Fantasy football 2023 -- week 3 recap

Eagles QB Jalen Hurts faced some pointed questions after Monday night’s game about the team’s lethargic passing attack and lack of dominance on the offense so far. The concerns surrounding those issues only grow larger for fans if they step back and look at the enormity of the team’s struggles of late:

— Through three games, the Eagles have already trailed their opponents for 7 minutes and 55 seconds. And that’s game time, not real time. For the season, fans have had almost 20 minutes of watching the Eagles not be in the lead.

— The Eagles only rank 7th in point differential, outsourcing their opponents by a paltry 25. That’s the worst among the three remaining undefeated teams in the league.

— The anemic passing attack has only produced three TDs through the air and left the total team offense at merely 6th in the league, behind more successful teams like the Chargers (1-2) and the Vikings (0-3).

— In his last 24 starts (including the playoffs), Hurts has only won 22 games. That’s an 8 percent failure rate in my book.

— The Eagles through three weeks this season have failed to win a single playoff game.

It’s time to panic, folks. This offense just doesn’t look crisp, and it may come back to haunt them after another six or seven wins.

QB: Tua Tagovailoa, 36.36 pts — started by Sam
WR: Keenan Allen, 31.29 pts — started by Jeff
RB: De'Von Achane, 48.30 pts — on Bob’s bench
TE: Sam LaPorta, 15.60 pts — on Mom’s bench
K: Matt Gay, 24.00 pts — on the wire
DEF: Buffalo, 35.00 pts — started by Jonathan
D: Kyle Hamilton, 12.00 pts — on the wire

Achane may have just produced one of the greatest and the most frustrating fantasy performances of all time.

First, the greatness: The Miami rookie RB rushed for 203 yds and two TDs, caught four passes for 30 yds and two more TDs, and posted a top-10 non QB fantasy performance in the Dolphins ridiculous 70-20 win on Sunday. Not bad for his second game in the NFL.

Now the frustration — it was his second game in the NFL. He came into Sunday as a backup (to Raheem Mostert, who had a mere 39.70-fantasy-pts performance). That means almost no one started him. Across ESPN’s 11 million fantasy teams this season, Achane was owned in only 15.6% of leagues and started in 0.6% of them. For comparison, Colts QB Anthony Richardson was started in 5.4% of leagues this week, and he played zero downs because he was ruled out with an injury days ago. Nine times more people started an injured QB than Achane.

My prediction: Achane will be starting in 90% of leagues next week, and it will take him five more weeks to match his point total from Sunday. And that’s because fantasy football is incredibly, incredibly frustrating.

“Backup QBs for a reason” edition

3rd place: Sam Darnold, -0.10 pts — on the wire
2nd place: Kyle Allen, 0.20 pts — on the wire
1st place: Blaine Gabbert, -2.86 pts — on the wire

Gabbert came into the Chiefs game with his team up 41-0 in the third quarter and promptly threw two picks which led to 10 Chicago points. Sure, Kansas City still won, but it really says something when your team is +41 with you on the bench and -10 with you in the game.

Special shout out to the defenses of the Jaguars, Panthers, Bears, Cowboys, Commanders and Giants this week. All of them scored fewer fantasy points than the Broncos, who surrendered 70 points (the second most in an NFL game ever) but managed a flat 0 on the fantasy scoreboard thanks to a kickoff return for a TD. Fantasy scoring is dumb.


** This weekend could go down as one of the stupidest game planning collection of performances in memory.

On Saturday night, with Notre Dame leading Ohio State by four points with three seconds left in the game, the Buckeyes drew up a RB plunge play from the one-yard line as their last hope for a victory. They ran the play to the left and scored, aiming right at the Notre Dame defensive end … or, where the DE should have been, if he was on the field. But because of a coaching miscommunication, the Fighting Irish decided to fight the biggest play of the season with only 10 men.

After the game, Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman said he realized the team was a player short but opted not to send another player on the field because the team was out of timeouts and “we couldn’t afford a penalty there.”

To be clear, an offside penalty there would have put the ball at the ½-yard line, costing the Irish 18 inches of defensive space but giving them a full complement of defenders to try and stop it. But keeping the penalty numbers down and losing the game was probably the right call, because beating a top-ten opponent is just gonna force a coach to make more hard mental decisions down the line. Things like, I dunno, learning how to count.

** Not to be outdone, the Vikings were trailing 28-24 to the Chargers in Minnesota on Sunday when they connected a pass down to the six-yard line with 35 seconds left. On the cusp of taking the lead, QB Kirk Cousins promptly wasted 23 seconds, then fired a wild pass in the direction of his tight end that was picked off by a Chargers linebacker to effectively end the game.

Afterwards, when asked why the coaches took so long to call that miserable play, Cousins admitted that he “just couldn't hear the coach with the noise” in the stadium, so he guessed and hoped for the best.

To be clear, Cousins, who has played for the Vikings for the last six years, could not hear the coach’s call because he was unprepared for the crowd noise AT HIS HOME STADIUM. That means the team was unprepared to hear their own fans cheering for them, so they lost. I don’t know if that’s an indictment on the fans or the coaches, but it does explain how Minnesota is 0-3 right now.

** But if you want to talk about all-time screw ups, let’s chat about Mike McDaniel. He grew up in Denver as a huge Broncos fan, and worked as a ball boy when he was a kid. After college he joined the franchise as a coaching intern. After working with five other franchises over the next 16 years, McDaniel was a hot head coaching candidate and tried to come back to his hometown team, but they showed no interest because his offensive skill set didn’t match what they were looking for.

So it should be noted that the Dolphins in the fourth quarter of Sunday’s win over the Broncos were faced with a decision whether to kick an easy field goal to hit 73 points and set the single-game NFL record for points, their coach — that Mike McDaniel — showed mercy on his former franchise and kept the score at a mere 70 points instead. With that kind of generosity, maybe the 0-3 Denver coaches could ask him for a few tips from Miami’s 3-0 start to help them learn how to football.

As part of the NFL’s ongoing quest to put football everywhere except for where it’s easy to watch, Disney+ will host “Toy Story Funday Football” next Sunday during the Jaguars/Falcons game. Characters from the iconic movie will “replicate every run, pass and score from the game almost as it happens” in some kind of bizarre crossover broadcast. Here’s what I’m looking forward to seeing:

— To simulate every facemask penalty, Rex the T-Rex will savagely bite the heads off of other players.

— Falcons QB Desmond Ridder will be replaced by Forky, an immoble plastic fork that can’t use its arms. The plays will look exactly the same animated and in real life.

— If a player gets hurt, Disney plans to have Buzz Lightyear’s leg pop off, then rush him to the medical tent where he can get doped up with painkillers and steroids.

— Jaguars RB Travis Etienne will be represented by a stuffed kitten. Falcons RB Bijan Robinson will be represented by an actual live falcon screaming across the room.

— No humans will be watching the toys play their game, just like no fans will be watching these two irrelevant franchises.

Beyond the Dolphins 70 points scored on Sunday, the biggest shocker of the week was the Arizona Cardinals improbable win over the Cowboys. Dallas had been hyped by idiot commentators as a Super Bowl hopeful for weeks, while the Cardinals are barely fielding a team of professional players. The matchup seemed like a horrible mismatch, but most pundits did not dig into the psyche of the Cowboys players. If they had, they would have noticed what the letters in new Dallas LG Asim Richards name clearly spell out:

Dallas Offensive Lineman Asim Richards
** Oh! I fear Cardinals fans’ ill minds. Save me!

Never underestimate the psychological damage that opposing fans can cause on rookies. If the young Cowboys players are afraid of Arizona fans, what will happen on their first trip to Philly?


** I went 4-2 against Dad in the weekly picks, putting me at plus-3 for the season so far. It’s less impressive when you realize that Dad will always, always pick the Jets, no matter how bad they are.

** The Vikings went 11-0 in one score games last season. This year, they are 0-3 in one-score games, because the football gods demand balance in everything.

** The Eagles 25-11 win over the Bucs was a scorigami, the first time that score has ever appeared in an NFL game. It’s the 1,078th unique final in league history, according to the Scorigami Twitter page, which is a thing that exists and probably is an indictment against us all.

Week 3 standings

1 — The Best (Jonathan), 449.09 pts
2 — Jalen Ain't Failin (Dad), 388.57 pts
3 — Room Temperature Icers (Sam), 375.73 pts
4 — Tight Ends for Everyone! (Jo), 348.85 pts
5 — DeVonta’s Inferno (Mom D), 342.56 pts
6 — Blue Collar Killers (Jeff), 321.39 pts
7 — Murder Hornets (Mike), 316.89 pts
8 — Jabronis (Ant), 312.75 pts
9 — Tush Push All-Stars (Capt. Awesome), 300.42 pts
9 — All Rogers No Sauce (Joel), 300.42 pts
11 — No One Likes Us We Don't Care (Bob), 294.54 pts
12 — Let's Go Iggles! (Paul), 273.61 pts

Take a look at those standings again, because it is downright shocking to see that one score up there.

That’s right — Joel and I are tied EXACTLY at 300.42 pts. How is that even possible? With all the different scoring combos and idiosyncrasies of the game, we end up at the same hundredth of a decimal point? Unreal. I know you’re as overwhelmed as I am.

Oh and also Jonathan scored 189.93 pts this week and is way ahead of everyone. But, really, it’s that statistical quirk down in 9th place that should catch your eye.

A good week from Sam gets him back up in medal contention, while Joanna continues to complain about how bad her 4th place squad is performing. And after a solid outing, Paul jumps up to striking distance of … hold on, Paul set his whole roster? For real? Wow. It really is a wild season already.

Reminder that not only is there a Thursday night game (Lions at Packers) but also that Falcons and Jaguars game is in London and starts at 9:30 a.m. in good old American time, so get your messy rosters ready as soon as possible. And if you think any backups might score 50 fantasy points, try and get them in your starting lineups too.