IsaiahCrowell.com: Support Isaiah
Isaiah Crowell is a pretty good running back in the NFL, and probably a really nice guy. Isaiah is also one of those guys who always sneaks his way onto my fantasy football teams. Year after year, I somehow say "Isaiah Crowell, Browns (now Jets)" in the 6th round. Or 8th round. If I choose to ignore him in the 7th, he'll still be there in the 9th, and I have to take him there. All the other names around him are crossed off. Clear value there, all the experts agree. On that note, do you ever pull out old fantasy football expert forecast magazines to laugh at how little the "experts" really know? I wish these clowns played in my leagues. Seriously, go check your old magazines after you bookmark my site. Fantasy football is fun because of the unpredictable nature of it all. We ALL look stupid, more often than not. All we want it too look less stupid than the other guys in our league. So back to drafting Isaiah Crowell repeatedly: I really have no choice. If I didn't pick him when he's still hanging around a full two rounds after I picked him just last weekend in a similar draft, I would have to admit that I had previously overvalued him and made a mistake. Clearly that's not an option, so bam! Crowell at flex once again. Anyway, we'll come back to Isaiah after we talk about me some more. But before we do, just keep in mind that Isaiah (probably) deserves our support. This year he'll have to contend with the harsh perspectives and short memories of the New York media all while undergoing an enormous transition, jumping from the Cleveland Browns to a professional football team.
So anyway, back to me. As mentioned, I play fantasy football; I also buy and develop domain names. I build micro sites, full websites, write blogs, etc. I generally choose keyword domain names and build content around them, producing a website or blog or micro site. While perusing available domain names late one night, I notice a familiar draft option...this time on my expired domains list: IsaiahCrowell.com. I decided in that moment to create this, an effort to publicly support Isaiah this year, through thick and thin. What the hell. I've been (selfishly) rooting for him all along anyway. And, I am human....the poor dude got stuck in Cleveland for the first four years of his pro career, and he's a running back. For non NFL fans, running back is the only profession I can think of where most careers are over or about to end by their 30th birthday. And it's usually an abrupt and ugly ending to a career of incredible courage and toughness. Running backs do not have easy days. Have you seen the guys who play defense in the NFL? Terrifying people. And most of them are truly mean, just not nice people. And they're all fast. Really, really fast for large men. Running backs, on a weekly basis, summon the superhuman courage to intentionally sprint into human car collisions with guys like Ray Lewis and Brian Urlacher. These guys ignore agonizing full body contusions, hide broken bones, and spend the season hovering on the injury report (due to constant injury) before ultimately fighting through another 20 to 25 carries straight into eleven of the best defensive players in the world. My friend Wendell Tyler once told me that he had days after games that he couldn't, or wouldn't, get out of bed. All day.
So here's what we are going to do for Isaiah: we are going to write a live blog, week by week, documenting his ups and his downs. We'll make a big deal about the good games, we'll make sure he gets public kudos for wins, and we'll make excuses for his bad games, missed blocks, or fumbles. Now that I've told you all about me, let me tell you about Mr. Crowell. He rushed for 853 yards for the disgustingly bad Cleveland Browns last year. Cleveland won zero games, while losing 16. Isaiah was not to blame. The year before, he rushed for nearly 1000 yards for another terrible Cleveland team. Truth be told, it's hard to tell how good Isaiah really is, as of this moment. He's only been in the league for four seasons, all with the hapless Browns. The Browns were really bad for all four of those years, and he still rushed for 4.2 yards a carry. We're expecting an uptick in Isaiah's numbers this year as a New York Jet. Crowell will likely lead the Jet's rushing attack, although talented Jet teammate Bilal Powell will likely eat up some carries and even more catches. That said, I'm going to go out on a limb and publicly post my statistical expectations for Isaiah this year:
1144 Rushing Yards, 8 Rushing TDS, 4.3 YPC, 25 Catches, 214 Receving Yards, 1 Rec TD
(Should Isaiah achieve those numbers, I pledge to continue the Isaiah Crowell Support Site another year).
Anyway, Crowell definitely upgraded in the team category. He's just hitting his prime, and he's a rugged dude (Isaiah is listed as 5'11' and 225 lbs, and he may actually be built out of granite). He's got an Alabama State pedigree, so he's won games before. Crowell even caught 40 passes a few years back, and as I have frequently had reason to watch him during his Cleveland games for purely statistical gain in fantasy (or at least when they were briefly shown on the Redzone Network), I know the kid played hard even when games were over in the second half. That's even more impressive when you're the running back in these games. Really bad teams tend to lean heavily on their starting running back until they start losing, with the clock and the score increasing the odds that the following play call will be a pass, not a carry by the star running back. Despite that, I never saw Isaiah stop giving effort. These are all reasons that we are going to start the Support Isaiah movement. It will help my fantasy teams tremendously if he succeeds this year, but we are doing this mostly because he deserves it after the four year purgatory he served as a Brown to begin his NFL career. Good luck, Isaiah. We'll check back after week one, win or lose.
