Calling our Shots: Year in Review

Fantasy football can at times be a very funny place to seek help when you need it most. One week, a so called “expert” will tell you to start “Player A” because “Player A” is a “can’t miss” starter who will blow up that week. A week later, that expert will deny giving that advice to their readers or followers but will be more than happy to tell you to start “Player B” this week. It would be almost comical in some instances if it wasn’t so tragic for the people who take the advice of these charlatans.

As a staff member of DLF, I can tell you that everyone affiliated with this site both loathes and detests this behavior. Every staff member on the DLF team constantly tries to learn and better ourselves so we may be of better help to you. Part of that process is being accountable for our successes, as well as our failures. We’re did that each and every week as we offered personalized lineup advice as part of our premium content.

We also rolled out this series entitled, “Calling Our Shots.” The premise of this series was to get some predictions for the upcoming weeks. Some writer’s predictions were bold, some were solid, while others, well, we’re glad we didn’t place too much money on them in Las Vegas!

When we were right, we shared our successes. When we were wrong, it presented a great way for our loyal readers to give us a good (and hopefully friendly) ribbing. The point is we didn’t hide from the advice we gave or the predictions we made.

We gave you the same chance.

Our community is an essential part of the success of DLF. This weekly series asked YOU, the readers, to post your own shots in the comments below each article. We all have that coach in our league who says, “Yeah, I could have told you not to start that guy” and perhaps that’s even you who thinks that! Well, this was your chance to make those bold predictions when they counted - before the games were played. We invited everyone to blow up the comments section and make any player predictions you wanted for the week – this gave you a perfect opportunity to officially say, “I told you so,” or offer a brutally embarrassing piece of ammunition for your opponent to use against you next week. Either way, this was a great way for the community and the writers to have some good old fashioned fun each and every week!

As fun as this column has been, we are ending it at the regular season and what an end to the regular season we saw in Week 17! We saw Drew Brees throw for 396 yards and four touchdowns in his game, almost like a normal day at the office for Brees. We also saw DeAngelo Williams rush for 210 yards and two touchdowns, appearing out of nowhere. Finally, Michael Crabtree capped off his season with a nice eight catch, 172 yard and two touchdown day. What a note to go out on!

So how about the DLF staff, did we close out the season on as high of a note as the NFL did? Well, we didn’t do too bad, hitting on 19 shots. Jacob Feldman racked in six correctly called shots to claim the Week 17 Shot Caller of Week 17 crown. Here are the correct shots for Week 17 that were called by the DLF staff:

TheFFGhost – Peterson will get force fed over 25 carries.

Jacob Feldman – Peterson becomes AP2K.

Andy Miley – Rodgers throws for another 300 yard game and 3+ touchdowns.

Chris Rohrer – Not the season to bet against Peterson… becomes seventh player in NFL history to hit 2k.

TheFFGhost – Brees lights the Carolina secondary up for over 325 yards.

Jacob Feldman – Brees gets the 220 yards he needs to post his third 5000 plus yard season, the only one to ever do that.

TheFFGhost – The Giants walk away with at least a 21 point win.

Jacob Feldman – McCoy posts over 100 combined yards with 4+ catches.

Andy Miley – Pittsburgh defense has back to back games with 2+ turnovers and 4+ sacks.

Chris Rohrer – Doug Martin shakes out of his funk and finishes the season with a 100 yard rushing game.

Jacob Feldman – Stevie Johnson has 4+ catches for 80+ yards.

TheFFGhost – In a suprise AJ Green won’t be the leading receiver in this game.

Eric Hardter – Bernard Pierce out-carries Ray Rice in what amounts to a meaningless game for the Ravens.

Jacob Feldman – Romo posts more yards than RG3.

Jacob Feldman – The Chiefs have more yards rushing than passing for the second week in a row.

Chris Rohrer – The Broncos defense holds the Chiefs to 10 points or less.

TheFFGhost – McFadden will not even hit 60 rushing yards.

Chris Rohrer – Antonio Gates finds the end zone in his third straight contest.

Chris Rohrer – Marshawn Lynch posts his fourth straight 100 yard rushing performance.

We at DLF just missed on another five shots. Here are those shots:

Eric Hardter – Taylor Thompson sees extensive action and records at least three catches.

Jacob Feldman – Foster bounces back with a great game. 100+ yards and a score.

Chris Rohrer – Ballard has 80+ rushing yards.

Eric Hardter – Christian Ponder throws for over 250 yards as the Vikings fall behind.

Eric Hardter – It’s the year of records!  Russell Wilson breaks Peyton Manning’s rookie passing TD record in a winning effort.

Now is the time to name the last weekly shot caller, the reader shot caller of Week 17. It’s a familiar name that you might all be familiar with, none other than Jeremy Nusbaum. He correctly hit on seven calls in this, the final week. Here are those correct shots:

-HOU@IND: Arian Foster rebounds from his 0 point fantasy performance last week and is worth 10 or more points (in Yahoo standard league scoring).

-MIA@NEP: Tannehill and Brady collectively throw for at least 200% more yards than the combined rushing totals of both teams.

-PHI@NYG: Eagles rush for at least 50% of their passing total (versus only 25% over the past 3 games).

-CLE@PIT: Pittsburgh’s defense destroys the Browns, limiting them to 13 or fewer points on offense and under 290 combined rushing and passing yards.

-BAL@CIN: In a nasty division rivalry, I’m taking the “Under” 42.5 point line.

-KCC@DEN: Denver manhandles and crushes the Chiefs, winning by at least 2 TD’s.

-OAK@SDC: In a competition to see who has the worst starting QB, neither shines.

Before we reveal the first grand winner of the Calling of Shots article series we wanted to share some interesting statistics with all of you. First, over the seventeen week we’ve been doing this the DLF staff have called a total of 254 shots correctly, that’s an average of roughly 15 shots called correctly per week. As for our readers, a grand total of 99 shots were called correctly by the weekly winners. That comes out to a total of almost six shots called correctly a week.

As for overall bests, the DLF staff had their best week in Week 11 in which we called 24 shots correctly that week. We nearly hit the amount again with a 23 shot performance in Week 14. The best week one of our weekly winners turned in was an eight shot performance that was three-way tie between KCGuzz (Week 2) and Jeremy Nusbaum (Weeks 8 and Week 11).

It’s been a great season for this column but now comes the grand finale, the moment that this entire contest has been conducted for, to give away some free stuff!

The winner of the “‘Calling Our Shots” grand prize of one year of DLF Premium and a DLF t-shirt is Christopher Hallam. Congratulations  - you were the winner for week five, but more importantly, you’re the DLF Shot Caller of 2012!

Thank you everyone, both DLF members and readers, for all your participation. I hope you’ve all had as much fun as I have with this contest. Also, congratulations to Christopher Hallam – we’ll be in contact with you to get you your prizes. I wish everyone a great playoff experience and hope to see all of you back, participating in this column next year!