are 6 positions: QB, RB, WR, TE, DST, K). None of the other 28 teams had a "full" draft. Interesting shit eh!
So who did we not like. Turns out, we don't really like a lot of teams. 5 to be precise. So from the 5 teams below, we only picked 2 players each! Thats a total of only 10 players from these 5 teams!!!
1) STL
2) SF
3) Oak (Other 4 teams on this list have a RB and WR drafted ... Oak has a RB and TE ... so we have not picked even a single WR from Oak ... something to think about!)
4) Det
5) Cle
So if you are unhappy with your team and want to change a player or two, you should definitely look at the teams above since you literally have their whole roster available to chose from. One good example is Josh Cribbs -- undrafted!
Here is the complete list:
Number of players -- Teams
-------------------------------------
2 -- Cle Det Oak SF StL
4 -- Cin Jac KC Mia TB Was
5 -- Atl Buf GB Hou Sea
6 -- Bal Den Ind NO NYJ Pit
7 -- Ari Car Chi Dal NE NYG Ten
8 -- Min Phi SD
Before we go, let's take a more high level view.
We were actually quite consistent in picking from conferences and divisions.
We picked 82 players from AFC and 86 from NFC (pretty even ... although I would have thought AFC would beat out the NFC).
In AFC (East, North, South and West) we picked 22, 18, 22 and 20 players each respectively (again, consistent here too.).
In NFC, we botched it a little bit. Again we picked 22 players from NFC North and South which is fine ... but since we live on the East coast and watch a lot of NFC East games, we drafted 26 players from the NFC East and being so far away from the West and not as exposed, we chose to go with only 16 players from NFC West.
So that's it for this week. Congratulations to you if you have read this far. If Meghna & Niral help me set up the DB and the Front End and if you guys help me throughout the season by entering some data, I promise you lots more of these mindless stats! ... oh and I'd like to say one more thing -- I think I am falling in love with Pivot Tables in Excel! LOL
Cheers!
Murtaza
PS: The answer is WR! ... Out of the 168 players, we drafted 52 WRs and 49 RBs. Rendezvous with a calculator again and find out that 60% of our total draft strength are either WRs or RBs.
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