Week 5 in the NFL was a pretty interesting week indeed. I made some teerible mistakes this week and I realized that I needed to get back on the grind. If I continue on like this I'll end up in last place. Last place is no bueno, the last place has to pay the third place's prize money. So after months of being away, PhantasySteez is back! I have been playing fantasy sports all along. Both of my baseball teams came in 3rd place. Right now though, in between my 5 leagues (one of those leagues I won't talk about much) my teams are either doing extremely well or extremely poor. I jotted down some notes about how exactly I ended up in this situation.
Starting off with the biggest and dumbest mistake of the day, for some odd reason I benched Matt Forte in Noe's league, Show Me Ur TDs. Noe is this guy that works with Victor and invited us. Back to the matter, I woke up on Sunday morning and felt like I should bench Forte for Giovanni Bernard. Why did I come to such a dumb ass decision? I figured that Bernard would have a field day against the Patriots' disoriented defense. Bernard did produce but Forte dominated scoring 23 points, 12 more than Bernard. I only lost by 4 points. Had I started Forte, I would've had more than enough to continue my winning streak and move on to 4-1. I'm still in second, but the lesson of the day is DON'T BENCH FORTE.
The rest of the mistakes all comes from the ever so competitive Roughing the Picker. This year is unique for me because I was not able to attend the draft and Victor basically drafted my team for me. I'm in 9th place today and not necessarily because of the draft but because of once again, bad decisions... and good managing by my opponent Mark. This guy has been trying to get Cam Newton or Ben Roethlisberger from me but I want Nick Foles and he's not willing to go for it. I've been hinting that it needs to be Newton for Foles because in a two quarterback league, Mark did not have a reliable second quarterback, which is why
he was pressing me for Newton in the first place. In the midst of checking scores and stats I noticed this guy had Austin Davis in the game. He picked him up last Wednesday and decided to put him in. Why all of a sudden Davis wants to have a breakout game? He got Mark 45 points like his last name is Manning. This league is PPC (pass per completion) or 1/2 PPC, or something like that. Meanwhile Roethlisberger was below average from a phantasy point of view and Cam still isn't running. I got Bridgewater, but I'm going to have to keep an eye on all three of them.

It wasn't just Davis that killed me. Thanks to Victor, Mark also has Julio Jones and Eddie Lacy to go along with Antonio Brown. He is, or he WAS weak at quarterback but he has good productive "role players" once again thanks to Victor. My squad however, I have decent receivers but my running backs suck.
I got stuck with C.J. Spiller and Maurice Jones-Drew as my starting running backs. I dropped Jones-Drew for Chris Ivory and I've been running with them. This combination has me so uncomfortable every week. With Spiller you don't know whats going to happen between him and Fred Jackson. With Ivory he gets touches but from a phantasy point of view he's mediocre at best.
I feel the same way about one of my receivers so I low key been trying to trade Percy Harvin for a running back. It's not been as easy I thought it would be because either the other players are trying to send me someone of lesser value, or they see the same thing I do in Harvin. He's a top 10 receiver and he can be productive, but you have to consider how Seattle uses him. He goes out on little screen passes and runs reverses. In Seattle's system he's a decoy with big play potential, not the consistent main threat that you want in your phantasy receiver. Like I said I got a decent group of receivers, so I'm willing to trade Harvin for a productive running back to try to balance out my team.
On a more positive note, things are going smoothly in Coast2Coast Ballers, the league with my Dillard University classmates. I'm in first place and I can honestly say its because my draft was immaculate. In this league there's one quarterback but two Offensive Player positions. Yes, you can put quarterbacks there potentially having three quarterbacks. I've adopted this strategy from my phantasy arch nemesis Mr. Hindsman. He'a won three championships using this strategy and after being kindly reminded that he's beaten me in a championship I felt no shame in using the tactic. Funny thing this year is Mr. Hindsman is in 9th place right now. He's been quiet these last few weeks, but winning in this league is nothing unless I see Mr. Hindsman in the playoffs.
What makes matters worse is Mr. Hindsman, Victor and myself are in another league my boy Mike invited us to... AND MR. HINDSMAN IS IN 11th PLACE. He says he's trying to adjust to the Yahoo! format, and while I didn't agree with his excuse this league is a little different. There are 14 players and the draft was crazy long. By the time it was your turn to pick everyone you had on your radar were gone. Free agency is very slim so you literally have to work with what you got. Mike is in 1st but to my pleasant surprise I'm in 6th and Victor is in 2nd place. He drafted really well, but I have a lot of make or break players that I need to work on. Somehow I need to figure out what to do with Larry Fitzgerald and Roddy White. The Cardinals are not feeding the ball to Fitzgerald and White is living in Julio Jones' shadow.
Okay, so I've been MIA for months and I come back 5 weeks in like nothing happened. However PhantasySteez is improving everyday with interesting fantasy tidbits and what nots from a player's point of view. Got something to say? Leave a comment. Tweet me @donofalldons Google+ +MarcusNickerson Instagram @donspook :-)
