Down and Dynasty

A tale of two teams: Part I

The All In!!

League: Private Dicks League Team “Chief Wiggum”
Private Dicks is a 16 team PPR, deep league dynasty with big starting line ups. You are required to name your team after a fictional private detective or police officer. Teams are named after luminous fictional sleuths such as Detective Baby Legs, Jake Peralta, John Shaft and Det. Marge Gunderson, among others. The rosters are 40 players plus a five-man taxi squad and two IR slots. We did a 40-round snake style slow draft. I’m proud to say we completed it in 15 days even though two participants live on opposite coasts of Australia. Rather than just randomize the actual draft order, I randomized the order in which each owner was allowed to select their draft position. So if you were the number one you could pick any of the spots 1 to 16, leaving the remaining spots to the next person and so on.The rookie draft would take place after the NFL draft and would be inverse to the order of the startup draft.

The starting lineup consists of 1QB, 2RB, 3WR, 2TE, 3 flex, 1 superflex, K, 3DB, 3LB, 3DL. I set the league up with big play bonuses for the offense when the quarterback passes for 300, 400 or 500 yards or when RB, WR, TE score touchdowns over 40 yards and over 80 yards. I also made it a TE premium so that TE get 1.5 PPR versus PPR for RB/WR. The defensive scoring was set up to put IDP’s on par with the offensive players. To accomplish this, I set the defensive scoring up as follows:

DB: 3 pts/tackle, 1.5 pts/assist
LB: 2.5 pts/tackle, 1 pt/assist
DL: 4 pts/tackle, 2 pts/assist

All defensive positions are scored 1 pt/fumble recovery, 2 pts/sack, 2 pts/forced fumble, 3 pts/pass defended, 4 pts/ Interception and safety. The net result is that defensive players make up 13 of the top 40 scorers in the league. This means we have to study both sides of the ball when evaluating players and building our teams.

Laying the foundation

I felt pretty good about my team after the draft. I selected the No. 5 spot when it was my turn to pick my draft position, this gave me the No. 12 rookie draft. I started off my draft Zeke Elliott, Russell Wilson, Matt Stafford, Josh Gordon, Alshon Jeffrey, Reshad Jones. OK, typing this out maybe I shouldn’t have felt that good. My team broke down like this:

QB: Wilson, Stafford, Chad Kelly, Jake Rudock
RB: Elliott, Aaron Jones, Devontae Booker, Elijah McGuire, Frank Gore, Rod Smith, Kyle Juszczyk, Sony Michel (Rookie/FA Draft)
WR: Gordon, Jeffrey, Golden Tate, Josh Doctson, Mohamed Sanu, Trent Taylor, Amarah Darboh, Noah Brown, Robert Davis, Braxton Miller (RFA Draft)
TE: Tyler Kroft, Ben Watson, Marcedes Lewis, Jeff Heuerman, Ian Thomas (RFA Draft)
DB: Jones, EJ Gaines, Patrick Chung, Glover Quin
LB: Sean Lee, Jarrad Davis, Mark Barron, Leonard Floyd, Bud DuPree, Roquan Smith (RFA Draft)
DL: Emmanuel Ogbah, Lawrence Guy, Noah Spence, Mike Daniels, Derek Barnett, John Simon, Marcus Davenport (RFA Draft)

This big dish of draft soup led to a 1–4 start, and in a 16-team league that puts you pretty far back in the pack. There were some circumstances though. When I drafted Gordon in February it was during peak optimism season, for the Browns and Gordon, I had Jones slated to miss the first two games, Jeffrey starting the season recovering from shoulder surgery, and Russell Wilson got off to his usual slow start. I felt like I had drafted enough depth to get by a few weeks until these issues resolved themselves.

After week five I took a hard look to decide if I was going to be a seller or a buyer. I decided to be a buyer. I went to Jake Peralta, another 1–4 team and inquired about Kareem Hunt. We opened discussions and eventually settled on me getting Hunt/John Brown for Jones/19 and 20 1sts. I like Jones talent a lot, but Head Coach Mike McCarthy’s usage of him has been frustrating since Jones returned from suspension. Brown came out Week 8 as the WR20. This trade helped propel me to two wins and a 3–4 record. I took a loss this week, dropping to 3–5 on the season, with Elliott on a bye and my TE position (Watson, Uzomah who I got for a second) giving me a big, fat, zero. My biggest opportunity is on the defensive side of the ball where I only have two players, I’m still buying as I need to improve my IDP positions. I currently have only three IDP in the top twenty at their position. Those players are Jonathon Joseph (CB8) picked up as a free agent last week and promptly injured, Josh Bynes (LB7, FA week 2), BJ Hill (DT15, FA week 7).

With the Week 8 games in the books as I write this I am one game and 155 points out of the sixth and final playoff spot. There are five games left in the season and I’m going to need to make some more moves, especially on the defensive side of the ball. A quick review of the waiver wire showed there are a few decent defensive backs, but not much in t he way of linebackers or defensive linemen. As a reference point here are the top scorers at each position so you can see the impact of balancing the scoring.

QB: Patrick Mahomes 34 points per game
RB: Todd Gurley 30.3 PPG
WR: Adam Theilen 25.8 PPG
TE: Zach Ertz 25.8 PPG
K: Greg Zuerlein 13 PPG
CB: Damarious Randall 21.8 PPG
S: Budda Baker 24.6 PPG
LB: Darius Leonard 28.4 PPG
DT: Kenny Clark 17.4 PPG
DE: Jason Pierre-Paul 24.7 PPG

So, wish me luck as I head out to the market to try and with this league in year one. Tune in next week as I talk about the total re-build I am trying to do in an Empire League while making sure that no one else wins twoconsecutive years and resets the league.

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