Fantasy breakthrough

FOOTBALL THOUGHT OF THE WEEK

Last week, in his ESPN column, Bill Simmons wrote,

"My big epiphany: Really, the fantasy football season isn't fun. Winning is OK; losing is agonizing. You constantly feel awful about your choices and your bad luck; it's the only exercise that causes arguments with friends you normally never would argue with; and you spend roughly a kazillion hours managing your team for the 10 percent chance that you might win your league. There's just not a ton of upside. It's almost like smoking cigarettes -- it started out with good intentions, and it's something to do, and it can be fun in the right moments, but ultimately, there are an inordinate amount of moments when you find yourself leaning out a window in 20-degree weather to puff out a quick cig as your nose gets frostbitten, or bumming a cig from a group of horrible girls and then feeling obligated to talk to them, or waking up in the morning and coughing up your right lung. Really, it's more harm than fun. And yet, we continue to do it. And love it. This entire paragraph made me want to smoke."

Now I am a fan of Simmons, but I couldn't disagree more on this. Why? Well for one, I don't smoke and never really saw the appeal of it. And two, because my fantasy team this year, The Regulators, is having the year of their life. We are 9-1, in first place in the league, and this is all after some of the worst luck a fantasy squad could have.

Tom Brady, Larry Johnson, Michael Turner, and Darren McFadden. Those were my first four picks. Look at that again. Brady earned me exactly one point before going down with a season-ending injury. Johnson has been mostly useless as well, thanks to a bad offensive line and a couple suspensions. Turner has been a beast and one of the reasons my team is doing so well. But McFadden has had exactly one good week for me, that was, he had exactly one good week for me before I shunned him to the bench. Add to that my backup QB to start the year was Vince Young, and I was in the rare position of having two quarterbacks in week one and then two completely different QB's on the roster for week two.

Yet I'm 9-1. Why? Well because after Brady went down, I was able to sign Kurt Warner, who looks like the favorite for NFL MVP right now. Turner and fellow running back Lendelle White both are touchdown machines. Receivers Santana Moss, Calvin Johnson and Laveranues Coles have all had impressive seasons. And I've been lucky, like every good fantasy football team is.

Now the key will be keeping it up and winning my first fantasy football title since 2004. I like that many of my key players are in the playoff race, which means their real teams will be riding them down the stretch. And I like that the two teams closest to me in the standings have both received a big-time beat down when they faced me during the regular season. But the road is not an easy one for a fantasy football team, same as a person who smokes lots of ciigarettes.


Thursday night pick: New York Jets at New England