Professional Grade: A Comeback?
GMC Pro Grade League: The Finals
Tom Brady picked a bad time to show he's human.
A significant share of fantasy owners might have coasted this far riding Brady's hot hand, and some of those might already have won league championships, but I've got your example where Brady's recent "slump" could end up costing his team a title.
In our in-house, GMC Professional Grade League, Matthew Berry is the proud owner of Mr. Brady. And entering Week 2 of his two-week finals matchup against Eric Karabell, he finds himself trailing by 30 points on the scoreboard.
At first glance, that might seem an insurmountable deficit. But I took a closer look at our league's history: In 23 of our 65 regular-season matchups (35.4 percent), the margin of victory was 30 points or greater. In other words, over the course of our season, there was better than a one-in-three chance a team could have amassed that large a lead in one week of a two-week playoff matchup. But there's also better than a one-in-three chance its opponent could rally in Week 2 to close the gap. Those aren't awful odds.
Regardless, Berry wasn't convinced a comeback was possible.
"I'm not going to lie, I'm not crazy about my chances here," he said. "Everything that could go wrong (in Week 16) did. Not only did Willie Parker get injured on the first play, but Earnest Graham got pulled very early after [Buccaneers coach Jon] Gruden said he wouldn't. Wes Welker did nothing against his former team and T.J. Houshmandzadeh had a score but not much else. Even stupid Jared Allen vultured a score that probably would have gone to Tony Gonzalez. And Brady's three picks didn't help either."
Karabell, meanwhile, wasn't about to relax, informed of his advantage.
"Ha! I won't be fooled by this lead," he said. "In fact, I won't even look at the score. It doesn't exist. Lead? What lead? Let's pretend I'm trailing. Why don't you write that! I really won't change my philosophy at all. I want to score points, and since I have no idea how many points my opponent will score, I'll worry about my team.
"I won't talk trash either. It angers the fantasy gods. No, I'm serious."
Ah, superstition. Apparently it transcends the gridiron and into fantasy football.
Despite being up big, Karabell, to his word, wasn't playing protect-the-lead in Week 17. He went for the kill, with one exception: One of his two highest-scoring players for the season, Tony Romo (282 fantasy points), took a cozy seat on his bench.
"While I don't think Drew Brees has a big day in windy Chicago, it has to be better than Tony Romo in a meaningless game," he said. "I also didn't hesitate on using LaDainian Tomlinson. He can score twice in the first half, then sit. I'm glad I signed Dominic Rhodes a mere minutes before the Week 16 game. I activated him, he did well, and should again."
Wide receiver was also the source of another interesting Karabell decision: Concerned about Greg Jennings and Bobby Engram sitting in Week 17 with their teams locked into their playoff seeds, he activated Santana Moss, whose team has plenty of motivation fighting for the final wild-card spot. But was there something else behind the move?
"Doesn't my opponent like the Redskins?" said Karabell. "Hmmm, will he root for Moss, even though I have him active? Double hmmm. Not that it affected my decision one bit."
While Karabell wasn't taking any different approach to his lineup than he did the previous 16 weeks of the season, Berry prepared a "hail mary" strategy for Week 17.
"I'm going with all high-risk, high-reward guys, including T.J. Duckett," said Berry. "Marshawn Lynch is starting for me and then right now I have Darren Sproles in at flex. … Aaron Stecker is banged up so unless he's declared 100 percent ready to go, I'll probably go with Sproles, who will be going against Oakland and is as high-risk, high-reward as it gets."
Interestingly, that means two Chargers running backs, facing the Raiders, who have allowed an NFL-high 24 rushing touchdowns, will be facing each other in the Berry-Karabell Week 17 matchup. Could the decider in this matchup ultimately wind up however early in the game the Chargers give Tomlinson the hook? We'll find out …
Tristan H. Cockcroft covers fantasy sports for ESPN.com. You can e-mail him here.
