PARRY: Head-to-head in fantasy means there’s always a chance

Published 11:59 pm Wednesday, October 30, 2013

My team is 4-4.

We should be 3-5 at the most.

Why the .500 record?

Well, fantasy football is not fair, or I am very lucky, or probably both.

You see, like gambling is supposed to be if you’re not counting cards or doing something shady, fantasy football is about skill — but also luck.

Most leagues are head-to-head each week as teams square off with one another just like how NFL teams do. That means if one week your team lays an egg and scores 75 points, you can still win as long as your opponent struggles even more that week.

My team, the Last Action Heroes, has scored 80 points or less four times this season.

We’ve won three of those games. Now if you put us against most of the other teams in the league on those weeks we would’ve lost, but the opponent we played did not do enough to win.

Last week is a perfect example. Thanks to Tom Brady continuing to limit my team’s effectiveness, Le’Veon Bell being bogged down and Victor Cruz failing to get into the end zone again, my Heroes combined for a whopping 75 points entering Monday Night Football.

My opponent, The Goodfellas, average 98 points per week this season, but were limping along with 54 points. But that team still had Seattle Seahawks running back Marshawn Lynch left to play and he was projected to go off against the Rams defense.

Well, Lynch did virtually nothing and my kicker added two more points to give me a 77-56 win. To put it into perspective: in our 14-team league I would’ve lost to 10 opponents.

But not The Goodfellas on this week.

Man, I love fantasy football.

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If you’ve seen the movie Glengary Glen Ross, there is a famous scene where Alec Baldwin’s character tells his salesmen to “ABC — always be closing.”

Well, I’d like to edit that statement a little for fantasy football.

My fantasy motto: ABW.

Always be working — the waiver wire and the trading block.

This is the best time to do that because bye weeks will have owners panicking, especially if their record is not what they hoped.

It’s amazing when owners that are 3-5 at this point start punting and trading all of their players.

That is when you pounce.

The owner of Goodfellas and myself are very similar in that we subscribe to same formula: ABW.

And on Tuesday, even though we had just played each other and were both 4-4, we pulled off a nine-player trade.

I got Lynch (hopefully he does better for me from now on), Tony Gonzalez, Hakeem Nicks, Eli Manning and injured but soon-to-be-viable Michael Crabtree.

I sent him two receivers I picked up off the waiver wire, who have been solid for me: Jarrett Boykin and Keenan Allen, a running back who has been up and down but could break out in Bell and a quarterback who is driving me crazy, Brady.

Who know if it works out for either of us, but I do know that the Goodfellas owner and myself will keep ABW.

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Teams on a bye this week: Cardinals, Broncos, Giants, Lions, 49ers, Jaguars

Players you can look at for bye-week fill-ins:

Quarterback: Jason Campbell, Cleveland Browns — Campbell went against the best defense in the league last week and still finished with 293 yards and two touchdowns.

Running Back: Deji Karim, Houston Texans — As of writing this, Arian Foster and Ben Tate are still questionable so Karim will be the man for a Houston team that likes to run the football.

Wide Receiver: Marvin Jones, Cincinnati Bengals — Talk about lightning in a bottle. Catch this if he’s still on your waiver wire. Jones scored four touchdowns last week and has six in his last three games. A.J. Green is drawing more and more attention, which open things up even more for Jones.

Good luck in Week 9.