Challenge Contests — by Justin Eleff

One week down, 16 to go. We have a lot to talk about; here are my thoughts on the most pressing topics after Kickoff Weekend:

THE STANDINGS

Congratulations if you had a great first week; condolences if your week was lousy.

I'm in pretty good shape all around, with 300-plus points from each of my Fanball teams (300 is generally the benchmark of a good week) and a 3-10-53 (league-division-overall) ranking in the Football Challenge.

Big deal.

One thing you must bear in mind right now is that it's not possible to win or lose a challenge game in any one week of the season. If you started the year with a truly lousy roster, you may already have lost. But if you followed the advice that's appeared in this space over the last several weeks, your teams are not fatally lousy. Bad numbers can happen. Make the best decisions you can going forward.

And if you happen to have started like a house afire, pat yourself on the back exactly once and then get back to work.

WHOM TO START

Fatally lousy or not, your roster is what it is. Maybe you're itching to replace someone already; maybe you're itching to buy a guy who tore it up in Week 1. We'll address burning through your new player purchases below. For now, a piece of advice about picking a starting lineup after you've figured out which players should be on your full active-and-taxied roster:

I'm not big on bulletin boards, but every year around this time I check the BBS at Fanball.com to amuse myself. Panic has set in. Team owners have decided that Drew Brees and Tom Brady and Adrian Peterson MUST all be started every week, and they're trying to decide how to fit all three onto their active rosters.

Of course, it wouldn't be bad to have each of those guys active. It certainly wouldn't have been bad this past weekend. But the approach that leads anyone to conclude that any one player in particular must be owned and started is all wrong.

These are salary cap games, folks. Each bit of salary you spend on one player is a bit you can't spend on another. Deciding on your active rosters each week by picking the players who MUST start for you and then just filling in around them is wrong. You have to think of the players in pairs, or even groups of three or four. It isn't Brees and Brady and Peterson; it's Brees with whichever cheapos you have to start to afford Brees, versus the less expensive QB and more expensive other players you could start instead; the analysis is the same for Brady and Peterson and every other high-salaried player.

I started Aaron Rodgers this weekend and taxied Brady. Mistake, obviously, in retrospect. But their salaries aren't quite a match. The decision I actually made was to start Rodgers and Greg Olsen instead of Brady and Brent Celek -- so it was two mistakes in one.

But let's say I'd been hellbent on getting Brees onto my teams. Brees sure looked like he was in for a good week, home against DET, and he obviously didn't disappoint in that regard. But Brees costs $4190 in the Football Challenge to Brady's $3000 and Rodgers' $2770. Now we're not talking about a simple matter of which TE goes with which QB -- we're talking about finding an extra million-plus salary dollars, likely skimping at WR to fit Brees onto the roster.

It's Brees with Celek AND a cheapo WR I own but didn't have active (Josh Morgan) instead of Rodgers with Olsen and Greg Jennings. The latter group has already started to look like less of a mistake, and if I'd used the Brady / Celek exacta instead of Rodgers / Olsen, there's no mistake at all. I'd rather have Brady's Week 1 numbers with Jennings' than Brees' with Morgan's. In the Football Challenge, 6 TD passes only add 18 points to the total scoring category; receiving yards and receiving average are categories unto themselves.

These games are about combinations, not isolated superstars. There are only so many cuts you can make to accommodate the highest-salaried players before you cripple the teams you own around those players. I'm not telling you to avoid Drew Brees (or anyone else). I'm saying you should always take a look at what else you could afford as an alternative to one stud paired with a cheapo or two.

WHOM TO PURCHASE

No one.

Not yet.

I assume that when you locked in your opening roster you weren't only thinking about Week 1 of the season, right? You owned players you wanted in Week 1, sure, but also beyond then, and you tried to make sure that your roster was functional -- that you could comfortably make out a Week 2 roster without burning any purchases.

So what did you see this weekend that convinces you the season will unfold much differently than you expected just a week ago?

Anthony Gonzalez hurt himself, and most of you rostered him (as I did, everywhere), but as of today it doesn't look like a very long-term hurt. I wouldn't drop Gonzalez until I knew exactly how long he'd be gone or until I really, really wanted someone else.

But who would that someone else be?

Mike Bell? Nice week, but mostly because Pierre Thomas was out and Reggie Bush isn't fully healthy yet. Also, the Saints don't play the Lions every week.

Zach Miller? Did you watch the game last night? Does JaMarcus Russell look like an NFL quarterback to you, the kind of player who'll feed big numbers to any of his targets on a consistent basis?

Really, which guys changed your mind this week? Which guys weren't good enough to make your teams a week ago but are now? Brees? Didn't you already miss his biggest game of the season?

THE SCHEDULE

I have neither the ambition nor the energy I'd need to run down the full schedule every week, so I'll give you kind of a quick-hits overview instead:

Clearly the Lions have the worst defense in the history of defenses (or something close to it), and this week they're home vs. MIN. Scrap everything I said above, and DO own whichever cheapos will enable you to start Peterson.

Even if I owned Brees, I wouldn't use him this week at PHI. The Eagles are for real and then some. I expect a moderately high-scoring game, but certainly one that drags on Brees' passing average. Probably a good week for Celek again, given the limitations of Philly's various QB candidates.

The games that strike me as likely to feature the most scoring are CIN at GB and maybe IND at MIA. I like Carson Palmer just fine after he spent Week 1 shaking off rust, and I really like Rodgers, still. No way the Bengals harass Rodgers as effectively as the Bears did on Sunday night.

(Fantasy considerations notwithstanding, it's a shame those Bears suffered so many injury losses -- the D looked scary good with everyone on the field together.)

The other game is just a gut feeling; there are a handful of QBs I'll always expect big numbers from on a Monday Night, and of course Peyton Manning is one of them, and I also like how Miami's O (dreadful as it may have been at ATL) matches up against Indy's D.

Otherwise the keys to Week 2 would seem to be a handful of very favorable matchups for individual players:

Darren McFadden has a game not unlike Ray Rice's; Rice was strong against the same KC defense McFadden sees now.

Washington is home against St. Louis, and Clinton Portis may be aging but he's better than Julius Jones at any age; Jones was dynamite this week against the Rams. Portis was the next-to-last inclusion on my Football Challenge roster, incidentally. Josh Morgan was last, because I knew I'd want Peterson and Portis in Week 2, needed an extra cheapo for that reason and liked Morgan's matchup (vs. SEA) best among the cheapos I considered.

Look, not everything you try this season will work. That's a sad fact, but it's more fact than it is sad. Just keep plugging away, setting your lineups according to which mix of players has the best mix of matchups (instead of which superduperstars you absolutely must own), and meanwhile save as many purchases as you can for when injuries and bye weeks start to pile up.

You'll be fine. But we'll start talking about using your new player purchases a week from now, just in case.

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