Tuesday, October 20, 2015

Fantasy league 2015 -- week 6 recap

A look at new Eagles QB Sam Bradford through a little more than one third of the season:

** 38th in QB rating (80.1)
** 30th in 1st quarter scoring (10 pts)
** 18th in yards per game (260)
** 15th in pass plays of 20 yrds or more (17)
** 2nd in INTs (9)
** 1st place in NFC East (which hurts my brain)

He’s also 21st in the league in sacks, before you use the offensive line as an excuse for his erratic play so far. But, winning cures everything, right?

QB: Matt Stafford, 41.90 pts -- on the wire
WR: DeAndre Hopkins, 26.87 pts -- started by Sam
RB: Devonta Freeman, 29.73 pts -- started by Dad
TE: Ben Watson, 19.47 pts -- on Mom Doyle’s bench
K: Chris Boswell, 17.00 pts -- on the wire
DEF: Miami, 26.00 pts -- on the wire
D: Cameron Wake, 14.00 pts -- on the wire

Well, that was terrible.

Second week in a row the top QB for the week wasn’t even owned by one of our 12 teams. In fact, three of the top five passers on the week are on the wire, with Brian Hoyer (30.22 pts) and Ryan Fitzpatrick (29.72 pts) just looking around for someone to love them.

On a related note, getting pretty sick of Devonta Freeman at this point. At 146 fantasy points, he's 55 pts ahead of the next RB (Matt Forte).
   
“General lousiness” edition

3rd place: TJ Jones, -0.86 pts -- on the wire
2nd place: Buffalo, -1.00 pts -- started by Joel
1st place: Corey Fuller, -1.17 pts -- on the wire

Detroit gets its first win of the season on Sunday and still has the two lowest scoring players in the league. I honestly don’t know what Detroit did to deserve this kind of football punishment, but I feel like maybe they have learned their lesson by now.


** ESPN had Green Bay’s Eddie Lacy as their 5th-best RB in their pre-game weekly rankings on Sunday. He finished 51 among running backs on Sunday. Those same experts had the Packers’ James Starks 45th among RBs in their pre-game rankings. He finished 3rd.

In fact, excluding the Monday and Thursday games, only one of their top 10 projected RBs ended up in the actual top 10 in scoring (Matt Forte). That’s an astoundingly low batting average even for the Phillies. And I bet a few of these so-called experts get paid better than OF Odubel Herrera.

** Just before halftime of the Eagles/Giants game, ESPN commentator said that New York coach Tom Coughlin would be furious with his team’s performance in the first two quarters because “he has always valued ball control, and hates turnovers.”

Somebody probably should have told that to his QB, who has more fumbles and interceptions for his career (277 coming into the game) than TD passes (269). A good time to start preaching ball control to him would have been 11 years ago, when it might have made a difference...

Here are a handful of my favorite fantasy football names so far this season:

** Touchdown Grinders
** Freak Cafe
** Field6 Forwards
** Bang Ballers
** Fan2, ManCave2
** Blindside Holdouts
** CheeseSteak Noise

I mean, I think those are fantasy football names. That’s actually just a partial list of FanDuel promo code keywords used so far. They run another commercial every 15 seconds during NFL games, and they switch those codes every single commercial, so I assume there’s some sort of subliminal wordplay exercise they’re attempting. I don’t know if the site is legal or not, but those folks are doing a great job filling up crossword puzzles somewhere.


Reports say the Dallas coaching staff used the bye week to help install newly acquired QB Matt Cassel as the replacement starter for struggling QB Brandon Weeden. That would give the Cowboys their third different starting passer in six games, a less than optimal strategy in today’s NFL. But could it work? Let’s see what the letters have to say:

Bills backup/Cowboys starter Matt Cassel
** Attempt sails, crabby screwball sucks too

It does not surprise me to hear that Cassel is crabby, given that he got his NFL break with the Patriots and Bill Belichick in 2005. That grouchiness tends to rub off on people.



** Picked up two games on Dad this week, so we’re back to even again. This may be the latest in the year that we’ve been tied in the last decade. I consider that a win. And at 63-28 on the season, we’re so far ahead of ESPN’s “experts” that it’s not even worth a joke.

** Most of the former Phillies still playing in the postseason were eliminated when the Dodgers lost, but there are still two beloved Philly stars out there trying to win a championship: OF Ben Revere of the Blue Jays and RP Ryan Madson of the Royals.

So, um, go Cubs.

** There’s a Thursday game and another early Sunday morning game this week, because the NFL still hates you.

Week 6 standings

1 -- Lake Weed Monsters (Dad) -- 862.23 pts
2 -- Cosby's Sleepers (Mike) -- 733.09 pts
3 -- Gettin' Chippy (Jo) -- 732.82 pts
4 -- hippo fantasy (Sam) -- 730.72 pts
5 -- Yelp for help (Mom Doyle) -- 690.84 pts
6 -- Blue Collar Killers (Jeff) -- 674.76 pts
7 -- Clinton's Email (Jim) -- 657.52 pts
8 -- Eat Drink & D Murray (Capt Awesome) -- 651.59 pts
9 -- 1.21 Chip-a-watts (Ant) -- 649.42 pts
10 -- Bethlehem Moravians (Bob) -- 628.77 pts
11 -- Heap Big Chief Reid (Joel) -- 578.41 pts
12 -- May Pay Attention (Paul) -- 519.52 pts

Dad’s lead atop the standings is growing ever wider, so let’s focus on the rest of the medal positions for now.

Mike and Joanna are separated by just 0.27 pts in the standings, and Sam is less than 2 pts below them. Now that’s a race worth watching. After that … well, let’s just say the distance between second and 10th is less than the distance between first and second. So, everybody stinks.

But I cracked the top 10 for the first time in weeks, so that’s all we really need to worry about. And there are still 11 weeks left before the Awesome Cup is shined up for its presentation ceremony…

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