Week 7 Observations

I can't even

I can’t even get into writing about the Giants-Broncos game. At least not right away. It’s too frustrating, too nauseating. When things like that happen, you have to have the attitude of “it is what it is” and move on. Woulda/coulda/shoulda are just forms of masochism. You acknowledge reality and let it go.

Instead I want to shift to one positive thing that’s happening for me so far, and that’s my BCL2 RotoWire Online where I picked first overall, missed Omarion Hampton by one pick in the third, didn’t love any of the choices at the 3-4 turn and went with my Plan B to stack the hell out of the Chiefs. To that end, I took Xavier Worthy and Rashee Rice and Patrick Mahomes and Tony Pollard (my only RB) at the 5-6. Then I took Jordan Addison in the 7th because at the time Rice was supposed to have his suspension ruled on four weeks into the season, and I figured I could use him while Addison was out, and Addison while he was out.

As it turned out, Rice was suspended concurrently with Addison, so I was starting Hollywood Brown in Week 1 (worked out fine), and my ninth and 10th-round picks were Javonte Williams and Cam Skattebo. I was hoping to be 4-3 or so at this point, have Rice and Addison back, make a run and sneak into the playoffs. Instead, here’s how things stand:

And I’m about to be 6-1 after this week (unless the Lions defense has a historic showing, and by “historic”, I mean if Ohtani hit six home runs and struck out 27):

And this despite leaving Addison on my bench.

Of course, there is a LONG way to go, and anything can happen. Moreover, the Chiefs, Bengals AND Cowboys are on bye for Week 10, so my lineup that week looks like this:

I’m not sure anyone’s ever had 10 players on bye before, but I’m hoping for 100-ish points and staying more or less on track to make the playoffs. The entire goal for this team was somehow to get in and then hope for Mahomes et al to go ballistic from Weeks 15-17. So far so good.

My Primetime team, by contrast started out 4-0, then lost Malik Nabers (1.9), Puka Nacua (2.4) and Garrett Wilson (3.4.) Still I managed 137 points with Woody Marks to go, but I’m a steep dog tonight with the other team having Jared Goff, Jahmyr Gibbs and Cooper Kupp, down 29. It’s a sad fate for what was once a serious juggernaut.

The other good team I have is in the Beat Alan Seslowsky league, but I’ll need big games from Goff, JSN and ARSB to pull out the win. I had patted myself on the back for starting Goff over Bo Nix after the third quarter of that game too.

That’s what’s going reasonably well, but I went 1-3 again in Circa which doesn’t matter until Q3, but it shows how retardedly off I’ve been in handicapping games this year.

• The Rams-Jaguars game was a joke. I have Brian Thomas is two non-NFFC leagues, and he was dropping passes and losing snaps to Travis Hunter. I had hopes Thomas would bounce back after last week, but he’s in his head now, and Trevor Lawrence is terrible. He’s the Kyler Murray of the AFC, the former No. 1 overall who only keeps the job (and got paid) for that reason. Mac Jones is better, just like Jacoby Brissett is probably better.

• Hunter is probably startable now that he’s proven what he can do, but you never know with that team.

• Bhayshul Tuten is the one fourth-round rookie back who hasn’t earned the chance — even late-round scrubs like Jacory Croskey Merritt, Kyle Monangai and Brashard Smith have looked more promising.

• Matthew Stafford still has it, and at least the Primetime team with Nacua got Davante Adams in Round 4, though the Rams seemed to keep Adams in his goal-line role rather than move him to Nacua’s mega-target one. Then again, the Jaguars being totally inept limited Stafford to only 33 attempts, many of them short throws.

• Blake Corum is cutting into Kyren Williams’ role, though that could also be because the stakes were low in the second half.

• The Saints are bad but scrappy. I have Kendre Miller in a couple places, thought he might get a shot if Alvin Kamara were traded, but Kamara doesn’t want to be traded, and now Miller is hurt.

• I have Rome Odunze in a couple places, and it’s becoming frustrating. Six targets is not enough, and they spread the ball around too much.

• D’Andre Swift has been solid for where he was drafted, but Monangai seems like a player too.

• I was happy to have the Browns defense on two teams this week — they annihilated the Dolphins offense. Tua Tagovailoa is looking like present-day Russell Wilson with less mobility and more concussion risk.

• De’Von Achane is doing fine, but a sinking ship drowns all sailors.

• Quinshon Judkins is the only startable Brown. I fell for the Harold Fannin hoax this week (over Kyle Pitts), and I regret it. Dillon Gabriel is not the guy, and the sooner they audition Shadeur Sanders, see if he might be, the better for the franchise. The defense is legit, though.

• Drake Maye had two incomplete passes all game and rushed for 62 yards. He’s already a top-10 real-life NFL QB and by that I mean almost anywhere in the top-10 behind Josh Allen and Patrick Mahomes.

• Rhamondre Stevenson is a good player as long as he doesn’t fumble. TreVeyon Henderson is the punchline of this year’s fantasy drafts.

• Stefon Diggs is a modest upside, solid floor guy, but he’s not making any big plays.

• The Patriots defense is worth holding onto — they draw the Browns and Jets in two of their next four games.

• That Dike on the Titans caught a TD this week, but that’s about the only thing they had going for them.

• The one Circa pick I got right was the Chiefs laying 11.5. The Raiders are terrible, and when Maxx Crosby got hurt, it was a joke. Ashton Jeanty is (maybe) a buy-low, but even peak Marshall Faulk would have trouble on this team. The Seahawks must have been a passing-game paradise given what’s happened to Geno Smith and Russell Wilson after leaving.

• The only contest more lopsided than Chiefs-Raiders Sunday was my daughter’s basketball game:

  

  That’s a real score, 149-0. At halftime it was 92-0, and the other team had managed only one shot. I joked it was a good thing we played well because the other team missed only one shot! What a waste of an early Sunday morning.

• The Chiefs are the best team in the NFL.

• My Chiefs stack team scored nearly 200 points, despite their pulling their starters for the entire fourth quarter.

• Isiah Pacheco looks healthy and energized, but Brashard Smith is earning trust and could be interesting down the stretch. He caught five passes Sunday.

• Rice saw 10 targets out of the gate and scored twice. It was all short stuff, with Tyquan Thorton and Marquise Brown getting the downfield looks, but Rice is a top-five-ish WR already. It’s going to be hard for Xavier Worthy to see enough targets to stay fantasy-relevant with Rice and Travis Kelce around, though. Hell, they’re even throwing to Juju Smith-Schuster on occasion.

• Saquon Barkley had 436 carries last year if you include the playoffs. He looks okay, but the explosiveness isn’t there.

• Devonta Smith and AJ Brown showed up when they were finally needed. Maybe the Eagles target their wideouts more by design now that they broke out.

• Jordan Addison out-targeted and out-performed Justin Jefferson. I would still bet on Jefferson ROS, but the gap between them isn’t that big.

• TJ Hockenson finally showed signs of life, but all the pass catchers might get a re-set when JJ McCarthy takes over.

• One of my Circa picks was the Jets, and while it’s good to be contrarian, a “never Jets” policy is probably the best way to stay solvent as a bettor.

• Put differently:

• Tyrod Taylor isn’t good, but he’s better than Justin Fields.

• Breece Hall is in the Jeanty purgatory.

• Bryce Young is another No. 1 overall pick who has a job only for that reason.

• Rico Dowdle split carries with the inferior Chuba Hubbard. I imagine he’ll get the better end of the split going forward.

• Tet McMillan has been a low-key third-round bust, not as bad as Henderson, but in the same vein in that both stayed healthy and delivered very little. Xavier Leggette got 11 targets to McMillan’s five.

• The Packers won the game, but Jordan Love is an unimpressive caretaker to me. He loves Romeo Doubs, who has no big-play ability, and Matthew Golden is bronze at best, and that’s with Christian Watson and Jayden Reed still out. Why spend a first-round pick on a receiver you don’t use?

• Josh Jacobs is boring, but gets the fantasy points.

• Brissett is better than Murray, and that’s certainly the case if you own Trey McBride.

• I can’t get involved with the Cardinals RB situation. Trey Benson should be back eventually, but we don’t know yet whether he’s good.

• Imagine how good Jaxson Dart would be on the Colts!

• Danny Dimes is suddenly Mr. Reliable, never makes mistakes. How is that even possible?

• Jonathan Taylor went from having one of the worst setups to one of the best, and he’s got a shot at being the 1.1 as a result.

• I still don’t buy the Colts as an elite team. I could see them as a 1 seed that gets knocked out in the divisional round.

• The Chargers defense is bad, and so is their decimated offensive line.

• Oronde Gadsden put up a huge line on nine targets. Just one more obstacle to Ladd McConkey living up to his draft slot. (In fairness they gave McConkey 15 targets, but he had only 67 yards.)

• Gadsden mostly put a dent in Quentin Johnston’s opportunities (six targets), but Johnston is a TD machine. Part of the problem is Justin Herbert was forced to roll out a lot of the time because he was under so much pressure. He had 420 yards, but it took him 55 attempts.

• Jayden Daniels is awfully close to being RGIV. (He’ll have an MRI today on his hamstring.) As promising as Daniels was last year, RGIII was at least as promising his rookie year. It doesn’t help that all his receivers are hurt.

• I had left the Cowboys for dead after the Micah Parsons trade, but their offense is legit. Javonte Williams didn’t have much involvement in the passing game with CeeDee Lamb back, but part of that was game-flow too.

• Brandon Aubrey hit a 61-yard field goal that would have been good from 70 on uprights that were six-feet apart.

• We didn’t get Vagenix, but we did get three-inch Sunday night. He didn’t fare well under pressure.

• Bijan Robinson always gets his, doesn’t matter how bad the game-flow or team offensive output is.

• I saw a stat that Drake London rarely goes off when Darnell Mooney is healthy, and this was a case in point. Of course, Kyle Pitts caught seven passes on my bench (for Fannin) after only three for 18 yards last week while in my lineup. The worst players are the zig-zaggers, ones that never string two or three good games in a row, but alternate and whipsaw you every week. Pitts killed people as a premium TE for years, and now he’s even doing it on the cheap!

• It’s amazing this rag-tag bunch of 49ers are 5-2.

• Christian McCalfinjury had 24 carries and eight targets. The guy is Emmitt Smith durable this year and the easy 1.1 if we knew everyone would stay healthy.

• Okay, I’ll finish with the Giants.

• Jaxson Dart played a great game despite a couple bad errors. One was the soul-crushing pick, but he was being hit and couldn’t get any zip on the ball. Still, he should have thrown it away, and there were a couple sacks he should have thrown away too. And he overthrew a couple open receivers deep — needs to put more air under the deep balls. But he STILL battled back against a top defense in a hostile, noisy road environment to get them the go-ahead score on their last drive, still dove across the goal line and did it with receivers that were just signed off the practice squad. Imagine if he had Malik Nabers.

• The Giants should have done some basic due diligence on their backup kicker. Was no random ex-Division III college soccer player available?

• The Giants should have gone for two on their last TD given the kicker and the fact that had they made it Denver would have needed a TD.

• Wan’Dale Robinson is a solid possession receiver, but he’s being asked to do too much. Daniel Bellinger and Theo Johnson are just guys, but useful with a good QB.

• Cam Skattebo isn’t fast, but he’s quick in short areas and runs hard. He’s also a smooth pass catcher. He’s not a superstar, but a quality back. Tyrone Tracy got more work, but he’s just a guy. His stats look good because he had a 31-yard TD on a hole through which even trough Jeff Erickson could have run.

• The Giants defense on the final drive was insanely bad — rushing three and dropping backups (two of their key defensive backs were hurt) was malpractice.

• The Giants had the best draft in recent memory with Dart who would be the no-brainer 1.1 if teams re-drafted today, Adbul Carter who looks like a beast and Skattebo.

• The Broncos deserve credit for scrapping back into the game, even if the Giants largely gave it away.

• Bo Nix put up monster stats and scrambles well, but I’m 50/50 on whether he’s a franchise quarterback. There’s a bit of herky-jerkyness a la Murray that gives me pause, rather than smooth, sustained drives. The Giants defense before getting gassed and misused was good, but Nix wasn’t handling the pressure well most of the game.