The Daily Spin – NFL Edition Week 15

Some weeks you make the right calls for cash games, but the ball bounces a little funny, a few plays get called back and an injury or two beyond your control creates a situation where you just have to shrug your shoulders and not allow yourself to get too frustrated. I heard from many of you about having a great week for Week 14 and was jealous not to share in the win, but when I look back at the way things played out, I don’t think I can be too hard myself for the most part as my rationale was solid and there was really only one decision where I think I was wrong in making a certain play when another was readily available with a higher floor and ceiling for not that much more in salary.

The blueprint for Week 14 revolved around starting with the most obvious two plays on the board and building out from there. Josh Gordon and Gio Bernard, as I mentioned last week by virtue of the buzz around them, the very low salaries, particularly for Bernard and the matchups made them very easy to plug in. Both played well and were very close to hitting (Gordon) or surpassed our 3x target for the week with ease (Gio). From there, I looked at the skill players that I really wanted to work into my lineups for the week and right at the top were Keenan Allen and DeAndre Hopkins. Both of these guys are being featured for their respective teams and have been getting an extremely high number of targets in recent weeks (really all season for Hopkins). Again, each delivered a nice result and both were over 100 yards for the week with Hopkins putting up incredible numbers an posting just under 40 DK points. The only unfortunate play was Keenan Allen running wide open down the field on a flee flicker, making the catch, but falling down at the 1 yard line. When you see these things happen, you just know they are going to come back to haunt you. The only thing that was unfortunate about this receiver corp was that all of those players were highly owned for the week as a result of Gio being priced near the minimum – Gordon – 67%, Allen – 44%, Hopkins – 58%

The other player that I really had a strong feeling about for last week was Travis Kelce. As you know, I rarely pay up for my TE, but Kelce has really been excellent this year and in a game that was projected to be high scoring and going up against one of the worst pass defenses in the league, I felt like 20+ points was a high probability for the week. In building off of that, I elected to stack him with Alex Smith who had looked great the previous week after Andy Reid had given up the play calling duties. With the way he had performed against the Raiders in their first matchup of the season, I felt like 3x was a lock. Unfortunately, sometimes you get a little bit unlucky as was the case last week and in this case we were 2x unlucky. In the first quarter, with the Chiefs driving, Kelce caught a short pass, turned for the end zone, was hit around the five yard line and dragged tacklers in for a touchdown!!!! That scoring play looked good until about 3 different camera angles were triangulated together to show that Kelce was in fact down an inch from the end zone. Of course, Kareem Hunt plunged in on the next play, so we had 10 points wiped off the board. Later on in the second quarter, again with the Chiefs driving down the field, Smith sprinted out to the right, avoided the rush and found an open Kelce in the end zone for a touchdown!!!! Hold up, flag down… Some useless lineman got happy feet and took off down the field negating the TD…..13.1 points wiped out. Smith looked great in the first half, throwing for 171 yards, but not a TD. In the second half, he started strong and early in the 3rd quarter he had over 225 yards and Kelce was playing well too. Unfortunately, Charcandrick West got loose for a 15 yard TD run and another FG made the score 26-0 for the Chiefs who then went into ball control mode the rest of the way. Instead of getting 30 points from Kelce and 25 from Smith, I got 14.4 and 12.12. Can you tell how my mood was on Sunday yet?

In wanting to get Kelce into my lineup along with the other studs, I needed some salary cap relief. I elected to use Stephen Anderson who seemed to be emerging in the Texans offense and who was just $3200. His output was awful, but he did get six targets overall so I am not kicking myself too much on that one. He runs plenty of routes and is still the #3 receiving option for the Texans so although the play didn’t work, I am okay with my decision here. He was also owned by 45% of the field which I figured would happen so it did not kill my team.

The final decision of the day came late on Sunday morning with my second RB and Defense still under consideration. I ended up with the Chargers and Mike Davis. I was really did not want to pay down on defense as it has burned me before and felt like the Jags and Chargers were both locks at home. In selecting the Chargers, it forced my had to have to go really cheap at RB and I was okay with Mike Davis, even against the Jags. If he gets the touches, he’s getting 10-12 points easily as his floor which at $3700 is not a bad deal.

What threw a wrench in my decision was the report on Sunday morning that Amir Abdullah would not play and that Theo Riddick would again be the lead back for the Lions. Everyone in the fantasy world has known for the last two years that he is the better and more versatile RB on the team, but Jim Caldwell somehow still prefers Abdullah. With a nice matchup against the Bucs, I really wanted to pull the trigger to move up from Davis, but it would have meant dropping down from the Chargers and going with the Vikings, who I liked, but was still a little nervous that they would let up some points against a QB that can move around in the pocket and on the road. I had a bit of a bad break with Davis in that he accumulated 7.5 points, but then left midway through the 3rd quarter with a rib injury and did not return. I think 10-11 points was within reasonable range and if he busted off a big run, could have had an outside shot at 100 yards (he left w 66). The Chargers were particularly heartbreaking for me near the end of the day.

With just over two minutes remaining in the 4th quarter, the Chargers led the Redskins, 30-6 and had the ball at around the 7 yard line of the Skins with a 3rd and 2 situation at hand. They had already pulled Philip Rivers and Kellen Clemens was doing a decent job running out the clock as the Redskins had essentially waved the white flag. For some reason, at that point, the Chargers opted to throw a pass. Clemens fired it behind his WR who tipped it into the air and into the hands of Bashaud Breeland who suddenly found himself galloping down the field for a 96 yard return for a TD. Now, mind you, defensive TDs don’t count against your defense so this put the Skins up to 12 total points and moved the score to 30-12 with over two minutes left. So, let’s help Jay Gruden do a little math here. You’re down 18, so if you go for one, you’re gonna be down by 17 which is….hmmm, one…..two…..three scores. Yep, you’ll need three scores to overcome the deficit. Now, if you elect to go for two points here, you’re going to be down by 16 points, which is….and check my math for me here, yes, only two scores. So knowing this, is there any upside to kicking an extra point? Can anyone help me here? Of course, Gruden trots out the kicking team, they hit the extra point, which does count against your defense so now the Chargers went from having given up six points to seven, which puts you into a higher points allowed range and cost the Chargers defense 3 huge points, taking them down to eight for the day. Obviously, you know this was important to my final result since I have spent a huge amount of space on it. The final cash line was established at 142.12. My final total ended up being 140.52….a difference of 1.6 points.

In the end, there were just a lot of bad breaks, any one of which going the other way and it’s a winning week for me. The two lost TD passes from Smith to Kelce, Keenan Allen catching a deep ball and going down inside the 1 yard line, Mike Davis going out with an injury and a fluke, meaningless INT from the Chargers backup QB, compounded by a boneheaded coaching decision all came together on the same afternoon to keep my one roster out of the money and knocked my overall record for the season down to 9-5-1. My one bad call that I take full responsibility for was not biting the bullet and paying up to get Riddick. His floor as the featured RB is just too good to pass up and he had the better matchup than Davis who I knew at most was only good for 15 points. My worries about the Vikings were realized as they were torched for a lot of big plays by the Panthers, but Riddick scored 27 DK points on the strength of a couple of TDs which more than made up for it. That’s a call that I need to be able to make late on a Sunday morning, even though I hate tinkering with my lineup close to lock. I know a lot of you guys nailed that play so good on you for being more courageous than myself. Overall, I was happy with the writeup and the picks, but I did end up taking the ‘L’ and don’t mind being transparent about my mistakes when they happen. Analyzing it and passing it on to you helps all of us get better throughout the season.

 

QB	Alex Smith	12.12
RB	Giovani Bernard	19
RB	Mike Davis	7.5
WR	Keenan Allen	20.1
WR	Josh Gordon	15.9
WR	DeAndre Hopkins	39.9
TE	Stephen Anderson	3.6
F	Travis Kelce	14.4
DEF	Chargers	8
	Total	140.52

 

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