The scoring has returned! After three consecutive weeks of below-average scoring, Week 9 was a big scoring week with three teams over 100 (over 120, actually!) leading to 940 points scored league-wide. The previous three weeks only had 751, 802 and 815 points scored. Chief Dredd won their game to maintain the league’s best record at 6-2-1. Tip Toeing, Wyld Ass Monkeys, and Scottish Rebels also won, moving their records to 6-3, tied for second best. J LUV U LONG TIME and American BadAss lost their games, giving them only 1 win and 2 wins, respectively. All the rest of the teams are within 1-3 games of the leaders, so still a lot to be settled!
The big congratulations this week go to Timmy’s Chief
Dredd, leading all scorers with a 139-98 victory over sprouts. Tim’s big performers were C.J. Stroud (38 pts),
plus 52 points from his wide receivers (Ceedee Lamb and Christian Watson with
26 each) and 19 points from Christian McCaffrey. This was the highest single week score this
season, topping the 136 scored in Week 4.
This was also Timmy’s second Weekly High Score this season, to go along
with Week 2. Nice work Tim-may!!
In this week’s edition, we take a look back at the draft
to see which picks have worked out and what has changed since then. Also, we give out a Best Bench to a team who
hasn’t claimed one in over two seasons!
Let’s do this…
BIG TIME
- Jordan Love, QB – Tip Toeing – 38 pts – Love was about as perfect as you can get for a QB… 372 passing yards (only 6 incompletions), 0 interceptions, 3 passing TDs plus 13 rushing yards and a rushing TD! He also ran in a 2 point conversion, just an all-around amazing day. Love now ranks 3rd among QBs in fantasy scoring.
- C.J. Stroud, QB – Chief Dredd – 38 pts – Stroud was almost as perfect, throwing for 384 yards and 5 TDs (!!), but unfortunately having 1 interception. This was really a standout performance for Stroud as he outdid his previous best weekly total by 16 points (he scored 22 points back in Week 6).
- Kenneth Walker III, RB – Joe’s Pats – 32 pts – The point monster is back! After a couple rough weeks KW3 was back with his third 30+ point performance of the season, absolutely going off for 102 yards rushing, 41 yards receiving and 3 combined TDs!
- Joe Burrow, QB – sprouts – 28 pts – Burrow has not scored fewer than 22 points in a single week since Week 2. Since that point he is averaging—AVERAGING—28 points per game. Because of that incredible run, he is now the leading scorer in fantasy with 200 points scored on the season.
- Christian Watson, WR – Chief Dredd – 26 pts – This is Watson’s third 26-point game this season, and moves him to 3rd among wide receivers.
- CeeDee Lamb, WR – Chief Dredd – 26 pts – What a receiving corps for Timmy! CeeDee was huge this week catching a whopping 10 passes for 195 yards and a TD.
COME ON, MAN!
- Ashton Jeanty, RB – Wyld Ass Monkeys – 2 pts – Jeanty’s stat line is as weird as it is hilarious… he rushed 6 times for 25 yards and also caught 5 passes for negative five yards. Five catches for negative yardage. What the hell? How do you even do that?! I mean five incompletions would have been better. Why even bother catching it? Sheesh.
- Zay Flowers, WR – American BadAss – 1 pt – Flowers is a wide receiver, but he scored no points catching the ball this week. His sole point came from his 3 rushing attempts, where he gained 17 yards. Catching passes from the backup to the backup quarterback does not bode well for Flowers’ outlook.
- Mike Gesicki, TE – American BadAss – 1 pt – Gesicki had scored a touchdown every week for the last 5 weeks, but failed to extend that streak or to do much of anything else. He finished with just 11 yards on 2 catches.
- Tucker Kraft, TE – Big Sack No TDs – 0 pts – He literally caught a pass for a yard.
DRAFT LOOKBACK AFTER 9 WEEKS
Nine weeks is enough time to get a pretty good idea of
which draft picks have worked out and which haven't, and gives us a perfect
time to look back at the draft to see what should’ve been, what could’ve been,
and what has changed.
By NFL team –
In looking back to the draft, all 32 NFL teams were
represented and all 32 teams are still represented now, although the
composition has shifted considerably. On
the gaining side, the Bengals, Panthers, Vikings and Saints each gained +3 more
players on rosters. On the losing side,
the Chargers and Eagles both are -4 (both had 6 players drafted and now only
have 2 rostered), and the Ravens are -3 (went from 6 to 3).
By Sacred Sunday team –
In terms of individual team composition, American BadAss
and Chief Dredd have both replaced 7 players which is the most turnover of any
team. On the other side, J LUV U LONG
TIME and Tip Toeing have the fewest changes to their original roster with only three
apiece. Here is the full list of all the
teams:
Interestingly, the amount of roster turnover doesn't seem
to have much correlation with success. American BadAss and Chief Dredd have
each replaced seven players, yet Chief Dredd sits atop the standings at 6-2-1
while American BadAss is near the bottom at 2-6-1. Meanwhile, the two teams with the fewest
changes, J LUV U LONG TIME and Tip Toeing, are sitting at 1-7-1 and 6-3,
respectively. So apparently changing
your roster works, unless it doesn't. Or
sticking with your original draft picks is the way to go, until it isn’t.
Here are a few more quick hits on roster comparisons:
- Of the original players drafted, 99 remain with their original owners.
- Twelve players are not on their originally drafted team. Considering there have been no trades this season, it means twelve players were dropped but then picked up by a different team.
- Thirty-nine players drafted have been dropped and are currently free agents.
- Here’s a weird one: Jake Bates (K) was drafted by Joe’s Pats but is now on Scottish Rebels. Cam Little (K) was drafted by Scottish Rebels but is now on Joe’s Pats. So essentially Joe and I traded kickers without actually doing a trade.
- Kickers have seen 60% turnover…only 4 of the original 10 drafted are still with their original team.
- Defenses have seen 46% turnover, with 7 of the original 13 drafted still with their original team.
By individual player –
In order to assess the actual quality of the draft pick,
I’ve assigned each player a “Draft Value”.
This is the player’s weekly scoring average multiplied by nine (the
number of weeks played so far), and then adding the round in which they were
drafted. This adjusts for bye weeks and gives
a small bonus to players drafted in later rounds.
Using this formula, the player with the highest Draft
Value is Joe Burrow, QB, at a score of 230.
He was drafted in the 5th round and is currently the highest
scoring player in fantasy. Second and
third are Josh Allen, QB (219.3) and Jahmyr Gibbs, RB (201.3), both of whom
were first-round keepers.
Other runningbacks scoring high on draft value were Kenneth Walker III (193.3) drafted in the 2nd round by Joe's Pats and currently the 2nd highest scoring back, along with James Cook III (152.6) a third-round keeper of J LUV U LONG TIME.
Among wide receivers, the highest value is Jaxon Smith-Njigba
(166) who was a 4th round keeper for sprouts. Following him are CeeDee Lamb (139) and
Christian Watson (133), both picks by Chief Dredd in the 2nd and 6th
rounds.
The best tight end value belongs to Isaiah Likely (100.9) drafted in the 12th
round by Wyld Ass Monkeys. The other top
tight ends are Brock Bowers (98) drafted in the 2nd round by J LUV U
LONG TIME and Trey McBride (90) taken in the 3rd by Chief Dredd.
The best defense value is a close one between the Jaguars
(125.6) drafted in the 12th round by Big Sack No TDs, and the Steelers
(125.4) drafted in the 14th by Joe’s Pats. The first defense taken, the Rams, have a draft value of 88 and were selected by sprouts in the 7th round. The only drafted defenses with a lower value than that are Chargers (71.3), Ravens (71) and Eagles (62).
The best kicker value is Spencer Shrader (118) drafted in
the 13th round by American BadAss.
He is followed by Ka’imi Fairbairn (116.6) a 12th round pick
by sprouts, and Jake Bates (105) a 15th round pick by Joe’s Pats.
The most draft value in the final round of the draft is
from Javonte Williams (148) who was a keeper for my Rebels. Across the last three rounds, the player with
the highest draft value is Brock Purdy (195.4) drafted in the 12th
round by J LUV U LONG TIME.
The worst draft value players are harder to judge, but
here are the top four who jump out to me.
Ladd McConkey (40) was drafted in the 4th round by the Wyld
Ass Monkeys but is the 71st ranked receiver. TreVeyon Henderson (30) was picked in the 6th
by J LUV U LONG TIME but ranks as the 58th runningback. Jadarian
Price (22) was drafted in the 5th round by American BadAss but has
only scored 17 points and is the 72nd ranked running back. And at the bottom is A.J Brown (10) who was
selected in the 2nd round by Unlucky Irish and to date has scored only
8 points, ranking him as 132nd among receivers.
WORST FANTASY PERFORMANCE THIS SEASON (so far)
On Monday we were all treated to a truly horrific fantasy performance from Carson Wentz. His stat line finished with 8 of 25 passes for 81 yards, no touchdowns, two interceptions and a lost fumble. All added up to -3 fantasy points, which is the lowest we've seen from a single player all season. And get this, his Passer Rating for the game was 8.9, which is the lowest Passer Rating since Sam Darnold had a 3.6 rating game against the Patriots in 2019. To put it in perspective, if a quarterback simply threw all incompletions (up to 100 straight incompletions), and did nothing else, he would finish with a Passer Rating of 39.6.
BEST BENCH
Line-up management was strong this week, as the average
bench improvement possibility was just 9.4.
Only three teams had double-digit improvement possibilities, and the
winner this week had the lowest bench improvement this season, which
also tied last season's lowest score as well.
With a very manageable 21-point improvement possibility, the Week 9 Best
Bench goes to… the Wyld Ass Monkeys!
Rob needed just three roster moves to get there: L.
Burden III for M. Nabers +9, 49ers for Lions +8 and A. Kamara for J. Jacobs
+4. The amazing thing about this is this
is Rob’s first Best Bench since Week 7, 2024!
Rob had avoided the dubious distinction for 35 weeks, and had the
longest running streak without a Best Bench.
That was a helluva run, Rob! This
now marks seven different teams who have gotten a Best Bench this season, so
there are still three hanging on…
Get those waiver claims in and get your rosters ready for
Week 10!
