– Owen Daniels (7-123-1) continues to tear it up. He’s an every-week start.
– Vernon Davis (7-93-3) really started to get it going after Alex Smith entered the game.
– Jermichael Finley (1-16) injured his knee on his only catch, early in the first quarter. If he misses time, Donald Lee (3-39) becomes backup-caliber again.
– Jeremy Shockey (4-105) looks like his old self. His 66-yard catch and run was a thing of beauty.
Be sure to check back in a few minutes for the WR, RB and QB positions.
Every week, I’m picking one question from our Fantasy Football Q&A and posting it on Sunday morning. This week’s question comes from Indy, who is trying to decide amongst a couple of trades:
“I’ve been offered two trades: Steve Jackson for Rashard Mendenhall + Miles Austin or Brandon Jacobs for Kevin Smith + Miles Austin. my starting WRs are Fitzgerald, Colston, & Jennings (with Austin and Garcon on the bench.) my RBs are P. Thomas, Mendenhall, Smith, and Maroney. which one looks better to you? or do i just stand pat?”
My answer: I’d do the first deal for Jackson. Mendenhall is nice, but Jackson is having a top 10 or top 12 season and is an upgrade. I would NOT trade for Jacobs right now. I wouldn’t trade Smith for Jacobs straight up much less give up Austin in the deal as well.
It’s a little risky to trade Mendenhall away, because he could go on to have a great season, but Steven Jackson is a proven, every-week fantasy RB. He hasn’t scored a TD yet, but that won’t last with some nice matchups coming up. He’s on pace for 1789 total yards and is still having a top 10 or 12 season in PPR leagues. The downside is that the Rams are going to struggle to score on a weekly basis, but they have moved the ball a little better the last couple of weeks, so they should be able to give Jackson a few scoring opportunities in the near future. Since Indy is set at WR with Fitz, Colston and Jennings, Austin is expendable, so he might as well use him to upgrade at RB.
Maybe, according to SEC commissioner Mike Silve. Per ESPN…
A source also told ESPN.com that Kentucky has been investigating Wall’s eligibility for months because his former AAU coach was a certified agent.
Brian Clifton, Wall’s AAU coach, was a certified agent with FIBA, basketball’s international governing body, for nearly a year. Under NCAA rule that equates to Wall accepting illegal benefits from an agent. Consequently Wall could have to repay any and all expenses Clifton footed during that period before he can play with Kentucky.
NCAA rule also stipulates that an athlete can be withheld from at least 10 percent of a team’s games as part of the punishment.
Wall was one of the top recruits — if not the top recruit — of the ’09 class and if he’s ineligible for any part of the season it’s going to be a blow to the Wildcats. If not for the NBA’s age-limit rule, Wall probably would have headed straight for the pros, so this is another situation that could have been avoided if qualified high schoolers could bypass the collegiate ranks and play in the NBA immediately after graduating.
In the Oct. 19 issue of ESPN the Mag (a.k.a. “The Body Issue”), Bruce Feldman argues that speed is far more important in college football, where the hash marks are wider, the preparation isn’t as good and the talent disparity is greater, than it is in the NFL, where everyone is fast.
Case in point, the Oakland Raiders:
Or you can just look at the Oakland Raiders. Much like the Gators’, their performance separates them from the pack in recent years — just not in a good way. No one in the NFL covets speed the way the Raiders do.
Al Davis, the man who pursued such speedsters as the aptly named James Jett, is downright enamored of fast guys, perhaps even more so than Meyer is. (Of the nine fastest players tested by the NFL over the past 10 years, four — Fabian Washington, Stanford Routt, Ashley Lelie and Carlos Francis — have played for the Raiders.) According to an NFL scout, the Raiders had 15 players on their roster last season who’d run a verified 40 of 4.5 or faster — four more than the next “fastest” team. And what did it get them? A sixth-straight season with double-digit losses.
It’s a good read.
According to Yahoo! Sports, the total value of the contract is $65 million to $70 million, with some hard-to-reach bonuses.
This summer, I pegged his value at $13-$14 million per season, and he signed for an average of $13 M plus potential bonuses.
So is he worth it?
Bill Simmons has this to say about the deal:
It continues to floor me that anyone would overpay someone who isn’t a franchise player during these rocky economic times. Like Portland this week — the Trail Blazers inked LaMarcus Aldridge to a five-year, $65 million extension, a deal that might have made sense in the 2006 market, but not right now. I like LaMarcus Aldridge. He’s solid. In this climate, he should not make more than $8 million or $9 million a year. The cap might drop $6 million next season for all we know. Also, inking anyone to an extension that early means you can’t trade him for two solid years. You’re basically marrying the guy. Which means Portland married a power forward who doesn’t play inside and grabs seven to eight rebounds a game. With nobody else bidding for him, no real urgency to do a deal for another year and no idea whether declining revenue will keep wrecking the cap. This makes sense … how? And you thought the NBA was getting smarter.
Simmons often does this — he second guesses a signing and then lists all the perceived faults of the player. Let’s not forget that Aldridge averages 18.1 points on 48% shooting, which creates lots of driving lanes for Brandon Roy. The Blazers don’t want a power forward that hangs out in the lane. They already have a couple of centers that do this. Portland wants to surround Roy with shooters so that he can get to the rim with ease.
The Blazers probably overspent a little, but they have the peace of mind that they have their second best player locked up for the next five years. There was no way to convince him that he is only worth “$8 million or $9 million” without letting him hit free agency. (He’s worth more than that, for the record.) By the time he’s convinced, there’s so much ill will between the two sides that a deal never gets done.
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