Week 1 Update: And They're Off!

Gimp of the Week

That should be pronounce "Vimmen".

They say save the best for last so we’ll start this week with the Gimps of the Week. First, we have a very unusual dishonorable mention: every single Houston Texan. You may say “But Hunter, didn’t the Texans crush the Colts, seen them driven away, and heard the lamentations of their women?” and I’ll respond “Conan the Barbarian, starring the Terminator and Darth Vader, was a great movie.” I’d also add that despite the complete humiliation of the colts, the highest scoring player in that game was, in fact, a Colt (Reggie “Bruce” Wayne with 16 points). Somehow, the Texans managed to win by a huge margin without having a single player score higher than 15 points. That’s like making the Dean’s List with nothing but B+’s. It shouldn’t be physically possible, but it happened!

Another dishonorable mention goes to Frank Gore. Despite not being eaten by a shark yet, he still managed to underwhelm in Week 1 by scoring just six points against the Seattle Seahawks (whose defensive line consists of coffee baristas and computer technicians). Also, I don’t think I’ve made fun of Bean enough recently.

Like the Greek Pantheon, but twice as petty!

But the Gimp of the Week honors actually belong to a higher philosophy of Fantasy Football. Analysts say that you should never draft a kicker before the 16^th round and a defense before the 14^th round (and there are only 16 rounds). The train of thought is there’s fundamentally no real difference between kickers. The top scoring kicker was only 39 points higher than the 20^th best scoring kicker (which is slightly more than 2 points a game). Inevitably, people in every league do that. But the Gods of Fantasy Football said “No More!” this year and decided to punish the people who took the top defense and kicker.

The top defense taken this year was the Pittsburgh Steelers (who averaged over 10 points a game last season). The Baron spent an 8^th round pick on them, twirling his mustache all the while and wearing a picklehaube, saying that the Steelers would be essential for the invasion of East Katzen. But the Pittsburgh defense managed to be worse than nothing in their opener against the Baltimore Ravens (and it hurts me to write this next part). The Steelers were more like the Tin-Foilers given how Ray Rice tore them apart. They “contributed” -3 points to the Baron’s team. But that’s still not enough to win top dishonors.

How can you be worse than a negative? By being an absolute zero. Nate Kaeding, the kicker of the San Diego Chargers, was taken in the 12^th round of the Iron Dirigible draft by Team Gray. Normally, Kaeding punishes owners by being average and somehow being projected to be the number 1 kicker the next year. Last year, he was taken in the 11^th round (also by Team Gray) and finished as the 13^th best kicker. So how does Kaeding upstage the Steelers Defense? He tears his ACL and gets injured for the entire season before he kicks a single field goal. Kaeding amounted to absolutely nothing this week and will be nothing for the entire season. It is the only time in Iron Dirigible history I can say a draft pick was a complete and utter waste from which nothing good could possibly come. And if making the single worst draft decision in the history of Iron Dirigible football isn’t Gimp of the Week honors, I don’t know what is.

Pimp of the Week

On the flip side, we have our pimps of the week. I’d really like to go into more detail about them, but kickoff for Week 2 is literally 13 hours away as I’m writing this and I still have to find pictures and declare the Matchup of the Week. I’m going to try doing this update in Hunter Abridged style (which is either ridiculously tiny or nearly as long as the unabridged version).

Take a moment and remember how awesome this comic was.

Calvin “And Hobbes” Johnson of the Detroit Lions is quite possibly the second most frustrating player to own in Fantasy Football, and I say that as a two-time owner of C&HJ. He plays on the historically terrible Lions (historically in both the sense that the Lions are usually very terrible and that their terribleness is noteworthy enough to mention to future generations). According to math, the upper limit on Calvin Johnson’s yards and touchdowns in any given game is all the yards that the Lions get (i.e. not many). But Calvin Johnson is such an incredible talent that he’s able to produce on a semi-regular basis, despite a shaky quarterback situation. However, he’s been as likely to score 5 points as he is to score 25 in a game, thus a complete nightmare for owners. However, C&HJ showed true pimp-handedness by hauling in two touchdowns and 87 yards worth of receiving in Week 1 while simultaneously restoring hope to Detroit sports. Now if only there were some way that Calvin Johnson could stimulate interest in American cars, they’d rename Detroit “Calvinopolis” out of reverence. But a hypothetical saint-status does not earn you the honors of Pimp of the Week.

It’s worth mentioning that en route to scoring a week high 130 points, Sam’s team produced three players with over 20 points apiece (Aaron Rodgers, Matt Forte, LeSean McCoy). He would have had a fourth player score over twenty, but Steven Jackson injured his quad after just two carries, where he still managed to score 13 points. Those 4 players (less than half a team) scored 87 points this week, which was enough to beat two other complete teams outright and was within 2 points of beating a third team.

Kenny Britt gets an honorable mention because he really lucked into a big day on that fluke 80 yard touchdown catch. However, it was so flukey that it became surreal, like having the Sassy Fine Honey Express truck break down in front of your house, fixing it, and getting to make out with each of the aforementioned fine honeys. It’s completely implausible and could never happen again, but it’s still pretty pimpin’ that it happened once.

But the Pimp of the Week is none other than Tom Brady of the Hunterian Velociraptors. Despite his haircut, Tom Brady is still married to a supermodel, so he’s a pimp on and off the field. But more specifically, he threw for 517 yards and 4 touchdowns and burned Pro Player Stadium to the ground after he conquered the Miami secondary. He hooked up with Wes Welker (not in that way) for a 99 yard touchdown pass. He finished with 36 fantasy points, the most in all of football. And, let’s not forget, he did so in a timely and relevant fashion. When Monday Night Football began, the Vandy Pimpmasters were up by 1 and it was going to be a duel between Tom Brady and Darren McFadden to determine who would win the game. Tom Brady’s performance was a fantasy equivalent of Indiana Jones and the sword guy from Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Match-up of the Week

Normally, early on the year, I can’t make a clear pick for the matchup of the week so I write a bit about each matchup. Luckily for me, two matchups have presented themselves as clearly more interesting.

West Katzen Maus Munchers vs. Team Gray- The Battle of the Hill 122, called so not for its importance of the liberation of St. Lo in 1944 by Allied troops, but because there’s a realistic chance the two teams won’t combine to score 122 points in this game. Last week, they combined to score 117 points. No matter who wins, they’ll probably finish with a score that’d be great for a round of 18 holes.

More Dr Pepper vs. Hunterian Velociraptors- On exact opposite end of the spectrum, you have a matchup of the two highest scoring teams from Week 1 as well as a rematch of the 2008 championship game.

Well, that didn’t take nearly as long as expected. So I’ll write up a little bit about the other two games as well.

Vandy Pimpmasters vs Belmont Godfearers- The “I should’ve Won Last Week” bowl. Despite finishing with the third and fourth highest scores of the week, both of these teams still left with a loss. This week should be a nice change of pace for one of them.

Team Tune vs McLovin- This is matchup actually poses a fairly deep question. Is it better to have drafted a star quarterback and lost (Peyton Manning) than to have never drafted a star quarterback at all? Let’s find out!