TJ Watt gets just half a sack, which is honestly better than I expected with Flacco trying to avoid hits at all costs.Kenny Gainwell return-man scam succeeds in the sense of making good on that high floor. As bye weeks keep coming, if you need flex help and you are playing more for floor than ceiling, target the return men. Travis Hunter last man standing scores the only Jags TD and adds enough yards and first downs to outscore Davante Adams who had three TDs in the same game. Rashee Rice immediately steps into an Amon-Ra role for KC, scores their first TD, gets a bunch of YAC-opportunity targets. Will Reichard nails a 59-yarder right down the middle with room to spare.
Unpredictable finish: Darnold and Baker were even at 10 FP. Neither MF BILL nor Montgomery cracked 5 FP. Three of my four top scorers were Reichard (19), Tykee (18), and Tee (17); Evan’s top scorers were Hunter (23), Rashee (18), and Ernie (17). I benched LaPorta and T-Mac for Engram and Chuba and gained 9 FP. Somehow my Alec Pierce play paid off. And this was the gambit: I didn’t think I had a chance of winning conventionally, so I played a white receiver, a guy named Evan, and stacked Bucs IDPs (would have dropped Lavonte for a Bears LB against anyone else) because fantasy football analysis is pseudoscience. It’s astrology. It’s reading tea leaves and playing mind games.
This one also came down to Evan’s team being deeply flawed despite that 5-0 start. The Lions demystified the Baker Mayfield MVP run by blitzing the absolute fuck out of him. Baker was sped-up, off-balance, had nowhere to run, and missed a bunch of throws against a truly terrible Lions’ secondary that let Egbuka and Tez get open all over the place. And though I got to play Evan sans Cook, Cook would have played over Gainwell or Egbuka (timing-wise), meaning he would have needed 24 FP to deliver the win, which he’s only done against the Jets and Saints this year. Which brings me to my closing point: Evan’s team is only situationally dominant. Travis Hunter needed three Jags WRs to get knocked out of the game before finally coming alive down 28-0 in the fourth quarter. Montgomery is under 10 FP against every good defense Detroit has played this year. Dallas Goedert’s peripheral stats are a mess; without TDs, he’s cooked. Gainwell needs Warren to be hurt, and Justin Jefferson can only be so elite without a QB who can hit him in the endzone.
Am I going to pretend my team is good? Not the lineup I put out against Evan, no. But next week, I get to start Lamar, Henry, and Roquan in place of Darnold, Chuba/Bill, and Lavonte. I would conservatively estimate an extra 25 FP from that change, which would have put me over 160 this week. So yeah, I’m thinkin’ I’m back.
I don’t like this season from Sean because it’s really easy to poke holes in it, but the holes just, like, heal themselves like Wolverine? He started two total crap assets in Waddle and Breece, Herbig shit the bed, but it doesn’t matter. Spencer gifted him an elite DB for no fucking reason, the Miami LBs are the fucking bash brothers, Jonathan Taylor has more 30-point weeks than not, Javonte is a god I guess, Trey McBride is singlehandedly about to get Kyler benched because of how good McBride is without him… I would say Sean has WR issues, but Puka is coming back soon-ish, Pickens isn’t a stud but if he’s your worst offensive player you’re crushing. And even if you choose wrong between Dak and Maye, it doesn’t matter; they’re both flirting with 30. And even the Herbig thing doesn’t matter because Andrew Van Ginkel, last year’s IDP3, is back next week. Even if something went wrong, Sean has picks to move at the deadline, and he’s ruthless. He will outbid us for Ja’Marr Chase. He just will.
Oliver is down but not out. I really believed he would be 3-4 right now and be back on track, but 2-5 is fine. It’s tied with three other teams while Cameron and Coleman freefall. Oliver has the #1 QB (by almost a full game’s worth of points over #2), and an elite-ish group of skill players in Skattebo, Metcalf, AJB, Sutton, Kittle, and Kelce. That’s assuming none of Kamara, Pearsall, Vidal, or Benson pan out. One of them has to pan out, right? Ugh but does it matter if he’s drawing dead at two IDP spots every week? I really don’t want Oliver to bow out, but I also play him next week, so I would benefit. But my team needs hardening. I need stiff competition (not in that way, Optimus Prime, get that thing away from me). Oliver needs to give it one more week. We can’t start a trend of losing to Sean and then having a fire sale. At least not until I’ve come up with something clever to tag that with. Give me your best shot, then you can bail.
Justin Fields got hurt for the second time in three starts for Coleman. He returned to the game, he played poorly, got sacked to end the first half, and when the Jets came back for their first drive of the second half, Tyrod had taken over. Tyrod was bad, too, because the Jets’ line is bad and their only good WR is hurt.
STA-CLE continues his bid to be rookie of the year, Browns MVP, and the only reason this offense isn’t total garbage.
Brian doesn’t start Cam Ward, but he gets some confidence to hold him. The Titans finally admitted Elic Ayomanor is just not a WR1 type. He’s more of a Mack Hollins starter, great blocker, big frame, not useless but not explosive or particularly good at catching. Chim Dike is Rashid Shaheed 2.0. The Titans suck, but Cam Ward and the skill players do not. If they bring in an offensive guru and buy an offensive line, Ward’s a good late keeper.
This was an important game, especially combined with Cameron’s loss to Spe. Brian, Shelby, and Oliver would have LOVED to see Corey take Max down, and we’ll get to it later why he really should have, but we’ll take two upsets and the modest expansion of the middle class.
Oh good, we get to do it now. Matt Stafford threw five TDs in London, three to Max’s starting WR. That’s the game. I get benching Stafford after he barely scored 10 FP against the Ravens. The Ravens were bad-bad against the Texans’ offense the week before. Teams like the Ravens don’t fuck around and get embarrassed twice in a row. The coaching is too good, the intensity is too high, and the Ravens defense was designed to stop McVay’s offense. And McVay can’t rewrite the offense without Puka midgame. He can do it with a week to prepare, and he did. Again I get benching Stafford with the bad game and then no Puka, but not for CJ Stroud against an elite defense, a defense designed to stop the McVay style offense that the Texans run. I would’ve totally gotten in on Corey going for one of the elder millennials on Thursday night. The Stroud move was bad process, and this is what you get. I’m harping on it because I’m mad about it. If Max had lost, I’d have jumped up to 4th place, one game back of a team I just beat, with the 3rd and 5th place teams facing off next week. Now I don’t get any of that narrative juice for my bulletin board, and Corey’s about to lose to Sean and become a third straight team to sell out after losing to Sean when I still haven’t come up with something clever to call that! Dammit, people, don’t you understand the pressure I’m under?! I can’t win the league against Sean’s unlimited golden mushroom game genie bullshit. I need note fodder or I’m going to lose my fucking shit over here!
Quentin Lake comes through for 19.5! Note magic is real! Wait, I’m checking the rest of the box sco—oh, what the fuck! Cameron could have won if he’d started Nix and Olave over Dimes and Jeanty? You mean playing Bo Nix in a significantly better matchup than Dimes and simply not giving up a 2nd for a RB in a dead offense would have made your team better? You mean you didn’t see Denver’s 33-point fourth quarter coming? And Spencer gifted you five points by benching Jaxson Dart for Jalen Hurts again, the moron. The buffoon. The rebel scum. I still don’t buy Spencer’s team. This team scored 188, but 106 of that was Hurts, CMC, and DeVonta, who combined for literally half of that last week. Spencer should have had 195 but dropped DB7 Nick Cross for, again, no fucking reason. We’re witnessing the heater cool in real time. The cash game coup, the brazen lineup mismanagement. Spencer won’t even learn the lesson because of the win this week and the likely win next week against Shelby sans Gibbs.
Gibbs nearly matched McCaffrey this week on 20 touches to CMC’s 31. Shelby had this thing locked up from the word go, as Jaylen Warren dropped 24 on Thursday night and Chase Brown hit 100 yards (on the bench, but still, we could all smell what was cooking). Land Man added 13 in London, so Kennedy was down 37-0 before the main slate started, and it could have gotten close. Shelby didn’t have any starters hit double digits in the early window, while Kennedy got solid games from Addison and Stevenson and even Moody. But one of Shelby’s single-digit dudes was Rome Odunze, who was held to 5 FP because Caleb Williams could only muster 3 FP. And it was then that Shelby said, all right, if you’re not gonna take us seriously, then we’ll stop going easy on you. And she rattled off two 40-pieces from Herbs and Gibbs and a defensive TD from Will Anderson, finishing with week-high points because once you fuck with Bobby Time, you can’t unfuck it. It’s time to let go. It’s time to start nothing but Bears for the rest of the season. It’s time to don the windbreaker and the sunglasses and grow the moustache and start throwing back the Malort.
This marks the third time in seven weeks that Kennedy has lost by 90+ points, but this is the first one where he broke 100, so things are looking up.
Rhamondre was in my starting lineup until I got cute late in the week and started chasing teams’ top WRs. He is back to being a bell-cow for the time being, and I’m starting the lesser half of the Panthers’ timeshare if I’m not starting the exclusively between-the-20s-but-not-on-passing-downs third of the Commanders’ committee.
It’s an unwritten rule that you don’t spend on TEs, but in this inaugural FAAB season, I think you test those boundaries. You can’t make a worse buy at TE than Oliver did, so that should embolden you to swing and miss on a guy like Gadsden, who had 150 yards this week. He’s big and strong and fast and his dad was, like, a well-known WR in the NFL, so it could be a real thing. While the Chargers’ WR situation is a fantasy nightmare, their TE situation is clear: he’s the dude. Here’s the top 10 ways to burn your FAAB bucks this week:
1. Gadsden with a bullet
2. Joe Flacco
3. Tez Johnson
4. Kyle Monangai
5. Aaron Rodgers vs. GB
6. Xavier Legette
7. Bears LBs
8. Jerry “Note Magic” Jeudy
9. Laiatu Latu & Kenny Moore
10. Denver WRs vs. DAL
