In case you haven’t heard, Chris Cooley’s season is officially over, which is strange because as recently as one month ago, we were told that the surgery went well, was non-evasive, and that the tight end would be back on the field in 4-5 weeks.
You may want to file this one under “no one cares about your fantasy football team,” but this is how Chris Cooley is trying to kill mine.
The setup: 12-team PPR auction league. I was sitting pretty with a lineup of Romo/Eli, Adrian Peterson, Tim Hightower, Brian Westbrook, Laurence Maroney and Marshawn Lynch at RB, Larry Fitzgerald, Brandon Marshal and Steve Smith 2.0 at WR and Owen Daniels at TE.
I already had a first round bye pretty much wrapped up when Daniels went down. I didn’t have a backup TE to speak of since I was using my extra roster spots for depth at RB and WR, since we start a total of six players at the two positions (2-3 RB, 3-4 WR). So Daniels and Cooley get hurt, but both Cooley and Jim Zorn are saying that he’ll be back for the fantasy playoffs. I’m faced with the decision to either use my remaining bidding bucks ($34) to acquire Cooley, or Kevin Boss, or both. I narrow the decision to putting $34 down on Cooley or $24 on Cooley and $10 on Boss. (Remember, the news about Cooley is pretty optimistic at this point, so $34 seems reasonable to get a top 5 TE back for the fantasy playoffs.) I elect to go with $34 on Cooley since there was one other team in need of a TE and they had $33 bidding bucks remaining. I get him. Boss goes for $10, so I wouldn’t have been able to add him since the tiebraker is fewest points (and my team had the most in the league at the time).
That same week Dustin Keller is inexplicably dropped. This is after he has a 8-76-1 outburst in Week 8. But I’m out of bidding bucks, so I’m not able to pick him up. (He went for $9, so I would have been able to snag him had I originally done a $24/$10 Cooley/Boss split. I would have missed out on Boss and had $10 left over for Keller.)
The news on Cooley gets progressively worse and the league’s trade deadline is approaching. I’m sitting on Cooley, Bo Scaife and Donald Lee. Ugh. I offer up Tim Hightower for Jason Witten or Brent Celek but the owner (who has both) doesn’t bite. He says that Hightower is losing touches in ARI to Chris Wells. The best deal I can get is a Maroney-for-Heap swap, which was looking a little better two weeks ago than it does now. I still think Maroney is going to lose touches to Sammy Morris, but his two-TD Week 11 would have looked very nice in my lineup.
Brandon Pettigrew is cut. I pick him up for his Thursday game against the Packers. As the Lions try to set up a screen for him around the goal line, he blows out his knee. Great.
I still feel OK about my team, but with Westbrook sidelined and a gaping hole at TE, I’m not as confident as I was five weeks ago. I’d feel a whole lot better with Dustin Keller and Laurence Maroney on my roster.
And that’s how Chris Cooley is trying to kill my fantasy team.
(Don’t worry, Chris. I still love ya.)
Photo from fOTOGLIF
