Home

	Sign In Sign-Up

2002 Recap

The 2002 BFFFL season will go down as one of the great ones! With so much money on the line, there were not a lot of major mistakes made and everyone left the draft in very good shape to make a run at the championship. Most of the time after drafts there are 3-4 very good teams, but this year there was parity. Five teams battled out at 8-6 for three playoff spots and it came down to the final week and final Monday night game of the season. Good job by all league participants on making this the best season ever.

Below is a critique of each team as the year went on. Don't take these personally: if you sucked this year you knew it and one more razzing won't kill ya. If you were good, you weren't good enough to beat me (except Bryan) so a razzing is due. Enjoy.

10. Chris
Chris, Chris, Chris, Chris, Chris. What else can I say? He almost tied Dave for worst record in BFFFL history at 2-12. A pitiful 3-11 record was downright poor. Coming into this year I really thought each team would be in contention. Probably the funniest thing I have ever heard this year was Chris drafting Shaun Alexander and then Peyton Manning in the second and saying "man, my team sucks". After two picks he thought his team sucked. I guess he was right. Chris ended up trading Alexander, Manning, and his third rounder T Holt. He didn't get much back in return. Chris' strategy of chosing all backups to stars would have worked last year, but there were no significant injuries this year so his team of A Zeroue, S Mack and L Gordon didn't bode so well. Chris has vowed to make a serious comeback next year.

9. John
John had a much better team than his record showed -- on paper. Having J Garcia, C Garner, C Portis, D Stallworth, P Price, and J Shockey would be a great team .... next year. Garcia was the main reason for his slow start. Drafting Garcia with the 2nd overall pick was a head scratcher. He probably would have been there for John's 2nd round pick. A few games with less than 10 from Garcia was really to blame. C Portis in the 4th round was a real stretch at the time, but John was correct in seeing Portis' potential. The only problem was that this potential didn't come around until like week 6 or 7. Starting 1-5 doesn't help. Too bad this is not a keeper league as John would be sitting pretty right now.

8. Keith
Keith had a solid core of A Brooks, Edge, Tiki, and TO. The only problem with Keith's team is he also had B Griese and T Brady. He started Brooks and Brady tore it up. He started Brady and Griese and Brooks tore it up. You get the picture. By the time he dealt Tiki and Griese for Alexander it was too late. Also, getting 0 points each week by your kr was not good. Myself seeing this I pulled off my best trade in recent years. TO was on a few game bad streak (see John and J Garcia) so I offered R Moss and C Rogers for TO. Keith quickly accepted as he was getting two starters. Even to my disbelief TO tore the league up in the final stretch. This propelled me to the playoffs and Keith to a losing record. Oh yeah, thanks to Keith getting booted off the internet every other pick, we once again had a smooth 5 hour draft. We are going to have to start having these things at 7 am!!!

7. Gary
Nothing is sweeter than seeing Gary not make the playoffs. Gary must have been very busy in his new home of Pennsylvania as we did not hear much from him this year. We would always enjoy Gary's 5 page thesis on how his team was great and everyone else's (mainly mine) sucked. Losing will make the cacking less effective! Gary (like everyone) seemed to have a really good team on paper. Drafting the likes of A Green, F Taylor, Culpepp and Plexiglass made quite the team. Gary would consistently score around the high 80's and low 90's -- never really breaking out, but not really having a bad week. Unfortunately, this makes you lose a lot of 98-90 games which he did. Having no kr for about 5 of those weeks really hurt Gary, as it did a lot of owners. With all the prep work that Gary does (used to do??) it was real surprising to see him so low in the standings. But it will be nice to use all year against him.

6. Mike
There were 5 teams tied at 8-6. Unfortunately for Mike, total points is the tie breaker and Mike had the lowest of all of us. Mike had some really nice players in T Henry, M Harrison and H Ward. One two words sum up Mike's season: Kurt Warner, or should I say Hurt Warner. This absolutely destroyed Mike's team. Mike then lost J Fiedler and Trent Dilfer in back to back weeks. Of course, there were no more qb's left so he had to start R Lucas a few weeks --- yikes. Surprisingly even without Warner, Mike did well. He won a lot of close games but was rarely blown out. Another problem for Mike was that it took him a while to realize Rod Smith was not that good anymore and he should start Ward. It is difficult to know when to make that transition.

5. Tota
I personally really thought Tota was going to have a good year. I too was very high A Train (yikes) and he had him paired up with L Tomlinson who I also liked a lot. Tota waited a while before picking a qb ... and I mean a while. In the meantime he was able to grab a couple of decent receivers and more rb's. It must have been the 8th round or so and Tota still didn't have a qb .. but he coveted one -- Drew Bledsoe. I think two picks before Tota went, Bledsoe was taken. Good thing he was over the internet as the swears were rampant. Tota had to "settle" for a second year back named M Vick. Anyone heard of him? Unfortunately for Tota Vick played ok at first and was nothing to write home about. This teamed with A Train sucking and D Foster getting hurt, Tota was in trouble from the start. Actually, it was funny as Tota drafting D Foster in the 5th round even though we all knew he was out for a while with an injury. Tota was also the king of the 78-72 victories. He always seemed to play the team with the lowest score. But that is why we play the games.

4. Roger
Roger had a great tandom of qb's in McNabb and Bledsoe. Unfortunately you only get to start one. By the time Roger traded Bledsoe away it was a little too late. Roger came out like a banshee this year winning (I believe) his first 5 games. Then McNabb went down. Wouldn't you know he went down the week after he traded Bledsoe away -- very comical! Roger also had another problem in that he never started the right wr. He had Tim Brown, J Thrash and J Porter. He would take a chance on Porter and Thrash did well. He benched Porter and Brown tore it up, etc., etc. Roger held on finishing up the season 3-6 to make the playoffs, but he got demolished in the playoffs scoring 48 in his consolation game. Roger, however, is consistently in the playoffs and was really only 1 injury away from being a solid contendor.

3. Dave
Like death and taxes, it is inevitable that Dave will have Brett Favre. This has to be at least 4 straight years with Favre, not that this is a bad thing for him, but it must be getting a tad boring. M Faulk also joins Dave for the second straight year as Dave won the "Marshall Faulk" 1st pick in the draft. We all knew Faulk would go #1, what we didn't know is that Faulk would be so injured. Led by Dave's #2 choice D McCallister, M Booker and C Conway, Dave stormed to get the mid year point bonus. Unfortunately Dave came back to Earth and his team caught up with him as he limped to an 8-6 record. Such a hot start, I think Dave was expecting more. Dave lost in a heated semi-final matchup with me as I needed 10 poits by Eddie George in the Monday night game against the Pats. Luckily the Pats D sucked this year against the run and George was able to get 100+ yds and a score. Dave had one of the least impressive wins in recent history as he beat Roger 58-48 in the consolation game. This was a very very ugly win, but netted Dave another .

2. Noel
Looking back now, I am lucky to get into the playoffs and even get second place. Drafting R Moss with the #8 pick, I passed up the likes of P Holmes and L Tomlinson. I was kicking myself as T Owens came back around, but I could not pick the dreaded wr/wr first two rounds. Two people saved my year: Rich Gannon and Michael Lewis. As this was the last year for kr's, I made it a good one as Lewis had the most points ever by a kr in the history of the BFFFL and we have had some good ones. In one game he got me 40 points (200 kr yds, 80 pr yds and 2 td's). That is more than of the other owners got all year. I was able to make some great waiver wire pickups in getting W Green, L Coles and Chad Johnson off waivers. Riding the mediocrity train at 5-5, I pulled off my biggest trade in years, not in the player, but how the player did after the trade. I traded C Rogers and R Moss to Keith for TO who had gone a stretch of a few games without performing. I figured it wouldn't cost me much to get the better of the two wr's. It paid huge dividends as I would have definitely struggled to get in the playoffs. Second place paid well at almost .

1. Bryan
Bryan jumped on P Holmes' back and never got off. Bryan had a solid starting team for the year, but really had no bench. In past years this would have been a problem, but Bryan didn't have any significant injuries. He had a 3/4 healthy C Martin, but he always played. Bryan made a very good trade to acquire P Manning. This made his team even more solid. Bryan was consistent through the year, but finished a measly 5 fantasy points away from me for the year end bonus. He won both matches in the playoffs very easily to capture the $1,000 first place prize and his first BFFFL Championship.