NFL – NFFC and Daily Joust

I’m switching things up this Monday. With fantasy football season approaching quickly, I thought I would do two things today.

(1) I’ll present you with an opportunity to join a league at DailyJoust.com in which you can have a shot at winning part of the $1500 Free Roll — for free (it’s in the title).

(2) I’ll review the team that I drafted for the National Fantasy Football Championship because I’m always about transparency with my fantasy squads.

DAILY JOUST – $1500 FREE ROLL

I’ve been telling you all about DailyJoust all baseball season, but you know they also do basketball, hockey and football, right? Here’s an exciting option for the 2012 NFL Season.

DailyJoust is offering a $1500 Tournament in which $1500 prizes are available (top prize is $150.00, and the top-200 places receive a prize as well).

The best part about the tournament is that it is FREE to sign up.

Obviously there is no reason on earth that you shouldn’t take a few minutes out of your day to sign up for a free game in which you can win real cash. Not to mention the fun that accompanies cheering on your fantasy squad as you demolish the competition. So get over to DailyJoust and make it happen (you can easily sign up from the link that takes you to the BaseballGuys/DailyJoust partner page).

NATIONAL FANTASY FOOTBALL CHAMPIONSHIP

On Saturday I was part of a 12-team league in the NFFC 12-team Online Championship (I wrote about the league in Beat Ray Flowers, Win $100,000?). Today I’ll review the squad (you can still sign up for leagues with the NFFC so go ahead and head that way when you get a chance).

League Rules

12 teams, 20 rounds, #10 draft selection
PPR
3rd round reversal (more on that below)
KDS (more on that below)
Starting lineup: QB, RB, RB, WR, WR, WR, TE, Flex, K, DEF
6 points for all TDs

QB: Philip Rivers (7th round), Christian Ponder (16), Tim Tebow (17)

RB: Darren McFadden (1), Adrian Peterson (3), Fred Jackson (4), Roy Helu (8), LeGarrette Blount (10), Ronnie Brown (12), Mike Goodson (14)

WR: Larry Fitzgerald (2), Jeremy Maclin (5), Darrius Heyward-Bey (9), Kendall Wright (11), Danny Amendola (13), Alshon Jeffrey (15)

TE: Fred Davis (6), Heath Miller (20)

K: Matt Prater (18)

D: Atlanta Falcons (19)

Quarterback: As I say everyday on Sirius 210, XM 87 on The Drive (Mon-Fri 7-10 PM EDT), I’m not going to go nuts on the QBs early. This league was a perfect example of that. I’m a huge fan of Matt Ryan and Tony Romo, but they went in the 4th and 5th rounds. I happily waited for Rivers, the 10th QB taken. I grabbed Ponder late, like the foot/arm combo, and then took Tebow. I don’t ever draft three signal callers, but two things. (1) This league drafts 20 players, an extremely deep total forcing more aggressive drafting with so little left on the waiver-wire. (2) I’ve said this since before last season, if Tebow is starting he’s a top-10 QB option every week. I’m not sure that Mark Sanchez will hold him off for that starting spot all year, an if so I got me a great late round bargain, or at least blocked someone else from getting the chance to grab a potential starter at the end of the draft.

Running Back: If DMC and AD are healthy this will be the top duo in the league. If DMC ends up injured and AD lacks his normal boost coming back from knee surgery, my team is in trouble. Go big or go home I say. F-Jax gives me the best RB3 in the league. All this nonsense in Washington — Helu is still the most talented back there. Blount has been undervalued because of the Doug Martin hoopla. I think he carves out a bigger role than most. Ronnie Brown could get a couple of starts while the always brittle Ryan Mathews heals that shoulder. Goodson was my must add handcuff for DMC.

Wide Receiver: My weak link. Fitzgerald is amazingly consistent, and I wouldn’t be shocked if Maclin ended the year as a WR1. I like DHB but would have preferred his teammate, Denarius Moore. That’s a decent trio that I like a lot, but DHB doesn’t give me the warm and fuzzies even though he had some excellent games last year. Wright could be big as a rookie with Kenny Britt’s woes, and Amendola may not score but he catches passes (85 two years ago). Jeffrey was my go for broke late selection. He has the talent, and opportunity, to be a big player as the season progresses.

Tight End: Fred Davis, as long as he stays healthy and away from illicit substances, will be the breakout player at the tight end position this year. I would have preferred Rob Housler as my backup over Miller but Housler shares the same bye week as Davis.

K/DEF: Per usual, I just waited and grab the best available options at the end of the draft.

This league was a Third Round Reversal (3RR). What that means is that after the first two rounds the draft order flip flops.

Picks 1-12 are then followed by pick 12-1 as always in snake drafts. However, in round three the order is reversed so it ends up looking like this: 1-12, 12-1, 12-1.

Since I had the 10th pick I ended up with: pick #10, pick #15, pick #27

Since everyone knows I’m not gonna take a QB or TE that early, I felt like if I ended up with a pick at the end of the first round I would be able to grab a runner in round one, a pass catcher in round two, an another runner in round three. Guess what? I did exactly that.

How did I know I was going to end up with a late first round selection? Because the NFFC allows you to bid on which pick, #1-12, you want by use of the Kentucky Derby Style process. In this setup, each player submits their list of preferred draft slots (in my case, I went 10, 11, 12 etc.). Players names are then randomly drawn and they are assigned their highest preference on their draft list based upon which spots remain. Luckily for me I got the spot I wanted at the end of the round and my strategy played out perfectly. Now we’ll have to wait and see if my strategy was sound or not.

*** DON’T FORGET TO GET YOUR COPY OF THE 2012 NFL FANTASY FOOTBALL GUIDE.

 

By Ray Flowers

Beat Ray Flowers, Win $100,000?

Have you ever wanted to test your fantasy skills against Ray Flowers? Now you can do just that and take him on head-to-head with a chance to not only beat Ray but to win over $100,000 in prizes.

Ray has agreed to participate in the NFFC Online Championship (National Fantasy Football Championship), where owners can win a $1,600 league prize and a $100,000 grand prize. He will be drafting on Saturday, August 11, 2012 at 1 pm ET and will be among the 1,000+ owners competing for the overall grand prize. BaseballGuys.com followers can join that individual league to compete against Ray and will be in competition with Ray all year long for the overall grand prize.

Also, even if you don’t get into Ray’s actual 12-team league, all BaseballGuys.com participants in the NFFC Online Championship will also be competing against Ray each week in the Overall Standings. More than 1,000 teams will be competing for league prizes and the overall grand prize of $100,000. See if your point total after Week 16 is better than Ray’s and compete against him during the final three weeks of the season (Weeks 14-16) for the overall prizes.

Sign up now for the Beat Ray Flowers NFFC Online Championship league because spots will fill fast. This is a 12-team league, 20 rounds using Third Round Reversal. Cost of entry is $350 and first place in the league pays $1,600 and second place pays $500. Top two teams from each league advance to the Championship Round and the team with the most points from Weeks 14-16 (plus their weekly scoring average from Weeks 1-13) wins the $100,000 grand prize.

It’s simple and rewarding, but the best reward could be defeating Ray head-to-head. Only 11 owners will get that chance, so sign up now and join us on August 11th at 1 pm ET for the NFFC Online Championship. Good luck all.

A Successful Return

Yes, I made it home. If you are wondering why that is a slight shock, make sure you give my last blog posting a read where I lay out what the just completed weekend had in store for this kid (you can find that entry at Las Vegas Vacation). I don’t normally write about football here – pretty obvious when the title of my blog is BaseballGuys.com, but with less than a week to go before the NFL season counts, and with a wild weekend to recap, I’m going to push ahead with an entry about the gridiron.

Here are some of the highlights of the proceedings in Vegas as Fanball hosted the National Fantasy Football Championship.

* Some of the ADP numbers – Average Draft Position – certainly didn’t seem to play themselves out at the NFFC.

Jay Cutler was getting no love as he even fell out of the top-10 at the quarterback position at times.

Kevin Kolb who soared up to #7 at the QB spot has seen his ADP dip back to #10. He was being taken by some inside the top-10, but there may have been as many times when he was on the outside looking in at the top-10 at the position.

Maurice Jones-Drew has everyone panicked with that knee injury of his. The clear cut #3 option overall according to almost everyone worth a darn, he was falling to 4-5-6 and he even fell to #7 in one draft I witnessed. If he falls to you at #7 thank your lucky stars as you’ll likely get a tremendous value (kind of like last season when Joe Mauer was falling into the 7th to 9th round because people were worried about the back injury that was likely to sideline him for the month of April. We all know how fantabulistic that turned out for those that took a chance on the Twins’ catcher. What, you thought I would write a whole piece without mentioning baseball? You know me better than that by now don’t you?).

* Ryan Grant continues to get no love. I guess people see him and think ‘little’ upside, though in his defense, he is one of only four running backs to have rushed for at least 1,200-yards in each of the past two seasons. The others are Adrian Peterson, Thomas Jones and Chris Johnson.

* The Bellagio hosts a hell of an event. Plus, I swear on my mother’s life, I think there are only hot women with four inch heels and tight miniskirts allowed within the city limits of Las Vegas. There’s some astounding scenery in that town.

* Everyone is on the bandwagon with the 49ers defense.

* Speaking of that bandwagon, Arian Foster‘s can barely hold another soul. The guy is simply zooming up draft boards at an astounding rate for a guy who, four months ago, was barely on anyone’s radar.

* How in the world did I have to pay $13 for a White Russian? And no, I’m not talking about one of those hotties in a mini-skirt, I mean the drink. Don’t worry, I got back at them though with my $17 dollar Eiffel Tower drink from Paris. That’s my 15.6 laptop in the picture for scale, and despite what looks like a pink hue, the color was a manly white.

* People still seem to love taking quarterback’s early. I touched on why I think that isn’t necessarily the best plan of action in NFL Mailbag – The QB Conundrum.

So there it is.

I’m back at home in sunny California, I didn’t lose a kidney or get arrested, and I remember the entire trip (no blackouts). All in all, that sounds like a pretty good weekend doesn’t it?

By Ray Flowers

Las Vegas Vacation

By Ray Flowers