Your 2004 All-Pros....
Rambling after the '04 Championship...
Well, the 2004 All-Pro votes are in and you know what that means.....yep, your checks will be in the mail tomorrow. Secondly, it gives me a reason to sit down and write up another column. So, here are YOUR 2004 BIGFFBL All-Pro's.
Some may say this is the year of the QB, and the numbers don't necessarily deny that. The two top passers of this season, Peyton Manning (450 BIGFFBL points) and Daunte Culpepper (442) had the best QB season points wise dating back to at least 1993 when Brett Favre had 440. That's as far back as my database goes, so Peyton and Daunte had the top two years for QB's in at least the last 11 seasons. Amazing. I'm sure many of you were surprised to see how close Daunte was to overtaking Peyton in our scoring system, but his 400+ rushing yards had a lot to do with that. Neverless, Peyton was the top dog in both the points and you all rewarded him by voting for him with a maximum 11 votes with Peyton's owner Rico's vote going to Daunte.
As for the RB's, no one was near the all time high of 459 points scored in a season by none other than our lone Hall of Famer Marshall Faulk back in the 2000 season. In fact, no backs hit 400 this year and only Tiki Barber broke 350. Yea, that Tiki Barber. I'm sure many of you were caught off guard by that one too. Tiki's 352 beat out LT's 339, Dom Davis's 331 and Shaun's 330. Finishing up 5th in BIG scoring was C-Mart with a very unexpected 319. So who got the All-Pro votes? Was it Shaun and his 20 TD's? Could it be Davis with 69 catches? How about Tiki's 1500 rush/59 rec/500 rec yd/15 tds? Nope, nope and nope. Your #1 1st team RB is none other than old man Curtis Martin who picked up 6 votes. The other 1st team back voting came to a tie between Ladanian Tomlinson and Edgerrin James with 5 a piece. Shaun (3), Tiki (2), Dillon (1), F.Taylor (1) and D.Davis (1) also received votes.
On to the WR's...again, no one was near Jerry Rice's 1995 high of 412, nor the high during our league's existence which was Randy Moss's 384 just last year in the 2003 season. The big surprise of this year at the WR position has to be Carolina's (and the LB's) Musin Muhammad with 330. Once Steve Smith broke his leg, Musin took over and gave Jon what was probably the best 8th round pick our league has ever seen (although there have been better performances by guys who were not even drafted - more on that later....maybe). Joe Horn and Javon Walker followed up Musin with 300 each to dethrone the "Big 4" of Marvin, Moss, Holt and Owens for the top spots. I'd bet a ton of money that no one had these guys at the top of the list in August....and if you tell me different I'll call you a liar to your face (unless of course you are related to one of those guys or reside in cheese-land). You guys did a good job of rewarding Musin with 9 votes which gave him 1st team honors. Joining Muhammad, will be none other than Mr. Terrell "1 TD short of making us all toss our lunches" Owens. T.O. grabbed 7 votes in earning his 4th BIGFFBL All-Pro selection. Owens finished 6th for WR's even though he didn't play in about 2.5 games, and had a per game average just under that of Musin....but since we depend on guys for the whole year (and Wong sure missed him in the championship), I go by total points, so Terrell had 281. Taking 3 votes and holding the 2nd team spot was Joe Horn. Also receiving votes were Javon (2), Marvin (2) and Holt (1). Something to note is that I am pretty sure this is the first year that Randy didn't get a single vote....and he didn't deserve one either. Three, count them, three Indy WR's had more points than Randy's 204 (good for 26th for WRs), two Packers and a rookie (Clayton) also had more points than Moss. For god's sake, even Keyshawn Johnson had more fantasy points than Randy. That right there is just ugly.
As for TE's, I'm sure you all knew it was a two horse race. Both guys have hoops backgrounds and both were on teams that threw the ball like crazy. One lead the league in receptions....yea, a TE. The other had almost twice as many TD's as the first guy (13 to 7). So, who do you vote for? Tony and his best ever year for a TE with 102/1258/7 and 270 points? Or breakout star Antonio Gates and his 3rd best TE year ever of 81/964/14 for 255? Seems like you draw a line down the middle and you guys almost did that. Your 1st team All-Pro TE with 7 votes is Antonio Gates. Tony got the other 5 votes to make his 5th BIG All-Pro team as a 2nd teamer this year.
On to Jugsie's favorite...the kickers. We all know that kickers don't matter, but if you can pick the top dog, you'll get almost 10 points a week on average out of that guy, but you gotta have the right guy. Some say to go with the Dome kickers cause they have that weather advantage in half their games. Well, that one was shot in the foot this year. Only 2 of the top 18 kickers were 'domers' (Vangerjagt #9 and Carney #15) and both of those guys called the disaster that was Air JC's roster this year their home. So which kickers had the most points? Guys in good weather areas like Dallas or Miami or Tampa? Heck no...how about New England, Denver, Philly, Cinci, Pittsburgh, Baltimore and Green Bay. That's where the top 7 kickers played their home games this year. The Pats Adam Vinatieri took top honors without even hitting a kick of 50+ this year. Jason Elam's old leg was in 2nd and managed to hit on 3 of the long shots....the mile high air might have helped a bit on those. Green Akers was next and although Daunte would rather take the meter guy over him (which shows Daunte's intelligence, Peyton would have picked the right guy even if it was a scripted commercial), I wouldn't. Akers hit a league high 17 kicks of 40+ for the Eagles. Well, this is turning into quite the kicker paragraph so I better end it now since it's already twice the size of the TE rambling....your All-Pro kicker is Vinatieri with 7 votes, Akers and Vandjergat tie for 2nd teamer with 2 votes a piece. The final vote went to Elam.
As for Defense/Special Teams....I don't really have any historical numbers on these, but I'm guessing that this year was nothing special as far as D/ST scoring. The Bills (222) beat out the Ravens (195), Patriots (184), Falcons (180) and Bears/Colts (177) for the top scoring D/ST this year. You guys decided, good enough, so with 5 votes, the Buffalo Bills and their 5 kick/punt return TD's are your All-Pro D/ST. Ray-Ray, Reed and the boys in Baltimore got 4 votes to pick up the 2nd team award. Pittsburgh (2) and Chicago (1) also grabbed some votes in the always wide spread Defensive voting.
For rookies, as our '04 champ put it, "What a shitty year for rookies, but since I HAVE to pick one, I pick.....". Very true. If you look at our past All-Pro Rookie of the Years, you'll see they are almost always someone running away with the voting. From Moss in 98 to Boldin last year, no one had less than 8 votes for 1st team rookie (except Mike Anderson who got 5 in 2000). This year's voting was all over the place, but there were a lot of guys that had good rookie years but not spectacular. Kevin Jones had 1100+ rushing, Julius Jones had 800+ in 8 games, Stephen Jackson had 600+ in splitting time with Marshall, Tatum Bell came on at the end for almost 400. For the WR's, Larry Fitzgerald had 58/780/8 and Roy Williams had 54/817/8. Hyped QB Little Manning warmed up at the end, but the big two ended up being Big Ben Rothlisberger (2621 pass yds, 21 TD, 17 Int) and Michael Clayton (80/1193/7). And that's how the voting went too. Ben and Clayton both got 3 votes to tie for the rookie of the year honors. Fitz (gerald, not wallace) and Roy each took 2 while the Joneses took 1 each to round out the voting.
Finally, the coaches. Surprisingly, only once in our league history has our champion also been voted 'coach of the year' and that was Team Nookie's Ben Carlson back in 2002. Well, this year makes it twice with little brother and once again roommate Jonny Carlson getting 4 votes to beat out Jason, Suomala and Jugs who each had 2. In what may have been a vote of mercy, Wong received a single vote (I say that since Wong never gets respect here) and the final vote went to Ben (and I am guessing that it had something - or possibly everything - to do with his perfect grifting of Juice for the second year in a row).
So, to
summarize....here is your 2004 All-Pro 1st team:
| Description | Player/Owner (Career All-Pros) | 2004 BIG Points | Draft Spot |
| QB | P.Manning - Team GOO (3) | 450 | Keeper |
| RB1 | C.Martin - Little Red Horse (1) | 319 | 2.12 (#24) |
| RB2 - tie | L.Tomlinson - Team Juice (3) | 339 | Keeper |
| RB2 - tie | E.James - Flying Hellfish (2) | 308 | 1.02 (#2) |
| WR1 | M.Muhammad - Little Bastards (1) | 330 | 8.03 (#87) |
| WR2 | T.Owens - Wong's LD's (4) | 281 | 1.06 (#6) |
| TE | A.Gates - Flying Hellfish (1) | 255 | 7.02 (#74) |
| K | A.Vinatieri - Team Tang (1) | 152 | 12.02 (#134) |
| D/ST | Buffalo Bills - Fantasy Superior (1) | 222 | 14.04 (#160) |
| Rookie - tie | Ben Rothlisberger - Fat British Pigeons | 194 | FA |
| Rookie - tie | Michael Clayton - Little Red Horse | 241 | FA |
| Coach | Jonny Carlson - Little Bastards (2) | 12-4 '04 Champ |
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Need I say more?
BIGFFBL senior writer Jeremy Carlson (TEQ) sounds off whenever he feels like it on www.bigffbl.com