Sean-Ward.com

So, this year’s season of fantasy football has come to an end, and I placed second in the league I’m commissioner of, Llama Llama Football. Weeks 1 through 14 were the regular season, and 15 and 16 were the playoffs.

I finished the regular season at 9 and 5, despite having to play some of the better-performing teams the last 3 weeks, all of which I won against. Part of the reason I did so well, and only got second place after the playoffs, was because of LaDainian Tomlinson. While I’m not saying that he is the only reason I did so well, he is responsible for a majority of my points in the league. Hell, the way our league scores, LT got 2nd place for the total number of points scored (293), only 11 behind Peyton Manning (304). The next running back, according to fantasy points is Larry Johnson in 12th, who trails LT by 110 points (183) and had just over half as many combined touchdowns (LT:33, LJ: 16). Hell, LT even managed to throw 2 touchdowns this season.

LT didn’t get any touchdowns in the week 16 game, which of course only gave me points (6) for his yardage (123 rushing, 10 passing). One touchdown would have had me down by 9 instead of 15. I also should have played Garrad (10) instead of Hasselback (2). Assuming that an LT touchdown would have resulted in more yardage, that would have possibly been enough to tie or win the game.

I can’t feel too bad about the loss, after all, it’s just fantasy football. However, my brother couldn’t always get his team ready, and much like we did for Meghan’s parents, if we saw one of their players was out or they hadn’t gotten the team ready in the half hour before the game started, we (or me, being the commissioner) made executive decisions to make sure no one was getting screwed because of bye weeks or injuries and that the teams were as good as they could be. I should say that at no point did we purposefully bench or remove players who were going to play. That would have just been wrong. At that point, why even bother playing?

What this meant was that I was able to co-manage a team successfully that didn’t have LT on the rooster. My brother drafted decently enough, using Yahoo’s preselected rankings, and did have QB Steve McNair (168) and RB Steven Jackson (165), who finished, point-wise, in 16th and 17th respectively.

So, when all is said an done, my team lost the game for 1st place 61 to 76, but part of it was me playing against myself. Like I said, I can’t feel too bad about the loss.

If you have a Yahoo account and care, you can see my Yahoo! Sports profile here.