The Daily Spin – NFL Edition Week 6

This is where things get interesting during the NFL season. We are up to Week 6, the bye weeks are kicking in, injuries are knocking out prominent names and backups are getting a chance to make some plays. With the pricing getting tight early on in the season, this comes as a welcome relief to those of us looking to assemble a credible cash lineup. Although many of these backups will be fairly chalky, it gives us the chance to actually fill in the rest of our lineups with players we want to play instead of having to take two or three leaps of faith on players that are marginal performers at best.

Before we jump into the games this week, we have to discuss the results from Week 5. I felt like I had a good grip on the games last weekend and put together a solid team, but things ended up coming up just a little bit short….just barely short. In looking at it from the top, I felt like locking in the automatic 3x performance from Aaron Rodgers against the Cowboys and he worked his magic in getting across the magic line near the very end of the game. Surprisingly, the Packers had a much better running attack than I had expected with Aaron Jones giving them a much more traditional running attack than what they’ve had with Ty Montgomery. Had I thought that Jones could be even close to that good, I would have pivoted immediately to Dak Prescott, but without knowing that, I made a play for what I thought might be a slightly higher ceiling. The play worked fine and that got the team off to a nice start.

At running back, I went to the top of the board and grabbed LeVeon Bell. The Jags are tough against the pass with two of the best corners in the league, which made me think that the Steelers would be smart enough to line up and play some smashmouth football and utilize Bell for 30 touches. Well, five interceptions later from Big Ben, I was shown once again that Mike Tomlin is not always the best situational coach. We ended up getting close to 20 points, so it was not a total disaster, but I really was anticipating a 30 point effort here so it did set the team back. Andre Ellington was my second running back and performed exactly as expected. The Eagles got ahead, had to abandon the run game and Ellington was the primary beneficiary catching nine passes on ten targets for 65 yards, which was perfect for his $4,600 salary in giving us a 3x performance.

At wide receiver, my favorite play of the week was TY Hilton. I anticipated that the game between the Colts and 49ers could shoot out and it more or less played out that way. Hilton has shredded teams this season with average to below average secondaries and someone I love to target when he is at home where he can take advantage of the fast surface to get behind defenders for explosive plays. We probably will not get to see him back at $6,000 again for awhile. Dez Bryant was the chalk play of the week at $6,400 against the Packers. Surprisingly, he still didn’t have that big of a day, catching five passes for 52 yards and one TD. It wasn’t a performance that hurt us, but it was far from the ceiling that was out there. The last play at wide out was one that hurt us to some degree. Jaron Brown caught three passes for 39 yards. This is the one play where I do question my process. Brown had worked his way into a more prominent role in the Cardinals offense with injuries afflicting John Brown and JJ Nelson over the previous weeks and each of those players were still struggling to return to full health. However, the Cardinals never got in gear, even late in the game and the snap count was much more balanced and the targets were spread fairly evenly among the four receivers. The injury reports pointed towards improved health for Brown and Nelson and when that is the case, it makes in very difficult to pick and choose among the group. My desire to jump up to get Bell made me take a slightly unnecessary risk here.

At tight end, this was where I got burned. Brown hurt the team, but he was cheap so it was not a total nightmare. My pick at tight end came down to two players, Evan Engram or Austin Sefarian Jenkins. I’ve had ASJ let me down before as the chalk play. He’s been very capable of putting up a 4x effort one week and a zero the next. I had seen Engram progress to the point of being a regular contributor in the Giants offense and figured the flow of the game would dictate a fair amount of passing. I was right, but somehow, even with the entire Giants receiving core injured, he was unable to secure a single pass and posted a zero while ASJ, after a slow start, did manage to get into the end zone and put up a solid day. I don’t hate my pick here, but I probably will stick to the cheap chalk at TE when they are going to be owned as heavily as ASJ last week. If you are on the chalk in cash and they underperform, it doesn’t break you, but if the chalk plays well and your pivot misses, it can be crushing. This one swap would have been enough for me to turn a loss into a win.

At the flex position, I let Statboy talk me into Legarrette Blount who was really cheap. I hate picking backs that don’t play a roll in the passing game. They are too TD dependent, but the game script was one where I saw the Eagles getting ahead and pounding it to Blount throughout the second half. It looked like the play had worked when late in the game, Blount scored on a 5 yard run. However, a phantom holding call came down and the TD was called back so instead of a nice 14 point effort, he was stuck at 7.5. I don’t hate this play given the situation, game script and price, but it is not optimal and does pose certain avoidable risks.

Finally, on defense, I went for value with the Buffalo Bills. Outside of an early deep ball to AJ Green that went for a long TD, they held up their end of the bargain, posting 8 points and a 3x effort. Overall for the week, I fell 6-8 points short in the double ups that I entered last week with a total score of 124.84. I am okay with the work that I did last week and feel comfortable with the team overall. Like I said, flip in the chalk TD and I am at 140 points and cruise to a win so that just goes to show you what a fine line we are walking each week between winning and losing. Hopefully, you had enough ammo in your lineups to get you across the line into the green for the week, but if not, let’s get back to it this week!

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