FIWK the NFL: Week 4

The NFL right now is a volatile muddled middle. Remember that week in August where the stock market had four consecutive days of triple-digit movement and at the end of the week we were right back where we started? That's the NFL so far. Overall the teams are really close in quality, but that doesn't mean you can just take the underdog and the points because the games are much more volatile. You're going to have underdogs winning outright and one point favorites winning by double digits. You're going to have Team A beat Team B by two touchdowns, Team B defeat Team C handily and then Team C takes care of business against Team A. Go ahead and look at Tennessee, NYJ, Baltimore, Pittsburgh, Jacksonville and Oakland and figure out what's going on there. I'm pretty sure there is a Super Bowl contender and 6-10 team in that group. Go ahead and add Washington, Dallas, NYG, Philadelphia (wait, that's all the same division), New Orleans, Tampa Bay, Atlanta. I would only feel confident picking 3-0 Green Bay and against 0-3 Kansas City and 0-3 Seattle...wait, no Seattle beat Arizona last week, who beat Carolina, who beat Jacksonville, who beat Tennessee, who beat Baltimore, who beat Pittsburgh, who beat Seattle. See that vicious little circle we're dealing with? For no particular rhyme or reason, I'm going to use point differential unless I have some reason not to.

BPL or EPL? Filling out your lineup

After the Rooney scratch last week, I've become hyper sensitive to unexpected injuries taking a toll on our players. Fantasy NFL owners of Jamaal Charles and Peyton Manning know all too well how injuries can drastically change your fantasy team. In the vein of using your bench of effectively, make sure that you are actively checking the Guardian Squad Sheets the night before game day. As of right now they and other fantasy sources are saying that both Rooney and Chicharito are going to play for Man United tomorrow.

That being said, I'm skittish enough about their injuries to yank my captaincy from Rooney. I'll be giving it to either Silva or Aguero since Man City faces hapless Blackburn this week. This is going to explode in my face when Rooney has 4 more goals against Norwich this weekend. I'm not quite ready to go 3-5-2 out of striker-injury fear though.

Music Tuesdays - F-Stop Blues by Jack Johnson

Classic Jack Johnson song for the end of summer.

BPL or EPL? Use your bench players intelligently

Before the Premier League season started, Aaron had a theory that he'd roster attacking players from the teams that scored the most goals last season - Chelsea, Arsenal, and United. (Click the 10/11 pull-down for last year.) Similarly, defenders from the teams that allowed the fewest goals were ranked highly. Using this same logic, take a look at the high-scoring teams for this season - United has 21 goals, City has 17, and the next closest team is Chelsea with 8. The lesson, as always, is roster all the Manchester players.

For fantasy purposes, consider your budget to be $81 and lock in Rooney (9 goals) and Aguero (8) for $19.1. They are the two highest scorers on the two highest-scoring teams; if you don't roster them you give yourself lower odds of keeping pace. How you treat the rest of your lineup, however, depends upon whether you're rolling out a 3-4-3 or a 3-5-2 formation. The reason it's different is because of the way the ESPN fantasy game treats subs.

FIWK the NFL: Week 3

Yeah, I did pretty bad last week. I guess I took my own theme of not overreacting just a little too far and ended up underreacting. (Why is overreact a word, but underreact gets the red spell check squiggly?) I may have ended up underreacting all the way back to 2009. So let's try and find a happy middle ground. Let's start considering strength of opponents. The Bills and the Lions are both 2-0, with huge point differentials. But I'm pretty sure that's more an indictment of how bad the Chiefs are (L 41-7 to the Buffalo and L 48-3 to Detroit) than an early proclamation those two teams are going to the playoffs. In fact, I kind of like Royce's early "Always pick against KC and SEA" rule. So, with just the right amount of reaction...