- See my Intro to understand what this is all about.
- See my Draft Recap to learn where my team started.
- See my Week 1 Recap
- See my Week 2 Recap
My Rationale Beforehand
Ol’ King Flippy Nips really needed that win last week. We SHOULD be 2-0 and one of the scariest teams in the league, but instead we’re the best of the 1-1 teams (#2 in total points overall) and in a dogfight against the top scoring team in the league, the 2-0 Space Forcin’.
Since there’s hashtag No Time To Sleep, there were a couple more roster moves to sort out this week. First thing’s first, I used my dreadful waiver priority (I want to say I was 8th out of 10) to pick up Ryan FitzMagic. I figured after his week 1 heroics, it was all a fluke, and probably the Saints’ defense isn’t that good this year. However, he threw for 4 more TDs against the Super Bowl champion Eagles, so this HAS to be for real, right? He’s got 94 points in two weeks in our league! Maybe it’s like a Case Keenum situation from last year, where a veteran comes from out of nowhere to take the league by storm!
Plus, he’s going up against the Steelers on Monday Night this week, their defense looks atrocious, so I feel better about FitzMagic than I do Derek Carr (at Miami, whose defense COULD be secretly good) or Andy Dalton (at Carolina, whose defense is usually good when healthy).
To make room for the magic man, I once again waived Kenny Stills, after a 3.70-point week. Bottom line: Miami’s offense is never going to be explosive enough to want to count on him week-to-week, so it’s all going to be Boom or Bust with this guy and I just don’t need that in my life right now.
Early Wednesday morning, I was up at 3:30am, a few hours after the waiver claims went through, looking to do even more tinkering. See, this week, Carson Wentz is set to make his triumphant return, so there’s really no need to keep Nick Foles – a fifth quarterback – on the roster (frankly, even 4 QBs is too many, considering how small our benches are). In looking to boost my skill position depth, I picked up Detroit’s Kenny Golladay, who has been terrific when healthy, and obviously plays for a more explosive offense than Miami’s. He’s not just a big play, touchdown-dependent receiver; through two weeks he’s averaging over 10 targets per game, and is on a team that should frequently find itself behind and needing to throw their way back into games. Golladay won’t start for me now, but if he keeps it up, I could see him supplanting Demaryius Thomas sooner or later for my FLEX spot.
Here’s this week’s lineup:
- QB1 – Carson Wentz vs. IND
- QB2 – Ryan FitzMagic vs. PIT
- WR1 – Tyreek Hill vs. SF
- WR2 – Adam Thielen vs. BUF
- RB1 – Ezekiel Elliott @ SEA
RB2 – Leonard Fournette vs. TEN- RB2 – Adrian Peterson vs. GB
- TE – Jordan Reed vs. GB
- FLEX – Demaryius Thomas @ BAL
- K – Robbie Gould @ KC
- DEF – Chicago @ AZ
My bench is: Dalton, Carr, Adrian Peterson Fournette, Robert Woods, Golladay, and Greg Olsen.
I like almost all of these matchups. My only concern with Thielen is that the Vikings will be up so big that they’ll eventually stop throwing the ball, and if Thielen doesn’t get his early and often, it could be a surprisingly quiet day. Obviously, you never know what’s going to happen – any one of these guys could throw up some duds – but I’ll take my chances with this lineup against just about anybody’s.
It’s nice having Fournette back in the fold, since I don’t love Peterson’s chances against the Packers. I wouldn’t mind playing either of those backup receivers, as they both figure to be in high-scoring games, but when in doubt, go with the #1 receiver in Thomas.
SUNDAY MORNING UPDATE: the neverending disappointment that is Leonard Fournette’s injury-riddled body reared its ugly head once again. Even though he was able to practice in a limited capacity all week, the Jags are holding him out yet another game. My expected points took a pretty significant hit with Peterson not likely to get much of anything going against the Packers (since the Redskins figure to be playing from behind all game and trying to throw their way back into it). Here’s the real bummer of not having a deeper bench and a bigger stable of backup running backs. If only I could’ve injected one of my spare wide receivers into this game!
As I noted, I’m going up against the best team in the league through two weeks. I’m second overall in points and Space Forcin’ has outscored me by 48.81 (to put it in context, I’m closer to the 5th place team in total points than I am to him in first). His keepers were Mahomes, Rivers, and Kamara (i.e. the three best fucking keepers in the league; i.e. the 2nd, 5th, and 8th best players in our league). While his bench is pretty suspect, he’s rounded out by some high-ceiling, high-floor players that will make all of our lives a living hell as long as they remain healthy.
It should be pointed out that the guy running Space Forcin’ has had my number in recent seasons; even if his teams suck, he seems to really get it up for kicking my ass. So, I can love my guys and I can love my matchups until the cows come home, but it’s not going to make me even remotely confident as we head into this week. In the next section, we’ll talk about how my week went.
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Week 3 Results
And here we are, a 1-2 record with the second-most points scored in the entire league. This is my fantasy fucking life.
Here’s what Space Forcin’ looked like, as they thoroughly destroyed me, 192.14 to 166.90:
- QB1 – Philip Rivers @ LAR
- QB2 – Patrick Mahomes vs. SF
- WR1 – JuJu Smith-Schuster @ TB
- WR2 – Davante Adams @ WAS
- RB1 – Alvin Kamara @ ATL
- RB2 – Jordan Howard @ AZ
- TE – O.J. Howard vs. PIT
- FLEX – Quincy Enunwa @ CLE
- K – Wil Lutz @ ATL
- DEF – Philadelphia vs. IND
His worst player was his defense, who still got him 7 points. His kicker out-scored 6 of my guys, including Carson Wentz, who just couldn’t get it going against Indy. Getting stuck with Adrian Peterson was actually a blessing in disguise, but I still went into Monday Night down 20 points. He had two guys going, and all the FitzMagic in the world couldn’t get me over the hump.
Just brutal, all around. His lineup is as stacked as they come for 2018. The key for me was always going to be Mahomes feeding the ball to Tyreek Hill, who instead had easily the worst game of his season so far. On the plus side, maybe Ryan Fitzpatrick is a viable QB2 going forward after all? We’ll see how the Bucs respond now that Jameis Winston is off of his suspension.
I still like my team, but this shit is getting real frustrating. I need to bank some early-season wins and instead I keep running into buzzsaws!