Ian Allan answers your fantasy football questions. In this special Valentine's Day edition: Who should have been named the league's Defensive Rookie of the Year? Did the referees blunder on Seattle's challenge in the first quarter of the Super Bowl? And how many quarterbacks should be used in a fantasy league?
Question 1
Defensive Rookie of the Year should have gone to Kiko Alonso. Luke Kuechly had same stats pretty much and won his award. Richardson didn't even have the big sack stats. Who are these writers that nominate and vote on players?? This one I just don't understand. Anyway who do you think will be the biggest bargains of 2014? I nominate three at each category. QB: Kaepernick, Brady, and Ryan. RB: Rice, Bernard, Martin. WR: Hilton, Allen, and Stills. TE: Green, Gronk, and D. Allen. What you think Ian?
David Kennedy (STEAMBURG, NY)
You’re not alone with Kiko Alonso. He piled up a lot of tackles, and about half of the people you’ll ask thought he was the Rookie of the Year. In the AP vote, Richardson edged him, 23-19 in first-place votes. Alonso won the less prestigious award from the Pro Football Writer’s Association. The PFWA saw enough difference between the two that Alonso was also a finalist for their regular (offense and defense) Rookie of the Year award, while Richardson was not. I don’t want to get into trying to compare the two, because they’re doing different things. They were both great in their roles. With Richardson, don’t look at sacks (he had only 3.5). In the 3-4 defense they use, he’s more of a defensive tackle than a defensive end – his role is to collapse the pocket and clog up the running lanes. With these kind of guys, better to look at the team stats rather than individual numbers, and the Jets allowed a league-low 3.4 yards per carry. Only two defenses allowed fewer rushing yards. And note that Richardson also got in on more tackles than a typical defensive line; in the last three years, only six other linemen have had more tackles in a season. I’m just finishing up the book Collision Low Crossers, in which a writer spends a year with the Jets. In that book (which I’ll review next week), Rex Ryan notes that his dad, Buddy Ryan, told him that “you should never pass up the chance to draft an ‘unusual defensive lineman’.” And in Ryan’s tenure there, the team’s best two first-round picks, by far, have both been big, nasty defensive lineman – Richardson and Muhammad Wilkerson. I think Alonso is great as well. Andy Richardson spends more time on the defensive guys than I do. You probably saw the chart he posted earlier in the week, where he outlined that only two rookies in the last 13 years have had more tackles than Alonso (Luke Kuechly and Patrick Willis). And you’ve smartly noted that Alonso’s numbers this year are almost identical to Kuechly’s. They both had 4 interceptions and 2 sacks. Kuechly defended 2 more passes, while Alonso had 3 more tackles, recovered 2 fumbles and forced a fumble. They both ranked in the top 4 overall in tackles. But for me, part of evaluating any defensive player must include looking at the end result – is the unit stopping people? Carolina’s defense allowed 147 fewer points and 514 fewer yards than the Bills. One of the reasons Alonso finished with 3 more tackles than Kuechly is that the Panthers were forcing a lot more three-and-outs. The Bills ran more hurry-up stuff as well, but note that Buffalo’s defense was on the field for 114 more plays. So if you want to adjust those tackle stats to account for how often each guy was on the field, Kuechly was in on 16 percent of the tackles when the Panthers were defending. Alonso was in on only 14.6 percent of the tackles for the Bills. But whatever, all of these guys were very good – Richardson, Kuechly and Alonso. As for your bargains, I see where you’re going with most of them. Brady should have a better receiving corps. Ryan will get a nice boost if Julio Jones is 100 percent. Rice supposedly will be healthier next year, but there’s a lot of wear on those tires. To me, I’d much rather have Gio Bernard, who’s the same kind of player but five years younger. I don’t expect Stills will be anything more than a change-up-pitch kind of receiver, scoring every few weeks but disappearing in a lot of games, but we’ll see. Marques Colston is getting older and gimpy, and they’ve still got to re-sign Jimmy Graham. At tight end, I like the idea of rolling the dice on Ladarius Green in the later rounds, but Gronkowski has had a lot of injuries, and I don’t think Dwayne Allen is any better than Coby Fleener, who was a disappointment last year.
Question 2
Congrats to your Seahawks, Ian! I might have missed it in-game (I could not hear the audio at times), but I am confused about Carroll's first challenge. Why did it fail? Even though it was not a first down, the ball was spotted incorrectly and moved forward. Didn't he win the challenge? Thank you!
Moishe Steigmann (Glendale, WI)
The area was very excited. With Seattle having been on a long dry spell (1979, with the Sonics), it’s been crazy around here for the last month. I haven’t been in other cities during similar runs, but I can’t imagine any area being any more excited about a sports team. If Seattle happens to win another Super Bowl in a year or two, it will be interesting to see if the parade and celebration is smaller or about the same. But lots of warmth and good cheer in this area, and I hope that other championship-deprived cities can experience the same feeling. Cleveland and San Diego, I think, are the two cities that have been waiting the longest for an NFL/NBA/MLB/NHL title. As for the game itself, I also had trouble with the audio. That’s the problem with viewing the game as a Super Bowl party with 10-20 people there. You can’t hear anything that the commentators are saying. I wonder how much the advertisers keep that in mind. To put together a really good commercial, it’s got to be simple enough that it can be viewed and understood even if the viewer can’t hear all of the audio or looks away for 5-10 seconds. As for the challenge, I was thinking exactly what you were. The spot was wrong. When Wilson went out of bounds, the official places the pass with the nose just in front of the 9-yard line, almost a full yard away from the first-down mark. They look at the replay and determined that the ball should be almost a full yard forward. They place it 1-3 inches away from the 8. In theory, that could be called a successful challenge. Maybe at 4th-and-1, the Seahawks would opt for a field goal, but if it’s 4th-and-inches, they might want to instead go for it. But after seeing this one play out, it’s my understanding now that challenges must be tied to the original call. Ultimately, the referee does one of three things. He can overrule and change the call on the field. He can confirm the original call. Or he can rule that the original call stands (when it’s not clear what happened – you can’t tell if a foot was inbounds or a guy fumbled or whatever). Only if the referee changes the call, I now believe, is the challenge considered successful. In this case, Seattle had some success in that the ball was moved almost a yard forward, but the original call wasn’t changed, and that apparently must be triggered for the team to retain its timeout and be eligible for the third challenge. In the legal sense, Seattle isn’t challenging where the ball went out; it’s challenging whether or not it got a first down. It was only partially correct in that the ball was moved, but it did not result in a first down – the original call stood.
Question 3
Thanks for helping me to another title, Ian! Love your magazine and the weekly updates. Our league has gotten a little stale, and we're considering changing things up. One idea being discussed by the executive committee is to change the lineup to 2 QBs, 1 RB, 1 WR, 5 Flex (RB/WR/TE), 1 K and 1 D/ST. Sound interesting, or are we just getting too clever?
Scott Kopischke (MENOMONEE FALLS, WI)
I haven’t played in that kind of format, but I see a lot of positives. Going to double quarterbacks makes a lot of sense, I think. It’s the premier position in the real-life game, so why not increase the demand for them and get more of them on the field? Then you’ll see most of the first-round picks being used on quarterbacks, which is how it should be. For me, the only mental hurdle to going with multiple quarterbacks is that it makes fantasy teams more different than real-life teams. Each NFL team only has one starting quarterback, and we (I, anyway) tend to want our fantasy teams to be like our NFL teams. It seems weird to have both Cam Newton and Tom Brady starting at quarterback. But the same dynamic, really, is true at the other positions. No NFL teams are starting two true featured tailbacks. But we’ve all gotten used to that over the years, so we’re OK with it. If I were starting from scratch, I’d like to have two starters at all of the lesser positions – QB, TE, K and Defense. Probably two at RB and WR as well, then add in a couple of flex (RB-WR-TE) guys.