Monday Night Observations

That was a tough watch, especially because I was rooting against the Chargers defense. While I was initially worried about Mike Williams, who for some reason is on a few of the contending NFFC teams that were behind me, it became clear the Chargers defense (owned only by Nelson Sousa who was a few points ahead of me) was the real problem.

Actually the real problem was Jeff Saturday whose game plan was for God knows what reason to let Nick Foles (fresh off the street) throw the ball 29 times to 13 runs when his defense was playing well. I had expected the Chargers would get a few defensive points but not 21. Maybe one reason Matt Ryan, washed up though he may be, didn’t get the ball down the field was because professional quarterbacks don’t like taking seven sacks and throwing three picks. It was as if Saturday found a patsy with the stones (and the stick) to court catastrophe on his team’s behalf. It was torture watching him drop back in garbage time, taking pointless sack after sack. I’m just lucky he didn’t fumble, and the Chargers didn’t take one of the picks back to the house.

At least Williams had a modest game, dropping me down only to fourth place, but Sousa’s 21-point showing puts me a little more than 25 down with one week to go:

The good news is the only player we have in common is George Kittle, so it’s easy to see a path to my players outscoring his by 25, and in fact if I wanted to be really bold I could even start Pat Freiermuth at TE. I probably won’t do that (even though Freiermuth had a good game this week) because second prize is still $50K, and you’d hate to blow that trying to go all-in for first. Plus Kittle draws the Raiders in a good weather venue.

Both coaches were pretty bad in fact. What was Brandon Staley doing, going for it on fourth down up 10-3 with four minutes left in the fourth quarter? You have a chance to go up two scores, which against the Foles offense was game-clinching, and you call a pass play? They got the conversion, but wound up having to settle for a field goal anyway. Just kick the field goal and play defense. Staley was also calling too many pass plays during the fourth quarter when the priority was to minimize the chance for turnovers and run clock. This isn’t rocket science — when you’re facing a dangerous team with a lead, you keep the foot on the gas. When you’re facing an impotent team, you reduce variance. I’d be shocked if the Chargers make any noise in the playoffs this year — I’d take the Jaguars over them SU without a second thought.

• Austin Ekeler (18-67-2, 4-4-12-0) is like a pestilence. Even when he’s ineffective, he gets 23.9 fantasy points. He’s also an usually tough runner near the goal line despite having such a low BMI.

• Keenan Allen (14-11-104-0) had his usual game of hauling in all the short and intermediate stuff. Luckily, he couldn’t keep his foot in bounds on that sideline play or he would have had a TD too.

• Zach Moss (12-65-0, 1-1-5-0) looked good and ran hard. He should have had a monster day in a compeitive game had his moronic coach not made up his mind to feature the 12-inch Grinch.