NFL Fantasy Football 2012: Week 9 In Review.

Wow! It's hard to imagine that week 10 of the NFL season is upon us. Things are definitely starting to change as the month of November has come. Baseball has ended, the NBA season has began, President Barack Obama has been elected to a second term, and I'm finding it unusually hot in my area for it to be November. At any rate, we're at the week ten mark of the fantasy football season, which means that it's time for me to review week 9 of the various leagues I'm participating in. One thing that I can guarantee for sure is that there will be a name mentioned several times throughout this article. The name? Doug Martin! Yes ladies and gentlemen, Doug Martin. Those of you who play fantasy football will most likely know why I'm mentioning the rookie running back from the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. If you wanna find out how Martin and his historic performance last week against the Oakland Raiders factors into my fantasy teams, I need you to do me a tiny tiny favor. Read on please!

The standings in this league are incredibly close. When I say close, I mean exactly that. There are ten leagues in this league right? Coming into week 9, there were only 2 games separating 10th place from 4th place. If you read my review from last week, you would know that I was in 9th place coming into week 9. Although my rank in the standings was poor, a win in week 9 could have moved me up a spot or two. Although my regular starter Tom Brady was on a bye week during week 9, I felt confident in winning during this week. Looking at my opponent's team, I noticed that several of his key players were on bye weeks as well.

To make up for the quarterback dilemma, I picked up Buccaneers quarterback Josh Freeman from waivers. Freeman has been on fire the last few weeks from a fantasy perspective, and continued it with a decent outing of 21 fantasy points for me. The biggest production I received came once again from the dominant Chicago Bears defense. The Bears defense continues to put up excellent fantasy points for a fantasy defense week in and week out. They gave my team an added boost with 28 fantasy points in a 51-20 win over the Tennessee Titans.

The final result for me in this league was a 90-78 win for myself. The only other players in my starting lineup that finished with double digit points were Texans receiver Andre Johnson with 11 points, and Chargers tight end Antonio Gates with 10. The win pushed me from 9th in the standings to 6th, which means that if the playoffs started this week, I would be still playing. The schedule in this league is officially starting over in this league for week number 10. I'm playing the person who beat me in week number 1 by the narrow margin of 104-103. That loss left somewhat of a bitter taste in my mouth, so I'm hoping to get a little bit of revenge there.

I have every reason to be all smiles in this league. After winning in week 8, I found myself atop the standings in this league. I will admit that I attributed my seven game winning streak in this league to pure luck. I mean it's fantasy football right, so being lucky definitely plays a factor. However, after analyzing my team again, I realize that I have a really solid fantasy team. I have one of the best fantasy quarterbacks in Green Bay's Aaron Rodgers, and I have arguably the best fantasy defense with the Chicago Bears. Oh yea by the way, I have a player that has been one of the best surprises in fantasy this year, Doug Martin!

Anyone who is playing fantasy football and owns Tampa Bay's Doug Martin, more than likely won their match-up in week 9. Martin had an absolutely amazing, and even historic game against the Oakland Raiders. Martin ran for 251 rushing yards, and found the end-zone four times in the Bucs 42-32 win over the Raiders. The final result for my team was a 193.50-97.50 victory. Lets discuss briefly how Doug Martin's performance ranks among history in fantasy football. Since 1995, which marked the "Internet Era" of fantasy football, only 8 players have scored 45 points or more. The top three are Clinton Portis(55.4), Shaun Alexander(53.1), and Corey Dillion(51.6).

Depending on the scoring in your league, Martin's performance could be ranked a spot or two higher. Drafting Martin turned out to be a wise move for me, even though I didn't know much about him. Besides the great production from Martin, I got nice production from several other players on my fantasy team. Aaron Rodgers put up 33 fantasy points for me, and Bears running back Matt Forte added 21. The Chicago Bears defense put up 34 in this league, and both Jimmy Graham and Vincent Jackson finished in double digits with 17 and 15 points respectively. The the 193.50 points my team scored is the highest that I've scored ever since I started playing fantasy in 2006. A big win and a first place rankings, equal a very satisfied prospectboy.

I definitely wasn't looking forward to week number 9 in "Da League". This marked the week where I had to play a good friend of mine, who is also playing this league as well. Our records were the same going into the week, and a lost from either one was us would be a huge setback in making the fantasy football playoffs. At any rate, we both put it aside since we all know what we were signing up for when we agreed to play. Things got off to an interesting start in week 9 number in this league. If you're curious to know which player it involved, I'll go ahead and tell you now. DOUG MARTIN!

I don't know or understand the logic behind it, but one of the players in this league dropped Doug Martin from their team earlier in the week. I logged on Tuesday of last week, and noticed that Martin had been dropped. Being that I have Martin in "The Turf 13" league, I knew what he was capable of doing. I just don't see why someone would drop this guy. Oh well, I viewed it as their loss and my gain. After the claim I put in on waivers went through, I officially had Martin on my team. Being that my other running backs have struggled this year, picking up Martin was like a breathe of fresh air to me in this league.

I'll assume that you all know that I won in this league during week 9 since I started Doug Martin. The final score was 184-88. Martin put up 69 fantasy points for me in this league, and easily led the scoring on my team. Atlanta's Julio Jones contributed 17 fantasy points, while Andre Johnson and Mike Wallace both contributed 15. I got 37 points from the San Diego Chargers defense, and 13 fantasy points from Saints tight end Jimmy Graham. The only disappointment from week 9 for me in this league was Robert Griffin III. Griffin scored 14 fantasy points, which was 11 shy of the 25 he was projected to put up. Griffin seemed reliable as a starting quarterback option, but now I'm starting to worry a bit. However, I'm glad that I survived another week.

Well it was a clean sweep for me in all three leagues during week 9. Definitely happy about that. I owe the biggest portion of it to Doug Martin's performance against the Raiders. Last Sunday on Facebook, ESPN posted a photo of Martin showcasing his performance against the Raiders. They asked fan if they though he was the real deal. I replied by saying that I feel sorry for anyone whose fantasy team had to play against him in week 9. I do think that Martin is the real deal though. Here are my standings after week 9.

• ESPN: The Screwshop 2012: 4-5 (6th place out of 10 teams)
• NFL.com: The Turf 13: 7-2 (1st place out of 12 teams)
• Yahoo: Da League: 4-5 (4th place out of 8 teams)

Since Doug Martin helped me out so much in week 9, I hope I can continue the trend of yelling out DOUG MARTIN in week 10. We'll see how it goes. Well that's it for this week fantasy football lovers. Tonight we have the Indianapolis Colts taking on the Jacksonville Jaguars. Make sure you have your lineups set accordingly, and good luck this weekend. See you all next week.

http://www.sbnation.com/2012/11/5/3602944/doug-martin-fantasy-football-stats