It was late Sunday morning, around the 12 o’clock mark. Things had been going pretty nicely all morning and I was just about ready to do some last minute tinkering on Draftkings and maybe even build a few new teams. I’d had a fun evening at the casino the night before where for the first time in my life I broke exactly even at the poker table and I mean exactly like down to the dollar. I’d even had the foresight to go relatively easy on the booze so that my Sunday morning wouldn’t be blighted by the aching pain and uneasiness that comes with a hangover. I’d had a nice breakfast, my pears were just that perfect level of ripeness, my coffee was brewed perfectly and it was shaping up to be a pretty nice day. If you read my post last week you’d know I was back to my normal level of research so that last minute panic of ‘sh*t, how did I not know Keenan Allen was flying under the radar this week, I’ll have to put him in all my line-ups’ was nowhere on the horizon. All was right with the world.
Then it happened. Then I did a thing I should never have done. A thing that will haunt me until my dying day. I swapped Anquan Boldin for DeAndre Hopkins in my main cash game (and some GPP’s and some qualifiers) line up. Ok I’m engaging in some extreme hyperbole here but if ever there was a place to describe making a fantasy football error in such elaborate terms it’s a rotogrinders blog right? In case you missed it, Boldin had a pretty huge game on Sunday racking up an easy season high of 31.7 points while Hopkins suffered along with Ryan Mallett’s pectoral muscle, posting his second lowest point total of the year in 8.9 points.
It was a catastrophic error and it turned a line up that would have cashed in all cash games and maybe picked up a low payout in some GPP’s into a losing one. I felt so good about this line up on Sunday morning, and even though it didn’t live up to my lofty expectations, due to Andrew Luck some how posting his lowest DK point total of the year at home against the Jags and Robert Woods and Kyle Orton stealing all of Sammy Watkins points, that 22.8 swing was still pretty crucial. Is there anything worse than seeing the player you late swapped out of your team go off after the player you replaced him with does nothing? That’s not a rhetorical question. There is nothing worse. Not even Ebola.
It’s been quite a season for my late swaps in fact. Check out this doozy I pulled off earlier in the year. Remember that day when Emmanuel Sanders went crazy and caught three TD’s for 120 yards? Yeah I, at the last minute, swapped him out on my regular FF team for Joique effing Bell. I think that’s his official name now. For those of you keeping score at home Bell rushed for 39 yards and caught a few passes for 22 receiving yards against the Falcons in London. Yeah I know, that seems idiotic now but look, Bell was ranked ahead of Sanders that week on fantasypros so just shut up ok. It was the right decision to make. Well ‘right’ in everything except for actual results.
The Hopkins for Boldin was not the correct choice. It came down to a few factors really. I haven’t rostered Boldin at all this year and although that obviously shouldn’t make a difference, it does. We all know it does. If you roster a player and he leads you to a winning week you are naturally predisposed to him for the next few weeks. The opposite is also true, I’m looking at you Julio Jones. So Anquan and I didn’t really have a relationship outside of me putting him in the bracket of ‘old man receivers’ with Steve Smith Sr and Roddy White and refusing to play him. Reason No. 7684 why I’m not a professional DFS player. So I got a bit jittery when I thought about Kaepernick’s penchant for spreading the ball around to multiple receivers and the 49ers in general. I’m a paid up member of the 2014 Frank Gore fantasy football support group and I’ve also been burned by Kaep himself a few weeks. And then alsmizzle went and said he really liked Hopkins this week or something and that was it. The dye was cast.
Boldin went off, Hopkins went nowhere and I was left with a losing week. In fact my highest scoring team was one I built early in the week when I saw someone on twitter mention that you could fit AJ Green and Josh Gordon along with another top WR on the same team. Not one to shirk a challenge I went and built that team and it finished with a decent point total of 181.12. I didn’t think too much about it and it was easily my best team. To compound my depressing weekend the team I select first thing on Tuesday morning outscored my ‘researched’ team mainly due to Allen Hurns doing sweet f all against the Colts and Josh Gordon doing Josh Gordon things in Atlanta. The ‘gut’ team won 139.44 to 123.64 for its first victory of the year. So this week I shall be sticking with my first instincts, I will not be making any late swaps and I will certainly not be rostering any WR’s with average to poor QB’s. Except for Josh Gordon. I’ll be rostering Josh Gordon.
And with that, it’s on to this week’s ‘first look gut team’.
Quarterback
Eli Manning $7,000
After last week’s misstep against the Jags, Luck doesn’t seem like the lock for 25+ points he once was so I can’t play him here even with a pretty sweet match up against Washington. I was tempted by Brady what with the slight discount compared to the big three but I’m not pinning my hopes on any QB going into Lambeau in late November. Further down the scale I threw some admiring glances Ryan Tannehill’s way and even considered Rivers and Matt Ryan at pretty tempting price points but I’ll go with the human turn over machine that is Eli Manning. Yes I know the Dallas secondary is pretty poor and the Jags defense kept their putrid offense in the game on Sunday but…..
No one can guard this guy. The Giants D has also been terrible this year and Bortles is bound to put up at least SOME points at home so I don’t see this as a blowout. In fact it might be quite close and Eli will need to throw it around a bit. Granted Eli has been up and down but at this price he certainly has a shot at returning 4x his salary more than say Luck as at his.
Running Backs
Arian Foster $8,800
Here’s hoping Foster goes through the week with a questionable tag because it looks like Fitzpatrick will be back and the Texans are up against the awful Tennessee run D, all of which points to Foster having a huge game with relatively low ownership. Everyone’s going to be on Bell and for good reason as he also has a great matchup and is $100 cheaper (I’m actively exploring the possibility of playing both of them in the same team) but I love Foster and his questionable tag this week. I mentioned it before but the first millionaire maker was taken down by a line up that included Foster coming off an injury so I’ll be playing a lot of the Houston RB in this matchup.
Tre Mason $4,600
When I’m building this early week team I like to take a look at the high priced RB’s first. If I fancy any of them I like to pair them with a cheaper option. I might change it afterwards but it at least gives me some salary relief when I’m looking at the WR’s. Mason was pretty much the only cheap RB that stood out to me on first look. McKinnon could be in line for a big game against Carolina but I just can’t trust that he’ll get the majority of the carries or even more crucially that he’ll get the goal line work. Oakland are bad against the run, Mason looks like he’s the No.1 in St Louis now and with RB’s it’s all about volume and opportunity. Mason gets plenty of carries, he just hasn’t had a huge week yet which is great because that means he’s still pretty cheap.
Wide Receivers
Odell Beckham Jr. $6,800
Just going to leave this here again.
In all seriousness I usually hate paying up for a player who has a monster game on prime time and even though Beckham seems like the real deal I didn’t plan to roster him in this team. It just happened that way. And what I mean by that is I plugged in a few players changed some others and I was left with $6,900 to spend. My rule for this team is to not take too long agonizing over players so I basically picked Beckham over Kelvin Benjamin and to a lesser extent Julian Edelman. I said what needed to be said in the Eli blurb except for the fact that clearly there is no longer any question over who is the No.1 WR in this offense anymore. Beckham is light years ahead of Randle, expect at least 10 receptions this week.
Martavis Bryant $4,700
I rostered Bryant in a line-up on his debut against Houston. He scored a TD and had a decent enough game for someone at the minimum salary. I haven’t played him since as his price has been massively inflated (except his second game against the Colts where he racked up 25.3 points again at min salary, missed that one) but he’s back down at a more reasonable price point this week. He continued to put up big numbers until his 2-11 game against the Titans. I picked this team right as DK released their pricing on Monday but I’m writing this on Tuesday so yeah, those Saints CB’s are not good. Both Torrey and Steve Smith both had nice days so it’s looking like Bryant might find his way in to a lot of my line-ups this week.
Jarvis Landry $5,400
Have the Jets quit? Are they tanking for the No.1 pick? It sure looks like it. They were atrocious against the Bills and all Miami skills players have to be up for consideration this week, except maybe Lamar Millar. My boy DeAndre was right around this price point along with the rest of the mid table mediocrity such as Vincent Jackson, Mohamed Sanu and Torrey Smith but I went with the shiny new toy in Landry here. It’s always fun to target the Jets secondary and at this point of the season motivation starts to become a factor. Miami will absolutely be motivated to win. The Jets not so much. I like that.
Tight End
Charles Clay $3,400
I might be the worst person in the world when it comes to selecting Tight Ends. I drafted Zach Ertz and Jordan Cameron in my fantasy team this year and my T.E scoring over 12 weeks of the season is as follows: 4.7, 8.6, 1.4, 2.3, 0.0 (Thank you Larry Donnell), 0.6 (still Larry), 0.5, 4.0, 1.7, 1.9, 1.7 and 2.8. I mean that’s some astoundingly bad scoring. I’m even a little shocked when I see them laid out like that. With that being said, this is no time to doubt myself so I’m ALL IN ON CHARLES CLAY. I’m not really. I’m basically just deciding to pay low this week. Outside of Graham and Gronk any other player could get you a big fat doughnut on any given week. Gronk has served me well and Graham put up a nice line this week but I think I’m just fading the Pats in general and targeting the Jets. They’re poor against opposing tight ends and Clay is always good for a decent amount of targets. He may not put up a huge score but at least he’s not expensive.
Flex
Roddy White $6,400
Sometimes it’s ok to realize you’re more than likely not going to take down that large GPP you target every week. Sometimes it’s fine to think, ‘you know what, if can get back around quadruple my entry fee, I’m ok with that.’ Let me introduce you to Roddy White’s stat line over the last five weeks, 9-100-1, 5-66, 6-72-1, 8-75-1, 9-96. Yes people will say, ‘cash game only, blah blah blah’, but like I said, sometimes low upside is better than somebody who might go for 5-157-1 just as easily as they go 1-9. Yes those are DeSean Jackson’s stats thanks for asking. Roddy probably won’t win you a sh*t ton of money but he’s getting a bunch of targets every week and he’s still lower in price than Julio so he might get you a large UPS package size of money.
Defense
Giants $2,800
Cheap, playing the Jags. Slam-dunk.
Honestly I don’t think this team is very good right now and it should hopefully get a bit of an upgrade later in the week but then I swapped out Anquan Boldin for DeAndre Hopkins, so what do I know.
Thanks for reading and be sure to check out my researched team later in the week!
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