NFL Fantasy Football 2012: Week 6 In Review.

Week number 6 of the fantasy football season was a huge test. Now only was I coming off of losses in two leagues, I had to find a replacement for Packers running back Cedric Benson. Benson suffered an injury in week number 5. The injury is expected to keep him out eight weeks or longer. There were two leagues that I needed wins in badly in order to keep my already slim playoff hopes alive. Among the growing fantasy football story lines this season, injuries and bye weeks would play a huge role in how week number 6 would turn out for me. Anyone who plays fantasy football knows that the weeks leading towards the playoffs are dwindling down. Myself, along with others who play fantasy football, is feeling the pressure of wanting to win and make the playoffs. Here is my week number 6 review of the fantasy football leagues that I'm participating in. Please read on.

Week 6 found me facing the top dog in this league. The opponent I was facing was unfeated coming into this game with me. There were several key factors that played a role in this particular game. First, his starting quarterback Drew Brees of the New Orleans Saints was on a bye week. Secondly, his tight end Jimmy Graham, who is also Brees's teammate, was on a bye as well. With two of his key players out on byes, it seemed like I was likely to pull of an upset victory. Well, that's not how it quite turned out. My opponent started Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Andy Dalton in place of Brees. Dalton has a huge statistical game against the Cleveland Browns by putting up 29 fantasy points. He would take a lead on me, and the outcome of this game would come down to Monday Night Football's Broncos vs. Chargers game.

Heading into the Monday night's game, I was down by the score of 69-80. I had two players playing in that game(Antonio Gates, Willis McGahee). My opponent had Chargers running back Ryan Mathews playing. The goal was pretty simple. Hope that Gates and McGahee would play well, and hope that Mathews didn't. I was pretty certain that I wasn't going to be able to make up the difference. I mean lets face it, I normally don't have good luck when it comes to these kinds of things. Antonio Gates has been disappointing so far this year, and Ryan Mathews just got his starting job back. I just knew that I was going to lose, and fall to 1-5 on the season, which would have effectively ended any shot at making the playoffs. However, things ended up going in my favor. Antonio Gates finally broke out and had a huge game. Gates scored two touchdowns en route to 20 fantasy points. Willis McGahee managed 9 points, while my opponent's running back, Ryan Mathews put up 8 fantasy points. Between the big game from Gates and the points from McGahee, I was able to make up the difference and pull out a 98-88 win. I felt a great deal of excitement beating the top person in the league. Just goes to show that sometimes when we expect the worse, the best ends up happening.

My fantasy team in this league was on a 3 game winning streak coming into week 6. I was ranked sixth in the standings, but I had several players on byes this week. My starting tight end, Jimmy Graham of the New Orleans Saints, was one of those key players out on a bye week. The Chicago Bears were also on a bye week, which meant that I had to find another team to fill my defense/special teams slot. The opponent I was facing had a stacked team from a player perspective, which included my tight end in The Screwshop league, Antonio Gates. However, his biggest crutch ended up being Chargers quarterback Philip Rivers. Rivers threw 4 interceptions against the Broncos during the Monday night game, and also lost 2 fumbles. Rivers's poor performance brought his fantasy score in this league to 7 points.

On the flip side of the coin, my starting quarterback in this league, Aaron Rodgers, posted huge fantasy numbers. Rodgers threw for over 300 yards, and scored on 6 touchdown passes en route to 50 fantasy points. In addition to Rodgers being big, I also got decent production from Giants running back Ahmad Bradshaw(17.50 points), and Tampa Bay Buccaneers wide receiver, Vincent Jackson(20.00 points). The final score was a 135.00-101.50 win for me. The only mistake I made in this league was sitting Buffalo Bills running back, CJ Spiller. Spiller scored 18 fantasy points, however, I didn't feel he would do much with an emerging Fred Jackson, and facing a tough Arizona Cardinals defense. Looks like I was wrong about Spiller on this particular week. My win in this league pushes my season record to 4-2, and 3rd overall in the league. I'm hoping this is a good sign of things to continue.

After getting blown out in week number 5 in this league, along with falling into last place, I knew this was a do or die week for me. I knew for certain that a loss in week 6 meant no chance of getting one of those six playoff spots. The opponent I was facing came into the game with a 3-2 record, and apparently had been jawing a lot. That gave me even more of an incentive to hopefully get a win over him. My leading fantasy scorer from this week was Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver Mike Wallace. Wallace scored 19 fantasy points, which was 9 more than his projected ten. Similar to what I done in The Turf league, I made a poor choice of sitting Washington Redskins quarterback, Robert Griffin III. Griffin has been a gem this season for fantasy owners. However, I was nervous about starting him after coming off an concussion against the Atlanta Falcons in the previous week.

Griffin was projected to score 22 points against the Vikings. However, he exceeded that greatly by scoring 41 fantasy points. The final score was an 81-72 win for my team. Between the points scored by Griffin and the other players I left on the bench, I left 98 points off of the board. In essence, my bench scored more points than my starters, and would have beat my opponent with their points alone. Although this win was key and maybe saved my season, it's disappointing to leave that many points off the board. In a league where there is only eight teams, and everyone records are so close, scoring as many points as possible is crucial. I'm hoping that I don't make that mistake again, but hey it's fantasy football, and we know that nothing is ever guaranteed in fantasy football land.

So week number 6 of fantasy football turned out to be a clean sweep in all three leagues. If my teams could find a way to keep this momentum going, I think I have a good shot of making it into the playoffs. Here is what my rankings are looking like following week 6.

• ESPN: The Screwshop 2012: 2-4 (8th place out of 10 teams).
• NFL.com: The Turf 13: 4-2 (3rd place out of 12 teams).
• Yahoo: Da League: 2-4 (7th place out of 8 teams).

Week number 7 of the NFL season officially begins tonight with the Seattle Seahawks facing the San Francisco 49ers. I hope that everyone enjoys the game. Week 7 of the fantasy football season will be another tough one for me. I'll write again next week to let you all know how it turned out. Good luck this weekend everyone.