Our team pulled off a fairly big trade today, exchanging Reggie Bush and recent free agent pickup Bernard Berrian for Reggie Wayne and Willis McGahee (the latter not figuring strongly into our plans).
In terms of fantasy points, we gave up more than we were receiving in return.
But in terms of using depth to address a weakness, this was a fantastic trade.
We are in a league where only two running backs start, yet we found ourselves with a full stable of quality backs: Reggie Bush (3rd in the Yahoo rankings for all positions, and unbelievably #1 in points among FNFL running backs -- just ahead of Clinton Portis), Matt Forte (11th in the Yahoo rankings and #7 in points among FNFL running backs), Ronnie Brown (13th in the Yahoo rankings, #6 in points among FNFL running backs), and Thomas Jones (#46 in the Yahoo rankings, #16 among FNFL running backs ... he should at least be a lower tier RB2 in our 10 team league). Not to mention cut candidate/turf toe bust/time share prisoner Darren McFadden. Each week, we were sitting a top 10 RB on our bench -- either Bush, Forte or Brown. Makes sense to trade one of them, right?
In the meantime, our WR issues have been well documented. Randy Moss was again ineffective (against the Chargers) because of his subpar quarterback who cannot throw downfield with any more confidence than Chad Pennington. Terrell Owens was frequently disappearing from Cowboy games even when Romo was behind center; now Romo is out for at least four weeks and the geriatric Brad Johnson takes over. Don't expect any throws beyond 10 yards -- it's Marion Barber time in Dallas.
We acquired Houz for the Tennessee D two weeks back, but it's clear that a) the Bengals are horrible b) Houz needs a healthy Carson Palmer to throw him the ball. He is the #1 option in a horrible offense and only a fringe fantasy starter until Carson can return.
Reggie Wayne joins the squad and immediately becomes our WR1 -- Peyton Manning is getting his act back together and things are looking up in Indy. Reggie was arguably the third best WR heading into this season (ironically right behind Moss and Owens).
As if that was not enough, we picked up Marques Colston off the waiver wire! Holy hell -- what idiot would drop Colston a week before he's set to return? In the grand scheme of things, Wayne could become our WR1, and Colston our WR2 with QB Drew Brees throwing the ball to him (Brees is only on pace for 4,800+ yards). That puts us in the position of choosing who to start among the group of Owens, Moss and Houz ... for WR3. All of these guys entered the year as projected WR1s. Not a bad situation to be in at all.
At TE, we picked up Shockey (free agent). He may not score many TDs, but I'd expect 50-60 yards a game if he's healthy. 3-4 points (1 point per 15 receiving yards) is actually a better figure than our TEs have given us this year.
Kicker will vary week to week -- we have Jeff Reed of the Steelers for their matchup against the Bengals. And we have the Pittsburgh D, as usual, to give us a reliable defensive performance each week.
In a 10 team league, our starting lineup will now look like this:
QB: Brees
RB: Forte, Brown
WR: Wayne, two among the group of Owens/Randy Moss/Houz/Colston
TE: Shockey
We still have Aaron Rodgers on the bench at QB -- he could be used in a package to acquire either a franchise running back or a top flight TE (Witten?).
There are no guarantees in this wacky game we call fantasy football -- too much is riding on TDs in our league (total guesswork if you're trying to predict TD output) and not enough on yardage. And anybody can have an off week ... sometimes several stars have their off week at the same time and you're screwed. But our roster is stacked -- this is about as good a team as I've had. Now I'm bracing for an injury that will screw us.
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