Dominating My Fantasy League — Week 9
It’s safe to say, I am not dominating this league.
The frustration that I feel after Week 9 is overwhelming. My team generated so very little in terms of points. My only player to outperform their original projection was my kicker, Younghoe Koo of the Atlanta Falcons. Otherwise I was a big fat dud.
I’m maybe being too harsh. Herbert was my starting quarterback and did manage to ever so slightly exceed expectations. Julio Jones while not meeting his projected points this week, did manage to score double digit fantasy points. But everyone else, wah wah.
So during the week, there were reasons why I picked certain players to start and I feel like to justify my existence to myself and to everyone else I need to break down why I did what I did.
Let’s start with Herbert. I chose Herbert over Rodgers this week after really just being bored by Rodgers last week. He’s a great quarterback and he’s reliable but from my fantasy standpoint, he’s boring. He doesn’t take tons of risk and he doesn’t run the ball much. Herbert on the other hand does take some risks. Sure, sometimes things don’t work out for him and he throws and interception, but he’s dynamic on the field in part because he holds on to the ball just a little too long. Heading in to Week 9, Herbert was throwing on average over 300 yards. Rodgers was throwing around 290 yards. Not a huge difference, but then looking at who they were playing, Herbert looked like a clear winner. The Raiders have allowed 260 passing yards per game where the 49ers only allowed 209 yards. The Raiders also have allowed more touchdowns in the red zone than the 49ers, 67% compared to 58%. Herbert and Rodgers complete a similar percentage of passes and while Rodgers throws an average of 2.9 touchdowns per game, Herbert is back at 2.5 touchdowns. Considering the defenses, I thought Herbert was primed to outshine Rodgers easily. What I didn’t foresee was Rodgers throwing for 305 yards and 4 touchdowns. Herbert managed to throw for 326 yards and 2 touchdowns. Had the last throw of the game stand up as a touchdown, he would have earned 27 fantasy points, slightly behind Rodgers but enough to make me not question everything I’ve ever believed in. For the record, that was not a catch and appropriately overturned. Trust me, I watched it from all angles 100 million times as I watched my hopes of winning this week’s match up disappear.
So then where else did I go wrong? Well Derrick Henry, the one time love of my fantasy life generated next to nothing, only rushing for 68 total yards and no touchdowns. This is the first game since Week 2 that Henry didn’t score a touchdown. The Bears defense is tough, but on par with the average defense allowing 120 rushing yards per game so I didn’t expect this big of a drop off. My other running back ended up being Justin Jackson of the Los Angeles Chargers. Honestly this was a rush decision with Chris Carson out for the Seahawks and Henderson on a bye this week. Jackson got injured before the game even started? Honestly I’m not too sure what happened, but he obviously didn’t earn me any points. I’ll be happy to return to my regularly scheduled programming for Week 10.
Now to talk about wide receiver. With Carolina playing the Super Bowl defending champions, I was nervous Robby Anderson would be shut out. That added with the return of Christian McCaffery, who yes is a running back but was targeted 10 times this week, I wanted to make some changes. I found Cole Beasley of the Bills. Beasley isn’t the number one target by any means for Allen, but he does make some key grabs. Heading in to Week 9, the Bills were going up against the Seahawks and considering the Seahawks have not only given up the most points per game, but also the most passing yards in the group of teams I was looking at. Check out the graph below — throwing against the Seahawks felt like a total given.
And Josh Allen did throw, just not to Beasley. He favored John Brown who caught 8 of his 11 targets for 99 yards and of course Stefon Diggs who caught 9 passes for 118 yards. Beasley was only targeted 3 times, catching all thankfully for 39 yards, but he was one of 8 receivers to be targeted. To add to Beasley’s shyness, DeAndre Hopkins was targeted the fewest number of times this week then all other weeks this season. He didn’t get Kyler Murray’s attention until the 3rd quarter. Hopkins caught his 3 targets, but going in to Week 9, he was targeted 10 times on average. It’s like he wasn’t even on the field.
As for my defense, I went with the Patriots. The Jets were starting Flacco with Darnold out with a shoulder injury so I just figured an easy win. Well, none of that happened. The Patriots barely pressured Flacco. They only managed to intercept him once and sack him once. I needed only 4 points to win my match up this week and they got me 3. Safe to say I’ve dropped them for next week.
I could talk about Gronk but frankly the Buccaneers had more problems than just Gronkowski on Sunday night’s game. He was coming in after catching 3 touchdowns in as many games and he just fizzled completely along with the rest of Tampa Bay. That’s literally all I have to say on this matter. Should I have started Jonnu Smith who ended up catching a touchdown for the first time since Week 5? Honestly the data didn’t support it. In the last 3 games, Smith was extremely quiet, only catching 4 of his 8 targets for 53 total yards. There are just some things that will remain unknown.
I have a lot to do ahead of Week 10. I want to get out of this now 4–5 slump. I can’t seem to break .5 so I want to invest my time understanding my WR landscape — who do I have versus who’s available. I also need to make sure I have a backup ready for my running backs. Henderson and Carson are still questionable and I want to make sure I’m not caught again this week without.
Check out my github for Week 8.
