News:

We have officially entered our regular season’s second half and so far, Archie and Dan are doing their best to separate from the rest of the pack. In other league news, Jay picked Week 8 to finally get off the schneid courtesy of Brian and Tee Higgins. We also seem to be entering trading season, with a few significant deals taking place in the past few days. I realize patience is not always a virtue but we’ll have to wait and see if these are course correcting moves or a bit of panic button pushing.

Random Thought of the Week:

The Jets and Texans are kicking things off for us this week and it would seem to me that the Jets might be getting ready to do some panic button pushing of their own if they can’t figure things out tonight. AROD got the band back together but the music ain’t sounding too sweet so far. He also (probably) got his coach fired and I’m not saying that will cause the unravelling but it sure looks like the threads are exposed and all it will take is a sharp tug by Houston tonight. You have to wonder what will happen if the totally not eccentric Rodgers drops to 2 – 7.

Shark Move of the Week:

The closest thing we had to a close match this week was Grid vs. The Champ and it would seem to me the contest came down to Grid betting pretty heavily on the Bills’ offense playing in Seattle, which ended up paying off nicely. Of course I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the Cade Otton pickup and immediate start, which is the fantasy equivalent to a scoop ‘n score. Nicely done Grid!

Guppy Move of the Week:

I’m going to call my own number this week. Some Sundays you get a feeling. Maybe a word forms in your Alpha Bits cereal or you hear a certain song on the radio. Whatever the reason you run to your line-up at the last minute and make a change. Those aren’t going too well for me this year, as my feelings about McMillan and then later doubling down with DHop proved that you shouldn’t take fantasy advice from breakfast food.

Smack Talk Award of the Week:

It’s been awhile I think since the Piper has taken the smack talk award but he gets back in the win column this week for managing to chirp both Brian and Neil by connecting the Trey Sermon sermon of Effective Managerial Strategies. To be honest, I’m kinda interested in attending one of these myself – provided Doug is not the one delivering it.

Welcome to Fantasy Football Hell Award of the Week:

Another week of football, another refrain of “injuries suck”. We lost Stefon Diggs and Christian Kirk (not that Kirk was necessarily a huge fantasy loss). Anthony Richardson has been benched and to say “That’s not ideal” would be an understatement.

For this week though, I want to circle back and acknowledge our collective longer term IR “holds” and specifically, wonder out loud when some of these players we expect back will actually be back? Things have been pretty quiet with McCaffrey and although he may practice next week, “may practice” isn’t much of a timeline when you’re waiting for the cavalry to arrive. Pacheco was supposed to be 6 – 8 weeks but that situation has been really quiet too. Maybe Hunt has something to do with that?

We also seem to be seeing a trend (if it can be called that) towards teams taking very different approaches to injuries, IRs and injury statuses. Some players seem to come off the IR and head straight to the field. Others head to practice and some of those practice all week and then get deactivated on Sunday (Jags in particular come to mind). It’s a lot to track and manage, especially when you’re facing guys in Sunday and Monday night games because once those line-up decisions are made, there’s usually no going back.

I think IR spots have been a benefit overall but they can also be spots that get “clogged” just like any other.