The Football Diaries: Week 12
This week I played limited contests around the industry, because I was traveling for the Playboy tournament in Los Angeles. I wanted to focus more on that tournament and therefore didn’t have the necessary time to put into other contests.
Here is a breakdown of that team and the mindset which led me to each player.
Playboy Team
Blake Bortles – I know people say they make last minute switches all the time and most times it doesn’t work out, but this pick was literally a last-seven-second switch. All week long I debated between Andrew Luck and Brian Hoyer. If I was going to go the cheap QB route, it was going to be Hoyer. Midway through the week, I was 90% sold that I was using Luck here as my QB. Bortles was never on my radar. Then Sunday morning things went haywire. In a late, furious attempt to get Josh Gordon on my team, I needed to go cheap at QB. Hoyer was $100 too much for the team I had in place, and I didn’t want to switch any of my other picks (which I’ll get into later), so I looked for the next option down that I thought could make value. It fell on Bortles, whom I thought could play in catch-up mode and get garbage time stats. In addition, something else I had debated during the week was how much good the bye week did for him. So, that was in my mind also.
LeSean McCoy – Shady was a staple on this team all week. I never wavered on him. The matchup was solid and his upside was big, even though he hasn’t shown a ton of production this year.
Tre Mason – In this price range, I initially had thoughts of playing Trent Richardson or Isaiah Crowell. Then midweek I heard an RG team member speaking about how he liked Mason this week and he made valid points, so I kind of fell in love with the pick against the Chargers. He was fair, but could have had a really nice day if he could have capitalized on a couple of inside the 5-yard line opportunities. Instead, I saw a shovel pass to Tavon Austin. That is pretty infuriating when it happens.
Cecil Shorts – Cecil Shorts the third was my go-to WR this week. He was locked in from the beginning and never was coming off. My thoughts: he had a bye week to get healthy, had garbage time all game, there was no Allen Robinson, he avoids Vontae Davis, and he could easily see 15 targets. Epic, epic fail and I’ll leave it at that.
T.Y. Hilton – Initially I was going to double stack Luck with T.Y. Hilton and Coby Fleener. I got off that thought by Wednesday, when I knew I wanted Julio Jones in my lineup and couldn’t afford both him AND Hilton. Sitting there on Sunday morning, I heard about T.Y. having a child the night before and how he wanted to score a TD for her. I figured Andrew Luck would be able to do what he wanted in this game and that if he wanted to feed T.Y., then Jacksonville really couldn’t do anything about it. So, he became a must play in my mind. Then there was the issue with him not being at the stadium close to kickoff, and I was losing my mind until I read he was finally there and ready to play. That was a hectic three minutes.
Josh Gordon – I was on Josh Gordon all week, but then I read the 2-30 snap count tidbit from Adam Schefter and I got him out. I built a team that excluded Gordon, but still had Luck and Fleener and was all prepared to roll with it. Then Jay Glazer says they are going to “unleash Josh Gordon” and I went straight to my lineup and made room for him. That’s all I needed to hear. The trickle-down effect, though, was bad. I had to make a ton of moves that resulted in playing Bortles so that I could squeeze T.Y. and Gordon on the team and also upgrade from Fleener.
Rob Gronkowski – The upgrade from Fleener that Bortles allowed me was Gronk. He was, by far, the best tight end in this slate with Graham not included in the player pool and Julius Thomas being hurt.
Philadelphia Eagles – This was my #1 defense all week in terms of TD potential. Facing a rookie QB at home in a cold environment, and having Sproles as a return weapon, made the Eagles an easy pick for me.