Fantasy Diary: Rivers Rises; Scoring Change Befalls Upset Bid
November 17th, 2006 by Lucas Dwyer & Michael Stephens
For the fourth consecutive week, Britney’s Divorce Lawyers (who are pondering another name change to Marry Me Britney) delivered a savage beating to an overmatched fantasy football opponent.
In pulling our record up to 6-4 and snagging third place by virtue of an enormous lead in the overall points tie-breaker, Philip Rivers (right) led a thorough team effort with his best game to date.
Despite being 4-0 as a starter for us, Rivers hadn’t really showcased his potential until last Sunday, when he passed for 338 yards and three scores against the Bengals. Luckily for the Divorce Lawyers, our opponent’s T.J. Houshmandzadeh stayed out of the end zone for Cincinnati in that 49-41 shootout.
Inspired by Rivers’ effort at the helm, the supporting cast did what it had to do to bury the B-Town Billygoats early.
Even when they weren’t at their best, Larry Johnson, Reggie Wayne, Mark Clayton, Tony Gonzalez and Javon Walker all reached double figures in points, and the 125-85 rout was on. Now it’s time for a grudge match with a fellow 6-4 squad with sneaky-good players like Rex Grossman and Steven Jackson.
Proving what a fickle beast fantasy football can be, Rivers is getting the hook one week after turning in his best game yet. We’re hoping that Drew Brees can victimize that same Bengals defense Sunday, and continue what has been a very strong year for him, despite his 2-4 starting record for us. Jermaine Wiggins was added to the roster this week to spot start for an injured Gonzalez, which is a big loss. However, Larry Fitzgerald’s return should more than make up for it. At least we’re hoping so.
At this point, I turn things over to my colleague, Lucas Dwyer, for an in-depth account of a bizarre turn of events that impacted his own fantasy football league greatly last week. His account follows the Sports Truth’s favorite marathoner, Jane Murray, in her effort to dethrone the league’s top team — only to be thwarted, stunningly, by a mid-week scoring change made by the NFL.
As of Tuesday morning, Jane Murray’s team, aptly named the Kyle Killers, had defeated Kyle Kalember’s team for the second time this year, 77-69. The win for Murray left her tied atop of her division with Alex Woodcock at 7-3, and ahead of Kalember’s 7-3 team by virtue of a 2-0 head-to-head record. Additionally, Murray was tied with Woodcock and Toby Ralston for the #1 overall seed.
Everything changed Wednesday night when Jane, Sports Truth Founder Levi Matthews and I were watching SportsCenter and Brian Kenny told us about the scoring change.
Reggie Brown, Jane’s player, was no longer going to be charged with a fumble which was “recovered” by Correll Buckhalter and run into the end zone for a 55-yard touchdown. Instead, the play was going to be rulled a completed pass to Buckhalter by Donovan McNabb - Kyle’s player.
That’s four pts for the TD pass, two points for the 55-yards passing, and two more bonus points for a TD pass of 40 yards or more. The eight points for McNabb now tied the score at 77. However, we then thought that Reggie Brown (left) would no longer be docked two points for a fumble, and Jane would pick up two points, still allowing her to squeak out a 79-77 win.
We then realized that a fumble only counts for (-2) points if the Eagles lose possession, so the score remained tied. I also checked McNabb’s stats and realized that the 55 yards of additional passing would take McNabb from 222 yards passing (eight points) to 277 yards passing (11). One point for every 25 yards passing. Now Jane had lost, 79-78.
This morning, I read an article about the play and realized the loss wasn’t as traumatic as a one-point loss. We forgot that Reggie Brown was no longer credited with a 20 yard completion, so Jane lost two points. Additionally, McNabb had been credited with 20 of those 55 yards passing on the throw to Brown already, so he only received an additional 35 yards passing, bringing his total to 255 yards passing (10 points). Now Kyle wins, 78-75.
However, when adding up McNabb’s points, I only came to 23, meaning Kyle has been credited with four points I can’t find. That would change the score to 75-74 in Jane’s favor. However, I realized I accidentally set the scoring in our league to be +2 for 40-plus-yard TD passes and +4 for 50-plus-yard TD passes.
However, I only have +2 for 40-plus-yard TD receptions and runs. The additional two bonus points for passing TDs over 50 yards was not intentional. Since the two TDs tossed by McNabb (right) were 84 and 55 yards, that accounts for the missing four pts and the final tally was 80-75 in favor of Kyle.
The score change means Jane goes from a possible #1 seed, if not #1 in her division, to #3 in her division and the #4 seed overall. Kyle climbs to 8-2 and instead of being tied with Jane and losing the tiebreaker, he’s now two games up on her. Additionally, at 6-4, Jane falls behind Mr. Woodcock in her division.
Interestingly, however, this same 50+ yard TD rule that I accidentally put in actually gave Jane an extra two points and took her from a 102-103 loss in Week 6 to a 104-103 win. Kyle has two other one-point results this year, but it hasn’t affected either of those results.
