Bye Bye Bye

There were only four teams on bye this week: Packers, Bears, Steelers, and Falcons. However, with injuries and the byes, our league was forced into some tough starts. Here are some highlights:

Team Player Weekly Finish
JNT Spencer Rattler QB 19
Mrs Goff Malik Washington WR 74
Hamas Rockets Chris Godwin WR 67
Team Tendonitis Khalil Shakir WR 39

Its not like the waivers were too hot either, except at TE where 4 available TEs cracked 10 points.

These intros are about to get a lot more exciting too. I finally got some working web scraping to get our league’s scoring data dating back to 2016, though I think I’ll focus on 2020 to present since the owners have been stable since then. Feel free to pitch any questions.

Transactions

We had one trade this week, the analysis of which has already been litigated in the group chat:

MAZDA-3 Marvin LamaRB1 and the Funky Bunch
Receives Stefon Diggs Receives MHJ
Receives D’Andre Swift Receives Derrick Henry

Waivers were rife with low bids this week, the highest of which being Hassan Haskins awarded to Mrs Goff for $16. Mike grabbed Mason Taylor for $8 while Team Jeff swapped out Jake Browning and $3 for Joe Flacco. Mrs Goff’s opponent (me) grabbed Kimani Vidal leading to an interesting head to head. Projection models seem to slightly favor Haskins but I’d guess they both get about 12 total touches.

Matchups

Justin the Nico Time (137.42) defeated Mr. Big Chests (128.52). Bye weeks have officially arrived, forcing JNT to emergency start Jake Tonges (17.1) on TNF. The SF TE was targetted early and often as Mac Jones “let it rip” against what has been a solid Rams defense. The Rams have been so solid that MBC decided to start them with the SF QB injury to the tune of -2 points. The lead for JNT mostly held through Sunday. It was team Rookie RB for JNT against team back-up RB for MBC. MBC was very active on waivers, collecting Rachaad White (23.1) and Rico Dowdle (32.4) this past week to great success. In fact, Dowdle destroyed the Dolphins on the ground to the tune of over 200 rushing yards, more than half the five week totals of the Bengals, Bears, Steelers, and Dolphins have as a team. MBC was also sitting on Jordan Mason (12.6) who had a surprisingly good game against a stout Browns team thanks to a goal line TD. Meanwhile, JNT’s rookie tandem of Quinshon (13.8) and Omarion (13) had less success but still finished in the top 24 on the week. The nearly 30 point lead at RB was cut thanks to some MBC duds and long JNT TDs. Jayden Daniels (17.14) had a relatively disappointing performance thanks to a strong Commanders run game which also resulted in a Zach Ertz goose. George Pickens (13.7) was quiet outside of a 43 yard TD, however Ladd McConkey (14.9) put up a season best performance, restoring hopes the second year WR hasn’t been completely reduced to oblivion. For JNT, Spencer Rattler (16.1) salvaged a decent day thanks to an 80+ yard toss to Rashid Shaheed, and Jaylen Waddle (23) took advantage of Tyreek’s absence with a 46 yard TD with under 5 minutes left in the game. After the late games, JNT just needed 3 points from Drake Maye on Sunday night. Maye didn’t throw any TDs, but eventually mustered up the necessary yardage on the final drive of the first half.

MAZDA-3 Marvin (143.56) staved off Mrs Goff (132.58) Mrs Goff was off to a hot start on TNF with Kyren Williams (31.1) catching a pair of TDs. M3M answered with 27.9 points of their own from CMC, who has yet to score a rushing TD this year (3 receiving), and Mac Jones (22.18) who exceeded everyone’s expectations with 342 passing yards. Mrs Goff’s namesake stack decimated the Bengals to the tune of 38 combined points, while CJ Stroud (28.76) blew up what seems to be the worst defense in the league in the Ravens. The Ravens are allowing an average of over 40 points per game through five games. The worst defense in history allowed just over 33 points per game… I can only imagine what Puka is about to do to that secondary next week. In that same game without Lamar, Derrick Henry (9.3) for M3M couldn’t get going and saved the day with a TD. M3M also narrowly missed out on a long TD by MHJ (13.8) who was dragged down at the 1 yard line after Mossing a pair of defenders. Mrs Goff got more production from Tre Tucker (11.1) than he did last week, but decided to start 4 catch, zero yard Malik Washington (4) hoping he would get a boost from the Tyreek injury. This matchup was relatively close heading into Sunday night football with plenty of players on both sides. M3M quickly pulled away in this matchup thanks to underperformances from Mrs Goff’s James Cook (4.9) and Hunter Henry (6.6), top five at their positions entering the week.

Token Female (179.38) bitch-slapped (is that misogynistic?) Team Jeff (131.66). Team Jeff tried in this one, but was never close. Token Female’s lowest scorer was Cam Skattebo (14.4). The Colts DST (16) smacked around the Raiders including injuring their punter on a blocked punt and only allowing six points. Puka (24.5) wasn’t even her highest scoring WR thanks to the shootout between the Seahawks (JSN; 27.2) and the Buccaneers. Even old man Kelce (19.1) had a strong showing on the week despite losing to the Jags on Monday night. Token Female’s “everything is going right for me” theme was epitomized at the end of the Monday night game. Trevor Lawrence and the Jaguars were down 4 points to the Chiefs with less than 2 minutes left. T-law moved the ball to the redzone with a pair of deep passes to BTJ and Dyami Brown with over 50 seconds still on the game clock. Good clock management (at least relative to most teams, stares at Cardinals) paired with Chiefs’ penalties led to a first and goal with ~28 seconds remaining. T-law takes the snap and is stepped on by his lineman, falling down immediately. Panicked, T-law gets up and looks to huck the ball out of the back of the endzone, but there were no defenders within three yards of him still. Lawrence looked right then left and couldn’t believe his luck as he scampered into the endzone for the game winning score and adding to Token Female’s solid week.

Too Many Bengals (149.58) finally found the win column against Hamas Rockets (127.98). The Rockets benefitted from a second consecutive top game from Matthew Stafford (25.56), but were backed into some tough starts thanks to their trio of Falcons enjoying their bye week. At WR, Chris Godwin (5.6) is still ramping up from his injury last year and saw only 4 targets compared to last week’s promising 10 targets. RB has predictably thinned out leading the Rockets to go with Tyjae Spears (1.4) in his first game since injuring his ankle in the first preseason game. To be fair, no RBs on waivers scored more than 10 points this week. TMB meanwhile continues to enjoy the rare successful QB, RB stack of Prescott (28.28) and Javonte (26.9). Also backed into bye week starts, TMB rolled with Dillon Gabriel’s (16.1) expectation-exceeding first career start. The story of TMB’s week though was rewarded faith in Ja’Marr Chase (29) who had a pair of garbage time TDs regardless of their misplaced faith in Chase Brown (11.8) over 27 point Bill Croskey on the bench. Chase Brown has a historically low yards per carry. Of 246 players in the last decade with at least as many carries as Brown, he has the 246th most rushing yards (credit the Fantasy Footballers). Hamas Rockets had their own garbage time score with Garrett Wilson (19.1) and even got a passing TD from David Montgomery (18.22). This matchup was wrapped up by the end of the late window after the monster Chase performance.

$81k team (120.16) walked away victorious over LamaRB1-less Funky Bunch (103.42) in this week’s toilet bowl. Credit to both teams, however, for both cracking 100 points. Mike’s Geno Smith (7.92) Jakobi (7.2) stack did not impress especially in a game where the Raiders fell behind early. Meyers’ first two games led to 10 and 12 targets while he’s averaged about 5 per game since. The Raiders without Bowers may be the worst offense in the league with the same starting QB they entered the year with. The Seahawks must be damn pleased with themselves at the moment. Free agent pickup Michael Carter (18.3) dominated for Mike’s team and Tony Pollard (14.8) put together a solid day in the same game. However, thats where things dried up as Zay Flowers (12.2) cannot have a ceiling game without Lamar, and BTJ (12) still cannot reach last year’s form. $81k Team was also forced into trusting the Ravens offense in Mark Andrews (4.2) with Brock Bowers wisely taking time away from the Raiders’ stench. Interestingly, Steve decided to start both Charbonet (11.8) and KW3 (9.6). The good news is he gets all of the Seattle backfield’s points. The bad news is that means he leaves Kareem “2 TD” Hunt (18.7) on the bench. $81k Team finally had some offensive production out of the Dolphins in Tua (22.74) and Achane (16.6) while also hitting the homerun ball with Shaheed (21.4). Josh Allen (20.42) brought this one home for $81k Team Sunday night despite a tough loss to the Pats. Heading into Monday night, Mike needed 29 points from BTJ, a mark he hit only once last year, and one he didn’t even sniff on Monday.

Some Whiffs Here and There (136.46) squeaked out a win against Team Tendonitis (134.22). Team Tendonitis kicked off the scoring Thursday with another solid outing from Davante Adams (13.8). Team Tendonitis’s steal of the draft in Emeka Egbuka (31.3) dominated the Seattle secondary. Luckily for SWHT, Baker Mayfield (26.66) helped to offset the rookie’s 150+ yards. In the same game Cooper Kupp (11.9) kept the chains moving for the Seahawks, but it was against SWHT’s own Buc’s DST who were thrashed for -4 points. At the same time, Team Tendonitis rolled with the Seahawk’s defense to the tune of -5 points. SWHT has their own draft gem in 3rd round pick Jonathan Taylor (31.6) who picked up a trio of TDs for a league-leading 7 through 5 weeks. Things were looking well in hand for SWHT early in the Sunday night game with a first quarter fumble from Team Tendonitis’s Rhamondre Stevenson. Stevenson, however, returned to the game to score a pair of rushing TDs and finish with 14.7 points. Things still seemed out of reach until Xavier Worthy popped up on the injury report late. Worthy did end up playing, but Team Tendonitis’s Mahomes continued to show off the wheels with over 60 rushing yards, a rushing TD, and 27.72 points. Mahomes’ performance brought Team Tendonitis all the way back, breathing down SWHT’s neck with a pair of redzone possessions in the 4th quarter. Unfortunately for Team Tendonitis, both possessions ended in Kareem Hunt rushing TDs, no points for Mahomes, and a second consecutive loss for Team Tendonitis.

Predictions

ESPN predictions and me both went 4-2 last week. I’m 16-14, and ESPN is 20-10. This week’s winners according to ESPN are: Mrs Goff, LamaRB1 and the Funky Bunch, Team Tendonitis, Hamas Rockets, Token Female, and MBC. Honestly, I’m not even picking myself to win this week with my top four draft picks on bye or injured. I’ll take Team Jeff, Too Many Bengals, Some Whiffs Here and There, and Mazda-3 Marvin. Either going to catchup to ESPN predictions or fall quite far behind.

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