Category: Fantasy Football (Page 37 of 324)
As I’m sitting here attempting to start my fallout column, there’s a little two-and-a-half year old firefighter pestering me to go trick-or-treating, so don’t be surprised if this week’s version is abbreviated. I’m only going to focus on the truly surprising fantasy lines of the day.
EARLY GAMES
In my Waiver Wire Watch, I’ve been pushing Matthew Stafford (212 yards, 4 TDs) for the last couple of weeks and he delivered in a great matchup this week thanks to Calvin Johnson‘s (9-103-3) outstanding performance. The split in the backfield between Jahvid Best (17 touches, 79 yards) and Kevin Smith (14 touches, 67 yards) is a little worrisome, however. Smith has looked good in recent weeks in limited duty and we’ll have to wait and see if the Lions were limiting Best for any particular reason. Ryan Torain (12 touches, 29 yards, TD) left the game with a hamstring injury, and Keiland Williams (9 touches, 53 yards, TD) took his place. Williams may be a hot waiver wire pickup this week.
David Garrard (260 yards, 4 TD, rush TD) was a common pickup for a lot of Tony Romo owners who were scrambling for QB help this week, and boy, did he deliver. Mike Sims-Walker (8-153-1) exploded with a big game as well. Garrard has his bye next week and then has two good matchups in Weeks 10 (HOU) and 11 (CLE), so he’s a good play, at least in the short-term. And don’t read too much into Jon Kitna‘s so-so week (379 yards, TD, 4 INT). With the way that the Dallas DT is playing (poorly), the Cowboys are going to be in a lot of shootouts this season and that should mean some nice fantasy lines from Kitna. Felix Jones‘s struggles (11 touches, 36 yards) are very troublesome — I’d probably bench him until he can get it going.
Anthony Stalter (under TheScoresReport) and I (under fantasytips) will be tweeting throughout Week 8. Feel free to ask us questions, call us names, whatever…
Think that Howie, Terry and Jimmy spend an inordinate amount of time laughing at and with each other? They do, if you think 11% is too much.
…an analysis of the CBS and Fox pregame shows before Week 5 shows that the hosts do spend a lengthy amount of time laughing—sometimes at nothing, sometimes at their own jokes and, occasionally, at things that are funny.
The amount of time they laugh, though, is what sets them apart. The five hosts on Fox’s show—Curt Menefee, Terry Bradshaw, Howie Long, Michael Strahan and Jimmy Johnson—had a combined laughing time of two minutes, 22 seconds. That’s about 11.6% of the 20 minutes, 27 seconds they were shown on set together. Mr. Bradshaw was easily the laughing leader, going for about 92.4 seconds—including 2.5 seconds at the start of the show before anyone said anything.
I don’t watch the Fox pregame show that much anymore. I’m usually watching the ESPN fantasy football pregame, listening for any late-breaking fantasy news while trying to avoid making any last-minute decisions based on Matthew Berry’s advice. Part of what turns me off about the Fox pregame show is its size (there are too many commentators) and how they’re always fake-laughing at each other. Now we have numbers to prove it.
I feel your pain, Romo owners. I had him in two of my six leagues, and was ill-prepared for an injury to my star QB. In one league, I managed to pick up Josh Freeman and Jon Kitna, and in the other, I was only able to get Jason Campbell and David Garrard.
It seems like a good time to recalculate our Quarterback By Committee (QBBC) to see what QB pairs have a combined schedule that will get us through the rest of the season. It’s fine to trade away depth at RB or WR in order to land a solid QB, but in many cases it’s unnecessary. A problem at QB is one of the easiest to mask since there is so much depth at the position. In most leagues, you can get capable QB play by picking up a couple of guys on the waiver wire and using them in tandem.
To that end, I looked at the 18 (at least somewhat decent) QBs most likely to be available on your waiver wire. In order of decreasing availability (in ESPN leagues), the list includes:
Donovan McNabb (94.2)
Jay Cutler (86.4)
Brett Favre (86.2)
Carson Palmer (83.4)
Mark Sanchez (68.6)
Vince Young (62.3)
Chad Henne (60.9)
Matt Cassel (42.1)
Sam Bradford (28.6)
Matthew Stafford (27.1)
David Garrard (26.5)
Ryan Fitzpatrick (25.8)
Josh Freeman (23.1)
Matt Hasselbeck (20.8)
Alex Smith/Troy Smith (12.7)
Jon Kitna (10.9)
Bruce Gradkowski/Jason Campbell (5.1)
Matt Moore (1.8)
I tweaked Footballguys’ rest-of-year (through Week 16) projections to reflect my own ranking for each player. I then applied FBG’s strength of schedule to calculate a projected points for all the remaining games, and then used a giant Excel spreadsheet to determine the best QB pairs for the remainder of the season.
The two best QBBCs are Stafford/Cutler and Stafford/McNabb, but since Cutler and McNabb aren’t readily available in most leagues, we have to dig a little deeper. The third-highest QBBC is Stafford/Fitzpatrick, which has an average percent-owned of 26.5%, so the duo might be available in your league. Stafford/Freeman and Fitzpatrick/Freeman come in at #5 and #6, respectively.
Below is a table of all 153 possible combinations. Duos that are listed in green have an average percent-owned of less than 20% (meaning there’s a decent chance that they’re available), while duos listed in red have an average percent-owned between 20% and 40%. I included expected points (in a high performance scoring system) for Weeks 8-16 and for Weeks 9-16 in case you find this article after the Week 8 games.
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