News:

After 17 seasons you expect for the most part, you’ve “seen it all” in terms of how a season can unfold but with four teams tied at 6 – 3 and another four tied at 5 – 4, I think we are experiencing something a little different. There’s a full five weeks for that to change but with how unpredictable the scoring has been so far, there’s no reason to think the play-off picture won’t remain very murky.

On the NFL side of things, it was certainly a wild week of football. I have mixed feelings about some of these games because on one hand, they are objectively entertaining. Watching Josh Dobbs lead the Vikings to victory before he could even unpack his suitcase was exciting. Watching CJ Stroud set a record for rookie QBs was exciting too but watching some of these teams go up and down the field against each other reminds me a bit of watching Lakers versus Celtic games in the 80s. Can anybody stop anybody? Then intermixed with unstoppable offense, we also have horrible offense. I know teams aren’t averaging 10 sacks per game but when you’re watching, it honestly seems like every other play is a sack, fumble or deflected pass.

I guess the moral of the story is that exciting is good but it isn’t necessarily good football. I mean, it’s cool that Will Levis can throw a football 60 yards but it’s not cool that the Falcons just kept letting DHop run past them to catch it.

Random Thought of the Week:

The subject of good NFL quarterbacks versus good fantasy quarterbacks is interesting and it creates a lot of cognitive dissonance for people (myself included). We’ve been told many times that in fantasy, you should wait to draft a QB. We’ve been told there is always a guy available after the 5th or 6th round that will be almost as good as the great ones and if you can wait even longer, there will be someone almost as good as the good ones for an even lower price. If fantasy football had a “ten commandments”, those bits of wisdom would probably be in it.

We’ve also been told that on a points per game basis, the superstars just aren’t worth the premium (draft) price. Here’s the thing though. We know it yet we don’t believe it and come draft day, many of us have drafted a QB early to lock down a “great one” – often as an antidote to those seasons when we’ve struggled through having a “bad one”.

The trouble is, we believe that Lamar or Fields can almost single-handedly win you a week – and they can – but here we are in Week 10 and CJ Stroud is averaging 4 points per game less than Hurts and Allen – 4 points! He’s averaging more than Mahomes. You know who is averaging 2 points per game less than Stroud (basically the same points per game as Lamar)? Russ frickin’ Wilson. Yes, Russ the worm-burning, sack magnet, the fantasy leper, doomer of seasons past is a top 10 QB right now in fantasy PPG and he was available in the 14th round.

I’ve done this exercise myself and I invite you early QB takers to go back to your draft results and take a quick look at what your team would look like if you’d taken one of the non-QBs that were taken immediately after you drafted your QB. In a lot of cases, that player and Russ Wilson make your fantasy team look a lot better.

Shark Move of the Week:

I’m giving this week’s award to Neil for a couple of reasons – firstly because he seems to have struggled at QB all year long and now has maybe two of them (Stroud and Dobbs) and secondly, because it aligns with my QB thoughts above.

Dobbs is actually a pretty interesting story. He has been kicking around awhile, was a 4th round pick the year he was drafted and has bounced around from team to team as a bit of a plan B, stopgap or backup but he’s actually outlasted a lot of the guys he played behind or competed for jobs with (remember Mason Rudolph?). This year he’s spent most of his season running for his life in Arizona yet he’s still managed to average more fantasy points per game than Burrows and Lawrence. Now he’s in Minny. That could get pretty interesting.

Guppy Move of the Week:

I’ve been here before and looking around our league I see a few others in the same boat. Speaking of metaphorical boats, your fantasy team can feel a lot like being in a sailboat when all of a sudden there just isn’t a breath of wind to be found. You look at your bench or waivers or even trade partners and there just doesn’t seem to be some magic move you can make to salvage the situation.

It’s a bit like watching the Jays this past season. After you’re done saying this guy should be benched and that guy should be moved up in the line-up and that coach should be fired, after you’re done being angry, you finally accept that they just weren’t quite good enough.

When that happens in fantasy, you really have no choice but to do what the Jays did – run your players out there and they either score or they don’t. In the case of myself, BK, Grid and Mort, they clearly didn’t this week.

Smacktalk Award of the Week:

Some good banter this week and equally good sportsmanship from Grid, offering AOB a digital handshake after the loss. I would have offered the same to Ceilidh but my hands were pretty dirty after cleaning up from all my players shitting the bed.

Welcome to Fantasy Football Hell Award of the Week:

I’ve touched on it already but you know it’s bad when you’re blowing your waiver priority on a Ravens RB who was probably bussing tables part time at Denny’s last week. As Lloyd Christmas famously said… “So you’re telling me there’s a chance? YEAAAAAHHHH!!”