News:

This is one of those weeks where there’s a lot of overlap between our league news and NFL news, with the QB injuries making headlines. The Burrow injury casts the longest shadow in fantasy right now with what most are calling a “fantasy season ending” timeline for recovery.

Slightly more mysterious and less significant are injuries to Purdy and McCarthy. Initial reports were that the Purdy injury was looking like multiple weeks but now it sounds like they may be backpedalling on that. McCarthy’s situation is muddied by rumours he may be missing starts partially due to injury but also partially due to his play weeks one and two.

Fantasy wise, it’s hard to know what to do in 2025 because the main two time-honoured strategies for QB seem to carry plenty of risks. The modern “dual threat” QB has always had elevated injury risk but increasingly, we’re seeing pocket passers with Swiss cheese o-lines aren’t really any better off. I wonder if we’ll see the day where we’re streaming QBs week to week like kickers?

Random thought of the week:

In RB land, it’s a case of the more things change, the more they stay the same. 2025 brought in a nice new crop of highly drafted rookies, many of which were ranked in the top 60 fantasy wise. Once the actual games start, you can predict some will quickly secure “feature back” status but you can also predict some will find out that in real football, trusted veterans can be valued as much (if not more) than fresh legs and sparkling college resumes. Lastly, some will get tarnished early with the “bust” label and a few of those will actually go on to earn it. For now? It’s early and it’s still all a muddle.

Shark move of the week:

A collective honourable mention goes to anyone who decided the Lions offense probably wasn’t imploding this year after their shaky Week 1 start. It’s still super early but I’d still like to give honourable mention to some candidates for the “Puka Nacua Award”, the rookies (and their fantasy managers) who already look the part. Archie seems to have read the tea leaves in Jax correctly with Bhayshul Tuten and his “Khamun” effect on the offense. Emeka “Em ‘n Egs” Egbuka and Tet McMillan fit the description as well.

The winner this week though is more of an “Alvin Kamara (I’m Not Dead Yet) Award”, which goes to Grid for Deebo Samuel. Lots of people were sticking a fork in this guy (at his pre-draft ADP, myself included) but it appears reports of his pre-retirement victory lap were greatly exaggerated. He’s not going to find the end zone every week but the rest of what he did Week 1 and 2, he can absolutely do every single week. Anyone else want a guy with a 15 point weekly floor and a 30 point ceiling? I know I do.

Guppy award of the week:

This is more food for thought than anything but here’s an observation: I’m the last person to put much stock in “advice” provided by our gracious site host Yahoo but when I was looking at our Week 2 results for head-scratching decisions, I noticed that with rare exception, players with red match-ups (green vs. grey vs. red) tended to have poor fantasy results. The few players that posted good results despite red match-ups, were consensus “studs” – in other words, guys who are featured and get their volume no matter what. Something to think about…

Smack talk award of the week:

It was a fairly quiet week in the chat room, what with Ceilidh being away in Scotland but I do think Ken succinctly said what many are thinking. If someone were to ask me if I enjoy fantasy football, I would probably say yes. If they were to ask me why, the answer would likely vary day to day and certainly there would be days I couldn’t come up with anything at all. Some Sundays it’s akin to being asked if you like Costco…

Welcome to fantasy football hell award of the week:

Plenty of contestants in the gong show this week. Scott has to be wondering if Drake London’s face is on a milk carton and he may be wondering if Derrick Henry was out looking for him on Sunday. Ken is certainly wondering how the Bengals managed to score 31 points with a backup QB and seemingly without the need for much help from Chase Brown. I suspect he’s also wondering why Josh Allen picked the same week to have one of his Trent Dilfer games.

Those are worthy candidates but I think I need to focus on two other candidates who were actually facing off in Week 2. Who is more worthy? The manager who is up against an injured Burrow, yet still cannot pull out the victory or the manager who gets the consolation prize of a weekly win yet loses Burrow, likely for the fantasy season? Considering Brandon’s QB played the entire game and couldn’t outscore Burrow, I’m kinda leaning in that direction.