Anthony Stalter (under TheScoresReport) and I (under fantasytips) will be tweeting throughout Week 3. Feel free to ask us questions, call us names, whatever…

Every week, I highlight a few players that you should target in waivers. I use the ESPN league data when filtering players, so the only guys eligible for discussion here are those that are available on the waiver wire in at least 50% of ESPN’s leagues. I’ll list each player’s percentage-owned after their name so you have an idea of how available they are in leagues around the country. I’ll always try to mention a few players that are available in 90% of leagues for those of you in 12-team leagues or leagues with big rosters. I’ll rank them in the order I’d pick them up in a league with a high-performance, PPR scoring system.

Please note that these rankings are for total value through the end of the year. Players with particularly good matchups this week are in bold.

Matt Hasselbeck (24.6)
Fantasy owners were down on Hass this year because he has had trouble staying healthy, not because he isn’t a good fantasy QB when he is healthy. Right now, he’s healthy, and with the Rams on tap in Week 4, he’s a good start this week.

Mark Sanchez (34.9)
The Jets seem to be limiting him to short drops so that he gets the ball out quick. That keeps the pressure off of him and helps him avoid mistakes. 476 yards and six pass TD later, and Sanchez is looking like a viable QB2, and he has the Bills this week.

Josh Freeman (16.6)
Yes, he struggled in Week 3, but that was against the Steelers, who made Matt Ryan and Vince Young look foolish in Week 1 and Week 2. I still like him as part of a committee — he has great matchups in weeks 10-11 and 15-16. After his bye, things are pretty neutral, so he’d be a solid second guy in two-QB leagues.

Bruce Gradkowski (2.1)
He wasn’t bad against the Cardinals, but he did throw 2-3 passes that should have/could have been picked off. Still, with Louis Murphy, Zach Miller and Darren McFadden, he has enough weapons to look pretty good. With the Texans on deck, he’s a sneaky good start in Week 4.

Sam Bradford (20.2)
The rookie is a shoe-in for 20+ picks if he stays healthy, but he’s also on pace for almost 3,500 yards and 21 TD. With Seattle and Detroit on tap, he isn’t a bad short-term fix.

Matt Cassel (9.5)
Cassel’s 250 yards and 3 TD came out of nowhere against an underachieving San Francisco defense. A pretty nice upcoming schedule — HOU, JAX, BUF in weeks 6-8 — makes him an interesting start in two-QB leagues.

Alex Smith (14.0)
Well, he has thrown for at least 232 yards and a TD the last two weeks. But he’s also thrown five picks in three games. The 49ers just fired their offensive coordinator, so let’s see how Smith fares against the Falcons and Eagles before giving up on him.

Ryan Fitzpatrick (0.3)
Fitzy had a nice game against a very questionable New England secondary. With Jacksonville on tap this week, he should be a good start if you’re in a pinch.

Derek Anderson (7.2)
How long will the Cards put up with Anderson’s play with Max Hall waiting in the wings?

David Garrard (29.3)
He used to be the most underrated QB in fantasy football. But he’s been absolutely brutal lately and has a pretty tough matchup (IND) this week.

Shaun Hill (2.0)

Seneca Wallace (0.8)

Jimmy Clausen (1.7)
Boy, that first start didn’t go very well.

Read the rest of this entry »

Let’s start with the best game of the day, NO/ATL, where Michael Turner (30 carries, 114 yards, TD) and Jason Snelling (14 carries, 62 yards) wore down the interior of the Saints’ rush defense to triumph in overtime. A few things to note here: 1) Anyone writing off Tony Gonzalez (8-110-1) is making a mistake, 2) Jeremy Shockey (8-78-1) looks like he’ll get some of the short work originally designed for Reggie Bush, and 3) Lance Moore (6-149-2) can still play, and may have usurped Devery Henderson (2-23) and Robert Meachem (1-5) to be the Saints’ WR2. More likely, Drew Brees will continue to take what the defense gives him, which means any of these WRs could go off on any given day.

Over in Baltimore, the Browns were down Jerome Harrison today with a thigh injury, so Peyton Hillis was the feature back and he didn’t disappoint (to the tune of 29 touches for 190 yards and a TD). Baltimore’s rush defense isn’t as good as its reputation, so I tweeted earlier in the day that Hillis was a decent RB3/flex start, and he turned in an outstanding game. Ben Watson (5-47-1) has posted 12-125-1 on the season and is turning into a decent TE2 option. On the other side of the ball, Anquan Boldin (8-142-3, 11 targets) and Joe Flacco (262 yards, 3 TD) are totally in sync. Flacco isn’t as bad as he looked last week against the Bengals and he isn’t as good as he looked this week against the Browns.

Read the rest of this entry »

Anthony Stalter (under TheScoresReport) and I (under fantasytips) will be tweeting throughout Week 3. Feel free to ask us questions, call us names, whatever…

In a somewhat shocking development, Knowshon Moreno out for this Sunday’s game against the Colts, per Max Broncos on Twitter:

Knowshon Moreno “sustained a little something he will not be able to play through this week,” McDaniels said.

McDaniels is a Bill Belichick disciple, so it’s no surprise that he’s playing things close to the vest. There’s no upside in giving anyone any extraneous information, so why not keep it a secret? Sure, he’s screwing over fantasy owners, but he doesn’t give two schnitz about us.

Anyway, this is seemingly a big boost for someone in the Denver backfield, but I’m not sure who. In his comments, Josh McDaniels seemed to go out of his way NOT to mention Correll Buckhalter, but instead mentioned Laurence Maroney and Andre Brown as guys who will pick up the slack. If you’re desperate at RB, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to pick up Maroney and/or Brown.

Below are my rankings for Week 3. I’m participating in a study as part of Fantasy Pros, where they keep track of the accuracy of many of the top fantasy ‘experts’ around the country. For Week 2, I finished in the Top 8 (out of 39 experts) in QBs, RBs, WRs and TEs, and I hope to repeat that success this week. If you utilize my advice on the Q&A, please take a moment to sign up at Fantasy Pros (it’s free) and rate me as an expert.

These rankings are for a standard (non-PPR) scoring system:

Quarterbacks

1. Peyton Manning (IND @ DEN)
2. Tony Romo (DAL @ HOU)
3. Aaron Rodgers (GB @ CHI)
4. Michael Vick (PHI @ JAC)
5. Matt Schaub (HOU vs. DAL)
6. Tom Brady (NE vs. BUF)
7. Drew Brees (NO vs. ATL)
8. Donovan McNabb (WAS @ STL)
9. Philip Rivers (SD @ SEA)
10. Jay Cutler (CHI vs. GB)
11. Brett Favre (MIN vs. DET)
12. Carson Palmer (CIN @ CAR)
13. David Garrard (JAC vs. PHI)
14. Joe Flacco (BAL vs. CLE)
15. Eli Manning (NYG vs. TEN)
16. Alex Smith (SF @ KC)
17. Matt Ryan (ATL @ NO)
18. Bruce Gradkowski (OAK @ ARI)
19. Kyle Orton (DEN vs. IND)
20. Vince Young (TEN @ NYG)
21. Matt Hasselbeck (SEA vs. SD)
22. Ryan Fitzpatrick (BUF @ NE)
23. Sam Bradford (STL vs. WAS)
24. Shaun Hill (DET @ MIN)
25. Chad Henne (MIA vs. NYJ)

Read the rest of this entry »

In case you missed it, the Raiders have benched Jason Campbell in favor of Bruce Gradkowski, who entered the Rams game at halftime and led Oakland to a much needed win. He threw for 162 yards with one TD and one interception in two quarters of play.

In his last four starts of the 2009 season, he averaged 211 yards, 1.5 TDs and 0.3 INT against Cincinnati, at Dallas, at Pittsburgh and at home against the Redskins. Those four teams ranked 6th, 20th, 16th and 8th against the pass, respectively, so it wasn’t an easy schedule to throw against. He also added an average of 19 rushing yards, so he has the ability to take off with the ball when necessary.

Gradkowski has the Cardinals this week, and if you’re in a pinch, or if you need a second QB for your two-QB league, you could do worse. His schedule — HOU, SD, @ SF, @ DEN, SEA and KC — is pretty favorable over the next seven weeks. Given the way Campbell was playing, I suspect the insertion of Gradkowski is an upgrade for the entire passing game, but most importantly for Louis Murphy and Zach Miller, who were floundering with Campbell under center. Murphy caught five of his six passes after halftime last week, while Miller was targeted three times by Gradkowski over the same span, catching one pass for 24-yards.

It’s important to temper expectations anytime the Raiders are involved because the franchise is so dysfunctional. When was the last time Oakland had a consistent fantasy stud? Just when you start to count on them, they find a way to screw up whatever good mojo they had going. Is that still the case?

I guess we’ll find out over the next month or so, but for now I’m reasonably optimistic that Gradkowski will be a capable QB2 in the short term.

In the world of fantasy football, there was a bit of an uproar over how the Packers plan to use Brandon Jackson going forward. Here’s Rotoworld’s blurb about the situation:

Packers coach Mike McCarthy and offensive coordinator Joe Philbin have indicated that they don’t see Brandon Jackson as a carry-the-load back going forward.
McCarthy still plans to have Jackson on the field for a starter’s snap-count, but his carries will be limited. Packers coaches don’t trust Jackson’s body to hold up to the toll of 18-20 touches per game, and he’s still too valuable as a situational passing-down back. Barring a trade, Jackson will continue to split touches with John Kuhn and Dimitri Nance. Those who went “all-in” on their waiver wire budget will be disappointed to learn that Jackson is not going to be a reliable RB2.

Here’s what Mike McCarthy actually said, via 540 ESPN Milwaukee:

“Frankly, if you take (a look at) the snaps the way we’ve played here in the past, it has been by committee,” McCarthy explained. “Now, the run game was not because Ryan Grant had the bulk of it, (but) really our plan of how we utilize the running backs as far as how many plays they play in the game is very similar to our approach to the past.

“(Before his injury), Ryan Grant didn’t play on third down all the time. Brandon Jackson (did). I never had an intent – and will not going further – to see Brandon Jackson carry the ball 30 times in a game. It’s a long season. We’re not trying to play one running back 55, 60 plays in the game and have the other two or three sit on the sideline. We’ve never played that way.”

As a fantasy owner who dropped all of his bidding bucks on Jackson after Week 1, I don’t really care if he’s the primary ballcarrier, though it should be noted that he did have the most carries against the Bills in Week 2. I just want him to get the most snaps (at least 60%). He’s going to be on the field on third downs, so when the Packers go into catch-up mode or their two-minute offense, he’s going to see a lot of dump-offs in the passing game. This coupled with 10-15 carries in the running game will make him a solid RB2 in 12-team leagues. That’s the plan, anyway.

There’s nothing that McCarthy said that worries me about Jackson’s forthcoming production. He said he’s not going to carry the ball 30 times a game. We knew this. He’s going to get most of the work, but the other RBs are going to be involved, just like the Grant/Jackson combo that the Packers used over the past couple of seasons.

Lee Evans hit the waiver wire in a couple of my leagues, and it got me wondering — would he be worth a pickup now that Ryan Fitzpatrick is the starter in Buffalo?

Looking back to 2009, Evans averaged 3.0 catches for 36 yards and 0.43 TD with Trent Edwards at QB and 2.6 catches for 40 yards and 0.44 TD with Fitzpatrick.

In other words, there wasn’t much of a difference who was playing QB for the Bills — Evans’ numbers were about the same.

That said, I wouldn’t be opposed to picking him up if I had an open roster slot just to see what happens over the next couple of weeks. Buffalo has a fairly easy schedule for the rest of the season and Evans is just 29 years old, so it’s not like he’s over the hill. However, he hasn’t been fantasy starter-caliber since the 2008 season (63-1017-3), so one wonders what kind of upside he really has at this point. It’s important to note that last season (by far the worst of his last four), he was playing second fiddle to Terrell Owens.

If he just went back to his 2007 and 2008 averages — 3.7 catches for 51 yards, along with his career 0.4 TD per game average — he’d post 11.2 fantasy points per game. Those are WR26-type numbers. That makes him a decent WR3 option, which means he should be owned in most leagues.

The strategy behind DTBWW is that each week you pick up a defense that is playing against a bad offense (preferably at home). And each week you get pretty good numbers out of your DT position.

Last season, my top pick averaged 9.8 fantasy points per game. My second pick averaged 9.1 and my third pick averaged 7.3. On the whole, DTBWW averaged 9.3 fantasy points per game, which equate to DT5 numbers — all for the price of a few waiver wire pickups. In 2008, my top two picks averaged DT6-type numbers. (Note: To calculate fantasy points, I use this scoring system.)

Unlike Defensive Team By Committee (DTBC), which is for those owners who prefer low maintenance teams, DTBWW strategy allows fantasy owners to virtually ignore DTs on draft day and focus on picking up an extra RB/WR flier instead.

To be eligible, defenses have to be available on the waiver wire in at least 50% of ESPN fantasy leagues.

Let’s see how my Week 2 picks fared:

Read the rest of this entry »