The Diary of a Fantasy Virgin - Week 13 Timothy Davoll, Fantasy Football Staff Writer Dec 5, 2003 | More

Are you a person with the penchant for triskaidekaphobia?  The fear of 13 is triskaidekaphobia and I suggest that you should not be afraid.  For the 13^th week came and went this NFL season and many are still wishing we were in first place.  If you are in first place still, congratulations.  Watch out because everyone is gunning for you and let me tell you this my friends.  The last thing most teams in fantasy leagues anticipate is the continual fight from a team with a losing record.  Since I write this article every week, I explore ways to win because I have a losing record. A losing record means you have to make changes. It is no big deal if you never win another game because at least you never gave up.  So this week it will be never giving up strategies and the release of the Voodoo woman on board our ship.

Beating The First Place Team

Yes, my friends, the Virgin played against the number one team this week.  How do you prepare for such an occasion?  You think and come up with a strategy.  Two weeks ago, I looked at what week 13 would bring and saw that the Chicago Bears would be playing against the Arizona Cardinals.  If your league is like mine, you can only have 16 slots for players / Defensive Teams.  And nobody liked Chicago two weeks ago so I picked Chicago up off waivers.  Also someone in my league released Doug Flutie after his 3-point performance.  Little did they know that Kansas City, though boasting a league best record with but one loss, likes to have their passing defense lit up for all its worth.  So I acquired and started Doug Flutie.  If you witnessed the Kansas City – San Diego game, it came down to this one moment.  In my league I was losing by 7 points when KC punted with 1:04 to go in the game.  And, if you paid attention, KC only missed the first down by two yards.  Two more yards and they could have run out the clock.  But it didn’t happen.  So San Diego gets the ball and Flutie just competes.  That is all you can ask out of a player on your team.  Eventually the team gets down to the 20-yard line with 4 seconds to go.  With 0 time on the clock he throws a touchdown and in my league the drive and score was worth 7 points!  This combined with the pickup of Charles Lee for Tampa Bay and a Chicago defense, which netted 19 points, resulted in a win over the number one team in our fantasy league.  So what does this mean?  You too can win by playing the odds when it is all against you.  Acquire a defensive team that is playing at home against a team that has trouble scoring.  You may be justly rewarded.  And by all means, never give up.  Speaking of losses.  Lets see how the captain deals with losing Mawu.

Captain’s Log – 12-1-2003 – 11:00 PM

Artemis’ plan to defeat the next obstacle went without a hitch and our listing ship had a full wind at its sail as we made way past the 13^th obstacle.  We had kept our end of the bargain and dropped Mawu off at the island she had requested.  We had won two games in a row and we really felt sore in seeing her go.  I asked her if she had any tokens to wish us good luck and to my surprise she gave me a wonderfully polished cannon ball.  It was so bright that I could make out the wrinkles in my salty sea-worn face and Artemis swore that the cannon ball could not be ours.  But it had the markings of our ballistics supplier and it shined like Mars on the evening of an eclipsed moon.  She stated that her family knew secrets and polishing cannonballs was one of them.  I just stood flabbergasted as we set off for obstacle 14 without our Voodoo woman.  It was a great two weeks and lets just hope we makes it into port with our wits about us.  I caught the glimmer of a smile coming from the boatswain as we breached waving distance and Mawu was gone.  Lets hope our fortunes have not left with her.

Master D.