The Perfect Plan

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There weren’t many sure things in the 2002 season. Neither the defending champion Patriots nor the Rams made the playoffs. The underdog Browns took their act to the post-season, while the highly-touted Dolphins, Bears and Broncos stayed home. Early fantasy picks such as Kurt Warner stumbled, while Tommy Maddox proved he can succeed even when the footballs aren’t black and red. Priest Homes showed that last season was no fluke, and Keyshawn Johnson caught more than one touchdown.

Yes, it was a year full of surprises. For me, however, the season began with an absolute certainty: I would win my fantasy league, because this time, I had the perfect plan.

The plan wasn’t terribly complicated. What it came down to was this: draft Aaron Brooks. Sure, it also included the usual suspects – draft solid running backs, don’t waste an early pick on a kicker, look for sleeper receivers, brush your teeth after every meal, etc. – but the one absolutely essential part was to land Brooks to play quarterback.

Why Brooks? Wouldn’t it have been better to wait until the later rounds and draft a sleeper such as Drew Bledsoe? Quarterback was a fairly deep position last year, after all, and Brooks wound up costing me a third-round pick.

The reason was simple: in a league with playoffs in weeks 15 through 17, Brooks would be the man when it counted most. What more could you ask for than a schedule featuring Minnesota, Cincinnati and Carolina in those weeks, three teams bound to give up lots of points and passing yards. To make things even better, it looked very likely that the Saints would still have something to play for in the final weeks, meaning Brooks wouldn’t be resting on the bench like other top quarterbacks might be.

And at first, things went exactly as planned. Ricky Williams excelled, Brooks played well, a healthy Jamal Lewis became a solid contributor, and mid-round flyer Clinton Portis kept getting better and better. Wide receivers were another matter, as injuries to Darrell Jackson and sleeper Ron Dixon added to the misery of having drafted both Johnnie Morton and Terry Glenn, but the Keith Brooking-led defense held its own, and this squad reached the playoffs with ease.

The first round of the playoffs seemed to confirm the wisdom of building a team around Brooks. The Saints’ signal-caller had a fine game, throwing for 255 yards and two scores against a porous Minnesota pass defense. Together with a huge three-touchdown effort by Portis and a bit of luck on defense, this game was in the bag.

Brooks’ magic seemed to fade in the next game, however, as he had trouble finding his receivers despite facing the Bengals. Still, 203 yards and a score were better numbers than those put up by the opposing team’s Brett Favre, and a touchdown by Darrell Jackson sealed a lucky win in a very low-scoring game. By now, I was beginning to worry a bit about Brooks, but couldn’t bring myself to bench him for A.J. Feeley.

Those worries turned out to be well-founded. In the final week of the season, Carolina’s defense embarrassed the Saints at home, sacking Brooks three times and picking him off twice, thereby ending New Orleans’ playoff hopes. With Saints fans calling for Jake Delhomme, I wound up receiving negative points for Brooks’ performance. Fortunately, my opponent in the championship game posted a lower score than she had in any other game of the season, and Portis and Williams alone wound up racking up enough points to bring home the title. Still, in spite of the win, seeing my strategy blow up so spectacularly left me feeling somewhat chagrined.

So much for the perfect plan.

In the end, Aaron Brooks had little to do with this team winning a championship. When all was said and done, the key factors turned out to be, as is so often the case, finding solid sleepers as well as benefiting from quite a bit of good luck. Portis, in particular, snared with the 160th pick of an early draft (right after Mike Anderson went off the board), was golden, especially when it mattered most.

Fortunately for all of us, there are no perfect plans in fantasy football, nor in football itself. Even dependable strategies have their weaknesses, which is what makes this game so interesting. But that doesn’t mean we won’t keep trying to come up with those perfect plans…

 
When not writing or editing Fantasy Football Cafe’s Point of View articles, Arlo Vander is constantly on the lookout for interesting fantasy strategies. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t…