Congrats to everyone who won this past weekend. Life is a little more meaningful when there's a reason to set your lineup.
Last night's game was one statistical oddity after another. Outside of Kenyan Drake and Jarvis Landry, no "good" fantasy starters exceeded expectations, while the seemingly unstartable Jay Cutler joined another unlikely Week 14 hero--Brett Hundley--as a top 5 QB. Cutler enjoyed his ninth career 3+ TD, 0 INT peformances while stringing together his third 110+ QB rating of the season. He's now just under his career QBR of 85.7 and could turn in a top 3 career year with a couple decent games to close the season. Incredible for a guy who's looked like a backup much of the year.
Meanwhile, Tom Brady has crushed many fantasy dreams the past two weeks against teams he's normally dominated. He entered last weekend's contest against Buffalo with a career 27-2 record, averaging 2.3 TDs and less than one turnover per game. But he was only the 28th best fantasy QB that week, thanks to a 258/0/1 line. Last night was more of the same, except this time he wasn't operating more conservatively while protecting a comfortable lead. Playing from behind, the Patriots had trouble moving the ball against a sub-par defense. They couldn't even find the end zone on 1st and Goal from the Dolphins' 1. For Brady, it resulted in fantasy's 23rd best Week 14 QB performance against a team he's dominated nearly as much as he has Buffalo for his career. It was his worst statistical output since a 2013 loss to the Jets.
More interesting nuggets: New England entered last night averaging nearly 29 rushing attempts per game. Yesterday they mustered only 10. And Danny Amendola was actually fantasy relevant, leading the Pats with six receptions for 76 yards. But no other Patriot wideout had more than one catch.
On the other side of the ball, Jarvis Landry is now 2017's ninth highest scoring fantasy wideout and is within one point of sixth place. This from a guy who this summer was dealing with a spousal abuse investigation, and who from the summer to the trade deadline was reportedly being dangled in trade offers.
Finally, most of you know I've been hyping up Kenyan Drake since July. 17 times, in fact. Most of those times, I was pushing Drake as one of fantasy's top RB handcuffs. My September 15 post sums up my season-long thinking: "Kenyan Drake and Damien Williams are rostered in fewer than 1% of ESPN leagues. One of them will be an RB2/3 for multiple games this season. My money's on the more talented Drake, despite his #3 position on the team's depth chart." (http://www.fantasyfootballforwinners.com/2017/09/week-2-thursday-night-football-recap.html)
I'm a big proponent of the RB handcuff strategy: securing as many handcuffs in the draft and during the season as you can reasonably hold, and play the odds that about 25%-35% will become starters. This preseason, Drake's PPR RB ADP was 59, while standard RB ADP was 73. In PPR, Alvin Kamara, Samaje Perine, Jamaal Williams, Gio Bernard, Latavius Murray, and Rex Burkhead were in the 40s. Tarik Cohen was 64. Alfred Morris was 73. Orleans Darkwa was 81. Alex Collins was somewhere beyond the top 100.
Remember this heading into next season. A decent number of late-round or undraftable RBs will help millions of fantasy managers win a title. While I've definitely missed my share (I really thought Shane Vereen would be relevant), two undraftables I've pushed hard for nearly six months have become fantasy relevant: Drake and Tarik Cohen (PPR's 24th highest scoring fantasy RB). It's all about sizing up talent and taking risks. Neither guarantees success. But when combined, success is fairly likely.
Last night's game was one statistical oddity after another. Outside of Kenyan Drake and Jarvis Landry, no "good" fantasy starters exceeded expectations, while the seemingly unstartable Jay Cutler joined another unlikely Week 14 hero--Brett Hundley--as a top 5 QB. Cutler enjoyed his ninth career 3+ TD, 0 INT peformances while stringing together his third 110+ QB rating of the season. He's now just under his career QBR of 85.7 and could turn in a top 3 career year with a couple decent games to close the season. Incredible for a guy who's looked like a backup much of the year.
Meanwhile, Tom Brady has crushed many fantasy dreams the past two weeks against teams he's normally dominated. He entered last weekend's contest against Buffalo with a career 27-2 record, averaging 2.3 TDs and less than one turnover per game. But he was only the 28th best fantasy QB that week, thanks to a 258/0/1 line. Last night was more of the same, except this time he wasn't operating more conservatively while protecting a comfortable lead. Playing from behind, the Patriots had trouble moving the ball against a sub-par defense. They couldn't even find the end zone on 1st and Goal from the Dolphins' 1. For Brady, it resulted in fantasy's 23rd best Week 14 QB performance against a team he's dominated nearly as much as he has Buffalo for his career. It was his worst statistical output since a 2013 loss to the Jets.
More interesting nuggets: New England entered last night averaging nearly 29 rushing attempts per game. Yesterday they mustered only 10. And Danny Amendola was actually fantasy relevant, leading the Pats with six receptions for 76 yards. But no other Patriot wideout had more than one catch.
On the other side of the ball, Jarvis Landry is now 2017's ninth highest scoring fantasy wideout and is within one point of sixth place. This from a guy who this summer was dealing with a spousal abuse investigation, and who from the summer to the trade deadline was reportedly being dangled in trade offers.
Finally, most of you know I've been hyping up Kenyan Drake since July. 17 times, in fact. Most of those times, I was pushing Drake as one of fantasy's top RB handcuffs. My September 15 post sums up my season-long thinking: "Kenyan Drake and Damien Williams are rostered in fewer than 1% of ESPN leagues. One of them will be an RB2/3 for multiple games this season. My money's on the more talented Drake, despite his #3 position on the team's depth chart." (http://www.fantasyfootballforwinners.com/2017/09/week-2-thursday-night-football-recap.html)
I'm a big proponent of the RB handcuff strategy: securing as many handcuffs in the draft and during the season as you can reasonably hold, and play the odds that about 25%-35% will become starters. This preseason, Drake's PPR RB ADP was 59, while standard RB ADP was 73. In PPR, Alvin Kamara, Samaje Perine, Jamaal Williams, Gio Bernard, Latavius Murray, and Rex Burkhead were in the 40s. Tarik Cohen was 64. Alfred Morris was 73. Orleans Darkwa was 81. Alex Collins was somewhere beyond the top 100.
Remember this heading into next season. A decent number of late-round or undraftable RBs will help millions of fantasy managers win a title. While I've definitely missed my share (I really thought Shane Vereen would be relevant), two undraftables I've pushed hard for nearly six months have become fantasy relevant: Drake and Tarik Cohen (PPR's 24th highest scoring fantasy RB). It's all about sizing up talent and taking risks. Neither guarantees success. But when combined, success is fairly likely.