I have Jordan Mason in three leagues, two of which are NFFC, including the Primetime. It’s especially frustrating watching the 40-minute edited version because you miss all the sideline updates and real-time updates you’d get on Twitter. You just have to watch the game and hope he comes back. It turns out Mason has a shoulder injury, and we’ll know more later today. It bodes badly he tried to return to the game (to my great relief) but then left in pain after one play.
My other rooting interest was against Jaxon Smith-Njigba who I moved to my bench. I am almost psychotic about not wanting to make lineup errors (knock on wood, I’ve made relatively few so far this year), so I really wanted him not to have a big day. He’s tough to predict because one week he’ll have 16 targets, the next three. My feeling was Geno Smith wouldn’t have much time to throw, so if JSN got targets, they’d mostly be short, and I have Tank Dell (without Nico Collins) in for now instead (I could also use JK Dobbins.)
While lineup errors are inevitable in the aggregrate, any particular one is avoidable. The Mason injury is horrible, but he got me nine points at least, and there was nothing I could have done about that. I also had the 49ers -3.5 in my home picking pool, and it’s always nice to start the week with the Thursday night win.
Brock Purdy is a very good quarterback. He’s as poised in the pocket as anyone in the league other than maybe Patrick Mahomes, and he’s an underrated scrambler. I saw a Twitter post where he says he’s faster in the 10-yard split that Deebo Samuel or Christian McCaffrey, and they showed from the Combine it’s actually true.
It’s really too bad Mason got hurt because his backup Isaac Guerendo got 99 yards, which would have been his, and Kyle Juszczyk got a last-minute TD. Still it could have been worse. Guerendo is an obvious pickup, pending the news on Mason.
Deebo Samuel got his on one big play, and George Kittle scored twice. Brandon Aiyuk has been a huge fantasy bust this year.
I also had Kenneth Walker going in the Staff Dynasty League where I’m in first place, but I have both my QBs (Sam Darnold and Mahomes) on bye (and Mason), and no one will trade me a QB, so it was huge that Walker scored that TD and started catching passes in garbage time.
I also enjoyed seeing DK Metcalf (zero shares) get a long TD called back due to a false start and Tyler Lockett (who few people start) get the TD catch instead. JSN was perfect — enough to maintain my confidence in him, but not so much that I regretted benching him. He saw some end zone targets too.
Geno Smith had his worst game — he missed a couple open receivers and threw two bad picks. He only took one sack though after getting destroyed by the Giants and Lions the previous two weeks.