This week was incredible.
This week I was slapped with the same ‘punishment for success’ I ran into a few weeks ago. My QB was so thoroughly dominant that he didn’t play in a full quarter and a half of his game. If he had, the score would be nowhere near this tight. It’s so frustrating; you should really be given some kind of compensation for at the very least each quarter your QB sits out (provided of course the reason for the benching is a dominant performance and not a poor one or an injury) because the message otherwise is ‘Your selection was entirely 100% right, you made such a great choice that you stop getting points for picking him!’ It’s so stupid. In a week that ended this incredibly close that missing quarter could have easily been the difference in the outcome.
Anyway, on to the breakdown. This week was projected to be pretty tight through the day, then after Sunday night not even close, but in the end was even tighter than originally predicted.
Despite some disappointing performances early on Sunday I was pretty confident overall because I expected a dominating display by my dynamic duo Rodgers and Nelson on Sunday night, but even my lofty expectations were exceeded. Shattered, actually, as Rodgers threw six touchdowns, two to Nelson, in just the first half! But then as I said I was punished for my success as Rodgers only went out for a few series in the second half before calling it a night early. That made things interesting at the end, because the backup QB wasn’t going to throw very much so it effectively ended Nelson’s night as well, and it also meant Packer drives were suddenly more likely to end in field goals which was significant because AE had their kicker. So that closed things up a little bit, but I wasn’t worried about it because when everything settled the outcome was all but set.
AE had the Eagles D on Monday night and they were projected to get only five points. I didn’t agree with that, I thought it was too low, but even if you allowed them a good amount more I still came out with the edge by a fairly solid margin. So whatever went down, the ultimate outcome was not in question. Until the game. AE’s group had a mindblowing five turnovers, two taken for touchdowns, to finish more than six times their projection and make the finale score the nail biter it turned out to be.
So I take nothing away from AE, this was an awesome matchup, but it was much closer than it would or should have been.
What saved me in the end was that I had a strategic plan at work in forming my lineup this week. I figured AE was going to grab up Roethlisberger after he had those back to back monster games, and indeed he did, so I doubled down on my Steelers receivers in order to counter whatever he was going to get. That way if Ben kept up his huge numbers I was matching them because he was throwing and my guys were catching, or if they finally came back down to earth AE and I would have a mutual bust, either way we stayed even and I could pull ahead with my other positions. And that’s exactly how the day played out. It's a really good thing I did that too because the new WR I picked up was the one that ended up getting any points, if I had stayed with only the one I already had the entire thing would have gone differently as he had a shockingly poor performance which was completely and unpredictably out of character.