Every time I tell somebody that I play NESCAC fantasy football, I can feel the waves of judgment coming from them. They look at me with narrowed eyes full of skepticism. “NESCAC fantasy football? What drugs are you on?”
And I get it. Playing NESCAC fantasy football is about as weird as fantasy sports can get. Nobody else does it for a reason. But you know what, we don’t care about you and your silly societal norms. We aren’t that invested in our teams; we aren’t going to lose any sleep or spend hours trying to do crazy trades. But it’s fun, easy and we know that some player out there is shaking his head at us in shame while also being pumped that he is on a fantasy football team somewhere, somehow.
Matchup 1: Nick DiBenedetto over Joe MacDonald 94-90
| Nick | Player | Points | Joe | ||
| QB | Gabe Harrington | -2 | QB | Matt Milano | 40 |
| QB | Tim Drakeley | 14 | QB | Alex Snyder | 9 |
| RB | Diego Meritus | 12 | RB | Lou Stevens | 0 |
| RB | Connor Harris | 12 | RB | Tyler Grant | 10 |
| WR | Darrien Myers | 21 | WR | Ryan Rizzo | 12 |
| WR | Dan Barone | 2 | WR | Mbasa Mayikana | 0 |
| TE | Trevor MIletich | 18 | TE | Nik Dean | 0 |
| FLEX | Ben Kurtz | 3 | FLEX | Jabari Hurdle-Price | 1 |
| FLEX | Raheem Jackson | 1 | FLEX | LaShawn Ware | 5 |
| D/ST | Trinity | 20 | D/ST | Middlebury | 9 |
| K | Eric Sachse | 3 | K | Charlie Wall | 6 |
| TOTAL | 104 | TOTAl | 92 | ||
| BE | Matt Hirshman | 1 | BE | Ethan Suraci | 1 |
| BE | Alex Berluti | 0 | BE | Pat Dugan | 6 |
| BE | Tanner Contois | 0 | BE | James Burke | 0 |
I have to give it to DiBo, when he took Darrien Myers ’17 with the fifth pick overall, I scoffed at it as a true homer pick. However, the wide receiver was the difference in this matchup with his two touchdown catches being especially important. The other big scorer for Dibo … that would be the Trinity defense which pitched a shutout and had a defensive touchdown to have a big weekend.
How Joe was not able to win despite 40 points from Matt Milano ’16 (the kicker for Milano was the one rushing touchdown he had) is beyond me. But if I was to gander a guess, the combined zero points between Jabari Hurdle-Price ’17 and Lou Stevens ’17 was a major factor. Expect MAJOR changes from Team MacDonald in Week 2.
Matchup 2: Adam Lamont over Carson Kenney 109-78
| Carson Kenney | Player | Points | Adam Lamont | Player | Points |
| QB | Sonny Puzzo | 36 | QB | Austin Lommen | 24 |
| QB | Jared Lebowitz | 0 | QB | Gernald Hawkins | 14 |
| RB | LaDarius Drew | 3 | RB | Nick Kelly | 10 |
| RB | Nick Gaynor | 9 | RB | Chance Brady | 23 |
| WR | Matt Minno | 5 | WR | Ryder Arsenault | 2 |
| WR | Mark Riley | 8 | WR | Mike Rando | 5 |
| TE | Rob Thoma | 2 | TE | Alex Way | 5 |
| FLEX | Ian Dugger | 3 | FLEX | Shaun Carroll | 16 |
| FLEX | Frank Williams | 3 | FLEX | Jackson McGonagle | 6 |
| D/ST | Amherst | 5 | D/ST | Wesleyan | 3 |
| K | Charlie Gordon | 4 | K | Ike Fuchs | 1 |
| TOTAL | 78 | TOTAL | 109 | ||
| BE | Neil O’Connor | 0 | BE | Ben Berey | 3 |
| BE | Henry Foye | 0 | BE | Pat Donahue | 23 |
| BE | Jon Hurvitz | 0 | BE | Carl Lipani | 1 |
Am I surprised that I won my Week 1 matchup so easily? No, I’m surprised I didn’t win by more. Everywhere you look on the roster, it’s stud city. Quality days from Chance Brady ’17 (117 rushing yards and 2 TDs) and Austin Lommen ’16 (288 passing yards and 2 TDs) carried the squad. The 174 receiver yards from Pat Donahue ’16 weren’t even especially missed, and once he gets into the starting lineup, nobody is stopping me.
Meanwhile Carson got nearly half of his points from Sonny Puzzo ’17 (278 passing yards and 2 TDs), and had nobody else score in double digits. In all seriousness, this was just an unlucky week for Carson as guys like Matt Minno ’16 and Mark Riley ’16 had decent weeks but just didn’t have any touchdowns. Once he figures out his QB situation, he will be dangerous.
And those are your Week 1 results. As you can tell, many of the players that we expected to be huge contributors ended up doing very little in the first game. Such is the way of the NESCAC. Despite the click-bait title, we do not know nothing (and we know more than one thing too, alright Socrates). We just had to get some of the unknowns of how coaches would react to the first game before our fantasy lineups would become perfect.
Standings:
Team Lamont (1-0)
Team DiBo (1-0)
Team Kenney (0-1)
Team MacDonald (0-1)