Sports Time Radio

11/15/14

We’re heading into the home stretch for fantasy football as a lot of leagues wrap up a week or two before the regular season ends. I thought it would be a good time to look and see who’s been disappointing for fantasy owners. I’m going off of the ranking that were used in our longest running fantasy league called Next Year is Here 13. I know it’s 2014, but when I renewed the league I forgot to change the year. We’re going to try and stay away from players who missed multiple games because of injuries or suspension. At quarterback Jay Cutler of the Chicago Bears was the 18th rated player at draft time. Cutler is the 63rd ranked player going into Week 11. Carolina Panthers quarterback Cam Newton was ranked 39th at the start of the season. Newton missed a lot of the pre-season injured and it seems to have carried over into the season as Newton is ranked as the 65th overall player right now. Colin Kaepernick the San Francisco 49ers quarterback was the 31st ranked player coming into the season. Through 11 weeks Kapernick is in the 89th position among all players. If you remember at the start of this fantasy football season all the talk was about the running backs being the guys you needed to have. In our league running backs where projected to be the top 5 scoring players in our league. Through 11 weeks there is only 1 running back (DeMarco Murray) in the top 5 total scores. LeShon McCoy of the Philadelphia Eagles was the #1 overall rated player in our league coming into the 2014 season. Right now McCoy is the 71st rated player in our league. Green Bay Packers running back Eddie Lacy was the 5th rated player in our league. As of right now Lacy is the 44th rated player. Zac Stacy of the St. Louis Rams came into the season as the 29th rated running back. Through 11 weeks Stacy is rated at 215th. There are probably quite a few more running backs that we could list here, but we’ll save that for the end of the season. A lot of the top wide receivers have been injured and missed multiple games; so they’ll get a pass right now. Chicago Bears wide receiver Brandon Marshall was rated as the 13th overall player coming into 2014. Right now Marshall is rated as the 70th overall player. Keenan Allen if the San Diego Chargers was supposed to be the 27th overall player. Even with the solid year San Diego is having Allen is rated at 161st right now. Maybe Tampa Bay Buccaneers wide receiver Vincent Jackson was over rated at 36th to start the season. Even if Jackson was rated a little to high; he should be in a better position than 124th where he is right now.Injuries affect the tight end ratings as well and I actually had to search a little bit to find 3 tight ends. Playing in the up tempo Philadelphia Eagles offense Zac Ertz was in the 102nd position to start the season. Through 11 weeks Ertz is rated as the 137th overall player. Ladarius Green of the San Diego Chargers was supposed to take some catches away from Antonio Gates at tight end and that made Green the 137th rated player to start the season.Green was ranked 7 spots ahead of Gates. After 11 weeks Green is the 1782nd rated player overall while Gates is in the 37th spot. Since we need a third tight end let’s go with Tim Wright of the New England Patriots. Wright was traded to the Patriots at the start of the season and he was ranked as the 208th overall player. Right now Wright is ranked as the 208th overall player and while that not a huge drop I’m sure fantasy owners where looking at Rob Gronkowski’s injury history and thinking they might have a steal with Wright. I figured I’d looking and see if there where some kickers we could add as disappointing, but all 4 of them are rated higher now than where they started the season. The 4 kickers that are down from the start of the season are Josh Brown of the New York Giants. Brown started at 1814th and is now 2285th. Greg Zuerlein of the St. Louis Rams started the season at 1852nd and is now at 2301st. Ryan Succop of the Tennessee Titans started the season at 1857th and is now at 2309th. Oakland Raiders kicker Sebastian Janikowski started at 1968th and is now 2313rd. The team defense/special teams category had a few teams that dropped way down from where they started the season at. The Denver Broncos were rated 282nd to start and are now at 1755th. The Seattle Seahawks where rated at 133rd to start the season; the highest rated defense to start the season. Now the Seahawks defense is ranked at 177th. The St. Louis Rams defense came in at 177th to start the season. At the start of Week 11 the Rams defense is at 1785th. Come the end of the season we’ll have to see if these players turn it around of if 2014 is going to be disappointing for their fantasy owners.

The Baseball Writers’ Association of America (BBWAA) handed out their awards for the Major League Baseball regular season. Remember these awards cover just the regular season; no post season included. Overall I thought they did a good job of picking award winner for the American League and National League at 4 of the 4 categories. AL Manager of the Year was Buck Showalter of the Baltimore Orioles while the Washington Nationals Matt Williams won the NL award. On a side note Schaumburg Stu picked both of these guys to win this award at the start of the season. In the AL, Jose Abreu won the Rookie of the Year award while Jacob deGrom of the New York Mets was the winner in the NL . I actually picked Abreu to win at the start of the season. I thought they might miss the AL Cy Young award winner, but they got the right guy as Cory Klober of the Cleveland Indians won the award. I thought they might go with “The King” Felix Hernandez of the Seattle Mariners, but Hernandez finished 2nd in the voting. On the NL side Clayton Kershaw of the Los Angeles Dodgers won the award getting all of the 1st place votes. Of course Kershaw was Dan the Man’s pick at the start of the season. Mike Trout was the unanimous selection for AL MVP and while Schaumburg Stu, Mr. Fantasy and I all had Trout winning this award I don’t think any of us thought he get all of the 1st place votes like he did. Where I think the BBWAA missed was their choice for NL MVP Clayton Kershaw. Kershaw pitched in 27 games this season. 27 games is just under 17% of the season. Does he deserve this award based on the fact that he’s only involved in 17% of his teams games; the answer should be NO! While Keshaw was dominant when he pitched he didn’t show up in enough games to win the MVP award. The mainstream media push that Kershaw got probably put him over the top for this award, but it’s sad that voters pay more attention to what people say than players on the field. Looking at the NL voting San Francisco Giants catcher Buster Posey finished 6th and was actually left off of a ballot; really off a ballot. I thought Posey and Andrew McCutchen of the Pittsburgh Pirates who finished 3rd where the players who would battle it out for this award. Troy Tulowitzki of the Colorado Rockies got a 10th place vote from the voter who left Posey off his ballot. I would love to know how he thought that Tulowitski was a Top 10 MVP candidate, but Posey wasn’t. I know every year there are questions about how these awards are handed out, but like I said I think they got most of them correct this season. Well all, but one. Maybe next season they’ll get them all right.

You can find Sports Time Radio on BlogTalk Radio and you can find me on Twitter @Burketime.

So how was your week?