Tag: Fantasy football risers and fallers

Week 13 had the chance to be a separation week for a lot of playoff contenders, but instead has created a logjam that will likely have an inordinate number of teams still in contention as the season winds down.

In the AFC, only three teams (New York Jets, Tennessee and New England) aren’t either in a playoff spot or within two games of a berth. Four teams are 7-5, three are 6-6, and two are 5-7. In the NFC, only three teams aren’t within two games of a playoff spot (Washington, Arizona and Carolina) with five teams at 6-6, two at 5-7, and two at 4-8.

The good news for those looking to nail down a fantasy championship, a lot more teams than usual will have a legitimate shot at making the playoffs and will continue putting their best foot forward until they’re mathematically eliminated.

Every season brings surprises that weren’t necessarily expected from where fantasy players were drafted. Not many would have guessed that Sam Howell and C.J. Stroud would be No. 1 and No. 2, respectively, in passing yards heading into December. Few would have projected that the top 10 rushers in the league 12 weeks into the season would include Raheem Mostert (No. 2), D’Andre Swift (No. 4), James Cook (No. 6), Travis Etienne (No. 7) and Zack Moss (No. 10).

But when it comes to receiving yards, the script hasn’t changed. The wide receivers expected to be at or near the top of the charts were picked high because they’ve been there before. Of the top 12 in receiving yards, only Puka Nacua is a surprise. The other top guys were drafted as top guys – Tyreek Hill, Keenan Allen, CeeDee Lamb, A.J. Brown, Amon-Ra St. Brown, Stefon Diggs, Ja’Marr Chase, DJ Moore, Brandon Aiyuk, Mike Evans and Davante Adams.

As you prepare next year for your fantasy football draft, keep it in the back of your mind that receivers are much more predictable than quarterbacks and running backs for top-end value – and should be ranked as such.

The NFL gets accused of stomping on the holidays and this year that argument holds a lot of water – as both Thanksgiving and Christmas will become all-NFL-all-the-time casualties.

There was a time when Thanksgiving meant the Detroit Lions early, the Dallas Cowboys late and men in stretch pants sleeping on the couch at 7 p.m. Now, there are three Thanksgiving Day games, the first “Black Friday” game, and the slate on Sunday and Monday. Christmas falls on a Monday this year, and the NFL has doubled down.

In Week 16, there will be a game on Thursday, two on Saturday, the regular slate on Sunday and three on Christmas Day. While this is a little unseemly for having family get-togethers with hardcore fans in the house, it creates a unique scenario in which if you are heavily invested (or your opponent is) in early games, you can make chess-like roster moves during the fantasy playoffs at multiple times to bolster your roster and swing for the fences. Nobody is complaining yet. Wait until someone gets greased because of Monday roster change that helped negate a quarterback. Happy holidays, everybody.

Quarterbacks always make headlines in the NFL, but what wide receivers have accomplished so far this season has been amazing. It seems like history is made every week, and it has been spread throughout the league.

Tyreek Hill topped 1,000 receiving yards in eight games. A.J. Brown had six straight games with more than 125 receiving yards. In the eight games he has played, Amon-Ra St. Brown has either 100 yards, a touchdown or both. Michael Pittman Jr. has caught eight or more passes in seven of 10 games. In the four games without Cooper Kupp, rookie Puka Nacua caught 39 passes for 501 yards.

This year more than most, the biggest headline in fantasy football hasn’t been about the quarterbacks, it’s been about the weekly back-breaking performances by wide receivers.

There are some weeks that are worse than others as it pertains to bye weeks. Depending on how invested you or your Week 10 opponents are in specific teams, it can be argued this is the most gut-wrenching loss of talent of any bye week of 2023.

The four teams sitting next weekend are the Kansas City Chiefs, Miami Dolphins, Philadelphia Eagles and Los Angeles Rams. It’s one thing to have players on your roster. It’s another to have them in your starting lineup.

Unavailable this week will be quarterbacks Patrick Mahomes, Jalen Hurts, Tua Tagovailoa and Matthew Stafford. So are running backs Isiah Pacheco, Raheem Mostert and D’Andre Swift. Also gone are wide receivers Tyreek Hill, Jaylen Waddle, A.J. Brown, DeVonta Smith, Cooper Kupp and Puka Nacua. So are tight ends Travis Kelce and Dallas Goedert (for a while). So are their kickers and defenses.

A lot of guys who have been in fantasy football lineups every week are down in Week 10. Roster depth will be tested, because it would hard for any fantasy team not to have a taste of one or more them. Hopefully your crippling is minimal.

Week 8 showed us once again how an injury to a quarterback can have a ripple effect. The Minnesota Vikings lost Kirk Cousins for the season with a torn Achilles. With a lot of uncertainty about his replacement, even after Minnesota acquired Joshua Dobbs, the value of all Vikings fantasy players take a huge hit – from Justin Jefferson and T.J. Hockenson on down.

The same was true with the New York Jets in Week 1. For the first time in years, a slew of Jets players ended up on fantasy rosters on draft day – only to see their weekly value bottom out when Aaron Rodgers went down.

Quarterbacks last longer in fantasy drafts than their value indicates, because so many of them are equally productive from week-to-week. But when you lose one, the ripple effect on the rest of the offense can be devastating.

Parity has been running rampant in the NFL the last couple of weeks, and it has had an impact on fantasy rosters.

In Week 6, only three of the 30 teams playing scored more than 24 points in one of the lowest-scoring weeks in the modern era of the NFL. The week also saw the last two unbeaten teams (Philadelphia and San Francisco) lose.

In Week 7, strange things continued. In the 10 games played Sunday afternoon, six of them were won by the team with the worse record in the matchup. This included three 1-5 teams (New England, Chicago and the New York Giants) getting their second win of the season – all against teams that came in with a record of .500 or better. The trend continued Monday with Minnesota beating the 5-1 San Francisco 49ers.

Just when you think you have the 2023 season figured out, the NFL proves that you should expect the unexpected.

Back in the old days of fantasy football, the touchdown was king. Yardage wasn’t measured in the tenth of a point. PPR wasn’t a thing. You accrued yardage juice (if any) in increments of 25 or 50 yards.

Touchdowns are no longer the primary measuring stick, which was a good thing in Week 6. Of the 15 games played, if you bet the Under on every game, you went 13-2.

Ten teams won while scoring 21 or fewer points, and only three teams scored more than 24 points (and one had 26). The point totals from top to bottom were 63, 57, 40, 40, 38, 37, 36, 35, 34, 33, 32, 30, 27, 26 and 23.

In the modern era of the NFL, we have never seen this – nor will we again. Here’s to hoping your fantasy team won with a season-low point total.