Playoff Fantasy Football - with a puzzling twist

[QuikSand]

Okay, I know I'm a little late to the stage, but that's okay. I want to run a little playoff fantasy football contest here in this thread. I don't think it will get too complicated -- I've designed it to keep from getting so.

We'll keep things pretty simple:

-You get up to 8 players, including a team defense

-You get a point for each TD scored by any of your players during the final three weeks of the NFL playoffs (i.e. not including wild card weekend, starting next weekend)

-Touchdowns score 1 point each, by any means including passing, rushing, receiving, returning, defensive (for Team D only), and anything else not listed

-No points for yardage, kicking, or anything else, just touchdowns... nice and simple


Okay now the twist.

To assemble your team, you need to create a word-search style grid of 8 x 8 letters. Within the grid, you must embed the last names of the players that you want for your fantasy roster. Here are the rules on that front:

-Your final score may include any player included in your letter grid from each of the eight possible directions of a standard word search - if you have more than one name spelled out in a given direction, you will get to choose which one gets used at the end of the contest

-Your final list of no more than eight players for scoring purposes may not include more than one quarterback, nor more than one team defense

-If you use a fully-spelled last name, you are entitled to pick from any NFL player who happens to have that last name, and you may decide at the end of the contest who your player there is for scoring purposes

-Your grid must be exactly 8x8 characters - if you like, you may use a null character like * to represent unused letters, but I think it behooves you to not do so, just in case you stumble across some guy out there who has some prayer of scoring in a game

-You are not required to have an actual name in each direction (you can pass and take a zero for one or more of the eight directions), but you may not end up with more than one player spelled out in the same direction on your final scoring roster



I'm not really interested in committing a ton of time and effort toward this, so my preference is that you simply post your letter grid here (along with some summarized list of the names you put into the grid, by direction, I suppose). We'll make the deadline noon ET on Saturday, January 10. If you're really itchy about this, send me your grid by PM, and then post it when you can, and I'll have your submitted copy as a backup to show you had it done on time, but didn't want to reveal it to be copied or whatever.

Winner gets the enduring respect and admiration of his peers, as well as any additional remuneration I deem fit.

[Maple Leafs]

I look forward to seeing all the creative ways the rules will me misinterpreted for this one.

[Shkspr]

n e b o l d i n
o m n w o r b g
s m a i l l i w
n a s n s a i h
h m p e n l n i
o f n t t i e t
j o s r h a n e
j a c o b s g g


Except for a couple of completely dead areas (I gave myself a choice between Boldin and Jacobs, or Brown and any given Williams), it's actually dang tough to get names going everywhere and still be able to pop in non-null characters that might net you points. I think I'd also rather take the Titans or Steelers to the Giants, but that's what fit the grid.

EDIT: That's what I get for doing this thing while the Colts game is on. Go Eli, I guess.

[QuikSand]

By the way, the use of GIANTS there is exactly what I had in mind, in place of a last name. Not looking for NEWYORK, MIAMI, or the like for the defensive team, use the full team name, without the city.

[hoopsguy]

Starter grid, may come back at this later:

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[QuikSand]

Bump...we're down to 8 teams, you make an 8x8 grid, and get up to 8 players. It's fearful symmetry, I tell you.