Matthew Berry's Vampire League Update
It has been 6 weeks into Matthew Berry's Vampire league and it has been interesting. The last time I wrote an update on this league, Berry was 0-3. That's not the case now. Before I jump into how Berry is doing, I will do a quick update on my team. I am now currently 4-2 with the highest point total in the league. My team is doing fairly well without my first round pick, Le'Veon Bell. I have also lost Rex Burkhead and Marshawn Lynch so far and can't do anything about it until the playoffs. I have also been without Evan Engram for a few weeks but I wisely drafted David Njoku, who has filled in nicely.
Berry has exploded in week 4 with a few good pickups. He added James White, Tyler Boyd, Sterling Shepard and Jared Cook. His opponent decided to keep all of his top players in this week, but it wasn't enough. The Vampire had his first victim. Berry scored 174.7 points in this game, beating his opponent by over 50. We were all stunned once Berry got his first win. His top choices he had to pick from was Zeke Elliot and Michael Thomas. Knowing how thin RB could get, he went and took Zeke from his opponent.
After that dominate performance, the league was scared and it showed. This week's opponent decided to bench his entire starting lineup and play his bench instead. If he would have played Berry straight up, he would have defeated him. Instead Berry cruised to his second straight victory winning 114.4-35.7. His opponent didn't leave much for Berry to take after he won, but he did leave Carlos Hyde in his starting roster for him to take. Berry now has 2 wins and had 2 more starting RB that he could play.
The fear continued in week 6. Once again the Vampire made his opponent bench all of his starting players. This team would have also won if they had just started their normal team. This was a fairly close game even though Berry was playing against half a roster. The final score was 105.9-74.5. As you can see above, Berry didn't have many options to pick from this team. He ultimately took Stephen Gostkowski after he had a huge week. Berry has now won 3 straight games. His record should be 1-5 if the other two teams actually played him straight up.
After some discussion in our group, Berry's opponent has decided to play him with his best lineup this week. I like the decision as there is a prize if we finish better than Berry at the end of the season. The current projections show Berry losing at a score of 115-108.6 so it should be a close one. Next week is my highly anticipated matchup against the vampire. I have done fairly well with avoiding major injuries thus far. I plan to play Berry with the best lineup that I can put out there. I will be playing without Julio Jones in this game as he is on a bye. Lucky for me, Zeke is also on a bye so he will not be able to use him. I plan on extending my dominance in this league with another high scoring week. I will write up a short summary of how that game goes, but wish me luck!