Week 13 Observations

It was a so-so week for me. My best NFFC team is still in first place and by a decent margin, with the Denver kicker still to play. My Steak league team lost but probably got enough points to stay in the eater category for now. My dynasty team stayed in the thick of it, so that’s good.

My two fringe contending NFFC teams (Primetime, BCL3) didn’t do enough, and they’re on the ropes. The Primetime has the CJ Stroud/Tank Dell problem, while BCL3 just doesn’t have enough healthy bodies. One more week probably isn’t enough to make the playoffs, barring an absolutely monstrous Week 14 showing.

I went 1-3 ATS to kick off Q5 pending tonight’s game. The one really dumb pick was the Titans — it was a reach-hunch™ influenced by some numbers I looked up. Never buy into numerical narrative. What, they should have been getting only four points instead of six? That’s basically worthless compared to reading whether it’s they or the Killer Redskins who will show up for the game. If you can’t read that — which is most of the time — stay away.

The challenge for contests like Circa is you have to pick five games every week. You can’t just pass on the whole slate, wait for the right situation where you feel confident about things breaking a certain way and go all in. It’s not real life where you can be wrong about most things, but right about the big ones and still clean up. In a structured contest you have to right about most things, whether you have a feel for them or not. Maybe it’s better to take the quant, rather than the “zone” approach after all.

• I didn’t watch Raiders-Chiefs. I was sick all weekend, and I couldn’t bring myself to focus for 3.5 hours on a bad standalone matchup. I heard the Raiders were about to win too, until they botched a snap. At least I had Brock Bowers going for my best team. I started Jonnu Smith next to him in the flex too. Part of why it’s my best team.

• I started Ladd McConkey over Jaylen Waddle in that league (for once FantasyPros came through for me, they had McConkey not just higher but WAY higher), and McConkey had 100 yards in the first half before getting knocked out of the game at some point in the second. He looks like a superstar if he can ever stay healthy.

• With JK Dobbins on IR, the Chargers gave Gus Edwards six carries, and Kimani Vidal four. Hard to read too much into that except that Vidal is worth getting in case he’s the No. 1.

• Kirk Cousins looks washed in the way Aaron Rodgers does — there’s nothing really physically off, and they can still make the throws, but the focus, the patience, the feel seems gone, like they’ve lost the spirit. The Falcons are tied for first, so they probably won’t whip out Penix just yet though.

• As a Burrow-Chase owner (fringe contender BCL team), I’d expect a little more out of the combo when the Bengals put up 38. The problem was the defensive TD to open the game and then the Chase Brown drive.

• Jaylen Warren was hardly used in the first half, then heavily used in the second. I have no idea why. Russell Wilson put up huge numbers, but spread it around widely.

• The Cardinals played to lose by kicking the FG to go up six on their penultimate drive. They were at the four-yard line, up three. If you score the TD, the game is over, and if you fail, you give the Vikings the ball at the four, with a chance to tie if they get into FG range. By kicking, the Cardinals had to kick off, giving the Vikings the ball at their own 32, while knowing they had to have the TD. You should almost never go from three to six in the end game if you have a good chance to score or convert a first down.

• I had Anthony Richardson going everywhere except the Primetime where I foolishly sat him for CJ Stroud (Jackonsville had the No. 32 fantasy defense against QBs), so I watched a lot of that game. Everything with Richardson kind of looks like it’s in slow motion — he’s so big and effortlessly slings the ball when he throws it downfield. His rushing instincts were good, and he made some decent throws, but was victimized again by drops. Still a work in progress, but good for fantasy in easy matchups. A little bit of early Lamar Jackson in him with the easy motion, but a different kind of runner.

• I loved the 68-yard game-winning FG attempt instead of the Hail Mary. Joey Slye was just a little short, but going for an all-time record on a game-winning kick is exciting!

• I can’t remember now, but there were like five bananas things that happened in the Jets-Seattle game, once of which was ex-Giant and Jet Leonard Williams with a 92-yard pick six. You never see a 300-pound lineman make it more than 30 yards, but Williams was moving.

• Nobody’s producing for the Jets these days. Davante Adams had a touchdown, but 66 yards on 12 targets is paltry.

• I had Brian Robinson going for in a couple places — looks like he’s healthy again. They didn’t expand his role though, even with Austin Ekeler on the IR.

• Terry McLaurin looked like a bust early on, but now he’s a top-five WR.

• Nick Westbrook-Ikhine is a TD machine. He’s the AFC’s DeMarcus Robinson.

• Did you see the hit by Azeez Al-Shaair on a clearly sliding Trevor Lawrence? Crazy thing is the Jaguars got penalized for retaliating, so the flags offset, and they didn’t even get anything for the other team concussing their QB out of the game. At least the Jags backdoored which was revenge enough for my purposes.

• Joe Mixon is the bane of my existence. He and Ka’imi Fairbairn. At least Stroud got the one TD late.

• I didn’t see much of Saints-Rams. Heard the GOAT Taysom Hill is out for the year, but that’s it.

• The once cavernous gap between Bryce Young and C.J. Stroud has shrunk as conditions improve for the former and fall apart for the latter. Adam Thielen should have had two TDs too.

• Mike Evans got 118 yards, putting him at 521 on the year. He’s got five games to get 479 yards, and you have to think the Bucs will force feed him at the end if it’s close.

• In my 14-team Dynasty league I traded Marvin Harrison for Malik Nabers and the guy’s third round pick (No. 31) before the year. That pick wound up being Bucky Irving (I used the pick before it on Jonnu Smith too.) So my once garbage team added Nabers, Irving and Jonnu (plus Xavier Worthy in Round 2) and Darnold in Round 6, which is why it’s contending.

• I take no joy in seeing Justin Tucker turn into Chuck Knoblauch.

• I also take no joy in realizing that almost every year when he was on the Giants, I bet Saquon Barkley to win MVP, OPOY and/or to lead the league in yards from scrimmage, but neglected to do so this year when all those things are now in play.

• Almost forgot about Niners-Bills. San Francisco has proven beyond doubt you can’t win on the road against top teams without most of your best players. Who knew?

• Christian McCaffrey looked like he was going to have about 400 YFS before he went down. I’m bummed because my 2-11 team that Alan Seslowsky trashed as the worst team ever was on a two-game win streak too. The team has McCaffrey-Achane as its backs, Sam LaPorta as its TE, but his criticism was neglecting WR (Diggs was my Round 3.) So I had been starting Courtland Sutton, Ladd McConkey and Rome Odunze with Jonnu Smith in the flex, once I lost Diggs and Rashid Shaheed. Basically, I got the right WRs more or less to make it work, and the real weak link was not the structure (as alleged) but Stroud (and losing the 1.1 for most of the year.) Actually the McCaffrey injury helps me now because I have Jordan Mason everywhere else, and proving Seslowsky’s criticism wrong, while important, narrowly takes a back seat to actually cashing in these leagues.

• Hearing Jeff Erickson’s worries about Joe Burrow turning into Dan Marino or Andrew Luck got me thinking about the AFC. Aside from Patrick Mahomes, Tom Brady, Peyton Manning and Ben Roethlisberger, can you name the only AFC QBs who have appeared in a Super Bowl since 2001?