Happy New Year, Special Ed!
Welcome to Season 8 of the world's greatest fantasy league! LETS GO!!!!!!!!
SO LONG, ABBY! HELLO, JEFFERY!
Before we get the festivities started we want to say a few words about Abby and team Bitchslapped. She has left an indelible mark on our league and will not soon be forgotten.
Abby was a 6-time Special Ed league participant. She had the losingest regular season teams over the last five years, and she never tasted the sweet nectar of Special Ed playoffs. Because of this, BS is thought of by many as the “worst” team ever in Special Ed. But, DID YOU KNOW: Bitchslapped won more Constellation Tournament games than any other Special Ed team in the 10-team era?? You have to give her credit, she might zone out for a few weeks every year but she often finished strong. Abby only finished in last place in the final standings ONCE due to several strong showings in the Constellation Playoff Bracket. Abby will also go down in history as the longest tenured Special Ed player to never change their team name or avi picture - a cautionary tale for sure.
For the 2018 season, we are very excited to welcome a new member to the Special Ed league! Let’s all give a hearty shalom to Jeffery Roth!!!
Welcome aboard, Jeffery, and good luck!
Mr. Roth is a complete unknown entering this Special Ed draft. Yahoo shows no history of fantasy football activity on his account profile. They rank him as the third worst player in our league with a paltry 593 point, Bronze-level rating, but we believe this to be based only on some unsuccessful NCAA tournament entries. We’ll presume that he plays other leagues on NFL or ESPN dot com, but maybe he’ll introduce himself on the NEW MESSAGE BOARD and enlighten us.
Jeffery is in luck tho, the rule of thumb in Special Ed has been "the less experience the better". Beginners’ Luck has been a major factor for a few other new teams entering this league in the past. Doug, Paul, and Rob have all entered the league HOT and won championships within their first two years. Let’s see if Jeffery can take us all by storm as well.
Picking in the Number Four slot, Jeffery’s greatest advantage will be the element of surprise. Four is not an ideal draft position, especially in a ten-team league. Almost dead in the middle, he will need to make tough decisions every round. But slotting this unknown player into the middle of each round also adds difficulty for players like Ertz and Dave who will alternate picking before and after him. Not knowing Jeffery’s tastes and tendencies makes every round less predictable for those around him. That could lead to some tilt-induced mistakes that would play right into his hand.
The mystery of the unknown player will be a factor right from the start. In the first round, there are exactly 3 players in the “top tier” of most people’s draft boards. Lev Bell and David Johnson were the contenders for 1.01 last year and Todd Gurley joins them this year. Those will be the top 3 in most drafts. Four is the first spot with a lot of intrigue.
Let’s see how it plays out in...
THE SECOND ANNUAL SPECIAL ED MOCK DRAFT!!
What Jeffery might not realize is that there is one pivotal player in the first round of the 2018 Special Ed draft, and that’s Saquon Barkley. With 4 Giants fans and another 2 Penn State alumns in the league, Saquon may be more highly coveted here than in any other league outside of Central PA. Saquon would be a good pick anywhere in this draft, but his value as a trade chip could be astronomical for a savvy player.
1 – Matt:
Matt loves Saquon Barkley. He was more on board with the Giants drafting Saquon at #2 than most any other Giants fan I know. So maybe he does make this pick for reals. BUT, he and The Commish are also known colluders, so don’t be shocked if they’ve already arranged for Matt to reach for Saquon at #1 then quickly trade him to Chris for whomever Chris drafts in the first and the second. WE'RE WATCHING YOU GUYS!
2 – The Champ:
Ok, so now we can get back to the real draft. Rob rode Gurley all the way to the 2017 Special Ed Title. He’ll look to repeat that effort starting here with Todd Gurley at #2.
3 – Dave:
Dave took Bell #2 last year and still ended up as one of the lowest scoring teams and last place in the final standings. We think he shakes things up this year and goes for Bell’s teammate Antonio Brown.
4 – Jeffery Roth:
Jeffery’s like “Holy Shit! I can get still get Bell or Johnson at 4??” Yep. I swear something dumb like this happens every year. He picks Leveon Bell.
5 – Jeff Ertz:
We predict Ertz DOESN'T blow it here. He makes the easy pick with David Johnson.
6 –The Commish:
Chris picks Odell Beckham. Still hard to tell at this point if he just took Matt’s favorite player to be vindictive or if the aforementioned pre-draft fix is truly in.
7 – Defend Your Moves:
Alvin Kamara might have the funniest name of any player drafted in the top 10 this year. His jersey number (41) leaves something to be desired, but the dreadlocks, nose-ring and icy grill piece make him an absolute LOCK for DYM at #7.
8 – Mike:
Ezekiel Elliott is a very good pick here, but not a sexy one. Kinda hard to really get excited about, especially for our league’s leading PSU die-hard. We don’t think Mike will be able to stomach owning a former Buckeye, so he goes with the absolute least sexy RB on the board, Melvin Gordon.
9 – Paul:
Leonard Fournette led Paul’s team all the way to the Super Bowl last year. We think he plays this just like Rob, bringing back his starting RB for a second season.
10 – Doug:
Doug’s teams are usually good, but I always hate his drafts. We can’t call it. No idea what he’ll do here with Odell and the unsexiest RB gone. We don't think he takes Zeke. If it seems like an obvious slam dunk to me Doug will always pass.
Maybe Gronk? Kareem Hunt is still there… No, wait, I got it. AJ Green. Yea, probably AJ Green and Gronk at the turn. Yuck.
NEW FEATURES AT DYM.COM
Now that the 2018 season is almost upon us, we are rolling out a few new features here at the DefendYourMoves.com weblog. These long-awaited features are some of the most game-changing, disruptive innovations in the history of Defend Your Moves.
NEW MESSAGE BOARD:
PROMISES MADE PROMISES KEPT!
DYM left the Yahoo message board when they discontinued image posting and polls following the 2016 season. Establishing DefendYourMoves.com gave us more creative control over the look and feel of DYM content. Initially we were able to install a commenting app in the blog pages so folks could reply to the DYM editorial staff directly. Unfortunately this implementation lacked the capability for DYM readers to interact with each other from within the DYM platform. The people demanded a more robust messaging system, where all subscribers can be constantly looped in and empowered to engage with the entire Special Ed Community in real-time. Today those demands have finally been met.
The New Special Ed Message Board is powered by Google Groups. You may have received an Email earlier today regarding the group named “SPECIAL ED LEAGUE MESSAGE BOARD!!!!!” if so, you are already a member. CONGRATULATIONS! (Let us know if you didn’t get it. Especially if you’re not using a gmail account). You should immediately start receiving email updates of any posts or replies in The New Message Board.
All you have to do now is join in the conversation. There are THREE (3) different ways to use the awesomely powerful New Special Ed League Message Board:
1 - DefendYourMoves.com/message-board is the preferred method of true DYM Scholars. Here you will find access to all of the NEW Message Board features right along side weekly Special Ed and DYM content. This page will be updated every week with the latest Special Ed standings and match-ups for the upcoming week. The interface will also be at the bottom of every DYM post for easy commenting. Scroll down to the bottom of this page and start now!!!
2 – Send an Email to defend-your-moves@googlegroups.com. Your message will be automatically posted to the board for all to see. You’ll get an email back with any and all replies.
3 – The actual Google Groups website is groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/defend-your-moves. This might be the best place to change your user settings, including profile name and notification preferences.
ARCHIVES:
An invaluable tool for the true DYM Scholars, the DYM Archive page is now complete with all of 2017 and the best of 2016 fully labeled, dated and indexed. We went through all the posts from last year and added dates and week #’s for easier reference. You can find the “BEST OF DYM” posts linked on the left sidebar of any regular blog post (like this one). The entire DYM history is sorted by date on the homepage sidebar and in the “ARCHIVE” page on defendyourmoves.com.
