$89 – Coleman’s spree for Justin Fields (31), Quentin Johnston (36), and Harold Fannin (22), consider Coleman had an extra $20, he technically only spent $69. Leaving aside my estimation that this is going to result in a huge waste of FAAB, it is good process. If Fields can flirt with 30 more often that not (and he’s more often than not NOT facing the Bills), then 31 is cheap. If QJ is a deep threat plus one injury away from drawing 10 targets per game, that’s profit. Harold Fannin is a backup TE, but he’s also a slot receiver who had a huge debut. That’s a smart bid.
BUT Coleman spent enough on each of these players that ideally they are long for his roster. With Fields out for a week, QJ staying in the flames, and Fannin being Coleman’s lone TE, so far, so good. Nobody came out and laid an egg. Even Fields was fine considering the circumstances. If he hadn’t been ruled out, he easily could have scored twice in garbage time. The reason it’s going to end up being a waste is that Coleman already has Jordan Love, and the Packers are apparently the best team in the league.
BUT if you have a shot to get a Brown at every skill position, good for 15% of your roster, of course you take that action.
$56 – Sean’s actuarial accounting for Kayshon Boutte (27), Cedric Tillman (25), Julian Love (3), and Jordyn Brooks (1). I love Boutte, so I think this bid is relatively cheap, and I want to point out that Sean’s process was probably: value Boutte at 1/8 of budget, consider someone might feel the same and bid the same, consider if you’re not the final bidder on The Price is Right, going $1 might be a tie, so bid yet another dollar. If you’re willing to spend $25, you might as well spend $27. It’s not even 10% gratuity. The lesson: if you Scrooge, you lose. (Note: this is the same process that resulted in Coleman’s bids ending in 6, 1, and 2.) I like the Brooks bid because you can cycle your LB or DX spot every week like this, and you’ll probably only spend $5 before you find your long-term solution.
$15 – Oliver made my favorite buy of the week. Dudes named Juwan (or Jauan) were the best adds of the week (props to Kennedy). Oliver needed a Kittle replacement for at least a month, and he got a fast TE, converted from WR, who played 99% of snaps in a high-volume pass offense. It’s unsatisfying to see you spent $15 when no one else even bid, but this was THE guy at TE (imo), and $15 is nothing. At the end of the year, there will be a multiple teams with $15 and no meaningful use for it. And because Coleman spent $22 on a team’s second TE, Oliver is automatically absolved from any overbid rhetoric. Getting Mooney for free is nice, but Oliver will probably have to drop him before he gets to use him anyway.
$15 – Cameron said copy/paste and picked up Colston Loveland. In a vacuum, Loveland is a smart add, but the reason Coleman dropped him is that he is unstartable right now and has the earliest bye week. Not sure if Cameron can hang on long enough to get any payoff here. We want Loveland to be a LaPorta, but LaPorta came into a golden situation. He was immediately the second best receiver on the team (or tied with Josh Reynolds). Loveland is fifth, possibly sixth, and Kmet honestly might be outright better. Kmet was also the top TE in his draft class, he’s got 20 lbs on Loveland, and he can play the whole position, not just receiver. That said, nobody knows anything, and this could end up being a great move. We’d just prefer a more obvious path if we’re planning on holding a second TE through a bye week.
I think most of us made the wise move of modest bidding and observing results. But I will say one thing to Sean and Coleman’s credit, which is they added the best young players available, and in a dream scenario, they have late keeper ammo. This early in the year, I would rather spend FAAB on players with trade value or not spend at all. It’s also good in a shallow-bench league to save money for bye weeks. There will be good players dropped, and there will be massive bidding compared to this week.
Shelby’s team name makes me want someone to commit to the complete jungle where they have one of every wild animal, which makes me want to count the number of teams named for wild animals and pray it’s only 17. Good news, friends: there are 16 wild animal team names, and that’s including Browns as dogs (granted, not wild dogs), Bills as Buffaloes, and Seahawks despite not being a real name of a bird. Still, for fun, for shits since your money is in my pocket, let’s assemble The Complete Jungle, match it up against The Concrete Jungle (non-animals) and see who would win. This is Man Vs. Nature:
QB: Josh Allen vs. Mahomes/Daniels, edge nature
RB: Derrick Henry (fight me) vs. CMC, edge nature
WR1: Ja’Marr Chase vs. Justin Jefferson, no edge?
WR2: Puka Nacua vs. CeeDee Lamb, edge man
TE: McBride vs. Bowers, edge man
FX1: Bijan vs. Nabers, edge nature
FX2: Barkley vs. Egbuka, edge nature
K: the top four kickers are on the man side
DL: Garrett vs. Watt, no edge
LB: Roquan vs. Warner, no edge
DB: Hamilton/Budda vs. Winfield/Derwin, no edge
DX: Hutch vs. Parsons, edge man
It’s an even split, but the four edges for nature are QB and three RBs, so as in reality, so in fantasy. Nature crushes man in the first half, buries him in the third quarter, and man is decomposed by game’s end. I know I’ve enriched your lives with this one. No need to thank me.
I assumed I would win this game, so I thought I would have some fun and start Bill on Thursday night. It was awful, and then it was grand. Yada yada don’t root for injuries yada. We are playing a game, and certain aspects of the game are divorced from reality. In fantasy football, Austin Ekeler was simply removed from the deck, leaving Bill as the Ace in the Commanders RB suit. I left Thursday’s game knowing two things: the Packers are the best team in the league, and I am for sure going to lose to Shelby. So when Gibbs and Odunze traded scores to open the action on Sunday, followed by Derrick Henry fumbling, I was “on to Cincinnati.” Then Burrow broke his toe. Then Roquan went crazy. I was still losing by a lot and projected to lose by a lot. I did what I do: I posted the reverse jinx in the chat, and Evan took the bait. Note two things about the reverse jinx: 1) I actually have to believe it, just like I really believed Cameron had the best Week 1 linuep; and 2) someone has to bite: they have to lend their belief. Cameron has to text me, “Why do you hate my team?” (not his exact words, but the sentiment). That’s the secret sauce, perfected for over a decade. Shelby never stood a chance.
But did I also convince myself that Cameron Dicker was going to end my hopes right at the end of the Monday night game? I sure did! Because trauma: in my other league, I lost to Dicker on a last-second field goal on Monday night against the Cardinals. Consider me healed.
And consider me Cash King and the luckiest bitch. A 30-point IDP game only happens like once a month, and often it’s a free agent. And the first IDP drafted has a terrible hit rate of actually being the top IDP. My fear that I’m peaking in Week 2 is overwhelming.
Despite finishing 4th in scoring, Brian lost by 30. He squanders 32.5 from Chase, 22.5 from Kraft, and 48 from his IDPs in the wreckage, and he loses his QB for at least a week. TreVeyon Henderson was the only Pats RB to score less than 20, finishing with 7. Tyrone Tracy had a solid 16 FP, but like half of it was from kick return yards in a shootout. Cam Skattebo is eating into his regular work. So… gotta hope the Giants keep sucking on defense. And Brian Thomas is bad/hurt, and Liam Coen is kind of lying about it but in the dumbest way possible of also telling the truth about the lying. Thomas allegedly entered the game with an unreported wrist injury, which means the Jags should have to pay a fine. We’ll see. Bright side: Chase did a lot of that damage with Browning in at QB. Kraft plays for the best team in the league. But Brian has serious RB woes. Henderson is in a classic Pats clusterfuck, Pacheco sucks, Braelon Allen is gamescript dependent, and Nick Chubb is phasing out Woody Marks, and I already mentioned Tracy. If you want to make a play for Jayden Daniels, this is the week, but you’ll have to give up a great RB. Kennedy, Cameron, Corey, this is the moment when the Joker breaks the pool cue.
Sean dropped a shit-ton of FAAB, only played the cheap IDPs, and finished with the highest score of the week. That Puka Nacua jet sweep on 4th and 1 was amazing. The Cowboys triple-stack (Dak, Pickens, Javonte) combined for 67. Sean’s lowest scoring player on offense was Trey McBride with 11.8. This train should keep rolling. Keenan Allen is back to being the Chargers’ top receiver, top overall option on offense as Hampton implodes and cedes valuable touches to Najee. And with Ekeler’s injury, Sean has another open bench spot to throw money at. Drake Maye outscored Dak for the second week, but it was all about the matchups. Dak faced an elite defense in Week 1, Maye faced the worst team in the league in Week 2.
Max had the lowest score of any Week 2 winner. Josh Allen scored what will probably be a season-low 15, Alex Highsmith got hurt, the Vikings refused to do the most obvious thing and pound the fucking rock with Mason, which also contributed to Jessie Bates’ bad day. Otherwise it was a solid outing. Double digits from Jacobs, Davante, Nico, Dobbins, Bosa… Max has kinda got a little MAGA thing going with Allen, Butker, and Bosa. It’s a situation to monitor. This was a trash win, but Max has a strong team. He had 68 from the Goff-Jameson stack on the bench, he has the flexibility to drop Kaleb Johnson and Rashod Bateman, and Jordan Mason is about to FEAST.
Oliver would have won if Sutton and AJ Brown just had normal games, like seven points apiece. Instead, they combined for 5. The Jamel Dean add was also super corny and debilitating. But look at Juwan earning that FAAB right out the gate! Oliver is cleaning up as RB slumlord with Benson, Skattebo, and Sampson seeming to work their way toward 50% of their teams’ RB touches. Doesn’t matter yet because Oliver’s best lineup is Kamara and 4 WRs (DK, AJB, Sutton, Pearsall), but those bye weeks are going to be when the garbage patch runningbacks comes in, and once they do, Oliver might not be able to bench them all again.
Kennedy and Coleman combined for 180 FP and lost by a combined 170. As always, losses this bad don’t serve any learning purpose. Sometimes there just aren’t enough rocks. You cry about it, clean yourself up, get knocked up by your idiot friend, and go work at the diner. You get AIDS and die, but in that space between, you get your life back, Jen-nay.
Cameron’s convincing victory and second-best score of the week adds to the legend of my never wrong, just early list (pick up Daniel Jones). High floors (low of 5.9 by London), and four players over 20 FP, including a Aubrey with 24 and Fred Warner with 20. What happened to Cameron this week is the flip-side of what happened to Max. Cam got likely season-highs from multiple players in a week where he only need 93 FP to win. Just urinating LIKE A DOG all over the room because of how little needed to get in the cup for a win.
Spencer’s a wagon, yeah? Two convincing wins in two weeks, and it’s pretty legit? Like circumstantially, Hurts, CMC, Nabers, Kelce, Achane, Etienne shouldn’t be a knockout lineup. It offends our sensibilities that those players dropped a collective 120 FP this week, but they’re all good players who get the ball a lot. It would be Wrong for this to happen every week, but every other week is reasonable, and that’s only half of Spe’s lineup.
Evan and Corey barely outscored Max and Oliver, but they were just begging each other to take this game throughout. Corey should have won. His back-half (K thru DX) scored 22, which is 4.4 per player. Bump that up to a normal, still not good 7 per player, and Corey scores 13 more points and still loses by a fraction of a point dammit math just work with me! To be totally fair, Corey deserves to lose when he has three QBs and none of them can get above 16 points when Daniel Jones is, like, right there. Evan had pretty woeful IDP play, and Aaron Jones got hurt, but that one James Cook run made all the bad dreams go away. And with Jones out, Evan gets to plug Bhayshul Tuten into the lineup and get GOING. My favorite part of this Jags season is that the engine is being run by everyone but the players people actually wanted. Etienne, Tuten, and Dyami Brown are the ones doing damage in fantasy. Travis Hunter is one week away from giving Evan full Marvin Harrison Jr flashbacks and causing him to swear off second-round rookies forever.
Best players available:
IDP
Danielle Hunter
Byron Young
Daiyan Henley
Devin White
Talanoa Hufanga
Kam Curl
K
who cares
TE
Zach Ertz
WR
Troy Franklin
Dyami Brown
Malik Washington
Wan’Dale Robinson
(oh wow, gross list)
RB
Rhamondre
Najee
Allgeier
Cam Akers
(getting grosser…)
QB
Daniel Jones
(full slop)
