ROB MASTERSON
Injuries happen. It’s football. It’s large men bouncing off each other at full speed. Of course that’s the same description Rob uses to describe his college years, so there’s that. Anyhow, we all have to deal with injuries throughout our seasons. Last year, Molly lost two-top five players…but recovered to have a fantastic regular season. I lost both my running backs and starting QB…I wasn’t so lucky.
However, it appears no one has suffered as much as Masterson, when it comes to losing his top picks for long stretches of a season. Let’s take a walk back down memory lane.
Rob entered Robioland way back in 2002, but for two years avoided the injury bug. In those two seasons, Rob produced a pair of 7-7 records, two top-five scoring outputs, two trips to the semis and a record 2,501 points scored in a single game. The future looked bright.
In 2004 the first major crack in a future Masterson dynasty hit him like an iceberg on steroids. Priest Holmes, Rob’s top pick and the league’s leading rusher, went out for the year. Gone were Holmes’ 1,000 total yards and 15 touchdowns. At that point, Rob was 5-3.
He tried to cover his loses with the likes of Antowain Smith and LaMont Jordan, but those guys were backups who didn’t even average 100 fantasy points per game. He would eventually settle for three-wide look, but the damage was done. Rob would drop five of his last six. He would fall into the post-season as a 7-seed, but lost to Bob in the quarters (his first time losing in round one).
Of course 2004, couldn’t hold a candle to what happened in 2005.
During the draft, Rob decided to hold on to Priest Holmes, even though he had failed to finish his last two seasons, in the first round. If healthy though, he was expected to be one the league’s best rushers. In the second, he landed Ahman Green, a low-end RB1. In round three he grabbed Detroit’s Roy Williams (considered a WR1) and in the fifth round, he somehow grabbed Denver’s Javon Walker. He was also considered a WR1, so no one was sure how he slipped to the fifth.
With a lineup that basically featured two RB1’s and two WR1’s, Rob was declared the preseason favorite heading into the 2005 season.
It only took one quarter of football though for things to turn ugly. After recording two catches for 17 yards, Javon Walker tore up his ACL and was out. Gone. Done. Out for the year. Despite this injury, Rob still managed to pull off a 17-point win over Burrier.
At this point, no worries, right? Just four years earlier, former league member Jason lost his top WR in the season’s first game and he still managed to go on and win a championship.
And for a while, things looked good for Rob too. While he lost his second game to rookie Colby, he would score 1,674 against Calderon in week three, followed by a low scoring 995-695 win over Bob.
In week five though, things went from “okay I can live without Walker” to “oh shit” when starting running back Ahman Green went out. Gone. Done. Out for the season. Up to that point, Green had produced 400 total yards. Still, Rob escaped with a 1,091-1,076 win over Griff.
He was 4-1, but down two of his first five picks. Could he survive? Not if another star player went down and you’ll never guess what happened next?
In week six things went from “oh shit” to “what the fuck” when Roy Williams was declared out (he would miss the next three weeks). Over the next two weeks, Rob would drop two low scoring games to David and Eric, but in that second game, it happened…that’s when things went from “what the fuck” to “in the name of all that is fucking holy!”
Priest Holmes, for the third year in a row, went out. Gone. Done. Out for the year. Worse yet, Rob failed to secure his backup, Larry Johnson. Griff had stolen him in round eight, 10 picks after Masterson had drafted Pittsburgh’s Duce Staley. Anyhow, this would go down as one of the worst mistakes in league history, as Johnson exploded onto the scene and Rob was left with nothing.
Heading into week eight, Rob was now without first-round keeper (Holmes), second round pick (Green), third round pick (Williams) and fifth round pick (Walker). The only top-five pick he still had was quarterback Kerry Collins. Despite this, Rob somehow managed to win his next game easily, beating Matt 1,397-888.
At 5-3, was there hope? Could Rob find a way to survive? Um, no.
The fact was, Rob didn’t have any good backup running backs. He would spend the entire season trying desperately to land anyone who could carry the ball for more than two yards, including Travis Henry, Duce Staley, Ricky Williams, Brock Forsey, Reuben Droughns, Kevin Faulk (trade w/Bob), Travis Minor, LaMont Jordan, Antowain Smith, Marion Barber, Shawn Bryson, Greg Jones and J.J. Arrington.
Nothing worked. Rob’s team collapsed. He would drop his last five games. He would fail to hit 1,000 four times, recording the league’s weekly low score four times, including a 435-point effort against Burrier, the fifth lowest scoring total ever. At 5-8, he would miss the post-season for the first time in his four-year career.
While things would never be as bad as they were in 2005, Rob’s remaining career has been scarred by elite players getting injured.
In 2006, he lost third-round pick Randy Moss for four games, including when he needed him the most, the post-season.
In 2007, Rob took Marvin Harrison in round one, but he survived only five games into the season. Then later he lost third-round pick Marc Bulger for four total games, including the final two games of the regular season. He needed to win both those games to get into the post-season, but he lost to Bob in week 12 by just 262 points.
In 2008, Rob couldn’t keep a running back healthy. He lost Darren McFadden early (even when he did play he was hurt), Joesph Addai went down for four games and rookie Ray Rice was out three. Thus Rob was struggling to make the playoffs heading into week eight. That’s when he lost Reggie Bush, his second-round pick who had produced 800 total yards and 10 touchdowns. Rob would lose the three games Bush missed, failing to break 1,000 in each. His playoff hopes were dashed.
The 2009 season wasn’t too tragic, at least to Rob’s standards. He lost Tomlinson for two games and McFadden for another four. Overall Rob was able to go 3-3 in the games they missed and he made it back to the playoffs.
In 2010, the season hadn’t even started yet when he lost stud keeper Sidney Rice. The Vikings’ star was coming off a 1,300 yard, eight TD season. Then two weeks in, Rob waved goodbye to Pierre Thomas. Both Rice and Thomas would actually return (Rice in week 11, Thomas in what would be the quarters), but by then Rob’s season was already over.
In 2011, just about everything went right for Rob (third most points scored in a regular season), but you can’t help but wonder what might have been if (A) his starting quarterback (Tony Romo) hadn’t broken his ribs early in the season and (B) if Ahmad Bradshaw didn’t miss four games late in the season. Think about it, if Bradshaw doesn’t get hurt, Rob never trades Steve Smith for Chris Johnson. As I’ve pointed out in the past, if Rob had still had Smith and not Johnson, he would have beaten Bob in the quarterfinals.
So heading into 2012, the question is not, will someone get hurt on Rob’s roster, but who and when?
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