Fast start a top priority for Teynor this fall

COLUMBUS — The start of last fall’s Tiger Township Fantasy Football season quickly turned into an all-too-familiar feeling for Pat Teynor. For the third consecutive year, he was forced to stare down a 1-6 record. What happened next, though, proved to be a new experience for the 2015 champion. Unlike the previous two campaigns, there were no comebacks, momentum builders or late-season magic. Instead, Teynor fell into a place that so many other former champions have battled in the past. As the season wore on, he became the league’s latest victim of a championship hangover. “It would be easy to blame (last season’s struggles) on the champion's hangover and I definitely think it played a role,” Teynor said in an exclusive interview with Chibby’s Corner. “Once you reach the mountaintop, you want to enjoy it for a little bit. But going into the draft last year, I honestly thought I enjoyed having a championship but had turned the page.” It didn't take long for Teynor to show that perhaps he hadn't moved on as much as he thought he did, however. Teynor scrounged together just three wins in the regular season, slotting him in 11th place and eliminating him from an opportunity to defend his title. The Otterbein University graduate ranked just 10th in points scored, yet went on to win twice in the consolation bracket, resulting in an eighth-place finish in the final league standings. On the surface, 2016 appeared to provide some déjà vu for Teynor. After all, stumbling out of the gates is nothing new to him. In fact, it has become routine for one of the league's founding members. In 2014, Teynor lost six of his first seven games before catching fire. He won seven of his last nine (including the postseason) to earn a bronze medal. A year later in 2015, a similar start led one of the TTFFL’s greatest single-season runs. Teynor won nine times in his final 10 games, the last of which being a victory over David Devine in the league championship game. However, the now-two-time-champion* just couldn’t find a way to deliver a third straight hot streak in 2016. “It’s certainly not a fluke because it seems to happen every (freaking) year,” Teynor said in regards to the slow starts. “I thought I might have stalled that with getting high points in Week 1. But as it turned out, I was stuck in the same (crap) and lost six in a row and dug myself into an early-season hole.” Indeed, Teynor tallied 211.4 points — one of the highest single-game totals in league history — in a season-opening win over Evan Julian. Unfortunately, he didn’t win again for almost two months. That led to Teynor trading away the New Orleans duo of Drew Brees and Brandin Cooks (and others) to C.J. Julian for Theo Riddick, Dez Bryant and Julian Edelman. The big move didn’t do much to pay off for him, though. The same could be said when he sent DeMarco Murray home to Devine in the middle of the year. Those frustrations are part of the reason why Teynor hopes the new season, one that officially gets underway with the 2017 TTFFL Draft on Aug. 19 in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., will finally provide his team a good start to the fall, rather than more losses in bunches right off the bat. If that’s the case, perhaps those desperate roster changes won’t need to be in the fold this time around. Still, one of the league’s two four-year collegiate athletes has shown a true bounce-back ability in the past, something that’s invaluable in such a high-stakes, competitive atmosphere. Teynor says that type of confidence is certainly nice to fall back on, if needed. “I think I relish in having the pressure on and needing to win,” Teynor said. “When the lights are on, it’s time to perform. That’s a good quote from this league’s history. ... When I had Sam Bradford starting at OP, I thought I might be able to sneak through with that. But just one look down my roster, it kind of shows you where I was at and what the problem was.” The first step for Teynor, who also won the league’s first-ever championship in 2003* despite a highly-drowned upon way of doing it, going into the new year is to get a better feel for the fourth installment of the auction draft. He left $27 on the table at the draft a year ago, physically showing his frustration at several different moments in the process. The reason for the struggles? To Teynor, it’s an easy explanation. “I just sat on my hands and let the other guys bully me,” he said. Teynor showed unfathomable restraint at the Malvern beach house, resulting in no shortage of over-thinking and rocky decision-making. Even now, an entire year later, Teynor admits he still struggles to peek at the Excel draft sheet that’s been shared throughout the TTFFL in the past few weeks. “It’s just there laughing right in my face,” he claims. A big season in 2017 will certainly help add to Teynor’s overall image around the TTFFL as well. His 2015 title didn’t bring along as much respect as he would have liked to have seen, which leaves him with the desire to strive for more. This year, he’ll hope to improve on his modern-era win-loss record, which is currently 11 games under .500 (40-51). Teynor ranks 10th in regular-season average place finish, but his solid postseason showings recently have helped him reach sixth in overall average place finish. For those reasons and more, Teynor is bracing for what promises to be a very impactful season for his 13-year franchise. “I think this is going to be a big year in determining (my legacy),” Teynor said. “I thought my position in the league was pretty concrete after winning that championship (in 2015) and breaking the curse. But after last year, those doubts started creeping back in. So, it’s going to be a big year in proving myself and getting over a long offseason.”