Week Two - Taco, Bench Points and Reigning Champs

I would like to start by thanking David J. Miller for benching all of his good players this week.

As much as I hate living in a fantasy world where Cam Newton routinely puts up 30+ points, where Knowshon Moreno is less relevant than Ryan Leaf and where I pay five American dollars each week on another fill-in tight end, it is, unfortunately, the world I currently occupy, so there is nothing left to do but to make fun of it and everyone else around me.  So let's get into the newsletter for Week Two:

The Stud of the Week:  Our first repeat offender.  The Big Sandwich's 151-point performance was fueled by another outstanding fantasy performance from Aaron Rodgers and a combined 46-point output from his WRs.  Kenny Britt seems to be the steal of the draft thus far.  Cedric Benson and Sebastion Janikowski were the only two starters not register a double-digit total.  On the flip side, his bench only had one double-digit performance (Ryan Fitzpatrick - 23) and seven other single-digit outputs.  Again, great point maximization from The Big Sandwich.  At this rate, it's going to take some serious points to knock off the early favorite.  Amy tried hard this week (123 total points) and still fell. . . pause for mental math. . . 28 points short.

Honorable Mention: Knuckle Junction.  Other than Robbie Gould and Mike Thomas, who had to start due to a number of injuries on the roster, each player in the starting lineup went for double digits.  Great balance leads to high totals (145).  As a general rule in my life, a grown man who professionally goes by the name "Beanie" is not someone I care to associate with, but if he's adding 15 points to my fantasy team and, for all intents and purposes, replacing Knowshon Moreno he would easily become my new best friend if it weren't for Fred Jackson running lose all over Oakland.

The Willy Lowman of the Week:  Our second repeat offender.  William Wallace is getting comfortable on the wrong side of the newsletter.  Just when we all thought Taco was getting his act together by having a seemingly adequate draft, he shows his true colors the first two weeks and finds himself as the Lowman in Week Two.  When your kicker records more points than all but two of your other starters, traditionally, things aren't going too well.  Further, when said kicker doubled the totals of four of your other starters you end up as the Lowman of the Week. 

His bench was equally inadequate so we really can't ridicule his start-bench decisions.  So, in that way, it really wasn't his fault.  But, in a slightly more logical way, it is completely his fault because he picked each and every one of those players. 

It's not all negative this week for Taco, however, because both of his "zeros" were squarely on his bench.  Congratulations for not starting a "zero."  We're proud of you.

Honorable Mention:  New territory here for the Nolans.  Unless, of course, you include almost all of last year.  The 49er's D/ST did not come to the Nolans rescue this week, nor will they ever again, so it may be time to start thinking about starting players not named Davone Bess.  I understand that Santonio Holmes was listed as questionable leading up to Sunday's game, but he played at 1pm and it was announced well before game time that he would in fact be in the lineup.  Under no circumstance is starting Bess over Holmes acceptable unless it's in a fantasy league that deducts points for having illegitimate children and running into problems with the law.  Stop preparing to be new parents and pay more attention to your fantasy team.  Priorities, Nolans.  Priorities. 

Meet the 0.1 Percent:  Danny Amendola is only owned by 3.6 percent of all ESPN fantasy participants.  That, in and of itself, is impressively low.  Amy Tardiff not only doesn't care that (almost) no one else owns him, she also decided that he is worth starting.  According to ESPN.com, Amendola was only started by 0.1 percent of owners last week.  While not confirmed, it is my suspicion that our Mrs. Tardiff is the ONLY owner to start Amendola in all ESPN leagues.  She is the 0.1 percent.  I'm not even mad.  That's impressive.

Email I Don't Expect To See This Week:  Probably won't get a Week Two manifesto from Whore Hands since he lost to Sam and Wicked of Lately.  Leaving 34 WR points on the bench isn't necessarily a bad thing (depth can be good), but when you consider he only started 15 points worth of WR this week, it starts to become a problem.

Reigning Champion Update:  When you start 0-2 after being crowned the first-annual Millerkuz champ a change is necessary.  Unfortunately for Cafaro he can't change his draft.  He did, however, change his name back, which does not, in fact, lead to more points. It's science.  On an unrelated note - if anyone is actively seeking to trade any and all Steeler personnel, please see Jim Cafaro immediately.