BEST MOVE OF THE WEEK
Though I do try to avoid it, I'm patting myself on the back this week boys. With super-stud Rob Gronkowski sitting uselessly on my bench, I needed a bye week TE. If you guys haven't noticed, the TE crop this year (excluding some blue-chip studs) has not only been inconsistent but weak overall. I opted for the ballsy pick of Jared Cook against the Cardinals, and Cook responded with 84 yards and a TD for 14.4 points. Color me satisfied. I may not use him again for the rest of the season, but when I needed him, that guy showed up big. This is a guy whose last three games were 2.5 points, 1.1 points, and 1.2 points, and his previous season-high was 7.5 points in Week Three. Feel free to call me Nostradamus; I won't stop you. Honorable mention: 302 picking up Jonathan Stewart off waivers and starting him against the Eagles, earning 12.2 points in the process. WORST MOVE OF THE WEEK I actually kind of had a hard time finding a "Worst Move of the Week," so really this is congrats to you all. No bonehead moves this week! Since I do have to pick one though, if you twisted my arm I would go with Clam Juice Junkies (nice name choice, Dan!) benching Martavis Bryant for any of the three WRs he started. He had Julio and BMarsh at WR and Golden Tate in the FLEX. Now I know that Julio has enormous name-value and there's really no way to expect anyone to bench him. Got it. BMarsh is much the same way, though we can't deny that both have clearly underperformed this year, especially in recent weeks. Julio had scored in double digits in just one of his last five games. Brandon, in one of his last six. Still though, Golden Tate is the easier critique here. Calvin was coming back, and Martavis Bryant had scored FIVE touchdowns in the last three games (now four in the last six). How do you not get a guy like that in the lineup? Bryant proved to be the highest-scoring WR, besting Tate by 9, Julio by 8, and BMarsh by 3. Those points are just sitting on the bench. It's not a really dumb move, but in a week with few dumb moves, I guess this one wins. Power Rankings: #1 the mullynation (8-2) --- Despite last week being "the closest call for the #1 spot all year," this week the winds have changed a bit. The mullynation has now gone NINE straight weeks scoring 100+ points and also being a top-4 scorer, which is frankly just absurd. This was supposed to be the week where she was handicapped. This was the week that the unstoppable Andrew Luck-TY Hilton connection was halted (due to bye). Losing the #1 QB and #5 WR would be rough for any team, or maybe not. She posted 133 (second-most this week) despite her depleted arsenal. Also of note, the mullynation finally got her beloved Calvin Johnson back, and I think that worked out pretty well for her (17.3). No skill position player scored fewer than 13.1 points. With sole possession of the best record in the Just, Win, Maybe League, life is sweet in the mullynation. A playoff bye week also seems a virtual lock, as she owns a two game (plus tie-breaker) lead over PMotr in the Clowns division with only three weeks to play. #2 Turn Down for Watt (6-4) +1 Just one week removed from being beaten by SI and TDfW is above them in the power rankings? How can that be? Can I feign any semblance of non-bias? I'm not sure. I'll talk in more detail about SI's drop in their section, but this section is about what's working in the world of TDfW. The loss last week was in no small part due to the absence of my two Packer (ick) studs, Eddie Lacy and Jordy Nelson. I won't need to worry about that anymore. I think it's safe to say that Eddie Lacy is back, people. In his last six games he has scored 12, 25, 4 (a stinker in Miami), 11, 19, and 18. Maybe not the greatest keeper of all time, but at least he's not losing TDfW games. As a flex play, you can do a whole lot worse. While Lacy's performance was nice, this week is all about the WRs. The combination of Dez Bryant and Jordy Nelson earned a truly grand total of 55 points this week (2.9 points more than the entire 38V squad). Evan was left shaking his head as his QB Romo's touchdowns kept going to Dez. Most importantly though, for a team that started the year absolutely riddled with injuries, there is not a single meaningful injury on this squad besides Rashad Jennings, who was injured five weeks ago and is finally due to return this week. TDfW has gone 3-2 since losing the then-#6 RB, but I'm hopeful that record will be nicely boosted by his return. The Giants have been downright pathetic without him, and I'm thinking they'll feature him heavily once he's back. They certainly did before he was injured. #3 Gin Makes Me Bum Pucker (6-4) +2 After a tough loss to T-Swift last week (scoring only 84 points), GMMBP responded in true bum pucker fashion, earning a big ol' win over the favored SI. GMMBP was our high-scorer of the week, being just the third team to crack 140 points (38V with 162 in Week Two, and the mullynation with 156 in Week Eight) Even more impressive was that this was accomplished with six players on bye, though the only stud missing was Antonio Gates. Aaron Rodgers (unfortunately) is playing mistake-free football. In fact, that might be an understatement. Rodgers is playing football about as well as I've ever seen anyone play it, and GMMBP is eating those points right up. A lovely 36.6 point outing, along with Justin Forsett's 23.2 and Emmanuel Sanders' 19.2, helped put SI in the rearview mirror. Oh don't forget about the Packers D/ST earning 21 points in their defeat of the Bears. After a couple of lackluster weeks, Mike Wallace also got things going again with 11.1 points. As I've mentioned before, the WR depth on this team is nice. Sanders and Wallace are a nice WR1/WR2 combo, but Desean Jackson, Reggie Wayne, Michael Crabtree, and Cordarrelle Patterson (eh) round out a really solid deep set. And imagine if the WR trade hadn't gone through earlier this year, GMMBP would still have BMarsh and Golden Tate instead of Wayne and Crabtree! If Rodgers keeps putting up 30+, this team can beat any team in the league. The only concern persists at RB. It's unclear how that's going to affect the team come playoff time. Relying on a Patriot RB as an every-week starter is a dangerous game. But for now, we live in the moment. GMMBP has won five of its last six and is making a decent push for a playoff bye. GMMBP and TDfW are now both trailing SI by just one game, but the interesting note is that these two teams play each other in Week Ten. There can only be one... #4 Poppin Mollies on the reg (6-4) +2 Last week PMotr was our high-scorer, riding on the backs of its nice RB talent. I feel like I'm singing the same song here. Ellington is hitting that stretch of schedule where points are going to be hard to come by, but he still managed 10. Denard Robinson continued his great streak with another solid game (17). The game ball though, that goes to Marshawn Lynch. Holy guacamole. Lynch (and really the whole Seahawks running-game) obliterated the Giants in the best running performance in the history of the Seahawks franchise. Lynch had 140 yards on the ground and FOUR touchdowns, earning PMotr 38 points. There was no coming back from that for RRiaa. If I'm going to sing the same song as last week though, I need to sing the part about the underperforming WRs. Last week they combined for 7.4 points. This week they combined for 4.4 points. This is a dangerous road Dan is walking. When the RBs have solid matchups PMotr will feast. We've sure seen that! When the RBs have rough matchups, PMotr is going to be lucky to break 100, because those WRs don't really bail him out. For PMotr's sake, I'm hoping that RB opponents in Weeks 14, 15, and 16 are soft. Steve Smith is no longer getting it done, and Sammy Watkins, as good as we all know he is, is going to have games where he looks frustratingly like a rookie. That's how rookies are, especially at WR and QB. This was one of those weeks. With that kind of serious deficiency at WR, it's hard to move this team up the ranks, even with such dominant performances as the last two weeks. It's just tough to know what we're going to get. #5 Staff Infection (7-3) -3 With last week being one of the high-water-marks of the season for SI, it would seem like things are just peachy-keen, right? Wrong. There may be some trouble in paradise. Despite boasting one of the most solid RB corps just several weeks ago (Le'Veon Bell, healthy Gio Bernard, healthy Lamar Miller), things have precipitously fallen off. Gio was out yet again, and there's been no indication yet that he will be back for Week 11. Lamar was actually active for this week's game, yet he was used so sparingly that he earned a whopping 0.6 points. Furthermore, Le'Veon Bell continued his head-scratching streak of no rushing TDs since Week 1, and he earned 7.6 points in the process with only 36 rushing yards. Legarrette Blount got the goal-line carries this week, an annoying sign of things to come? Demaryius Thomas is a kindred spirit with Bell, as he's had no TDs in the last three weeks, though he's been fantastic yardage-wise. Emmanuel Sanders is slowly stealing DT's thunder, with FIVE touchdowns over those same three games. Sanchez really did look competent on Monday night against the hapless Panthers, but unfortunately the drop-off happened (as predicted) for Jeremy Maclin. Perhaps I'm a pessimist, but I don't see how Maclin could keep his first-half-of-the-season pace without Foles force-feeding him the ball. Though SI is certainly in the driver's seat for a playoff bye, the loss this week (and wins by TDfW and GMMBP) open the door a smidgen. This is compounded by the issues several key players are facing. This is a team that needs to get back to the football they were playing four weeks ago. #6 302 Cadets (6-4) -2 The Cadets earned a nice 47 point win over 38V last week, but this week proved to be a bit tougher. With almost an identical end-score, the margin of winning this week was a nail-biting 4.8, and the best part is that it came down to Monday Night Football. After solid performances from Drew Brees and Jamaal Charles (and the Cowboys D/ST), 302 would normally be riding high. Antonio Brown, the superman, interestingly became the weakest link in this week's lineup. His 3.7 points (only beating Larry Donnell's 2.6, but that's not as surprising) almost cost Derek the victory. It came down to the unheralded Jonathan Stewart, of all people, and Cody Parkey. Derek needed 17 and he got 21. Jamaal Charles has now put up four straight solid games, and Brees is inching back towards where he belongs in the rankings, though he's still the #8 QB after his slow start. The question is, what is 302 going to use in the FLEX spot from here on out? We have the obvious RB starts of Charles and Ahmad Bradshaw, and the obvious WR starts of Brown and Odell Beckham Jr, but there's no clear FLEX play. Do we roll the dice with Stewart again? Can 302 live with Dwayne Bowe's maddening inconsistency? What about Andre Holmes or Andrew Hawkins? In comparison to other potential playoff squads, that FLEX spot is seriously behind. 302's FLEX spot is going to be compared with TY Hilton, Eddie Lacy, Lamar Miller, Desean Jackson, and Denard Robinson. That's a matchup 302 will lose virtually every week. Furthermore, unlike teams with JT, Graham, and Gronk, the TE position is another spot that may be consistently losing 302 points. As we've seen, when Brees, Brown, and Charles are on their game, who cares? But we've also just seen that Brown is a mortal man like the rest of us, and we already knew that about Brees and Charles. The drop in ranking has more to do with GMMBP and PMotr surging ahead, rather than 302 slipping back. #7 Clam Juice Junkies (3-7) +1 Clam Juice Junkies was born from last week's 50+ point defeat (thank you Dan), and I'm hoping this name (and the accompanying picture) sticks around. The good news for CJJ is that there was certainly no 50+ point defeat this week. The bad news was, in terms of records, all defeats look the same. CJJ fell to TDfW this week despite having nice showings from Tony Romo (22), Frank Gore (14), and Brandon Marshall (17). Is there a tougher QB than Tony Romo? This guy has two broken bones in his spine and yet travelled halfway round the world to London only to throw three TDs and no INTs. He gets way too much flak. I already wrote about Martavis Bryant in the "Worst Move of the Week" section, so I'll spare you any redundancy here. I think it's a reasonable bet to assume that Evan will find a way to feature Bryant in most upcoming weeks, so I'm going to look at his WR corps with that in mind. Julio Jones may have put up 119 yards on Tampa Bay this week, but you have to look back to Week Three to see the last time Julio even scored a TD. This is JULIO FREAKING JONES. The guy is too good to be satisfied with the occasional 100+ yard no-TD game. Even with the 11.9 this week, Julio is now averaging less than 8 points per game over his last six games. This offensive line is killing him. BMarsh looked like his usual physical self against the Packers, nicely throwing a CB to the ground while running for a TD. This came at the cost of his ankle though, as he had to leave the game due to injury. I'm thinking this WR corps could use an infusion of Martavis Bryant, and if this ridiculous TD streak keeps going, Bryant could easily end up as the highest -scoring CJJ receiver over the second half of the season. #8 I'm Just Gonna Shake It Off (3-7): +1 For a bit there, I thought that T-Swift was going to pull the upset of the week. Peyton, T-Swift's obvious lynchpin, earned 30 points against the Raiders, and when that happens, T-Swift usually will get a good shot at a win. Unfortunately, Peyton and Anquan Boldin were the only members of T-Swift with healthy totals. Randall Cobb did earn 11.2, but for the only WR in the NFL with 10+ TDs, 11.2 points isn't a great day. The good news is that Boldin has surprisingly broken 15 points in three of his last four games! Boldin along with Cobb forms a pretty decent WR combo, and Percy Harvin/Cecil Shorts III/Terrence Williams are left fighting for the WR3 role. Okay, maybe that's not great depth, but at least the top two are getting the job done. T-Swift's team has a well-documented issue at the RB position. With Rashad Jennings reportedly ready to play in Week 11, T-Swift has just lost Andre Williams for good. Not an earth-shattering loss, but still. Oh and how the losses have accumulated... We've got Williams, newly-injured Ronnie Hillman (out at least 2 weeks), Khiry Robinson, Doug Martin, CJ Spiller, and Matt Asiata. Amazingly, none of them will be a starter this week, and the only other back on the roster is Montee Ball, who is just returning from a long injury and may have to be eased into the lineup. We still have things to play for. Time to figure out that RB spot, before it's too late for all the prizes. #9 Ray Rice is an asshole (2-8) -2 RRiaa suffered another defeat, but at least this time it wasn't an agonizingly close one. Is that a good thing? I don't know, but I feel like it probably makes Alex sleep easier at night. At least this week there wasn't any "I should have played/benched " second-guessing, because nothing would have helped this week. RRiaa ran into PMotr and the Marshawn Lynch/Julius Thomas buzzsaw, and unfortunately that resulted in a 52 point loss. Russell Wilson continues to do nothing of note through the air (one TD in the last three weeks), but his day was saved by 107 yards rushing and a rushing TD. That certainly helps! Even though that rushing production alone is worth 16.7 points, Wilson finished the game with just 17.6 points total. Woof. For once the Bengals WRs didn't come to play, with both Sanu and Green scoring exactly 2.3 points in that dreadful Thursday night game. That kind of set the tone for the whole week right there. Until Russell Wilson's late 4th quarter rushing TD, Caleb Sturgis (Miami kicker) was the high scorer on the team with 12 points. The playoff hopes of RRiaa have dwindled into nothingness, but hopefully this team keeps playing tough for pride (and to avoid that last place standing). I still believe, Alex! #10 38% Chance of Victory (3-7) --- Mike, I apologize. The cupboards are real bare, dude. Real bare. I can sleep easier at night now because my pathetic total of 53.4 points in Week Two has been bested! In the two weeks since Mike took over for Steve, 38V has now scored a total of 112.8 points. For reference, six of the seven other teams (sorry 302) have scored that many points in either of the last two weeks. Two teams have scored that many points in both weeks (the mullynation and PMotr). This week paired 38V with the mullynation, a matchup that resulted in a breathtaking 80.9 point loss. I didn't think it would be possible, but there was in fact a position group that scored fewer points than PMotr's wide receivers this week (who scored 4.4 points combined). That position group? 38V's RBs. Antone Smith earned 0.3 points, and he was the highest scoring RB on the entire roster. Good thing he was starting! The next two highest scoring RBs were Arian Foster and Alfred Blue, both on bye and on the bench. Can't blame Mike for that call. Yes. That means that the other starting RB, Knile Davis, scored negative points. Negative 1.4 in fact. So the total for the two starting RBs was a staggering -1.1 points. Let's just forget about this week, okay? Taking ownership of 38V is akin to a Sisyphus-like task at this point, and we've got to give Mike a little grace here. These weeks will be rough. But just think of how battle-hardened you'll be for next year! And hey, Torrey Smith had a good game! Predictions (Winners underlined): Gin Makes Me Bum Pucker (6-4, +967/-933) @ Turn Down for Watt (6-4, +1069/-1047) the mullynation (8-2, +1227/-1044) @ I'm Just Gonna Shake It Off (3-7, +898/-1033) Clam Juice Junkies (3-7, +984/-1114) @ Ray Rice is an asshole (2-8, +919/-1107) 38% Chance of Victory (3-7, +927/-1068) @ Poppin Mollies on the reg (6-4, +1042/-898) Staff Infection (7-3, +1107/-1003) @ 302 Cadets (6-4, +1061/-954) Last Week’s Picks: (3-2) Overall record: (30-20)
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By: Hayden HansonMr. Hayden Hanson (Editor in Chief) is an Accountant-extraordinaire, as well as an aspiring writer. He has written several moderately-successful self-help books, the most famous of which is "What Do You Mean You Can Smell My BO?" Gustav Travers of the New York Times praised the book as "A vulnerable, courageous look into the mind of a man who has literally no sense that other people exist. And also no sense of smell. Nope, he definitely doesn't have that either. Just musk, like a hog that's gotten into the cabbage." Archives
September 2019
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