NFL Week 1 Wrap-Up: Seven Deadly Selections

Week 1 of the NFL Season is in the books, and I'll start off with some links to all the important scorecards, since they're not yet up on the ALA Website (they will be soon). Before we get into the gruesome details:

Fantasy Football Master Scorecard
NFL Pick 'Em Scorecard
NFL Survivor Scorecard
NCAA Pick 'Em Scorecard

First: the Fantasy Football Spreadsheet explained. On this spreadsheet you will find four tabs. The first tab is the Power Rankings for all three leagues. These rankings will also be pasted on your league homepage, and they are explained within the spreadsheet for anyone who still doesn't understand how they work. The second tab is the Flex Usage tab that tracks how many times each team in each league has used each position in their Flex spot. The third tab is what I'll be using to compute each team's Breakdown metric over the course of the season. The fourth tab will detail the highest scoring team in all of the ALACS for each week.

The dominant ALACS story from Week 1 of the NFL Season was the elimination of exactly 1/3 of the 21 people who threw down $55 for a shot at ALACS glory in the NFL Survivor Pool. Four participants were eliminated by virtue of a last-second Jake Delhomme TD pass that eliminated the Chargers; three more players fell on Sunday night when the Bears -- nine point underdogs coming into the game -- shocked the Colts in Indianapolis. Fourteen participants are now a great deal closer to the Survivor Pool's $1000 grand prize.

And then, of course, there's Tom Brady...and the fact that two of the three ALACS teams with Brady on the roster don't have a backup QB. Yikes. It's rare that a player of Brady's caliber goes down in the first game -- in fact, the first quarter -- and his injury is testament to the amount of luck that is sometimes involved in these games. Before his leg was crushed by one of the Chiefs' DBs, Brady had the third-longest streak of consecutive starts in the NFL.

In the NCAA Pick 'Em Game, Nick Foley and Andrew Gay both won seven games for the second consecutive week and are now tied for the lead. In an exciting twist, Gay started the day 7-0 before losing the last three games. Alex Rosenbloom became the first participant of the season to not submit his picks in time. He can currently be found at his brother's apartment in Brazil, hanging his head in shame.

And finally, the first week of NFL Pick 'Em saw an impressive number of participants finish above .500. ALA veteran Mike Lazar and newcomer John Rosinbum led the pack at 11-5.