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Knowshon
Moreno should be a good enough #1 RB
.Photo
by Justin Edmonds- Getty Images
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........and Buffalo's Fred Jackson at #2 should be
just fine, thank you Photo-Rick Stewart- Getty Images
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Imagine if you never had to see Mike
Pelfrey pitch again……in
your entire lifetime….Pelfrey-free….aahh.
But this won’t be about the Mets. After all, what can anybody really say? Just, please God, don’t make me watch any
more Mets wheel-plays. And the latest
highlight of the Mets fortunes was Jason Bay’s arm-less lunge for home
plate
with his arms pinned to the ground under his body.
The Mets won that one so Jason gets a
pass, but it was the
most ridiculous slide I’ve ever seen.
Enough said about the Mets. Even if David Wright had a really nice night
and
Tejada made the tough
play he had to make to close the game out. It
was like old times. Reyes
was
back smiling and Wright was playin’ energized and Duda came through
with a nicely-
measured swing to win it. I could really
get used to watching baseball like that.
I just watched a replay of the
Jets-Giants exhibition game
from Monday night. I thought it was bad
the first time around. It was worse in
Round 2. The Giants, who lost 17-3 to
their Green rivals, looked ordinary at best. The
Jets were just a little more impressive.
If it seemed to you that Eli Manning
had no clue as to where
his receivers might be going, join the club. If
it seemed to you as if nobody ever came open for
him, you’re not
alone.
The Jets actually looked better
defensively to me than they
were last year. The offense needs a
little work right now but that could be said of a number of teams. They can still run the ball, especially if
Shonn Green stays healthy. Once again,
their only fly in the ointment might be New England. The Pats will be a
huge
fly to swallow.
But most people here are just getting
over the wrath of
Irene, the raging waters, the dump from the sky. Trees
down, power lines down, rivers
swelling, politicians swaggering, and Weather-Channel scaring the life
out of
you every step of the way, but especially before the event . Irene
was a big fat girl wagging her fatt butt all the way up the Jersey
coast.
But I stood ready for her, pump ready
for the
onslaught. Around 2 PM on Saturday, the
pumping began. But its little 1/6 HP
heart couldn’t keep the waters below the 18” retaining wall between the
garage
and house proper, could it? Well, it
pumped its little brains out for about 27 hours straight and saved our
butts
from a watery ending.
The power held up for me.
There’ll be a generator in my future.
The worst wind I got was
as Irene
was dragging her disgusting ass out of here. She
was worn out by then, all that torrential rain
for all that time
having dragged the venom out of her. Her
home invasion was finally over by mid-afternoon Sunday.
I’m thinking about giving my pump a
name.
But right before the deluge, that
would be Saturday morning,
we had our fantasy draft. That was
fun. Once again, I tested my QB-first
strategy with a guy everybody seems to have forgotten about, Drew Brees. He had no running game last year at all and
still managed to have himself a nice year.
But it’s all about risk.
The first pick should offer the highest risk-reward. If running backs get hurt waaay more often
than QB’s, how can you pick a RB first? There
were four who loomed over the rest of the
ball-carriers, Arian Foster,
Adrian Peterson, Chris Johnson and, arguably, Rrrray Rrrrrice. In our new world of two-back systems, you
could throw a blanket around many of the rest.
I should point out too that passing
TD’s count as much as
running TD’s in our league and QB’s fantasy scores vs. RB scores are
always a
lot higher overall.
Then there is the matter of
variability, week to week
adherence to a standard. Drew Brees is
like a machine. The opponent doesn’t
matter that much, he’ll score against Green Bay and Buffalo too. He won’t be a target like Vick or slide
around a lot like Rodgers or have a Manning neck or a Brady benching in
Week
13.
He’ll just be cruisin’ this year,
handin’ the rock to Mark
Ingram, making the play-action go. And
there’ll be the same guys on the other end, Colston and Meachem and
Henderson
and Mohr. His line is good, his coach is
smart and they like to score points….every week.
I could have had RB Jamaal Charles, as
things turned out. He was one of the four
leading the pack and
perhaps my favorite among those. But
will all of those four guys finish the season? Would
Jamaal Charles have been the odd man out?
Anyway, my second pick was 21 overall
and I still didn’t
particularly like any of the running backs there so why not grab a top
wideout? And if you could get yourself a
Giant at the same time, why wouldn’t Hakeem Nicks be the logical choice? Then at 28 overall, there was Jersey-boy
Miles Austin edging out DeSean Jackson and the possibly resurgent JET
Shonn
Greene. I see lots of catches in my
future.
A lot of nice players disappeared from
the board before my
next pick. Fearing a run on tight ends,
I jumped on Jermichael Finley, Rodgers’s favorite target most Green Bay
days. I could finally select a running
back so I jumped on Knowshon Moreno of the Broncos, who does a little
bit of
everything pretty much all by himself in Denver.
I may have actually taken a risk with
Julio Jones, Atlanta’s
multi-pick alleged wonder, but I still wasn’t sold on any particular RB. I did get a nice reliable guy in Fred Jackson
of Buffalo, who got them his thousand yards last year and seems to be
the star
in lowly Buffalo. And, um, circle the
wagons.
And Detroit will be my defense. Good Luck.