Who am I?

Thought it could be a good idea to write a little about me and my relation to football, for any interested readers. I'm 23 years old and I live in Sweden. I'm a girl, or woman, depending on how you view it. Currently studying and working part time.

The story of how I "found" American football started with my boyfriend. He and a friend wanted to start following a football team, and picked the New England Patriots. When it got closer to Christmas my boyfriend wanted me to watch a game with him, and he taught me the rules (and also who Brady is). We watched a few games that season, and this season we've watched most games together. Then when this seasoned started he found the Manning brothers' DirectTv ad, Fantasy Football Fantasy, which introduced me to fantasy football. I got interested and created an NFL account and joined a league. When it was time for the draft I knew basically no players outside of Patriots, apart from a few like Eli and Peyton. My starting team was probably a disaster, but I was blissfully unaware. I have switched out most of my players since then, I think I only have three players still that I picked at the time. I have the most moves by far in my league. But I'm learning, every day and every week. I'm currently at second place in the league, but there are quite a few weeks left, so we'll see where I end up.

I have now access to NFL Game Pass so I try to watch as many games as I can, learning more and I make a point of actually seeing "my" players in action. So in short, I'm a beginner in the world of football, and very much a beginner in the world of fantasy football. But everyone has to start somewhere, right?

An unexpected twist

This is what's so fun with fantasy football, every week and every day something changes. Someone has bye week, another has an injury and the third has a really bad matchup ahead. You always have to rethink your options, look for new players and move around in your team. It's also annoying, but it's part of the game so you have to take it as a challenge.

As this week goes, my wide receiver Edelman had a limited practice on Wednesday. I'm not very worried that he won't play, but it's possible that he won't be on the field as much or not being able to do as well as when he's healthy. Which puts me in a tricky position, start him or not start him? I won't decide now because I want to see if we get more news about his injury, but I'll have to think about it until Sunday. I'm considering picking up Broncos' running back Anderson, because several of the offensive top players in Broncos are injured, so it's a good possibility that he will get more yards and already his points have been going up. In that case I could start him instead of Edelman. We'll see how the end of the week unfolds.

Preparing for week 12

Two of my players are on bye this week, Benjamin and Olsen. It's too bad, because Bejamin is one of my best players, and I'm not sure who should take his place. I have Sanu, but he's had two bad weeks, I wonder if that will continue or if he will do better against Texans.

Robinson is back from bye week and took West's place as second running back. I brought in Colts' Fleener as my tight end for the week, I'm hoping he will continue to produce as many points as he has the past two weeks. For him I dropped Dolphins defense, and I'm now trying to decide if I should start Patriots or Eagles. Projection-wise they are just one point from each other, so it seems I can go with either.

Another thing is that Eli Manning is said to be a good start against the Cowboys, since he's usually good against them. I wonder if that could be a good move. If Brady will do a lot of running games again against Lions on Sunday, it could be worth starting Eli. Though on the other hand, Eli had five interceptions last week. It will probably not be that bad this week but how much better is it going to be?

That's all for now, I will think about wide receiver, which quarterback and which defense I will start during the week.

Week 11 afterthoughts

Week 11 has ended. I won my matchup with a total of 77.38 points but it was a close one, only 4 points difference. I'm very glad I brought in the Dolphins defense, they got 8 points, while my other defenses, Eagles and Patriots, got -3 and 4 points, respectively. West from Browns made the lowest score in my team, but I knew he had a risk of producing very little, so I wasn't that surprised. My biggest disappointment was probably Brady, not because he did very badly, he got 15 points, but the Patriots played a great game on Sunday. They won the game 42-20 and made 6 touchdowns. Sadly, most of them were made by running back Gray, so Brady didn't benefit from those.

Beckham started slow but caught up towards the end, and so did Benjamin who continues to produce steady, good scores. Olsen, Vereen and Edelman all did okay. The kicker Gostkowski was a little disappointing too, since he didn't get to kick one single field goal in the game, so the points stayed pretty low with only the points after touchdowns.

My decision in choosing to start Edelman instead of Bengals' Sanu proved a smart one. Sanu only made 2.3 while Edelman made 8.1. All in all, not that great of a week point-wise, but right decisions on who to start was made and that feels good.

The Issue of Eli Manning

I saw this tweet from Andrew Siciliano and wanted to comment on it. I keep a pretty close watch on Eli because he's in my fantasy team, though on the bench since the Giants bye week. It was a hard game to watch this weekend with all those interceptions. Would've been even harder if he'd been my starting quarterback. As soon as he started to up the yards he would throw an interception, and get minus points. 

I didn't follow other teams last year so I don't know what the situation was then, but I think it happened now because Eli is pressured at almost all times. The Giants o-line isn't protecting him well enough, so he has to throw it fast not to get sacked. He doesn't have a lot of time to consider where he should throw the ball and what's the best timing to do it. He just has to get the ball away fast to avoid sacks. That's when interceptions happens. Eli also seems to have some miscommunication with his wide receivers and tight end, with them going different ways than the balls, another reason for the many interceptions. The Giants have some work to do in their team.

Eli is not bad, but at this point he's very uneven and hard to rely on making enough fantasy points.