The Daily Spin – NFL Edition Week 13

As I clicked submit last Sunday, I felt great about the very balanced roster that I had assembled for the week….too good. There are weeks when things come together so easily that I can’t help but to think that I am on the verge of a coyote moment with an anvil about to fall on my head. Within an hour of lineup lock, that anvil proved to be Julio Jones, or should I say, Mt Julio who continued to erupt all afternoon and who did not stop until he had cleared the nearly unattainable threshold of 50 points for the week. What compounded the problem for me was that not only did I not own him on my cash roster, but over 40% of the owners in the field did in fact take the time to roster Mr. Jones for the week. When you get a convergent of factors like that, it’s usually easy to write your team off for the week and go about your business, but somehow, by the end of the day, my team managed to eek out another win and improved to 9-3-1 (Thanksgiving included) on the year in cash games.

As always, the most important part of the process is not just in counting our money when we win, but in looking back at the team and trying to understand where we made good decisions and to see if there were areas where we made mistakes in order to improve moving forward. We are now on Week 13 of the season which is the time of year to make your money. The statistics tell the story at this point in the year. As Dennis Green once famously said, ‘They are who we thought they were’. That is the best way to describe most teams based on the numbers. If they’ve been awful all season against the pass, it’s highly unlikely that they find a way to miraculously turn it around this late in the year. If a cornerback is among the lowest rated in the league after 13 weeks, they probably are not going to find a magic switch to flip to become respectable. Trust the numbers.

The matchups that you look at in Week 1 or 2 may look really strong, but are mostly based on previous seasons or a very limited sample size. It forces us to make guesses about what should happen. That’s why there are so many head scratching surprises early in the year as we try to figure out the identity of each team and try to reconcile it with what we know of them historically. We have to take certain leaps of faith early in the season, but as the year goes by, at least in cash games, you should really be trying to tighten down against taking too many big risks. At this time of year, the choices should be much more obvious and that is reflected in ownership trends which tend to be more clustered. These are very key trends to follow from week to week as they represent what most of the best minds and professionals in the industry are looking at in their research. It’s the reason that I read and track so many different sites, podcasts and models throughout the week. Individually, many analysts have certain biases and weaknesses in how they look at the game, but if we can harvest their analysis collectively, it starts to paint a clearer picture for a path to success in cash games that typically works extremely well for NFL contests.

This brings us back to last week with Julio Jones. I loved the matchup against the Bucs at home as they’ve been torched all season long by big time receivers. I knew that the Falcons would get their share of points in the game. I also know what Julio is capable of big things. My biggest worry with the matchup was that the Falcons would have such an easy time against the Bucs that we could see Julio usage limited if the game turned into a blowout. However, ALL of the early production went through Julio which launched his numbers into the stratosphere in the first half. On the other side of the ball, Ryan Fitzpatrick was able to move the ball effectively for most of the day and kept the game close until the end. This helped to keep Julio chugging along late into the 4th quarter. It was a frustrating result considering how often I have been on Julio this season.

The lesson for me here is that while I knew that Julio was being talked up, I missed the fact that he was going to be so highly owned in cash games for the week. If you know a star player has a good matchup, and is going to be highly owned, you normally need to find a way to get that player on your roster, even if the price is a little on the high side and even if they have underperformed a bit in terms of fantasy output during the season. It’s a similar argument to loading up on the injury replacement running back that is going to get 20 plus touches. You do it to avoid situations like what I ran into last Sunday where you end up on the wrong side of 40%+ ownership of a star player with a plum matchup, even if your feelings are a little mixed about using him in cash. Had I anticipated 20% ownership or less, I would not have batted an eye against fading him, but I just did not see the number getting that high which means that I was not tuned in enough to what people in the industry were saying and the trends that were being set in motion. It’s something that I need to be especially cognizant of during these last few weeks of the season as it can make the difference between being profitable or coming up just short.

Beyond lamenting not playing Julio and having a worry free Sunday, I need to take a moment to actually celebrate my win and look back at what went right last week. I had a very balance roster and everyone outside of the defense made a worthwhile contribution towards the win. It started at QB with the player who I think is the MVP of the league this season in Russell Wilson. Russ has no running game and a bad offensive line. He’s under pressure on almost every dropback and yet each week, we see him ducking and dodging and circling around to keep plays alive and finding ways to keep his team moving towards another playoff birth. Obviously, beating the 49ers on the road was no major feat, but again, he crushed value without any issues and as long as he’s on the main slate (not this week), he’s a cash game lock for me with everything he brings to the table.

At running back, I told you outright that I was going to play Tevin Coleman and anytime Atlanta has an injury to either Coleman or Freeman, you need to be all in on the starter that week when they are in the featured role. Coleman rushed for 97 yards and two TDs against an awful Tampa defense and although he was highly owned, he delivered nicely for us. The other RB slot went to Carlos Hyde who looked like a bust until the final garbage time drive when he gobbled up four more catches and nearly pushed his way up to a 3x performance. He’s been cheap all season and continues to be game flow proof given the number of targets he gets out of the backfield each week. He had 13 targets last week….insane. Now, with the swap to Jimmy G at QB, it is a much different situation as I think he’ll be able to get the ball downfield more than Beatherd so I’ll be watching that game very closely this week.

At WR, I did not pay up for any big names, but got solid performances out of all three players. I told you that I wanted to play Alshon Jeffrey for his excellent recent play and his anger about the way the Bears unceremoniously ushered him out of Chicago and it looked like he was on his way to a huge game after catching five passes for 52 yards and a TD in the first half, but the game ended up being such a blowout that the Eagles did not need to use him in the second half and he did not catch a ball the rest of the way. No matter, he still had over 16 points which was a solid effort for the price. The second WR slot went to Mohamed Sanu who was up against a backup CB for Tampa and had a nice floor given his price. I was certainly not expecting to get a 50 yard TD pass to add to his stat line, but the rest was about what we would expect as he was nearly 4x for the week and was close to 3x even without the TD pass.

Finally, the last WR pick came down to either Sammy Watkins or Cooper Kupp for me. As I was talking to Statboy before submitting my team, I told him that if I needed a high floor, I’d play Kupp, but if I needed upside, I would play Watkins. After Julio went off, I figured Watkins had more big play upside so I rode with him and amusingly enough, Kupp scored a few more points. However, before we turn the page here, this is a strategy to consider each week with the late games. If you think you are behind the curve and have a few guys left to play, you need to embrace more of a GPP philosophy in the afternoon and tune up your lineup to try to capture the maximum upside. Think of it this way; if you leave your lineup alone and chase the chalk, you probably won’t make up much ground and you’ll lose. If you adjust and your guys play worse than the chalk, you’ll lose anyway as well. However, if you get contrarian and have a couple of guys go off for huge days that others didn’t own, you can then make up some ground and possibly cross the cash line. A great example of this happened to me a few years ago back when Monday night games were still in the main slate.  I was just below the cash line, but had Dez Bryant left going against the Redskins. Unfortunately, nearly everyone above and below me also had Bryant. Each team was dealing with a backup QB and there really weren’t any other relevant fantasy players in the game (the contest was a small field, $1000 double up). I could literally count up the salaries of my opponents to see which player they used. Without a pivot, I was dead in the water. Although Colt McCoy was starting for the Redskins that night on the road, I made the only reasonable decision and opted to swap out Bryant for DeSean Jackson. As you might expect, I would not be telling you this story if it had not worked out, but sure enough, Jackson had a huge night and bested Dez and I just managed to cross into the green for a miraculous win. It is rarely going to be this obvious for you, but you have to be proactive if things go a little awry during the first half of the main slate and you still have options to get more aggressive in the late games.

At TE, Jack Doyle seemed like a very straight forward choice and he played well, nearly getting the 100 yard bonus against a soft Titan defense. I’ve been able to find good value of late at this spot and that’s been an enormous part of my success this season. Between targeting the worst teams in terms of DVOA against the TE position along with guys who just get a high volume of targets at a fair price, it’s been a good year for us with regards to avoiding getting wiped out here.

The flex spot went to Brandin Cooks. With the Patriots, nothing is ever a given, but when any of their normal wideouts are injured, it certainly elevates the others who are healthy. With Chris Hogan going down for an extended stretch and Amendola being banged up, Cooks has taken full advantage of some extra shots downfield and posted back to back big games. Although he did not quite get to 100 yards, he did get into the end zone and was over 20 points again.

On defense, I really hate to pay down, but the roster rounded out so well at the top that I thought I could get away with the Falcons at home against a Ryan Fitzpatrick led, Bucs offense. To make it even more tempting, the Bucs haven’t been that healthy on their offensive line and with the Falcons turning up the heat the previous two weeks, it seemed like a decent place to take a shot. Wrong. Missed this one and ended up with a grand total of two points for the week. I’ve had success paying up for a good defense most weeks and that is what I plan to get back to this week.

 

QB	Russell Wilson	24.62
RB	Tevin Coleman	21.7
RB	Carlos Hyde	13.8
WR	Alshon Jeffrey	16.2
WR	Mohamed Sanu	20.44
WR	Sammy Watkins	18.2
TE	Jack Doyle	16.4
F	Brandin Cooks	21.4
DEF	Falcons	2
	Total	154.76

 

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