Week Thirteen Preview: Battle Royale Edition

It’s time.

This one’s for all the marbles.

Me and Team rosellini. Winner gets the #1 seed. Loser gets… the #2 seed.

Okay, so it’s not like the championship is at stake this weekend – yet. But this seeding could go a long way to determine who the eventual champion is.

Although… There was another blockbuster trade this week that caused some controversy over whether it was fair or not. There’s always next year (currently in the #4 seed) picked up Mike Evans (currently the #1 wide receiver by points scored for the season) in exchange for three mediocre players. The fact that there were three of them maybe helps, but… who are we kidding, it doesn’t help at all. TANY has Mike Evans and Odell Beckham Jr. now from (less than honorable) trades, to say nothing of his drafted Antonio Brown. He’s a force. I’m not exactly eager to face him in the first round of the playoffs.

But I’m not eager to face the probable #3 seed either, KING OF TRADES, who’s done some shady trading of his own and boasts a lineup that features 2 top-5 running backs and 2 top-5 wide receivers.

Honestly, of the three playoff teams, the one I have the greatest chance against is Team rosellini. And after this week, I won’t get her again unless she and I both win our Round One matchups. Which we can do, we each have good teams or else we wouldn’t have gotten this far. It just feels a little David-and-Goliath for each of us against these two other monster teams.

But that’s a problem for next week. First things first: I have to beat rosellini for that #1 seed. Regular season champion has a nice ring to it, wouldn’t you say? And it’s in my grasp if I can just win this week.

So how’s it looking?

Pay attention here to the lines for TANY and KING OF TRADES. Notice how highly they are each favored? That’s those superteams working for them. Doesn’t hurt that they’re each facing pretty weak opposition, but they’d both be favored against me, for example.

You know who isn’t favored against me though? Team rosellini. Not even close.

That feels pretty good.

And now for a little more detail:

I’m concerned that it’s now early Sunday morning and she still hasn’t filled in for her tight end who is on a bye week. Of course she will, right? Of course she will. She has Antonio Gates on her bench, and he’s projected for 7 points, so inflate her projected score by 7 to presume that she gets her lineup straightened out in time. That still puts me out ahead.

Also interesting to note is that I’ve had two players go already in the Dallas/Minnesota Thursday night game, and she’s had one. In both cases they were pretty important players to our teams. And I had Ezekiel Elliott give me 15 points – exactly what he was predicted for – and Kai Forbath give me 10 – more than predicted, because he’s a Bruin and a badass – while she had Dak Prescott give her 10 – 5 less than predicted, and a terribly weak score from a quarterback.

She’s way behind the eight ball, in other words, while I’m just where I need to be.

In other news, I hate my streaming defense for the week, but I literally did not have other options. Every team out there made me nervous. One of the columns I read actually (mostly but not entirely jokingly) recommended streaming the Cleveland Browns defense, because they’re on a bye this week and “at least you know they won’t give you negative points”. That’s where we are right now. All the options are awful. Streaming defenses is no fun, but that’s what happens when the defense you drafted loses their best player to injury early on. I miss you, J.J. Watt.

Other than that, I’m rolling with my sort of base non-A.J. Green lineup with my three running back monsters, Edelman and Crowder in the wide receiver slots and looking for breakouts (in good matchups, I might add), Brady set to go Brady as my anchor, and C.J. Fiedorowicz as the tight end with the best matchup of my three. I do love this group and I expect big things from them.

Will they get me to a championship? Tough to say with some of the shenanigans my league-mates have pulled. But I’m proud of them, and proud of myself and how far I’ve come.

From Fantasy First-Timer to (possible) regular season champ.

One more day to get it done.