Pour one out for Brian. He opened the season 0-2, rattled off four straight, then he never won a game again. Some say his ghost still wanders these halls, calling the word “penis” progessively louder, avoiding eye contact and stifling a snicker. If you are unfortunate enough to engage him, he makes a dick pun out of your name and then bends over. We respected him once, back when he respected himself. He’s but a beggar now, holding out his hairy palm for a draft pick, says he has a player in his shopping cart that can make your team a winner. I say, let him rot, the man with no name deserves no tombstone.
Best available players: Jonathan Taylor, Breece Hall, Drake London, DK Metcalf, Jayden Reed
(Before engaging in Brian’s fire sale, consider this: he gets one another shot at ending Max’s season in rivarly week, which would just be a cool wrinkle on the season, two teams each spoiling the other’s playoff bid. Maybe wait until deadline day to pull that trigger, not to stick it to Max but because Max scores a shit-ton of points and would be a harder match than the other teams on the fringe.)
Pour one out for Evan. He started 0-4, he fought back to 4-5, including a season-high 219 in Week 6. Through 12 weeks, he’s had more points scored on him than any of us. The injury bug bit him hard with back-to-back season-ending injuries to Godwin and Diggs. His downfall was that he went Zero RB in the only year where all the RBs stayed healthy and all the WRs got hurt. Despite the 219-week, Evan is trending toward finishing the regular season second-to-last in scoring.
Best available players: AJ Brown, D’Andre Swift, Marvin Harrison, David Njoku
(Trade with Evan at will. He plays Cameron for rivalry week, and playoff teams should want to face Cameron as-is. One AJB-caliber player on your team is one less for Cameron.)
Pour one out for Spencer. Pretty much impossible for Spencer to avoid finishing last in scoring, just slightly less impossible for them to avoid finishing last in the standings. This is the risk of taking Josh Allen fifth overall. If he’s not the best QB by a wide margin, if you’re only winning your QB battle by a few points each week, you end up losing big at the RB and WR spots. Spencer cobbled together a tandem of zombie RBs, but GW and Tank didn’t live up to the hype, Nabers fell way off, and Rome Odunze borderline failed to launch. The lesson: you can’t chase upside with all of your early picks. A little David Montgomery would have gone a long way.
Best available players: Josh Allen, Garrett Wilson, Roquan Smith
(Probably not worth the injury risk to get Allen ahead of time unless you’re interested in starting him against the 49ers. Make sure he makes it through the game, and then put in your offer.)
There are five teams fighting for two playoff spots:
Shelby: 6-6, 1706 points
Cameron: 6-6, 1673 points
Corey, 6-6, 1616 points
Max: 5-7, 1830 points
Doak: 5-7, 1638 points
Okay, so if you’re doing the math at home, you know that Evan and Brian are technically not eliminated. But they can’t both make the playoffs, and the opportunity cost of holding their teams together through the trade deadline is pretty steep considering how poorly their teams have performed. Plus, if either of them loses this week, then they’re both out (Max would have too many points, Cam would have too many wins, and either Shelby or Corey would also have too many wins). So it’s some real prsioner’s dilemma shit. Whoever trades away their best player first probably gets the best deal, and then going into rivalry week without that player lowers their chance of winning, so whoever waits to trade likely gets screwed. But if you both hold strong and try to win, then you stay in the hunt (assuming I lose to Kennedy, which I’m counting on because I’d actually like to be the first to sell, if anyone’s buying). It is better to try to win. But if someone offers a 2nd, there’s really no shame in taking it.
With five of her best players out, Shelby scraped a lineup together and brought Coleman to his knees. Not only does Shelby jump into fifth place, one win away from clinching that playoff spot, she puts Coleman in danger of losing the 1-seed after he’s held the spot for the entire season. DJ Moore and Jaylen Waddle finally lived up to their draft stock, and there’s a good chance that production is sustainable. Maybe not a combined 50 points of production, but at least proof that it’s possible plus some confidence they can do half of that on a regular basis. You get your Bengals back, you get your regular IDPs back, and you get better opportunities for your Steelers assuming no more Snowglobe Bowls await them. This is a deep team. Chase Brown is getting work, Najee and Warren are the lite version of the Lions, and even though Rachaad White is getting squeezed by Bucky and Tucker, he’s getting his 10-15 touches. That’s a luxury from your worst player. Chase, Pickens, Moore, and Waddle is the best WR corps left standing. Top-tier players at every back-half spot except DL since you dropped Nick Bosa, which was weird since you could have just put him in your IR slot, but I admire the move since I think Bosa is a bad person.
Coleman is falling apart. His players are healthy and good, but recent developments have capped their upside. The Eagles’ run game is too dominant for the game to ever be put on Hurts’ shoulders. TJ Hockenson gives Sam Darnold even less reason to force the ball to Jefferson in double coverage. Kyren Williams has fumbled four times in his last four games and hasn’t hit 20 points in the time, after he hit 20+ in five straight games before that. It’s fair to wonder whether he’s wearing down. Ken Walker has been fine in terms of fantasy points because he’s getting good volume, but the Seahawks’ run-blocking has kept him under four yards per carry in six of his last eight games. He hasn’t rushed for 100 yards since Week 1, hasn’t had a 4-ypc game since Week 7, has only one TD since Week 7, and hasn’t hit 100 total yards in a game since Week 9. Jauan Jennings is dependent on his QB having a working throwing shoulder, and that’s a grey area right now. Still, in the worst week imaginable for Coleman’s team, he scored 123 points. Most of us wouldn’t clear 100 if that many of our players were batting below their average. But Coleman pitted himself against Sean for rivalry week. In doing so, he put himself in position to lose his top spot and potentially his playoff bye altogether. I don’t know if a trade can save him unless he’s willing to trade out some of the guys that got him here.
I don’t believe I have a shot at the playoffs, but if I have to go down, I’m taking somebody with me. My win this week knocks Corey out of the top six, and it’s all because I believed in Jameis Winston. Sure, I had two RBs and two IDPs outscore him, but Jameis the snow god was the catalyst for those performances. Please, give me my flowers for putting together an IDP crew that combined for eight sacks, including one from my DB. Give me my flowers for coming into this season flat broke and finding wins in free agency. Of the players currently on my roster, I drafted two of them (technically I only drafted Chubb; Evans was a keeper). I spent my waiver claim almost every week. And I choked away two wins! I should be 7-5!
Corey should be 7-5, but he benched Patrick Mahomes against the Panthers. He kind of had to. Goff dropped 50 last week and had a good matchup this week. The Chiefs were supposed to kill the Panthers on sight and be able to run the ball most of the game. Instead, the Panthers made it a shootout and forced Mahomes to have his best game of the season, good enough for Corey to have beat me by 20. Now Corey will have to face Shelby with his season on the line. Technically he can lose to Shelby and still sneak into the playoffs with a melee win, but he’d need a lot of help, and his Week 14 outlook is less than stellar: McLaurin, Pittman, Rhamondre, and Luvu will be on bye; Mahomes plays the Chargers; and the Raiders will be back to Aidan O’Connell at QB. It’s not looking great!
The Kansas City Shuffle: they look left, you go right. Oliver had all of us focusing on kickers who would miss their kicks so he could sneak into the hen house and snag the week’s best kicker. If not for Wil Lutz’s 24 FP, Oliver would have finished pretty close to the bottom this week. Lucky for him, he was playing the league’s lowest scoring team, both this week and season-long. And he gets a rematch next week, granted it’s going to be much tougher sledding with Spencer getting the Bills and Garrett Wilson back from bye. Meanwhile, Oliver likely loses Brian Robinson for the week and suffers a crisis in confidence over his IDPs. It’s not a terrible idea to trade for Spencer’s best players ahead of the rivalry matchup to secure that playoff berth.
Spencer suffered some tough luck. Geno Smith had a great matchup, but Seattle’s offensive line is broken. JK Dobbins was on his way to 20+ FP before hurting his knee. Nabers didn’t get the ball until the Giants were down 30-0. Seibert led all kickers in misses after being nails for two straight months. And Roquan Smith wasn’t ruled out until Monday, with Spencer already pretty dead. The competitive move is to get back on the horse and pay Oliver back, keeping him from clinching that playoff spot for one more week. You can kick Oliver’s ass on Sunday and trade Allen on Monday.
He just refuses to go down. He was 2-6, with all six losses in one streak, and he just kept putting that same lineup out there, only making moves out of absolute necessity, and the moves are paying dividends. He traded away LaPorta, he cut Goedert, he didn’t have a long-term plan at TE, and then he stumbled on Cade Otton for a 23 and a 15, and then Jonnu for a 28 and a 19. He scammed 26 FP this week from bye week fill-ins at K and DX. And now he’s getting Kamara and Cooper back from bye with only Lamar’s Week 14 bye left looming. Meanwhile, Tua has just hit 30 two weeks in a row, and during Lamar’s bye, he’ll face the broken Jets’ defense. He steamrolled Brian this week, and he gets a rematch next week.
Brian had some key players on bye this week, and others underperformed. He’s setup for a bounceback. And unless I’m completely out of the loop (always possible), no one is going out of their way to make trades ahead of Week 13. Maybe Brian comes back full strength and he and Max spend these two weeks pulling each other off the bottom rung of the ladder. The thing is: I didn’t hear the bell ring. Nobody has lost more than six straight this year. Brian is sitting at six straight losses. Two straight wins gives him a puncher’s chance at that final playoff spot. Anything could happen.
He split Bobby Time, he doubled down on the Texans fractured passing attack, and he won by 13. If Aubrey had made his kicks, Kennedy would have won by about five, meaning he was one fewer Myles Garrett sack from losing. Variance alone is going to bring Kennedy one more loss soon, and having locked up a playoff berth this week, he better hope that loss is coming one of these next two weeks. The McCaffrey trade is looking like a false step. Not only is McCaffrey clearly limited, the whole 49ers offense is dealing with injuries. Enjoy the playoff berth, but be warned. You fucked with Bobby Time, and that has consequences.
Cameron took a hit in a week where he would have won a melee. He would have won against Oliver and Shelby this week, but now both of them sit above him in the standings. Cameron clings to sixth place by a 57-point lead over Corey. He has a 35-point lead over me, too. But he trails Max by 157, Brian by 15, and Evan by 5. And he trails Shelby by 33. My prediction is Cameron won’t survive a tiebreaker if it comes to that. His saving grace is that his next opponent hasn’t scored more than 131 points since October.
Why do the rest of us even bother? Kudos to Coleman for falling on the sword next week so that those of us who need a win actually stand a chance.
