What you've all been waiting for: last year's recap!

As the title says, this is a big part of every year.  We'll run through a quick recap, team by team, on how the previous year went.  We'll start with key players picked up in the draft, and we'll include key players picked up off the waivers.  Without further ado, let's begin.

Imperator Militis (Patrick)


Personnel
I suppose I'll start with myself.  In the draft, I picked up MJD with my first pick, Peyton Manning with my second, and Calvin Johnson with my third.  MJD didn't pan out particularly well in the first few weeks; ultimately he would get 1300 yards rushing, 350 yards receiving and 7 touchdowns, good for nearly 200 points.  Manning ended up pretty solid despite his INT total at the end of the year and was by far my best player.  Calvin Johnson ended up being nothing more than trade bait, especially due to his slow start last year.  I should have accepted the first trade offered (Goodrich offered Mike Williams (TB) and Michael Turner (ATL).  As it turns out, that would have been an awesome trade.  Instead I settled a few weeks later for Rashard Mendenhall (PIT) and Visanthe Shiancoe (MIN).  The Mendenhall pickup was good, but not great, but I felt like I came out on top since Megatron continued his ups and downs.  The rest of my draft was terrible: Knowshown Moreno (DEN) (Injured half the season), Ronnie Brown (MIA) was worthless, Jeremy Maclin (PHI) was decent, Percy Harvin (MIN) was not great, Joe Flacco (BAL) didn't get much time at QB since Manning was so solid, and the rest were just as forgettable.  I drafted Dez Bryant late in the draft, and just when he was starting to get some solid production (Don't forget our league values punt and kickoff returns) he got injured.  I wasted Joe Flacco on a trade for Randy Moss.  Finally, the only decent waiver pickup I had all season was Danny Amendola (STL), and I sat on him too long before I began starting him.

Season
I started decently enough, 2-2, and then I went on a terrific five-game streak.  This was the highlight of my season since it included an incredible thrashing of PapaKareGoods (Lewis) when only one of his players even broke double digits.  The game ended 122-48.  I had the thrilling tie game against Goodrich, where I won since I was the home team, immediately followed by a one point victory over the total-points leader, Kretchmer.  I finished the season 9-4, which considering my so-so draft and little success through trades and the waiver-wires, was pretty decent.

Post-Season
Having finished in first place, I was included in the winners bracket.  I got to face up against the number four overall, Pretty in Pink (Michelle).  I was worried about the matchup, since Michelle was racking up decent point totals each week.  My QB and RB's played well, but Michelle had DeSean Jackson (PHI) get 29 points during the first week and the Saints defense scored 22, putting her ahead by nearly 30.  The second week wasn't much better as Knowshon Moreno (DEN) scored a goose egg, my kicker got -2, and MJD (JAC) managed a measly 6 points.  Michelle won 215-181, leaving me out of the championship game.  Kretchmer would end up beating me 222-180, leaving me in fourth place overall.


Pretty In Pink (Michelle)


Personnel
I'll say the same thing I've said every year in fantasy football: Michelle may ask my advice from time to time, but she manages and runs her own team on a weekly basis.  She also cruises the waiver wires for pickups and pays attention to sports news.  Despite being the only girl in the league she has been in the winner's bracket two seasons in a row.

Michelle's draft went very well.  Her first four picks were: Drew Brees (NO), Miles Austin (DAL), DeSean Jackson (PHI), and LeSean McCoy (PHI).  When you count Ahmad Bradshaw (NYG) that she picked up in the 9th round, she had 5 players score 170 points+.  Her crowning achievement on the waivers was, of course, Michael Vick, although this pickup was limited because Drew Brees was having a great year as well.  In all, Michelle had a solid draft, and picked up the single best waiver pickup of the year.

Season
Michelle started the season very well, cruising to an 8-2 start, and keeping in first place during most of that time.  She continued the strange Lewis-Kryptonite from the year before; Lewis accounts for more than 50% of her losses during her fantasy football career, despite finishing in last and second-to-last place.  She ended the season terribly, with Ahmad Bradshaw playing hurt and DeSean Jackson with concussion issues.  She lost the last three games, ended 8-5, which was good enough for fourth place.

Post-Season
As was mentioned above, Michelle trounced me in the first round.  A healthy DeSean Jackson, a killer Michael Vick, and the Saints killer defense all added up and put her into the championship game.  The first round of the championship game was disappointing, with Michelle only scraping together 75 points; the second round of the championship game was a brutal, terrible, nasty slaughter.  Michelle's problem was that all of her good players were on championship contenders who had cemented their place in the standings; she had to play Sam Bradford and Marion Barber, of all people.  She ended that week with just 37 points and cleaned her makeup off with her own tears.


One Man Wolfpack (Colby)


Personnel
Colby started the season with the 9th pick, and his draft choices reflect it.  His first pick was Andre Johnson (HOU), who ended up not even being the leading WR, Shonn Green (NYJ), a pick that deserves no comment, Cedric Benson (CHI), Matt Schaub (HOU), Jermichael Finley (GB) who got injured early, Pierre Garcon (IND) who had a terrible year... you get the point.  Not a single name jumps out at you as a this-guy-will-win-games type.  His only decent waiver pickup was Chris Ivory (NO) who promptly hurt his hamstring.

Season
Colby started the season as terrible as his draft would suggest.  After 7 games he was 2-5, scoring low, and not looking to make it into the winners bracket.  Finally, Mike Wallace (PIT) turned on the jets, and Colby started to pick up.  He finished the season with four wins, going from 4-5 to 8-5 and securing a spot in the winners bracket.

Colby's situation needs more evaluation.  His draft was not good, he was not given a high draft pick (9th), his waiver pickups were questionable.  How did he go from a slow start, to a fast finish, to an ultimate victory in the league?  Colby always managed to put together the best team available to him each week.  Even though he had limited choices, he managed to insert the best TE, defense, kicker, second WR and RB, etc.  He averaged 5 players in the double digits each week during his wild finale, and never depended solely on one player.  Let this be a lesson that it doesn't take a high draft pick or a standout waiver pickup to win fantasy football

Post-Season
Colby was a sure-loss in the making.  He was playing against Kretchmer, who was the total points champion in the league.  Colby was the lowest scoring player in the winners bracket.  Kretchmer's team had a meltdown in the first week, with Dwayne Bowe getting shut out, Antonio Gates playing injured, the Bears defense giving up 37 points, and his kicker not even getting a PAT.  Colby's team didn't fare much better, with Chris Ivory getting hurt early in the game.  Although Kretchmer's team revived a bit for the second round, Colby put together another outstanding collection, with 6 of his players scoring in double digits.  Goliath was conquered.

As has been documented, Michelle's team was ahead by 8 points going into the final week of fantasy football, and the second round of the championship game.  Then the meltdown ensued, but let's not overlook the fact that Colby, yet again, had 6 players score in double figures.  Colby's success this last year was pure fantasy football at its best.

Team Pepelapue (Kretchmer)
With Kretchmer out of the league this year, I won't dwell too long on his team.  Just let it be known that he had a solid draft, and he scored big time on the emergence of Dwayne Bowe and the revival of Matt Forte. Kretchmer's downfall was a shaky bench, which made itself obvious at the end of the season.  A good draft  can only take you so far, but eventually you have to have the second string guys that can come in and win a couple of games

Team Goodrich (Justin Goodrich)


Personnel
Goodrich had a draft full of hindsight *ouches*.  For instance, drafting Randy Moss in the second round.  Or Beanie Wells (ARI) in the third round.  Or drafting Steve Smith (CAR) in the fourth round.  You get the point.  You'll notice lacking in the first four rounds was a decent QB; Goodrich solved this by unloading Randy Moss on me and getting Joe Flacco (BAL) in return.  While Flacco was not great by any means, he was a solid 15 point QB each week, which was better than Chad Henne (MIA) was producing.  Where Goodrich really made his money last year was his pickup of Peyton Hillis.  Who knew he would be worth over 200 points?  And of course, it needs to be pointed out that he nearly traded away two of his three most valuable assets to me at the beginning of the year: Mike Williams (TB) and Michael Turner (ATL).  It was only my own stupidity that kept that from coming to fruition.

Season
Where you consistently see solid fantasy football players do well is at the end of seasons.  At the beginning of the season even the ESPN auto-ranking program can carry you to several wins.  However, near the end of seasons is when the pickups, trades, and drops start to show their foresight.  In the case of Goodrich, after a 3-4 start, he started making his playoff push.  He won 4 in a row and looked destined for the coveted winners bracket.  The wheels came off afterwards, however.  Weeks 12 and 13 looked solid, but Goodrich was narrowly beat out.  In Week 12, Peyton Hillis cruised to 38 points, but none of the peripheral positions (D, TE, K, etc) could produce a double digit score.  In Week 13, Peyton Hillis broke down and couldn't carry the team anymore.  The final game was a big one, with the winner between Goodrich and Colby leading them to the winner's bracket; Colby ended up winning by two points, sending Goodrich to the consolation bracket.

Post-Season
With Goodrich begins the consolation ladder, and for the sake of time, I will not include many details.  Suffice it to say that Goodrich came out as the winner of a tie, 183-183 against Alex, sending Goodrich to the consolation championship game.  He managed to do it with Kyle Orton netting him -2 points for one game and only scoring 59 points for an entire round.  For the final game of the consolation championship game, Goodrich was pitted against Mcleary.  Goodrich finally put together a solid game in Week 17, with all but one of his players reaching double digits; he also gambled on Tim Tebow who netted him 25 points.  Cudos, my friend.


Air Raid (Andrew Mcleary)


Personnel
Big Mac started the draft with a solid one-two RB punch: Adrian Peterson (MIN) and Rashard Mendenhall (PIT).  The wheels came off a bit with Brandon Marshall (MIA) and C.J. Spiller (BUF).  Finally, a death-knell to Big Mac's draft, came Brett Favre (MIN) in the fifth round.  I'm not sure if Air Raid ever really recovered from that one.  Mcleary picked up Jason Witten (DAL) early, and the TE acquisition paid off: Witten was a consistent producer.  Big Mac picked up Mike Tolbert (SD) early in the season, and although he did not play him as often as he should have, Tolbert was a good pickup.  Soon after, Big Mac pulled the trigger on a big trade; He gave Mendenhall to Alex in exchange for Steven Jackson (STL).  Although it was largely a wash, Big Mac came out slightly on top.  Finally, on 22 Oct 2010, Andrew Mcleary sealed his fate: he picked up the sour and stink that is... Jay Cutler.  Despite whatever points Jay Cutler may bring in the QB position, he will always sink the rest of your team.  Lewis did it two years ago, Big Mac did it last year, and it's just a question of when someone will pick him up this year.

Season
Big Mac started the season to a dismal 1-5.  This was mostly the showing of a difficult draft: While AP consistently produced, along with Mendenhall (and later Jackson), the rest of the draft panned out so poorly that there wasn't much hope.  But as I've been saying all along, the true fantasy football players start to show near the end of the season.  Big Mac made the trades, watched the match ups, and clawed his way to a 7-6 finish.  While it was not good enough to make the winners bracket, it was good enough to proof Big Mac has the heart of a champion and could sleep easy at night knowing, without a doubt, that he was a true man.

Post-Season
Big Mac played Lewis for the middle-of-the-pack, the 7 seed versus the 8 seed.  Big Mac caught a lucky break with the Dolphins defense netting him 22 points.  Jason Witten sealed the win with 18 coming from the TE spot.  Big Mac put Lewis away for good in the second round, sending him to the consolation championship game against Goodrich.  Air Raid put up a good fight in the final game, but ultimately was betrayed by his team: the final round included 3 0's, a negative score, and only 10 combined points from 3 RB's.  Still, Big Mac proved that anything is possible, even from a terrible start.


Team Stonewall (Alex Goodrum)


Personnel
Alex had a great draft, although it wasn't quite so obvious on draft day.  He started with Steven Jackson (STL), Tom Brady (NE),  and Jamaal Charles (KC).  He reached for a TE far too early, picking up Tony Gonzalez (ATL) in the fourth round.  Where Alex lucked out was getting Arian Foster (HOU) in the 8th round, LT (NYJ) a few rounds later, and getting Vincent Jackson (SD) with his final draft pick.  Arian Foster, of course, ending up being the #1 RB last year, LT had a revival, and Vincent Jackson produced solidly once he was able to play in the league again.  Brady threw for 34 TD's and only 4 INT's.  Noticeably missing from the draft was a solid WR, and Alex wasn't able to pick one up until late in the season, trading Rashard Mendenhall (PIT) to me for Calvin Johnson (DET).

Season
Alex is always one of the leading total points teams, and yet he never seems to make the winners cut.  This season was no different: Alex was the 2nd highest scoring team, 200 full points ahead of third place, and yet he still ended the season in 7th place.  How is this possible?  Alex suffers from feast vs famine syndrome.  He recorded games of 126, 122, 113, 110, 124, 104, and 124 points.  On the other hand, he recorded games of 68, 81, 88, 86, and 83.  While it's hard to put a finger on the exact cause of the problem, it seems as though Alex might over think his match ups: his second and third RB/WR's always seem to be the wrong one (Alex has the highest scoring bench, easily), his TE's never produce, and his defenses never put up double digits.  Alex was never able to string along a winning streak until the end; even then, it was three games and promptly followed with a loss to end the season.

Post-Season
Alex started the post-season as the sixth seed, giving him a good shot at the consolation bracket's championship game.  As was mentioned above, this ended up being a close, competitive game (As you would expect from the 5 and 6 seed).  He eventually lost to Goodrich, which was technically a tie, but the tie goes to the home team. This crushing defeat sent him out of the consolation bracket's championship game.  Alex promptly recovered, put together a killer lineup, and destroyed Nate two weeks in a row.  If Alex had somehow made his way into the winner's bracket, his Week 16-17 total of 236 would have won him the title; instead, he wasn't able to play consistently during the regular season, falling into 7th place.


Disco Inferno (Nate Kartchner)

Personnel
I gave Nate a pretty good score on draft day last year for a reason: Not many risky moves and solid picks.  Frank Gore (SF) was a good starter, Tony Romo (DAL) seemed like a good one, Larry Fitzgerald (ARI) and Roddy White (ATL) were solid starters.  After this, the remaining picks didn't get much praise, but it turns out Darren Mcfadden in the 13th round was a huge steal, since he exceeded the 200 point mark.  Nate even made a great mid-season pickup in LaGarrette Blount.  Although there were no trades for Nate and little waiver-wire activity, Nate had all the personnel to make a deep fantasy football run.

Season
If he had great personnel, then why did he end up in 8th place?  For starters, nobody could have predicted Romo playing terrible in the first six games and then being out for the season.  Nate never recovered from this, moving on to different QB's the rest of the season.  Shaun Hill (DET), Mark Sanchez (NYJ), Chad Henne (MIA), and even David Garrard (JAC) were tossed around.  Also, Nate pulled some rookie mistakes: Not changing defenses based on opponent, keeping Brent Celek as TE even though Vick doesn't know what a check-down is, never knowing quite which RB/WR to put in, etc.  It all adds up to a never-above-.500-season.  And then, to make matters worse, throw in a three game losing streak to finish things off; Nate ended the regular season at 4-8.

Post-Season
While things never panned out in the regular season, the post-season was different for Nate.  Mcfadden decided to show he could run, and broke out for 42 points.  Also, in week 15, all of Nate's team, except one, decided to score more than 15 points.  Nate trounced Eric, making sure the bottom-of-the-bucket honors would not be his on his inaugural season.  Fortunate would not continue, and, as has been noted above, Alex did the trouncing in the final game.


Dallas PapaKareGoods (Lewis and Kara Goodrum)


Personnel
Lewis has complained about injuries, and at least for this last year, he is correct.  Deangello Williams (CAR), his second pick?  Ryan Grant (GB), his third pick?  Dallas Clark (IND), his fourth pick?  Austin Collie (IND), his sixth pick?  Even the players that didn't get injured ended up being worthless.  His backup QB, potentially a good trade chip?  Oh, Kevin Kolb (PHI), who didn't get much playing time behind Vick.  If it weren't for Aaron Rodgers and his 275+ points, Lewis' team would have been a complete disaster.

Although it should be noted that a little research could have produced enough waiver-claims to fill out his team, it should also be noted that Lewis tried.  Lewis had the most acquisitions in the league last year (40), making him one of the most active players.  Lewis just couldn't seem to catch a break.

Season
Lewis at one point lost 8 in a row.  8.  That's terrible.  To his everlasting credit, he continued his tradition of taking out revenge on Michelle's teams.  50% of his wins came against Michelle.  Granted, it was only 2 of 4 wins, but it's significant because Lewis only won 2 games the year before, and both of them were against Michelle.  Will that continue into this year?  It should be noted that despite this dismal performance, Lewis was not last place.  That honor goes to another Goodrum, Eric.

Post-Season
Lewis got bounced into the Loser's game by losing to Big Mac in the first playoff game.  This meant that another loss would result in 2 straight years of fantasy football shame.  Ultimately, Lewis stopped the hemorrhaging, and beat Eric by a razor-thin margin of 12 points.  While this might not seem like much to cheer for, few people know what was on the line in this game.


Team Goodrum (Eric Goodrum)


Personnel
Last and most definitely least, we come to Eric.  Eric upset me something terrible on draft day:  Ray Rice (BAL) was listed as the 5th best player.  Eric had the third pick and I had the fourth.  I thought, for sure, that I would be able to pick up Ray Rice with my pick.  I was predicting that he would have a Brian Westbrook style breakout year.  When Eric picked him up ahead of me, I was dumbfounded, angry, and in a vengeful spirit.  But we'll let bygones be bygones, especially since Rice didn't produce like I expected.  Other than Rice and Phillip Rivers (SD), Eric had a dismal draft.  He gambled on Ryan Matthews (SD), picked Joseph Addai (IND) in the fourth round despite questions about his starter status, nabbed Wes Welker (NE) in the fifth despite his recent surgery, got a kicker in the 6th round, and then the devastating finale: he drafted Jay Cutler.  People, do not think this Jay Cutler thing is a coincidence.  Lewis had him two years ago when he sunk that team, Eric had him last year from the get-go and Cutler managed to sink this team.  Despite activity on the waiver-wire and a laughable trade attempt (MJD for Ryan Matthews?), Eric could never rinse the stink.  He was sunk.

Season
While the honors of the longest losing streak goes to Lewis, the most losses total goes to Eric.  Phillip Rivers and Ray Rice always produced, but none of the remaining players, be it WR, RB, TE, D, or even K, could score in the double digits more than once (I think Wes Welker might have, late in the season).  The highlight of Eric's season was... was... Ok, maybe there wasn't a highlight.  The man did not score over 100 points once in the season.  66% of his wins came against the #9 player in the league.  Moral of the story: on draft day, conventional wisdom is conventional wisdom because it's been tested.  Don't pick up a defense, TE, K, or a rookie in the first 7-8 rounds.  It's not worth it, and even then, only 1 of 2 TE's should be nabbed that early.  Let the rest get handled at the end.

Post-Season
Since this is the last player listed, the games have already been summarized earlier.  Strangely enough, Eric's best games came in the post-season, even though he lost them both.  This cemented his place in ugly infamy, and he has had to sleep every night of this long off-season knowing that there was absolutely 0 consolation.  Maybe there is better luck around the corner.



Well, there you have the summary.  A little long, but I won't be offended if you only read your own section or a couple others.  Within the next couple of days I will post a summary of this year's players, draft order, and my thought's before the draft.  Remember, the draft will be a live draft on 28 August.  If you can't be in front of a computer at that time, make sure you do the auto draft settings; if that time doesn't work for you, and you want to be a part of the live draft, send me an email and I'll see what I can do.