2011 fantasy recap, week 1

After a Sunday afternoon full of Sept. 11 anniversary tributes (many of them just awful -- Robert De Niro just seemed creepy talking on behalf of the NFL), I thought it was a nice touch to see New York's own beloved football team go out there and play their hearts out. Nobody was sure what to expect from the squad after another tumultuous offseason, but they went out there and performed exactly how you'd hope they would. So, congrats again to the Buffalo Bills, New York state's only football team, for their epic beatdown of the KC Chiefs on Sunday.

In unrelated news, the New Jersey Giants were absolutely terrible on Sunday. And I thought it was embarrassing that they would wear New York Fire Department hats on the sidelines, since the team doesn't play in that city. They really should have worn Newark or Jersey City items instead. Show some civic pride, jerks.

QB: Tom Brady, 42.98 pts -- started by Jo
RB: Mike Tolbert, 34.87 pts -- started by Joel
WR: Steve Smith, 31.87 pts -- started by Sam
TE: Scott Chandler, 21.20 pts -- on the wire
K: David Akers, 15.00 pts -- started by Jo
DEF: Chicago, 27.00 pts -- started by Dad
D: Brian Urlacher, 13.50 pts -- started by Jo

Only one girl left in the league this year, and she whipped all our sorry butts this week. Jo fell just short of an epic 200-point week, even with Danny Amendola’s dislocated arm on her bench. And for those of you who before this week could identify Mike Tolbert and Scott Chandler as professional football players and not characters from a generic police drama, congrats.

-- Patriots QB Tom Brady (517 passing yards Monday) is on pace to pass for 8,272 yards this year, destroying the NFL single-season record of 5,084.

-- The Steelers (7 turnovers Sunday) are on pace for 112 giveaways this year, nearly double the team record of 63 turnovers in a season.

-- Eagles RB LeSean McCoy (122 rushing yards Sunday) is on pace to rush for 1,952 yards this season, roughly 1,900 more yards on the ground than coach Andy Reid would like to see from his team.

-- Cowboys QB Tony Romo and Giants QB Eli Manning are on pace to go 0-32 this year, and post a record 752 dopey faces by November (Previous record held by Eli, with 652 by Nov. 1).

-- RB Fred Taylor (retired two weeks ago) is on pace to get injured anyway.

Opening Defense edition
3rd place: Seattle, -1.00 pts -- on Jeff’s bench
2nd place: Miami, -3.00 pts -- on the wire
2nd place: Kansas City, -3.00 pts -- started by Jim
1st place: Pittsburgh, -5.00 pts -- started by Paul

Paul may have had the worst player on the week (one point off the lowest possible score from a defense), but Jim had the roughest coaching debut of the season: He left 52 points on his bench. For good measure, Anthony opted to start two players injured before kickoff this week, and Jeff supported my preseason prediction that he’d win the league by inexplicably failing to start a second defensive player, the 769th time he’s left a position open in this fantasy league. He’s sly like a fox, that one.

During the USC-Utah game on Versus on Saturday (note: I may have a problem with the amount of football I'll watch), the commentators had this exchange during the first series:

Play-by-play guy: Utah QB Jordan Wynn had shoulder surgery during the offseason, and missed much of the spring practices. If you're USC, do you try and get to him early?

Color commentator: Sure. He's the QB. I try to get to him on every play.

I couldn't hear the booth clearly after that, but I assume the next sound was that guy slapping the play-by-play announcer upside the head.

Every year, at the start of the season, my father asks me a question about some rookie and quotes Yahoo's fantasy expert projections. Then I respond by asking him if he still believes in the tooth fairy as well. And then we don't talk for a few weeks.

But this year, I wanted to pull some numbers to show just how terrible those projected fantasy points are. So I pulled the numbers for the top 30 projected QBs and the top 50 projected RBs and compared them with how they actually fared. Since I crunched the numbers Monday night, before the game finished, I had to throw a few names out. But here's what I found:

-- Among 28 QBs, only 17 were within 50 percent (plus or minus) of the projected fantasy points.
-- Only 12 were within 30 percent.
-- Only 3 were within 10 percent.

-- Among 39 RBs, only 25 were within 50 percent.
-- Only 15 were within 30 percent.
-- Only 3 were within 10 percent.

Among the QBs off by more than half, the average mistake was more than 14 points. For the RBs, it hovered around 10 points. Imagine a professional football analyst guessing the final score of a game and regularly being off by two touchdowns. How long would that person hold onto a job?

Well, Chris Berman has been that terrible with his picks for 32 years straight now, so maybe that's a bad example.

You'd think that after nearly 130 Cowboy insult anagrams (I counted in the offseason) that I'd start having trouble coming up with new ideas. And you'd think wrong. It's easy to keep doing this, because every year the Dallas braintrust brings in a new crop of absolutely abominable players.

For example, take the Cowboys first-round draft pick this year, Tyron Smith. It took me less than 30 seconds to find the evil lurking inside the offensive tackle's soul:

Tyron Smith -- Horny mitts
Tyron Smith -- Tis my thorn
Tyron Smith -- My hints rot
Tyron Smith -- Him on tryst

He'll fit right in with the rest of those jerks. So, we say to you, "Hi, Mr. Snotty" (also an anagram for Tyron Smith).

Click on the image below to make it bigger.

Pretty good scores all around this week, so catching up to Jo shouldn't be too much of a problem.

-- We're only one week into the season and I'm already down two games in my weekly picks to Dad. Special thanks goes out to the AFC South, where I managed to get both games wrong. Damn Colts.

-- Speaking of the damn Colts, NBC's Sunday Night Football intro features Peyton Manning front and center among the NFL stars being highlighted. In the promo he still has a neck, so you know that picture was way outdated.

-- More awesome anagrams, but these are from mentalfloss.com:
** Indianapolis Colts: spinal dislocation
** Baltimore Ravens: ovarian trembles
** Chicago Bears: ribcage chaos
** Dallas Cowboys: spawn of satan
OK, maybe that last one doesn't quite work.

-- The Eagles are still 93 wins behind the Phillies on the season. I'm just saying.