Antonio Bryant’s touchdown against the Patriots proved equally meaningless in real and fantasy football.

I went up against the league leader in both of my fantasy leagues this past weekend, scored more than 90 points in each league, and will probably come away 1-1. It’s kind of fitting, since this was a high-scoring week in real football as well, with eight of the 12 games seeing at least one team scoring more than 30 points, including three teams that went over 40.

The Outlaws of the Marsh have already been assured of a defeat despite scoring 100 points, but it’s the kind of loss I can live with: I made basically all the right lineup moves, scored a ton of points, and lost to a good team that scored just a bit more. I did leave Hakeem Nicks’ 10 points on the bench, but it won’t have made a difference, and the rest of the guys on my bench were all either on a bye week, injured, or Willie Parker, so I literally left nothing on the bench. I’m actually surprised to see my squad reach triple digits, considering half of my starting offense was on a bye. But I got a big game from Philip Rivers, a nice all-around effort by DeAngelo Williams, and even correctly guessed that this would be the week Antonio Bryant finds the end zone for a meaningless touchdown while his team gets stomped on.

In my other league, The Thamsmen are holding a 13-point lead and will try to hold off Brent Celek in the Monday night game to pull out a win over the leader in that league, who just so happens to be my wife. If it happens, the victory will be due in large part to her forgetting to swap out her kicker, who was on a bye this week. But hey, a win is a win. I got at least nine points from every offensive position except tight end, and another big game by Tom Brady helped me offset a -1.79 performance by the Bears defense (ouch!).

Week 7 Highs and Lows

Ryan Grant ran for 148 yards Sunday, but it came against the Browns, so it’s more like 80 yards, or, if you left him on your bench like I did, more like zero.

• Just to spite me, a week after I expressed my lack of enthusiasm for Ryan Grant’s performance this season, he explodes for 148 yards and a touchdown. Granted, it came against the lowly Browns, but this makes for back-to-back 90-plus-yard games for Grant, so maybe he’s turning the corner after all (of course, now that I’ve praised him, he’ll probably go back to averaging 2.5 yards a carry the rest of the season).
• A pair of unlikely 3-TD games Sunday: Ricky Williams and Vernon Davis (Davis’ trifecta is largely responsible for the Outlaws’ defeat this week).
• Week after week, you think, “There’s no way Hakeem Nicks can keep scoring a touchdown each week.” And week after week he does, or at least he has for the last four weeks since coming back from injury. The even better news is that he’s been getting into the action early, so it’s not just garbage-time points. If he’s flown under the radar so far in your league, he likely won’t anymore. Get him while you can, though the law of averages says his production will probably level off a bit, unless you are expecting him to finish with 13 touchdowns.

Joseph Addai embodies the difference between real football, where he’s consistently mediocre, and fantasy football, where he’s consistently solid.
• Another guy that seems to find the end zone every week: Joseph Addai. He’s got a mediocre 3.3 yards per carry and loses a fair number of touches to Donald Brown, yet he has proven to be a consistently solid contributor this season, thanks in large part to his nose for the end zone. He has scored a TD in five of the Colts’ six games, including the last four.
• This was a boom or bust week for NFL teams. Nine of the 24 teams that played Sunday scored at least 30, while six couldn’t break double figures, including a big zero from the Raiders. I guess it’s my good fortune that out of the 32 total points put up by those six teams Sunday, players on my fantasy teams accounted for 12 (TDs by DeAngelo Williams and Antonio Bryant).
• When the Saints score 46 points, you figure their strong running attack would rack up some good fantasy points, right? Well, let’s see: Mike Bell: 80 yards, 0 TD; Pierre Thomas: 44 yards, 0 TD; Reggie Bush: 26 yards, 1 TD. That’s a meager breakdown of about 5, 2, and 6 points, respectively. Thank you, backfield-by-committee. And to make matters worse, Drew Brees stole two touchdowns from the backfield with 1- and 2-yard runs. Ugh!