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NOTES FROM A KEEPER
 THE UNQUENCHABLE UPS AND DARK, DARK DOWNS OF A FANTASY KEEPER LEAGUER
by Michael E Lawrence
20/5/2007
OK, so here’s how it went down last year. 14 teams, 13 games per. By season’s end, I’m fourth in scoring, third until the final week. Six of us make the playoffs.
I’m not one of them.
Now I hardly need to explain at this point, this makes me very, very cross. I’ve nurtured these guys for four years, building them up through shrewd drafting and savvy trading. Our (okay, my) organisation’s (okay, make believe team’s) credo: trust the NFL draft boards, and go after the young guys the NFL itself drafts high, since the established stars are long since pilfered by older clubs.
So at season’s end I sit there, Ronnie Brown, Kevin Jones, Steve Smith, Lee Evans, Andre Johnson, Tony Romo, Matt Leinart, Matt Jones, Robbie Gould, and me. The Holybourne Prophets together, round shouldered in disappointment, deconstructing the disaster. And I says:
“Fellas, something’s got to give. We’ve missed the playoffs two years running on tie breakers and I can’t takes no more.”
Johnson gets edgy and says “But coach, I mean, we scored plenty and…”
I cut him off by slamming the desk with my fist. He scored nothing in week 8 while Ernest Wilford (I mean: Ernest Wilford? I could outrun him) whumped our ass, and he knows it. He’s trade bait and he knows that too.
Johnson, of course, is right. Sure we scored plenty, but every week we’d go out and a doormat team would wake up and kick us square in the balls. When the Prophets came to town suddenly every journeyman put up triple digit yardage and multiple touchdowns. Owen Daniels, DJ Hackett, Kevan Barlow, Reche Caldwell, David Garrard – best games they ever played, to a man.
Of course I should have known ruination would come my way as soon as one rival organisation somehow managed to trade not just for Larry Johnson, but for All-Pro, soon to be single-season touchdown record holder and all round good egg LaDanian Tomlinson.
With the fourth overall pick of the 2006 draft meanwhile, yours truly, Prophets’ GM Michael Lawrence, had selected Lendale White.
Yup.
It was sometime around week 10, when that same team were smashing our league single game scoring record (94, since you ask) and good egg Tomlinson was frying, poaching and toasted-soldiering every other team coming his way, that I figured there’d be no silverware for the Prophets in 2006/7.
‘But playoffs, at least’ I found myself thinking.
Delusion. At crunch-time, Brown and Jones get injured (we don’t talk about it but the whole team knows they above all else are to blame and that I’m beginning to think they’re soft) while Romo starts dropping snaps and giving away the ball like Bill Gates gives away charitable donations.
“This is not freaking Microsoft!” I scream at Romo, but he doesn’t hear and I only get chest pains for my trouble.
Then in the final week, I lose to my brother. All season long I’ve been lecturing him on his fatally flawed RB2 position: he’s been alternating Stephen Davis and Mike Alstott, who between them have scored him the same amount of touchdowns (zero) as they have knee ligaments (ditto.) The only thing more remarkable is that his RB1, china-delicate Brian Westbrook, has stayed healthy all year long.
But what’s this? In the week before our game, he’s only gone and traded for Volkswagen-reliable Rudi Johnson.
With Brown and Jones on the bench the Prophets roll out Cedric Houston and White. In the coach’s booth, I weep quietly as the Prophets are eliminated from the post-season.
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May 2007 and already I’ve started tearing at the fabric of the old team. Out on his ear went Johnson, who was all receptions and no red zone, and with him Lamont Jordan, yet another injury flunky. Then went promising Jerious Norwood, since I read he has ‘astonishingly narrow’ legs and I had a dream Amy Winehouse told me he’d end up on IR.
She said: “Norwood’s gonna need to rehab and he’ll be slow, slow, slow.” It was a sign.
I told Romo: “Hey Romo, you’d better come to play this year,” but he wouldn’t look me in the eye because secretly we both reckon Leinart will pass him by camp.
Brown (hand), Jones (Lis Franc) and White (MacDonalds) are all on the spot too, since the picks obtained in the Johnson trade will almost certainly be parlayed into Marshawn Lynch.
The phone goes – it’s my brother. The 2007 schedule’s out and we play in week five, only both his starting running backs are on byes.
I can hardly contain myself.
“That’s a tough break man,” I say, fighting down the possibility of it all, figuring that with a couple of lucky bounces the Prophets could be unbeaten heading into week 6, and from there only a few more wins would do it.
I mean, the Holybourne Prophets in 2007: playoffs, at least.
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