News:

The distribution curve of wins and losses in Clan McDonald is going to make for an interesting finish to our fantasy regular season. We have eight teams above .500 and while every season is different, I tentatively predict it will take at least eight wins to have a reasonable shot at the play-offs. The time to take stock is now, to assess what you need to do over the next five weeks to be part of that conversation.

To that end, an early reminder our league’s trade deadline is Nov 22nd. That seems a little late to me for some reason but it probably isn’t.

Random thought of the week:

In isolation, Week 9 was a week like any other but when you first have to watch the Jays’ hopes and dreams come to an end on Saturday night and then watch your fantasy team lay there like a dead skunk on the highway on Sunday, it sort of rolls up into a pretty demoralizing weekend of sports entertainment. At least there were lots of leaves to rake and mulch… oh wait.

Shark move of the week:

Honourable mention goes to AOB this week for deftly changing lanes from Bo Nix to Caleb Williams. I know the Bungals are giving it up pretty easy these days but I don’t know how you foresee an 89 point demonstration of whatever you’d call that game. Nicely done though!

Another nod to young Ayden who decided Brock Bowers was ready for launch his first week off the IR. Three TDs, 12 receptions and 127 yards is pretty “ready” I’d say.

The winner by a nose though is the Piper, who bravely started both Chase and Higgins despite their 41 year old QB being questionable all week with a bad (non-throwing) shoulder. In the fantasy football game of roulette, he pushed in his chips and bet it all on “Flac”.

Guppy move of the week:

Certainly not award worthy but I did raise a Spockian eyebrow at Neil’s decision to go Love over Stafford. I expected them to be closer but the Saints look like a team that’s already starting to make off season travel plans.

Another runner up was Archie, who reminded me of the old saying, “If you have three QBs, you don’t have a QB”. I get it – in a perfect world you have a clear starter and you’re just hoping to catch lightning in a bottle somewhere else when he’s on bye but Tua and Bryce are more like catching stale urine in an empty Canada Cooler bottle on a long bus ride…

Without further ado, I’ve decided to claim the prize myself. It was a difficult choice because my decision not to start Flacco was solely based on health and potential downside. I’m 100% starting a healthy Flacco because he would help neutralize big weeks by Chase and Higgins if that happened but a bad Flacco game would most certainly be bad Chase and Higgins games too. Needless to say, I bet on Sunday being a long day for Joe but it didn’t go down that way.

Smack talk award of the week:

When it comes to smack talk, I’m generally looking at a week more or less the way Yahoo does – Wednesday to Tuesday with a particular emphasis on the Thursday to Monday contributions. The Piper certainly seems to have the early lead for next week’s award (even though I’ll need to spend a bit of time decoding it). For this week, the pickin’s were slim but I’m going to give the nod to Neil who weighed in on his QB situation with a bit of melancholy reflection.

Welcome to fantasy hell award of the week:

QBs always make headlines with injuries and this week we have Stroud in concussion protocol and Jayden Daniels getting his elbow dislocated in a blowout loss. Tucker Kraft appears done for the year as well and after that we have a healthy (pun intended) list of Qs that need to be monitored because they could go either way on game day.

That said, the award this week goes to Brian who appears to have exactly zero healthy QBs heading into Week 10. Maybe he and Archie can work out a trade for a half filled bottle of Canada Cooler or a yellow snow cone?