Luke Slams Paul Wall, Yung Joc Tops Lil Wayne As Fantasy Football Heats Up
Week one of the MTV News Fantasy Football League is in the books and we had a nail-biter, an ugly performance and two MCs from the South establishing their teams as scoring juggernauts. Big stat of the week: All the home teams lost!
Block Entertainment (the two-headed fantasy beast of Yung Joc and company CEO Block) and our very own Liz Hernandez jumped out as the early front-runners in Division I -- a.k.a. the Gridiron Gangstas. And after week-one setbacks, Method Man and Lil Wayne find themselves in a hole early.
Meanwhile, over in Division II -- a.k.a. the Crunchtime Zone Firing Squad -- Luther Campbell and Tyrese (rolling under the name Black Ty) are sitting pretty with opening-week victories. Paul Wall and producers Cool & Dre stumbled out of the gate, but still have all season to make up ground.
It will be a dogfight all year long. Every game counts! So how did the action go this week? Here's the rundown:
Method Man's coveted first overall pick, Shaun Alexander, only came to the table with five points. He might as well have picked Priest Holmes. Another one of Meth's prized players, Carson Palmer, only put five on the board as well, throwing for a mere 127 yards on Sunday. Yuck! Meth's going to need more than one player to score in double digits as the weeks progress, which should be no problem, as his players shake off the week-one rust. Liz, however, might just have the sleeper team this year. If her main bench player, wide receiver Donté Stallworth, can be consistent this year, she might have to bench the great Randy Moss (who scored a measly four points in week one) to push her over the top.
Wayne obviously got the steal of the draft by picking Reggie Bush late. The rookie running back was on fire with a solid 11 points, as was the man Weezy picked to accompany him in the backfield, Larry Johnson (who brought in 14 points). Wayne's team had a well-balanced attack, and most of the time 98 points should guarantee a win. But the squad of Block Entertainment (the company behind Yung Joc and Boyz N Da Hood) was virtually unstoppable, racking up the most points of any team this week. Virtually all of their picks -- such as kicker Adam Vinatieri, the New York Giants' combination of Eli Manning and Plaxico Burress and Chargers running back LaDainian Tomlinson -- paid big dividends for them.
Black Ty didn't do too badly with the quarterback Method Man calls "Bubble Guts," Donovan McNabb: His 22 points set the pace. Ty's number-one draft pick, Tiki Barber, didn't do too shabby either, with 17 points. Cool & Dre relied on Peyton Manning to score big for them, but he put up a very average 13 points. What cost them the game was the blunder of starting Carolina wide receiver Steve Smith, who didn't play at all. Not that their bench would have been an upgrade: Tampa Bay receiver Joey Galloway and the Redskins' Brandon Lloyd didn't score anything, but Indianapolis' Dallas Clark's nine points would have been just enough to push them over the top.
Luke was looking good. He got most of his points from players you wouldn't believe: the Bears defense (22) and kicker Jeff Wilkins (21). Luke's good friend, Pro-Bowler Edgerrin James, lived up to all his trash-talking over the speakerphone on draft day (see [article id="1540491"]"Kickoff Time! Check Out Our Fantasy Football League, With Lil Wayne, Paul Wall, Method Man"[/article]) and held him down with 14 points. Paul Wall might think about switching running backs next week: LaMont Jordan and Corey Dillon put up a combined 11 points. Meanwhile, Fred Taylor rode the pine with 17 by himself and Tatum Bell's 10 points were left unused as well.
Check back on Friday to see who's going toe-to-toe this week, and which players they're bringing to the table. Stay with us all season as the competition gets rough!
