SEASON: 26-10
The roster arms race we're going through is fascinating. I don't want to overreact too much because it's possible that this is just a one-off and the 2018 season has the perfect confluence of catalytic factors up to and including:
- Chris and Scott winning the last 3 titles while mostly eschewing the draft (Credit very begrudgingly given where due)
- The league falling into clear tiers following the 2018 draft with 2-3 dominant teams, 2-3 junk teams, and a big, muddy middle
- So 2-3 teams had incentive to sell off players almost immediately
- And the remaining teams knew they needed to add players if they wanted to join the elite tier
- A 2019 draft that is shaping up to be historically bereft of talent, diluting the normal power of picks
- With the NFL setting new records for passer rating, total TDs, passing yards, and passing TDs, more receivers than ever have value and 2nd- or 3rd-tier receivers are worth trading for
- A quick flurry of trades last week that became like a positional run during a draft, with teams jockeying to capture players who were still available and useful while also trying to box out other owners from bolstering their teams
But we might also on the bleeding edge here, much like in the NFL itself where coaches like McVay, Pederson, and Reid are becoming more aggressive, creating mismatches, and outracing old fashioned coaches. It'll be interesting to see what happens in 2019.
That said, there is a downside to all of these moves.
Scott might still be alive at 2-5 depending on how other teams do, and he's already ordered one gross of Back2Back AFFL Champions snapbacks that he doesn't want to donate to Sudanese children, so we have 8-9 teams that need to get to 8 wins by Week 13. Every matchup is crucial right now and with so many kicker and defenses byes coming up, things are going to get interesting, mainly on the CapSum tab.
Some teams have the roster cushion and cap space to easily fill in the bye. Why do you think I grabbed the Jets after that trade last week? Only $0.56 for the 3rd-highest scoring defense this season? Yes, please! I saw this crunch coming and got out ahead of it. I'm always looking forward, never backwards. That's not just fantasy football advice for you, that's life advice.
But some teams out there have a panicked accounting department right now. Buncha numbers nerds all making pivot tables and yelling at each other.
"ARE YOU SURE THESE NUMBERS ARE RIGHT?!"
"I CHECKED THREE TIMES, RANDY! I DIDN'T INVENT MATH, OKAY? I CAN'T CHANGE NUMERICAL FACTS!"
"YOU GOTTA TELL THE BOSS THAT WE MIGHT BE SHORT IN WEEK 10!"
"I'M NOT TELLING HIM. YOU TELL HIM!"
Of the Nifty Nine, I'd say that only McCamey, Bri, M. Barker, and I will easily cover the K/DST byes, mainly because BM and BW already have two kickers and MB and MK already have two defenses.
Meyers' kicker has a bye this week, so if he just drops Boswell for one of the four kickers who've already had their bye, he should be okay. Scott is a little iffier because all of his players are either very expensive or very cheap, and he might have to drop name player for cap space. Or he'll be out of it by then and it won't matter.
That leaves us with Tim, Larry, and Gary, all of whom, believe it or not, have the SAME BYE WEEK for their current kickers and defense. All of these come before the roster freeze, so that's one problem eliminated. Yes, Tim already has a second kicker, but their byes are back to back in Weeks 10 and 11, so he can't even drop one kicker for a fill in defense because the freeze is after Week 10. He's already just barely inside the cap, so I have absolutely no idea how Tim is going to finesse this without trades.
Neither Gary nor Larry have a second kicker or defenses, and with the thin cap space they have, it's going to take some pretty good maneuvering to find another kicker and defense that A) Have already had their byes, B) Are affordable, and C) Aren't terrible.
But we're not done yet! As it happens, Larry plays Russellmania in Week 9 and Gary plays the same team in Week 10. Do they both think Brian is bad enough to be beaten with 75% of a roster?
Well, at the moment, the top 12 defenses are averaging 6.3 PPG and the top 12 kickers average 7.6 PPG for a total of 13.9 PPG. Do Gary and Larry think they'll be favored by 14 points over Brian? Will they have a game to possibly throw away by then? And if Brian racks up some cheap wins, what happens to his lottery odds?
Some real butterfly effect shit going on, folks!
Expect some squirrelly-looking trades in the next few weeks that are like K <--> DST + 9th round pick. Hey, that reminds me. Did we ever pass that No Borrowing Players rule after Gary cheated to rent David Johnson?
WHEW. I think that's it for now. Let's (finally) get to this week's action.
Bri took the inside track on the #1 seed with his big win last week and I'm not sure who's going to slow him down and edge him out. It's possible that he has enough of a lead going into Week 12 that he can withstand a double loss with Gurley and Kelce out and still get one of the byes. This season, Bri is simply...
On the music front, I don't expect that any of you actually listen to any of the songs because your coolness factor is (x-1) where x=0, but that's not going to stop me from trying to turn up your lives a little bit. But I am embarrassed to be a tech-savvy person who kept embedding Spotify sniplets instead of just switching over to YouTube embeds to have an inline experience. Poor user experience on my part.
I definitely don't expect you to listen to Metallica, but for my money, this is the best song ever about Moses telling the Pharaoh to let his people go before the Egyptians all lost their first born sons. But there ain't no amount of lamb's blood you can smear on your playbook to stop Bri from raining down fiery hail on your team, leaving you in darkness for three days until Thursday Night Football kicks off.
Man, picturing an image of Bri with his perfectly parted hair, dress shirt, and glowing red eyes chanting "Die! By my hand! I creep across the land." as he smashes little plastic football helmets with his fists is really, really amusing. I wish I was good at Photoshop.
THE DUDE HAS GOT NO MERCY (3-3) vs. LITTLE BABY JESUS (2-4)
Speaking of rule changes, did we ever pass that rule where if the highest-scoring team in the league is out of the playoffs by record, they automatically get the 6 seed? Because if the playoffs started today, I'd currently be on the outside.
(While we're stuck on rule changes, next year I'm proposing a Choose Your Own Adventure playoff system in which the higher seeds get to choose their opponent in the playoffs. So in Wild Card week the #3 seed picks his opponent, and in the Semi-Finals, the #1 seed picks his opponent. Be ready to vote YEA on this rule change next year.)
I'm a little surprised Semi didn't start Royce Freeman to try and beat me with all of my all old players. He missed out on a TD with Freeman benched, but Phil Lindsay made up for it with a garbage time TD on which the Cardinals seemingly had no interest in getting grass stains on their pants.
I wouldn't say that I'm concerned about it, but I am at least aware that it's possible I lose this game and fall to 3-4, thereby having the same record as Semi, who started selling off his team last week. Especially with Brees playing outside on the road against a good Ravens defense. That's usually a 10-point game for him. But Golladay, Hill, and Brown should all be fine. I really hope Brown is fine because Barker sent me some real smoke about Smokey this week after he had two down games. Seemed like he had that draft saved for weeks and just itching to hit send on it.
But if Tyreek and Butker don't finish this game off for me Sunday night, Odell and Saquon definitely will on Monday night. The Falcons defense has been crushed by backs this year, both on the ground and passes. They're giving up 11 catches a GAME to backs and Eli targets Saquon with dump off passes 111 times a game. James Conner put up 30 on the Falcons. Hell, Peyton Barber had his first good game against them last week. Beckham and Barkley might combine for 50 in this one.
THE PICK: TDHGNM 110 - LBJ 83
HEISENBERG (3-3) vs. TIMMY DOESN'T HAVE ANY FRIENDS (2-4)
Gary clipped me on the Ito Smith pickup this week and has tossed him right into the starting lineup. Scott didn't have to beat out anybody to grab Josh Rosen this week and unfortunately he also went into the starting lineup. I was really hoping Rosen would finish the whole game in negative numbers, not just the first half, but he scraped and clawed his way to 3.8 points well after everybody gave up watching that game.
Speaking of Scott's roster moves, he publicly made AB available last night and the price will be high, as it should be based on the current trade market and AB's status. Now, I'm willing to be wrong here, but looking around the league, I think I might be the only contender who has both the franchise player spot flexibility and the cap space to actually pull this deal off. The only other possibility I see, barring some team totally blowing up their current roster, is Semi. But is he already willing to punt on his cache of draft picks for just one player?
Anyway, we should assume that Matt Ryan will score more than 3.8 points this week, even though he's playing outside at night. The Giants secondary is easier to get through than a cool breeze. I'm done predicting when or if Julio will score a TD, but at this point don't be surprised if he posts something like 38 yards, 1 TD and actually scores fewer points than when he has a huge day with no scores. Ito will be dependent on what Coleman does first and Peyton will have trouble with a good Browns defense. That leaves Alvin to do something against both the Ravens and Mark Ingram.
On the other side, if TJ Yeldon is going to stay iffy, it might not be a bad idea for Scott to start Albert Wilson against the Lions. (Chris Berman voice: UNCLE Albert Wilson. Someone's knocking on the door, let him in. TO THE END ZONE!)
Gary has Ryan, Ito, and Julio all going on Monday night while Scott just has Sterling Shepherd, but I think Gary is going to be sweating this one out a little longer than he might want to. Every red zone target that goes to Coleman or Ridley or Sanu or Hooper is going to be met with the gnashing of teeth and the rending of garments.
THE PICK: HB 76 - TDHAF 63
RUSSELLMANIA (1-5) vs. ASSTANNER (1-5)
In another fun scheduling quirk, Russellmania has gone from a 1-4 v. 1-4 battle to a 1-5 v. 1-5 battle in consecutive weeks. A lot of $3 upper bowl tickets available on StubHub for this one.
Another quirk is that Chris currently has the 6th-highest scoring offense, which isn't bad, but the most points against, which is bad. That said, he's averaging 80 points in his 5 losses and 145 points in his 1 win. A little unbalanced. If you take away that one fluke week, he only has the 10th-best offense and would be 0-6. More importantly, I'd be 4-2.
If you have a couple of minutes to spare today (after the 35 minutes you've spent reading this), you should really take a quick peek at these two rosters. They're really something.
THE PICK: AT 59 - RM 55
THAT KANGAROO STOLE MY BALL (5-1) vs. SIGMUND AND THE SEAMONSTER (4-2)
Bri's team is so good that they got bored and started having wide receivers throw touchdown passes last night. I'd like Coleman over Breida a little more this week, but does it really even matter? All Donte Moncrief did last week was steal $0.19 from Bri's cap space and that didn't matter a bit.
It's a shame too, because Tim has good matchups with Goff and Woods, plus Diggs. It's just that Sanders already put up 20 points, Gurley will get close to 30 against the Niners and there's 50 points right there.
Not sure what else you want me to say about it. Creeping death, I already told you.
THE PICK: TKSMB 108 - SS 95
THE NIGHT BOYS (3-3) vs. WTTK? (4-2)
For all the years he was screwed by having tons and tons of points scored on him, Barker is currently 3-3 and in the hunt despite the 2nd-worst offense in the league because he has the 2nd-fewest points against.
This is a huge game for these two. Going to 4-3 would give Barker a little more control in his quest to end his playoff drought, while going to 5-2 would give McCamey a nice edge on winning the best division in the league.
Not that I respect the CBS projections all that much, but I'm surprised they're that low on these teams this week. I think these rosters are pretty stacked with good matchups and this should be a shootout. I like Dalton more than Rivers this week since Kansas City can't slow down anybody (or maybe they just don't care to) whereas the Titans have been mucking up low-scoring games. Plus, being a red-blooded super patriot, Rivers is probably going to be uncomfortable in England since they probably don't even have a dang ol' Bill of Rights over there!
A good day for Dalton will be a good day for Boyd, and Cooks and Thielen will be good as well. There's a little concern for Hopkins with Jalen Ramsey on him, especially because DeShaun might not have enough time to throw. Cohen is another concern since he's game flow and touchdown dependent. It's either 5 or 15 for him.
The same could be said for Taylor Gabriel on the other side, so I guess it washes out. Even if the Titans make the game ugly for Rivers, Gordon will still grind out yards and a TD, and Mixon will go off against the Chiefs.
Speaking of Gabriel real quick, we're deep into my least favorite part of the fantasy season, which is every single Week X Adds and Week Y Sleepers article just being a list of Guys Who Scored A TD Last Week. Christ, I read "Drop Robby Anderson" for 4 straight weeks, then he scores 2 long TDs in one game and next week it's "Add Robby Anderson". There is entirely too much #content.
Anyway, this game is going to be decided by which gadget Bear has a better day and which deep threat connects on one. And it won't be decided until the Bengals are done on Sunday night. I say a Joe Mixon rushing TD is the difference.
THE PICK: WTTK 93 - TNB 90
THE WHITECHAPEL RIPPERS (4-2) vs. ANIMAL HOUSE (4-2)
Cardinals OC Mike McCoy is a fucking idiot. You have a back who can post a 2,000-yard rushing/receiving season in a league having an offensive explosion. You've seen six weeks' worth of other teams splitting backs out wide, running RPO, getting to the edge with misdirection, and you just bang him into middle of your terrible offensive line over and over and over and over. It's an absolute crime against the sport. It's a complete fucking disgrace. It's like making Steph Curry post up in the paint.
I'd say it's hard to the believe the Cardinals hired him after he did nothing with the Chargers, but failson Cards President Michael Bidwell doesn't think his old prep school chum Brett Kavanaugh raped anybody either, so maybe he just isn't concerned with people's pasts.
There's a site I look at that charts Opportunity Points, which is how many points a player should have based on targets, games, etc. You can decide whether to believe that stuff or not, but Jarvis Landry has been flashing bright green for a month straight. At some point he is going to have a breakout game, so why not this week against the terrible Bucs defense?
He and Evans should both surpass Michael Thomas, who will be closer to ARob's point total. AJ will be nice against the Chiefs, but I don't love Brady, McCaffrey, or Ingram this week.
Larry feels that once again he's middled his team. Not good enough to really compete, not bad enough to blow it up and start over. He couldn't even close the books on a deal for David Johnson, who was once so valuable entire scams were crafted just to get him on a team for six weeks. Let his win this week just add to his confusion.
THE PICK: TWR 88 - AH 81
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