The Dynasty Confessional: Bye Week Trouble

My home dynasty league is among the most sophisticated, ambitious, and revolutionary leagues that I’ve ever encountered. It is a sixteen team league, and for the most part we’ve had a consistent group of guys playing for over a decade. Many of us live close enough to regularly meet up at the local watering holes. The enthusiasm and competition in this league is second to none. Many of us, especially the closer of friends, have almost come to blows on fantasy related matters that would seem meager to most.

I was a bad fantasy football owner for years. In my early days, I would show up with nothing more than a two month old fantasy magazine, a twelve pack of something light, and whatever knowledge I’d learned from SportsCenter that off-season. I’d try to get cute with many of my draft picks; among the worst picks I ever made was Rueben Droughns early in the second round. That pick still gets brought up at least once a year, usually during the draft.

Our league is titled “Deez Nutz Fantasy League” or “DNFL”. The name is elementary, sure, but as I’ve stated, this league has been going since the early 2000’s, when many of us were teenagers. We are all suckers for tradition, so the name is cemented in the pages of history. While it is similar in many ways to a traditional dynasty league, there are many unique rules. We hold a head coach auction, we draft offensive lines, we were among the pioneers of the “IDP” movement, we were the first to implement defensive game planning, among many other uncommon regulations. The league only has twelve keeper spots, and the first two rounds are considered “elite” rounds, so you could call it a “keeper league” if you wanted; really it’s a hybrid. The two elite rounds in our league, are rounds in which players can be drafted, but will not be eligible to be kept the following year. The exception to this rule is rookies. The first two rounds are a mix between all-pros and first year players.

During the summer of 2010, I was able to finally turn my team into what I thought was a contender. I had already drafted Matt Ryan and Hakeem Nicks prior to their rookie campaigns, Santana Moss was still in his prime, I just traded for Jermaine Gresham, and I had a large amount of early round draft picks. I was ready to finally be among the contending teams in the league, which felt great. I made the playoffs for the first time the year before, and I was ready to make a run at the championship. I was overly prepared that year. No more magazines, light beer, or Chris Berman. I’d been accumulating fantasy knowledge over the internet. Websites were now becoming a popular medium to gain fantasy wisdom; I was starting to get the philosophy of becoming a winner.

We held the draft at my friend Troy’s new house. Most of the league arrived prior to the draft, but some simply lived too far away and had to communicate via telephone. Troy and I had been friends for about ten years at this point. We talked fantasy football almost every day, and we still do. He was my closest friend in the league, and for that, I wanted to ravage his fantasy team when we played. This year it would be week seven.

When I was sixteen years old, I lived in Clemson, South Carolina. I loved going to games at Little John Stadium. The player I was most excited about joining the NFL, in 2010, was CJ Spiller, but I didn’t want anything to do with him in fantasy. He was drafted very high in the first round of the NFL draft, but it seemed he’d be stuck behind Marshawn Lynch and Fred Jackson on the depth chart for years. Jahvid Best was the rookie running back that I had a radar lock on.

I held the second overall pick that year, and I selected Maurice Jones-Drew. Ryan Matthews was the first pick by a rebuilding team, so I got the best available one year running back. I came into the draft with Shonn Greene already on my squad, so I had a solid combination of ball carriers, especially for a sixteen team league. I had the tenth overall pick as well, and my sights were set on Best. There were many veterans being taken in the top ten, but a couple of rookie wide receivers, Dez Bryant and Demarius Thomas, were selected just a few spots before me. I started to get nervous that Best wouldn’t fall to me, so I started sending out trade offers. I furiously wanted to trade up one spot, but the guy ahead of me was very set in staying in the ninth spot. The pick got to him, he selected Joseph Addai. I was elated, I got my guy.

At this point you may be thinking “well that’s a horrible story, you could have traded up to get Bryant or Thomas, you could have selected Spiller, what were you thinking?” Even in hindsight, Best was a very good player. Nobody could have predicted the concussions that would end his career early. Selecting Best wasn’t my only mistake that year, in fact, that isn’t even the tip of the iceberg.

The third round arrived, and my team appeared to be ultra competitive. I had talent at my skill positions, and I was in a position to start adding depth to them.  The third round was the first round in which we could draft players who weren’t rookies and be able to keep them for potentially their whole career. During that offseason, I had been researching an undrafted sophomore running back who played for the Houston Texans. He had a couple good games down the stretch the prior year, but the Texans had just spent a high pick on rookie running back, Ben Tate.

I was about to pull the trigger on drafting Arian Foster, but I took a gander at my running backs’ bye weeks. Best and Greene both had week seven byes; Foster also had a bye in week seven. He couldn’t even help me in my plot to dominate Troy. He was useless to me.

I drafted Donovan McNabb with my third round pick. He played one game for me that year, and I released him the following off-season. The guy who picked right after me selected Foster and still has him to this day.