The Football Diaries: Week 11
This week on FanDuel I changed my GPP play up a bit and I rolled out seven different lineups into various tournaments.
The tournaments ranged from the $200 Monster to the $2 FFFC qualifier. I am kind of burnt out on making the 50-100 rosters a week that I was doing between the two major sites while chasing the million-dollar contests.
Listed below is a breakdown of my seven rosters and how many times I played each player.
Player Analysis
Robert Griffin III – I really don’t know what happened to him Sunday. Even more than that, I really don’t know why I was so high on him. Griffin III hasn’t done anything in two years. It was Tampa Bay and their putrid secondary for crying out loud. Tampa is bad, RG3 seemed to be getting healthy, and everything was shaping up for a solid game. I got Lee Corso’ed – “Not so fast my friend”. Griffin isn’t a good QB. He’s in the wrong system and just doesn’t have confidence. I’m off this train for the remainder of 2014…unless a great matchup comes along down the road.
Alfred Blue – When word came down that Arian Foster was out, Blue became an instant play for me. He is not a spectacular RB, but he can be solid. I knew he could eat up some points against that Browns rushing defense. I didn’t expect 35+ carries, but he needed every bit of those carries to make up for the multiple times he was vultered in the red zone.
Mark Ingram – Yeah, what happened here? I, along with everyone else, expected a huge game from Ingram against a terrible run defense. Ingram had been hot lately. It is rather shocking that the Saints got down so much in this game, in turn really ruining the game flow for Ingram. I believe his bad day was more of a product of that game flow than him being actually performing poorly. More on the Saints later.
Vincent Jackson – That loud noise you here is the giant buzzer going off. The buzzer that the idiots get on Family Feud when they give a goofball answer that didn’t make the survey. It’s the same buzzer I get when I choose Vincent Jackson over Mike Evans. This, seemingly easy, choice is the difference between cashing handsomely in tournaments and not cashing at all. My thinking is that I find it hard to believe VJAX suddenly lost his talent. I still believe that he’ll post a monster game soon. However, at this point, McCown seems to have been instructed to get the ball to Evans. Now I’m left in the conundrum, because it’s too late to jump on the Evans train, as he will be hard-pressed to keep making these huge scores, but I can’t turn back to VJAX again, as he is a black hole on a roster. Next week should be interesting, as the Bucs are again in a favorable matchup.
Keenan Allen – It’s not that I loved Keenan Allen so much that I just needed to put him on three teams. It’s more that as I tried to roster Gronk and Jimmy Graham, it became apparent that sacrifices needed to be made. It’s tough to afford those guys. Allen had potential and sat at a solid price. He’s been pretty average/below average this year, and he needs the perfect matchup to make my radar again.
Brandin Cooks – Now, about those Saints. If there is one thing history has shown us, it’s that Drew Brees is a fantasy machine at home. Everything pointed towards a big output for the Saints offense in the Dome. So, I felt it was a good idea to grab some of these guys. I’ve seen the games in which the Saints start rolling at home and drop a 40-burger on their opponent – similar to what Green Bay is doing now. You can win GPPs by stacking teams like this at home. This, however, isn’t your dad’s Saints team. This version of the team is really struggling to reach the levels they have been at in years past. I guess it doesn’t help that Cooks is now injured and potentially out for multiple weeks.
Rob Gronkowski – He was the obvious and overwhelming TE1 for the weekend in my eyes and for most other fantasy players out there. He had the dreamy matchup with the Colts, and he has been looking healthy lately. I think we are all surprised he didn’t do more with it. The late TD salvaged Gronk’s day. Now, in hindsight, it would have been far better for me if he had not scored that. Once he did, the non-Gronk teams I had that were cashing fell out of the money, and the Gronk teams I had didn’t move up enough to cash, seeing as how 39% or so had him. I just couldn’t leap frog enough people with that TD.
Travis Kelce – They call him Zeus. The Greek god of TEs. He’s been referred to as a Weapon of Mass Destruction. Ha. The only destructing he does these days is on your DFS lineup when you roster him. He showed up on my radar when Fasano got hurt and I thought he would be more involved in the game plan. Wrong again. All he did was drive down my shares of Gronk. Throw out the New England game and he hasn’t topped four receptions this year. He hasn’t even sniffed 100 yards. Be wary of these hype machines like Kelce (and Justin Hunter etc..) – they will explode for one or two weeks out of the year, but constantly rostering them is a losing proposition.