DeShaun Foster (180 Yd, 2 TD) – Foster, Foster, Foster... Every year this guy flashes just enough brilliance to get us incredibly excited about his prospects, only to ultimately disappoint fantasy owners when we are ready to let him back into the Circle of Trust. The 2004 version did so with back-to-back 100 yard games, and a score, before getting injured and knocked out for the season. This year things have gone a little differently. Twelve weeks of watching Stephen Davis plod along at 3 yards a carry, yet still find the end zone with amazing regularity, Foster owners have been waiting, waiting, waiting for his chance... At this point the guy is so far out of the Circle of Trust with playoff hopes on the line it isn’t even funny. Cue the brilliance. Foster on 24 carries pounds out 131 yards against the 21st ranked rush defense. Now, why on 23 carries the prior week against the 31st ranked rush defense he could only manage 77 yards, I have no idea. Foster is hereby barred from my Circle of Trust.

Lee Evans, 1st Quarter (3-106, 3 TD) – Last minute decision to swap in a flex player for injured Kevin “Also Out of the Circle” Jones: choices are Antonio Bryant or Lee Evans... Antonio Bryant or Lee Evans... Bryant! Doh! And it wouldn’t even have been so bad if Evans had even spread out the production across the 60 minutes. Then it wouldn’t have seemed like such a slap in the face. Three catches all for TDs in the 1st quarter, I practically could have chalked up a win right there. Did anyone see him on camera after his last TD? I swear he mouthed the words, “Screw you MacGregor. You call yourself a Bills fan!” Sorry Lee... I feel shame. Think you can repeat that performance in 2 weeks after my bye? Lee? Buddy? I promise to start you this time...

Chris Chambers, 4th Quarter (7-132, 1 TD) - New and remarkable ways to blow a ball game, courtesy of the Buffalo Bills. No, wait a second. That couldn’t have been the Bills who were up by 20 entering the 4th quarter. They have the best RB in football. Surely they can run out the clock. Oh wait, that was self-proclaimed, best RB in football. Whoops. Well, they did knock out the starting QB. Surely Sage Rosenfels can’t do anything because the QB-poor Dolphins would have inserted him as the starter long ago. Okay, wrong again. But for the love of God, how did the Bills not know by the late 4th Chambers was the guy Rosenfels was locking in on. Where was the double coverage?!? Anyway, his 60 minute stats ended 15-238 and 1 TD. Even more amazing... he was targeted an additional 11 times. Yeah, the Bills should have known.

FF In The Groin Report Card

Why do this now? Well, considering things have been going pretty well to date, I thought it might be better to throw out the review now before all heck breaks loose in the playoffs. I also considered, “Do I Really Have Anything to Complain About?” for the title of this section. Leagues are listed in order of best to worst results, so as to appease my ego.

Nothing To Complain About League Record No. Of Teams Results Ironman 3 12-1 14 1st overall, 1st in points, week 14 bye Insanity Pool 11-2 10 1st overall, 1st in points, playoffs start week 15 SOFA IDP 10-3 12 1st overall, 1st in points, week 14 bye Friends of FF Today 10-3 13 1st overall, 1st in points, week 14 bye OUFL 21-5 16 1st overall, 2nd in points, playoffs start week 14 Zealots Field 7 9-4 12 2nd overall, 1st in points, week 14 bye GameDay Geeks 10-3 16 2nd overall, 7th in points, playoffs start week 15 WCOFF Satellite 45 - 12 5th in points (total points league) Dirty Dozen Experts 5-6-2 12 6th overall, 3rd in points, out of the playoffs Zealots Grange Masters 3-10 12 10th overall, 7th in points, out of the playoffs FFTOC - 180 Don't ask...

Maybe I should take week 14 off from FF In The Groin. I have 4 bye weeks, 2 regular season games that are meaningless to my playoff position, and a couple out of the playoffs. There is one playoff game in the OUFL which is an 8 qualifying team, 3 week tourney for the big trophy. And being the #1 seed, if that doesn’t go well, then I really won’t feel like writing this column any more than I did last year after week 14 (same league, #2 seed).

Fun With Numbers

So, I think it is fair to say that is a pretty good season on the fantasy gridiron. I send a special thanks to Joey Galloway for being on 5 of my teams. But do I have something to complain about, as the theme of this column would suggest? Of course. You should know I would come up with something...

In leagues run on MyFantasyLeague.com, they have a neat standings report of power rankings, based on their formula. In that report is the “All-Play Record”, which represents what each team’s head-to-head record would be if you played each team in your league once, each week of the year.

Recently I came to the revelation that if my winning percentage based on the schedule is worse than my all-play winning percentage, then I have suffered from a schedule disadvantage (a.k.a. the head-to-head schedule luck factor of fantasy football). Feel like you score well but play the top scoring team each week? This should prove your case.

And sure enough, 4 of my leagues I was worse head-to-head than all-play, including the 2 worst, out of playoff leagues. Ay-Carumba! I had an overall schedule disadvantage of 2.4%! I knew it! All right, I’ll keep writing FF In The Groin for another year...

Here is one which helps explain my worst league of the year, the Grange Masters. Another good name for this graph is, “Quarterback By Committee - Are You Frickin’ Kidding Me?” I drafted Trent Green, Chad Pennington and J.P. Losman. Traded for Kelly Holcomb before Losman lost his job (the writing was on the wall), and picked up Mark Brunell off waivers.

One would think between those options I could pick a decent QB starter all year, right? Exactly 3 times out of 13 I managed to pick the best QB starter. Three! And how about picking Pennington in week 3 (got injured), Brunell in week 8 (useless after 5 straight weeks of 20+ point production) and Holcomb in week 10 (got injured).

I scored 140 points from the QB position all year. If I just stuck with Trent Green all year (including taking a zero for his bye week), or Mark Brunell all year (including taking a zero for his bye week), I would have been over 180. Talk about taking yourself out of the game. QBBC? No thanks...


Trading is not my thing. Either my perception is such that I only remember the really bad trades, or I only hit well on about 1 in 4 (maybe 1 in 5) trades. Sadly, I think my perception is pretty close to reality.

Anyway, here is an interesting little analysis following the path of Steven Jackson through the Dirty Dozen league. He starts off on Team A as a 4th round keeper - great value - but pretty much stinks it up weeks 1 and 3 sandwiched by an okay game against the Cards.

A trade! Team A sends Steven Jackson and Roy Williams to Team B for Reggie Wayne and Tony Gonzalez. So what does Steven Jackson do? He promptly rattles off his best 5 games of the year scoring in every one of them.

For whatever reason, Team B is still out of playoff contention by the time week 10 rolls around. Team C, who is fighting for a playoff spot but weak at RB ponies up a 1st round pick next year, plus Chris Cooley (who by the way would have made the difference between a win or loss in week 10 with Antonio Gates on bye), for Steven Jackson and a 16th round pick next year.

RB position solidified, right? Well, Team C did not make the playoffs. Guess who Team C was?

Comments From The Couch

• I'd comment more on the Bills game, but this column is rated like Madden '06 by the Entertainment Software Review Board, "E" for Everyone. When I think about that game I jump right into Grand Theft Auto: Vice City territory, "M" for Mature with emphasis on Strong Language and Violence (violence toward inanimate objects of course, like my TV remote).

And The Winner Is…

I’ve got to go with Lee Evans. Not only was he the only non-QB, 3 TD performer this week, but, um... well I have to make up for that non-starting gaffe this week. Seriously Lee, week 15 versus the Broncos and week 16 at the Bengals, we can expect a repeat performance, right? I’m sure there won’t be that much snow flying around preventing you from hauling in 50+ yard passes assuming J.P. can get the ball to you against two playoff bound defenses. I could really use it then, or I might need to make a Circle of Trust exception to Kevin Jones. That is the last thing I want to consider at this point.