The Daily Spin – NFL Edition – Week 9

Each season, there are a few weeks between games that really stand out in terms of the activity that takes place. Typically, the trade deadline produces little more than a passing glance as teams rarely make big moves to upgrade their squads for fear of relearning the lesson of the 1989 Minnesota Vikings and the worst debacle of all time trades when the Vikings pushed all-in to get Herschel Walker and sent a draft’s worth of picks to the Cowboys. The Vikes got trounced in the playoffs by the 49ers and then went on to miss the playoffs the next two years. The Cowboys, on the other hand, landed some incredible talent with those acquired picks and went on to win three Super Bowls during the 90’s. As teams follow in the formula that Jimmy Johnson laid out and the New England Patriots mastered, stock piling draft picks has been shown again and again to be one of the better ways to building up a winning franchise. Of course, you do eventually need to draft a few big names here and there when they are nearly dropped into your lap (ahem, Cleveland), but for the most part, teams are very reticent to part with picks these days.

That did change a bit this week when some teams made a few curious moves around the league. I am not about to declare winners and losers too quickly, but it was interesting in that some teams that seemed competitive this season did some things that certainly will not help them in the short term. The Patriots made another vintage move in shipping Jimmy Garapollo to the 49ers for a 2nd round pick that will end up being just a pick or two after the first round. In a bold signal to the league, the Pats decided that their QB of the future is their 40 year-old QB of today in Tom Brady who has openly declared that he wants to play until he is 45 which would be an absolutely monumental achievement in all of professional sports that I would place near Cal Ripkens consecutive game streak. If he were to continue to play at this level for 5 more seasons it would make every QB record his and the distance between him and any challenger would be enormous, much like Jerry Rice has done with the receiving category.

It’s a nice trade for the Pats in that they essentially lock down another top pick, unload some salary that they would’ve been forced to shell out to keep Jimmy, and let’s face it, most QB’s are busts in this league so Jimmy could end up falling on his face. For the 49ers, it’s an interesting move if they really think Jimmy is the guy. They’ll get a few games here to evaluate, but I’m not so certain that there will be much to see on the positive side for the rest of the year. With Pierre Garcon going on the IR with a neck injury, the 49ers have no weapons to showcase at WR at all. He’ll be bringing a plastic spork to a gun fight the rest of the way so unless he suffers a major injury, I think the 49ers are invested for at least a couple of seasons to really evaluate if they’ve found their guy. I am a little surprised by the move. I thought Shanahan was more enamored with Kirk Cousins and was a leading candidate to land him, but perhaps he felt Cousins wouldn’t want to be a part of a rebuild and wanted a guy more eager to have a shot to start. For DFS purposes, we’ll see how Jimmy looks in his early starts and if he’s super cheap and has a prime matchup, perhaps he could become a punt play for us at some point.

The Dolphina shipped Jay Ajayi to the Eagles this week in a move that surprised a lot of folks. After a breakout year last season, it’s been tough sledding for Ajayi this year and he hasn’t been helped by the QB play between Jay Cutler and Matt Moore. It’s odd that an RB who seemed ready to be a featured player on offense could get dumped so surreptitiously as they received a meager 4th round draft pick in return. This signals potentially a couple of things here. Either the Dolphins really don’t like the guy and he has some attitude issues (probable), or they have an incredible amount of faith in the guys behind him (less likely given game action this season). It’s a reasonable move for the Eagles in that Legarette Blount is a great short yardage banger, but he’s not really a breakaway runner capable of making explosive plays in the run game like Ajayi. The Eagles are saying Blount is still the starter, but I think that Ajayi will be the guy getting most of the early down work in the weeks ahead. He’s still probably not going to garner many targets so I am not sure this will make him more fantasy relevant. For the Dolphins, we’ll just have to watch to see how backups, Kenyan Drake and Damien Williams look in filling the open role. It sounds like Drake could be the lead initially so we’ll just have to play it from matchup to matchup.

One of the moves that I thought was a little strange this week was the Panthers trading away their top WR in Kelvin Benjamin to the Buffalo Bills. The Panthers are still legitimate contenders in the NFC South, but they are hardly an offensive juggernaut. The only thing I see here is that they are anticipating the return of Greg Olson soon and they were actually at their best on offense two seasons ago without Benjamin so perhaps Ron Rivera has something new planned for the offense the rest of the way. This one feels like a win for the Bills in that they had dust at WR until this move. Tyrod Taylor finally has someone besides LeSean McCoy to help him out on offense the rest of the way this year. This is another one we’ll take game by game for Benjamin. The Bills are a run first team that goes through McCoy so we’ll watch closely at Benjamin’s usage the first few weeks.

There were a few other moves last week with the Seahawks shoring up their offensive line with the acquisition of LT Duane Brown, but the biggest surprises came for a couple of teams near the end of the week. In devastating news, the Texans lost QB Deshaun Watson for the season after he tore his ACL in a non-contact injury. After watching the game of the year last week against Seattle, this was yet again, another huge disappointment for the league as Watson seemed ready to break records this season and for once made the Texans a team I wanted to tune in to watch. His injury is a death blow to Texans WRs the rest of the way as they’ll lean on Tom Savage to keep the team limping along. This should make Savage playable against bad teams as he’s very cheap and won’t need to do much to attain value, but he’s shown he’s not capable of much either so I am not wildly optimistic about his game. This should get Lamar Miller a bigger role in the offense as well with the Texans more than likely shifting back to being a ball control offense that tries to win the time of possession battle. He’s been good in the right spot the last two seasons so I think he has some value.

In what has been the most annoying legal battle in the NFL since Deflategate, Zeke Elliott staved off his suspension yet again after his 79th appeal was upheld this week pushing back the decision made by about a dozen courts. I had hoped that he would be out this week as that really would have turned the game on Sunday between the Cowboys and Chiefs into an all out aerial Dak attack, but I think there is still plenty to go around. Zeke is gaining steam as the season goes on and he’s the same horse he was a year ago both running and catching the ball. He’s obviously still a guy to play in all formats.

Looking back at last week quickly, it didn’t work out for me with my cash game lineup. I opted to keep it cheap at running back with the tricky pricing and shoved in big on the Bengals. I ended up with four Bengals on my roster which I felt stupid for doing, but the matchup looked so good and three of the players were so cheap that I just could not stay away. Andy Dalton, Tyler Kroft and Joe Mixon all played well and between the three of them generated a 3x return. Where I got hurt was at WR where AJ Green was nearly nonexistent in the offense despite an amazing matchup against a depleted secondary. What made it worse was that the game flow worked perfectly in out favor as it stayed close and the Colts were even ahead for large chunks of it, but for whatever reason, Green seems to show up better on the road than at home and not always in the best matchups.

The other roster spots that hurt me were also at wideout. Despite the wind, I thought Mike Evans was ready to have a breakout game against the Panthers and it did not materialize at all. The Bucs did not get him the ball in the first half and although he rallied to catch five balls for 60 yards in the second half, it was not nearly enough. I think this was probably a mistake on my part. The matchup with Bradbury wasn’t optimal and his price was high for a guy who hasn’t posted blistering numbers this season. Paying up here took away funds that could have gone towards LeSean McCoy who was more expensive, but not out of range. The other WR spot hurt me as well with Doug Baldwin underperforming his price. This pick I do not have any issues with. The matchup was really good and everyone for the Seahawks put up huge numbers through the air. Baldwin got tackled on a route at the goal line drawing a PI call where we could have gained points and then had a 50 yard bomb in his hands late that he could not hold on to. This was more of play that just didn’t work out, but had all the makings for big numbers.

The other RB slot was filled by Bloung who got into the end zone late to salvage the day. I hate playing him in cash, but the 49ers are so bad stopping the run and the game script set up so well that I again made an exception. On defense, I had the Eagles and they looked great in crushing the 49ers and getting into the end zone for a score. In total, my team came up short for the week. I made a couple of questionable moves, and a couple of things just didn’t go my way so I am hoping that Week 9 will be a rebound week.

QB	Andy Dalton	18.72
RB	Legarette Blount	12.2
RB	Joe Mixon	12.9
WR	AJ Green	11.7
WR	Mike Evans	11
WR	Doug Baldwin	11.4
TE	Tyler Kroft	9.6
F	Jason Witten	6.1
DEF	Eagles	20
	Total	113.62

 

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