Fantays football tip

The fantasy football season in most leagues is at the halfway point. As I look back at my season and stress over what I've done right and wrong there are some valuable lessons to be learned. I've struggled almost every week with making roster moves and starting the most effective people. Because of this agony I have developed the ultimate formula for whom to start on any given week.

The very first thing, before any kind of analysis can be done, you have to know how your league is scored. More specifically you need to know how your league scores receptions and yardage. For example, in my league we get 1 point for every catch (WR, RB, TE) and .1 points for every yard.

This single stat is huge for making a draft strategy and then again for whom to start.

The second most important stat is learning who gets the most attempts and then who gets the most attempts in the red zone. This allows for very specific analysis of your players in the most important game time situations.

Taking in these three stats will make sure you have the most effective team playing each week. Fantasy football is a game of numbers and intuition. We all know it is impossible to predict each week who is going to have the best game, but this formula makes sure you have the best chance at garnering big points.

World Series

I was listening to the disgusting babble on sports radio yesterday and there was an interesting tone considering the World Series. It was boring. No one was overly excited and the mindset was that the Yankees were going to win. Scott Van Pelt said that it's almost expected that the Yankees win the world series, and it is. They invested almost a half a billion dollars into that lineup last year; when a team makes a commitment like that what other kind of standard are you going to hold them to? There is nothing else like it in the sporting world. The Patriots don't really buy championships, they win them. The Celtics really paid a pretty penny for KG and Ray Allen, but this doesn't even come close to competing with what the Yankees do.

The best part of any championship match is the reaction of the winner. The Yankees looked more relieved than they did happy that they just won the World Series. It's a self induced pressure cooker that looks like anything but fun. This is supposed to be the American pastime, for the Yankees its a curse. The ghosts from seasons past creep up like a cold fog, always holding the franchise to an insurmountable legend. The Yankees take on a mythical like feel when discussed in the daily sports world. They are supposed to win. Tthey have no other choice but to play to a standard higher than everyone else, regardless of whom it is they play or to whom signs the next big contract.

Its the Yankee curse.

It's going to be another hotly contested week in the SEC, with The Crimson Tide duking it out against the Tigers of L.S.U. who are 7.5 point underdogs. At this stage in the season it is fair to say that Alabama is the team to beat and their current attack seems more balanced then ever. But, this game has more to do with the national title picture than conference standings. Presumably if the Tide wins they are more than likely going to face Florida in the conference championship baring anything drastic happening to either team. Thus, the winner of this presumed game is going to compete for the BCS championship. But, what if both of these teams have one loss and Boise State wins out, along with Cincy and Oregon wins the rest of their games? How many of us would like to see Boise State vs. Oregon in that final game of the 2009-2010 season?

The recipe for disaster always looms at large when dealing with college football. How many other times are you going to rely on 19, 20 year old kids to handle enormous amounts of pressure?

A quick Lesson on the Spread Offense

Wildcat. The Spread. Option Read. Zone Read....all names of the current trend in American Football. All of these formations and sections of the play book are from the theory of the "spread" offense. Spread meaning an offensive team spreads the defense from sideline to sideline, making each one of its players a threat to move the football. This idea is not new to the game. Nebraska won many naitonal titiles using this formula. Airforce runs one of the nations nastiest offense with their triple option attack. Florida, Michigan, West Virginia...all teams who the offense of the next generation.
If we look at how Florida or Michigan uses the spread we see a team who, uses big multi-reciever formations to get the defense to put its players litterally all across the field. Then, depending on how the defense responds to the formation, the offense calls its play or the quarterback audibles to the play best suited to dismantle the current defensive formations and personel groupings.
Because the offense has the ability to run successful options plays, the defense has to respect the option and account for each player on the football field. Many teams try to counter this offense with wierd defensive formations or by putting as many fast defenders on the field as possible.
The question is why is this theory so successful?
The answer is the quarterback being able to make a quick play fake and throwing the ball like a normal run and shoot or west coast offense. The team who does this the best is obviously Florida, with Tim Tebow and crew, Michigan runs has the same idea behind how they deliver the football, Airforce runs an option Wing-T that forces denfense to do the same thing, many teams have ideas and formations to make this delivery system work. If we were to break down any given running play we would see one thing every single time, and thats the action right after the quarterback gets the football. Tebow and theother quarterbacks who run in this system, use the same device to throw off the defense, they make a play fake to their running back or make a step to hand the ball off. This action does a lot things at one time:
1. It forces the defense to look and see who has the ball. (Most teams call this, read and react.)
2. The quarter back allows his receivers to get seperation from the corner and gives him a good view of the coverage and who's open.
3. Changes the flow of the play. The offense makes a play fake going to either side to get the defensive line to commit to the rush.
All three of these things working simultaneously allow the Quarterback to have time in the pocket and find the open reciever down field.

The design of the Spread was to make the defense have to commit early on their coverage and where the pressure was comming from. This simple combitnation has led to many teams changing their whole offensive philosophy simply because the defense can't hide what they do.