WRBL Week 1, 2018 Recap

Wisconsin Rapids Bro League

Week 1
Our 4th official season of blaming Cole Walters for the WiFi at Applebee's.

.Current Standings (with regular season won-loss streaks)
Steven Nett Division
Team Easy Breesy (Ryan Dougherty) 1-0 W4
The Scottfather (Scott Aschebrook) 1-0 W1
Team ChowHounds (Darrin Aschebrook) 1-0 W1
Cole World (Cole Walters) 1-0 W1

Shooter McGavin Division
Tax Paying Homeowner (Alec Swanson) 0-1 L2
Crazy Todd's Driveway Band (Andy Todd) 0-1 L1
Perfectly Balanced (Nick Zurawski) 0-1 L1
SNEEN MACHINE (Tyler Sneen) 0-1 L1

Week One Final Scores
COLE  136 ALEC  131
RYAN  185 SNEEN  98
DARRIN  146 NICK  110
SCOTT  153 ANDY  110

Heroes of the Week: RB Alvin Kamara (Darrin), WR Tyreek Hill (Alec), WR Michael Thomas (Ryan)

Michael DeMocker, NOLA.com
Hero of the Week: RB Alvin Kamara (Team ChowHounds)

Waiver Wonders: QB Ryan Fitzpatrick (41 points), QB Philip Rivers (28), DF New York Jets (25)

Derick E. Hingle - USA TODAY Sports
Waiver Wonder: Ryan Fitzpatrick (417 yards & 4 TDs passing, 1 rushing TD)

Zeros of the Week: DF New Orleans Saints (Andy)

Upcoming Week 15 Match-ups & NFL Schedule (in CT)
Cole vs. Andy
Scott vs. Alec
Darrin vs. Ryan
Sneen vs. Nick
Thursday: Baltimore @ Cincinnati 7:20 PM 
Sunday: Carolina @ Atlanta NOON
LA Chargers @ Buffalo NOON
Minnesota @ Green Bay NOON
Houston @ Tennessee NOON
Cleveland @ New Orleans NOON
Miami @ NY Jets NOON
Kansas City @ Pittsburgh NOON
Philadelphia @ Tampa Bay NOON
Indianapolis @ Washington NOON
Arizona @ LA Rams 3:05 PM
Detroit @ San Francisco 3:05 PM
Oakland @ Denver 3:25 PM
New England @ Jacksonville 3:25 PM
NY Giants @ Dallas 7:20 PM
Monday: Seattle @ Chicago 7:15 PM

Bro...
The long wait has concluded, the suspensions have been handed out, the replacements have been signed and the preseason games have been tolerated. Now, it's time to get down to the nitty gritty (a phrase that has no meaning whatsoever) of our semi-consistent bro bonding experience, the Wisconsin Rapids Bro League (A fantasy football league unlike any other). In order to tell the story of week one of the NFL and WRBL regular seasons, we must go back to Wednesday, September 5th as the league had some minor issues kicking off our 4th OFFICIAL (I'm dropping SEMI-official to avoid further confusion. The Nick Zurawski win will always count in our minds and his heart but, none of the stats or further league info exist from that Noah, Cal, Alex and others season) WRBL season. The draft took place at Applebee's this year (hold your applause) because four of the eight team owners could not meet for the draft. Nick was busy prepping for a hurricane on the east coast, Scott had to clean all of his terrible towels in Pittsburgh (Not to be confused with Pittsville, Wisconsin), Alec had taxes, houses and small children to tend to and Cole was waxing his nipples in order to protect DeShaun Watson at all costs (Not all heroes wear capes). It was simply Darrin, Ryan, Tyler Sneen and I. The wings weren't as good as Buffalo Wild Wings and the wi-fi was terrible but, it was still fun to catch up with everybody that was there and everybody not named Sneen felt good about their teams at the end of the night, even if I practically re-drafted my 2017 squad (a no-no in most books unless your team consisted of the #1 player at every position).

Answer: Not where we had our WRBL draft. 

Week 1 kicked off with the Falcons continuing their red zone struggles under Steve Sarkisian in a loss to the defending champion, Nick Foles-led Eagles. The biggest beneficiary of Thursday Night Football was defending champion Ryan's Team Easy Breesy, which is purely coincidental since a majority of Ryan's points were scored by Atlanta's Julio Jones. Ryan did not stop there either as his team went OFF for 185 points, showing why he is still the favorite to win the league. Maybe there's some correlation between youth and success in fantasy football? I mean... Darrin is 0/3 in this league while, Ryan is 1/1 so, the numbers don't lie.... yet. When Patrick Mahomes threw an incomplete pass to Kareem Hunt on 2nd-and-1 at the Chargers' 1-yard line, I knew my week was over. Yes, Scott threw together one hell of a nice team for the week but, I really thought there was a chance around the third quarter of the 3 o'clock games that I might pull off a sneaky quality win (I still like the unbiased, college football playoff system for picking our playoff teams). Regardless of Week 1's result, I feel extremely confident in Patrick Mahomes becoming my every week quarterback the way Dak Prescott was last season. Even if we took Nick Zurawski's suggestion and banned Alvin Kamara from the league, Rapmaster Nicky Z would have lost by four points and his Thanos team logo still would not have made much sense (Maybe he's saving it for the postseason). Despite scoring a point, Nick still likely feels like Travis Kelce has earned Zero of the Week honors after he consistently dropped ten or more points every week for the entire Alex Smith in KC tenure. One point in a week where everybody on Kansas City was fantasy relevant likely just means that Kelce will be open in future weeks after the Chargers hyper-focused on the reality superstar. In the week's most surprising result, Cole went from bottom to... not the bottom (Take that, Drake) after he somehow survived Delanie Walker's broken ankle (Sad reacts only), Leonard Fournette's hamstrung hamstring and a rusty-as-hell DeShaun Watson (was it really worth the dignity of your areolas, Cole? It's not like you were trying to get into the cool kids' party or anything. You're already a part of the coolest league on Earth!). Yes, the Walters name was salvaged thanks to LITERALLY the only pre-week one waiver move when Cole foolishly dumped sudden Bronco handcuff RB Phillip Lindsay for sudden superstar Top-10 fantasy RB James Conner. 33 points and 33 shade-infused Le'Veon Bell tweets later and Cole is the early front-runner for the Waiver Wonder award this year. The closest match of the week resulted in an Alec loss that can be blamed on many people including WR Amari Cooper (has under 10 receiving yards in SIX of his last thirteen games), TE Trey Burton (maybe a slight Bears bias from Alec here but, he was being viewed as a viable starting option this season) and to bring it all full circle, Falcons' QB Matt Ryan (lowest scoring QB in WRBL week 1).

Matt Freed/Post-Gazette
Cancer survivor and breakout RB James Conner is THE story of week one in fantasy football.

Highlights and lowlights for the week in the NFL... Where do I begin? James Conner was incredible in replacing #1 overall pick Le'Veon Bell for the Steelers. Anonymous sources tell me that once Le'Veon Bell was told he was the first choice off the board, he loudly stated "SEE YA SNEEN!" and was last seen hanging out on Big Island (A real place with a ridiculous wikipedia page) with Evan Moon. The Nathan Peterman experiment only took another ugly turn after he threw two more interceptions (he's up to 7 in his 2 career starts with 0 touchdowns) and now, rookie QB Josh Allen will be thrown into the fire after A.J. McCarron was dealt to Oakland in one of the least sensible trades made in a while for both teams that did not involve a Khalil Mack. Speaking of Khalil Mack, he was the NFL's best player for exactly thirty NFL minutes. Aaron Rodgers suffered a Paul Pierce-like injury, came back and then, he was the NFL's best player for the next thirty NFL minutes. End result? Bears 23 (Alec rejoices), Packers 24 (Cole jumps onto his front lawn naked).


Cole's nips are red
Violets are blue
Hopefully Cole loses
In week number two.

Very rarely does the hype of one week's worth of football keep me at the same level of excitement for another week (until Super Bowl week) but, here we are. The Bengals and Ravens play Thursday Night and it feels like one of these teams is going to go on a run that could land them a wildcard spot if they play their cards right and I'll take John Harbaugh over Marvin Lewis any day. Either way, that is quietly a really good game. Sunday sees the Vikings play a potentially hobbled Aaron Rodgers (could end poorly for Green Bay), the Saints looking for a rebound against Cleveland after an awful defensive performance versus Tampa Bay (Yeah, I don't expect Cleveland's first win since RG3 to happen this week either) and the Chiefs at Pittsburgh for a possible AFC playoff preview at noon. The late afternoon slate shows Jacksonville getting a shot at revenge after the referees stole an AFC Championship game from them against the Patriots last year. Sunday Night has one contender for the Eagles in the NFC East likely knocked out as the Giants and their awful quarterback play Dallas and their awful receivers. Monday Night will be a fun one between two teams with decent ceilings and basement floors as the Seahawks give Mitchell Trubisky and Matt Nagy a second chance at holding their opponents under water until the bubbles stop this time. In the WRBL, I face Cole, Ryan faces the possibility of losing a ride to the next league meeting if he kills Darrin in fantasy football the way he did Sneen, Tyler Sneen trying to get something out of these Le'Veonless weekends against Nick and the TanneGOATs and The Tax Payer Alec Swanson versus the Tax Dodger Scott Aschebrook. It'll be another weekend of fantastic fantasy football fun finally!

Scoring Leaders

QB

Drew Brees 31 (Ryan)

Patrick Mahomes 28 (Andy)

Aaron Rodgers 24 (Darrin)

Tom Brady 21 (Sneen)

Russell Wilson 19 (Scott)

Cam Newton 17 (Nick)

DeShaun Watson 11 (Cole)

Matt Ryan 8 (Alec)

RB

Alvin Kamara 42 (Darrin)

James Conner 33 (Cole)

Melvin Gordon 27 (Alec)

Joe Mixon 25 (Andy)

Isaiah Crowell 22 (Sneen)

Todd Gurley 22 (Ryan)

Saquon Barkley 20 (Alec)

David Johnson 17 (Scott)

Ezekiel Elliott 16 (Nick)

Jordan Howard 15 (Ryan)

James White 14 (Darrin)

Dalvin Cook 13 (Andy)

Christian McCaffrey 13 (Scott)

Kenyan Drake 8 (Nick)

Leonard Fournette 8 (Cole)

Devonta Freeman 7 (Sneen)

Kareem Hunt 4 (Andy)

LeSean McCoy 3 (Darrin)

WR

Tyreek Hill 41 (Alec)

Michael Thomas 38 (Ryan)

Mike Evans 27 (Scott)

Julio Jones 27 (Ryan)

Keenan Allen 24 (Nick)

Antonio Brown 24 (Darrin)

Odell Beckham Jr. 22 (Andy)

Golden Tate 20 (Ryan)

Davante Adams 19 (Scott)

A.J. Green 19 (Cole)

Demaryius Thomas 18 (Darrin)

Jarvis Landry 17 (Scott)

Adam Thielen 16 (Cole)

T.Y. Hilton 15 (Andy)

DeAndre Hopkins 15 (Nick)

Larry Fitzgerald 14 (Cole)

Brandin Cooks 13 (Nick)

Stefon Diggs 13 (Alec)

Chris Hogan 2 (Sneen)

Amari Cooper 1 (Alec)

TE

Rob Gronkowski 23 (Sneen)

Jordan Reed 14 (Scott)

Zach Ertz 9 (Sneen)

Delanie Walker 9 (Cole)

Greg Olsen 5 (Ryan)

Evan Engram 3 (Andy)

Trey Burton 2 (Alec)

Jimmy Graham 2 (Darrin)

Travis Kelce 1 (Nick)

K

Greg Zuerlein 16 (Ryan)

Justin Tucker 12 (Scott)

Harrison Butker 9 (Andy)

Stephen Gostkowski 9 (Nick)

Matt Bryant 8 (Cole)

Mason Crosby 7 (Sneen)

Wil Lutz 6 (Alec)

Chris Boswell 2 (Darrin)

DF

Minnesota Vikings 18 (Cole)

Baltimore Ravens 17 (Darrin)

Los Angeles Rams 15 (Scott)

Jacksonville Jaguars 13 (Alec)

Philadelphia Eagles 11 (Ryan)

Houston Texans 7 (Sneen)

New England Patriots 7 (Nick)

New Orleans Saints -9 (Andy)

Hypothetical Standings

Team Easy Breesy 1-0

The Scottfather 1-0

Team ChowHounds 1-0

Cole World 1-0

Tax Paying Homeowner 0-1

Perfectly Balanced 0-1
Crazy Todd's Driveway Band 0-1
SNEEN MACHINE 0-1