🚑 Ugh, 2 WRs Done For The Season
Tough blows for BAL & NO...
I played Teagan Quitoriano in DFS last night AMA...
In today’s Fantasy Life Newsletter presented by Bud Light:
- The Ravens & Saints lose a WR
- JMToWin's Week 9 DFS Tips
- The Fantasy Life Podcast is LIVE
- Geoff's bets: The Packers are back?
- Matthew's Love/Hate for Week 9
- Linda's Kicking It: Top kicker plays
- The Walkthrough: Aaron Jones, man.
- It's 11/4. Take it away, Peter Overzet
The Ravens may be 5-3 and winning the AFC North, but they're trending in the wrong direction.
Two weeks ago, they were forced to put RB J.K. Dobbins on IR after he underwent arthroscopic knee surgery, and yesterday we learned that WR Rashod Bateman will undergo season-ending Lisfranc surgery on his foot.
Any team led by Lamar Jackson will always be in the mix, but it's safe to wonder if this team has enough fire power to make a deep run.
Mark Andrews can certainly put an offense on his back, but he is banged up right now and missed practice yesterday. Gus Edwards (hamstring) also didn't practice.
If you're looking for potential fantasy beneficiaries in the aftermath of the Bateman shelving, here are some ideas:
- WR Devin Duvernay: Duvernay has already been getting a lot of burn in this offense and has been productive with his touches. He's a do-it-all playmaker who should have even more opportunities to do some damage down the stretch.
- WR DeSean Jackson: Coach Harbaugh said it's a good possibility that Jackson gets called up from the practice squad and plays on Monday night. I'm not sure how much Jackson has left in the tank at this stage of his career, but it's worth noting that Lil Wayne is bullish on his return.
- TE Isaiah Likely: This is the fun one and a guy who should be rostered everywhere. The exciting rookie stepped in for Andrews last Thursday and promptly led the team with a 6-77-1 line. His WR-esque skill set and ability to earn targets give him a real chance to be a full-time player regardless of Andrew's health.
🚑 Michael Thomas
Bateman wasn't the only WR who had their season come to an end yesterday, Thomas is packing things in for 2022 with a dislocated toe after playing only three games. It's wild how quickly his career got off track after a banner year in 2019:
Michael Thomas' last four years:
2019: Sets NFL record with 149 catches for 1,725 yards, 9 TD
2020: 7 games played, 40 catches, 438 yards
2021: Misses entire year
2022: 3 games played, 16 catches, 171 yards, 3 TDJust brutal injury luck.
Chris Olave will continue to lead this WR group, although Jarvis Landry is expected back for Monday night's game.
🚑 Jonathan Taylor & Derrick Henry miss practice
We spotlighted Deon Jackson as a must-add yesterday, and that call looks stronger by the day after Taylor missed practice yet again on Thursday.
Henry also missed practice with a new foot injury, but it doesn't sound remotely concerning:
Derrick Henry offers some good words for those that are concerned about his foot (he was on the injury report yesterday). #Titans
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In retrospect, I can hardly believe she married me.
When we met, I was working part-time at an airport parking garage while teaching SAT and ACT prep and shopping the novel that I was certain would take care of my finances for years. (Spoiler alert: it turns out — looking back — that the novel wasn't particularly great; and while it did "fine," it certainly didn't buy me years of freedom.)
And certainly, economic ceiling shouldn't be a deciding factor within the often-illogical tides of love — but it's an inescapable fact of our society that "life without money" is more difficult than "life with money"; and for a dreamer like my wife, "life without money" is even more of a challenge. (Trips to Paris aren't cheap. Neither — apparently — are children.)
But in addition to seeing Love, my wife saw enough "potential for upside" to feel comfortable that we would find a way to make it in life. She didn't overthink it. She pulled the trigger.
As DFS players, it's often easy for us to fall into the trap of thinking that "What a player has done in the past" is the equivalent ceiling for "What a player can do in the future."
We look at a player's past performance or look at a player's price tag ("too cheap" can cause us to imagine that the player in question is almost certainly risky; "super expensive" can lead to us feeling comfortable pulling the trigger), and we allow this logic to cloud our crystal ball. "Past is prologue," sure — but the prologue is only the beginning.
Here are a few spots I'm seeing this week where we might be able to capture a big score by being willing to be "too early" in order to be on-time.
⚡️ Josh Palmer // Donald Parham
Mike Williams is out, and Keenan Allen is trending toward missing another game. In Week 6 (the last time he saw game action), Palmer earned 12 targets while sharing the field with Williams — under-producing against the lights-out defense of the Broncos.
As for Parham: he's a tight end who "has never exceeded 13 DraftKings points "…and yet, he's also a tight end averaging 12.2 yards per catch in his career, with six touchdowns on 33 receptions.
We can expect more two-tight-end sets this week with the Chargers' top two receivers banged up, and we can expect Parham (who missed the first four games of the season with a hamstring injury and then got concussed in Week 6) to be a practically invisible option for most DFS players. The Chargers rank fifth in the NFL in pass rate over expectation and are facing a Falcons defense that ranks 30th in pass defense DVOA (Football Outsiders).
🐻 Justin Fields
Fields is dynamite. Don't throw stones at me here…but over the last few weeks, Fields has reminded me of 2018, when everyone thought Josh Allen was a joke, and we started watching his late-season, post-injury games at OWS and realizing: "This guy has a long way to go…but he's WAY more exciting than anyone realizes."
Our rule down the stretch that year was "Play Josh Allen every week" — a move that kept our rosters in play most weeks and vaulted our rosters to the tops of the leaderboards when Allen posted 41.5 fantasy points against Miami in Week 17 at a bottom-barrel price and practically no ownership.
Fields isn't Josh Allen…but he's looking more and more like his own version of: "Play this guy now, because he'll eventually have a monster game, and his price will eventually be much higher."
🏆 Jags Offense
After throwing eight touchdown passes in his first four games, Trevor Lawrence has thrown only two touchdown passes in his last four. With the dynamic dual-threat, every-down skill set of Travis Etienne now alongside him, Lawrence gets to take on a Raiders defense that ranks 31st in DVOA against the pass. This game has a healthy-for-this-week Over/Under of 48.0, with a spread of only 1.5 points, signaling a game that's expected to be competitive with high-scoring potential.
These three options may have been "working part-time at the airport parking garage" so far — but their ceiling is a whole lot higher than that.
📓 Sign up for OWS:
Code LIFE40 saves 40%(!!!) on rest-of-season access to OWS subscriptions.
🐬 Some WRs are better against zone, others against man coverage. And then there is Tyreek.
📉 Rankings & Regression. Marcas & Dwain get you ready for Week 9 on the Fantasy Life Podcast
🎀 Travis Etienne is special. Exhibit A.
👿 A Bengals fan on mega tilt. Watch the whole thing, trust us.
🤝 Josh Allen has a different handshake for the whole squad. So good.
🤥 Don't trust players on their own injury evals. Oof.
🔥 This "backup" RB is setting up for a big week. Find out why.
In between placing waiver claims and setting our lineups, we do a little sports betting around here. Today Geoff is here to give you his best bets of the week. All odds from our friends at BetMGM.
💸 Packers -3.5 (-110)
Detroit’s one saving grace this year was the potential for a potent offense that could keep them in games. With D’Andre Swift banged up and Jared Goff now having one less big body to throw to (goodbye TJ Hockenson!), there are legit concerns that there will be more sub-10-point performances from Detroit to come, especially with the immobile Goff at QB. Green Bay gave Aaron Jones a season-high 24 touches last week, and he produced over 7.0 yards per carry. (More on Jones below)
With Detroit being dead last in yards per play against and fifth-last in yards per carry against, Jones should be able to help Green Bay dominate the time of possession and give their beleaguered defense a small reprieve.
With more of the public action coming in on Detroit this week, it’s time to bet the Packers hard here who are 26-18 ATS since 2020 with Matt Lafleur as head coach.
💸 Falcons + 3.5 (-115)
Despite the betting win last week from Carolina it did require a small miracle (thanks DJ Moore) at the end of the game to convert. This week, Atlanta will be getting safety Jaylinn Hawkins back to help in the secondary and perhaps even Cordarrelle Patterson back on offense as they face off against a Chargers team who somehow got less healthy during their bye.
Even without Patterson last week, Atlanta was still able to rush for 180 yards, relying on the tandem Tyler Allgeier and Caleb Huntley. Los Angeles is last in rush yards against this year, allowing 5.7 yards per carry, and won’t have their usual complement of receivers (Mike Williams and Keenan Allen are both out for this game). Atlanta’s a very live dog to win this outright and at +3.5 should cover this number against the weakened Chargers team.
💸 Commanders +3.5 (-115)
The Commanders turnaround on defense has been a very under-the-radar story. They’ve now allowed under 200-passing yards in each of their last four games and have allowed under 300 total yards in three of their last five.
Further, they’ll be getting an immobile dome quarterback in Kirk Cousins on the other side of this game who has put up a 4TD/4INT line and 76.8 QB rating over three road starts this year (two of them were outdoors). The Commanders offense showed improvement under Taylor Heinicke last week and put up 23 points against another NFC North team in Green Bay. If they replicate that this week, their defense is playing well enough to get us cover on a +3.5 spread.
💸 Top 3 Player Props
- Darnell Mooney over 41.5 receiving yards -115
- Tyler Lockett over 63.5 receiving yards -110
- Derrick Henry under 91.5 rush yards -110
Find out who Matthew is on this week in fantasy! Love/Hate is on NBC Sports Edge, and it's FREE!
It’s #LoveHate day! Week 9 is now posted and as always it’s FREE.
Picking kickers can be a pain, but relax, we have our resident kicking expert Linda to help you make the right choice...
In Week 8 we got back on track with both streaming options finishing with more points than the points median on the week. It’s nice to be back in the win column, so let’s do it again this week. Navigating a massive bye week with lopsided matchups we have to go out on a limb with some of these streaming options, so bear with me.
🦵️ Opportunity Reigns Supreme: Greg Joseph (Linda's Rank: K6)
Greg Joseph has had a rough go of it this season. Vikings fans will tell you that the kicker position has been a pitfall of the team for several years. Joseph has a sub 70% made field goal percentage which currently ranks at 31st in the league. Despite all of that, Joseph is a good streaming option this week. In the business of streaming kickers we want to target opportunity > accuracy. If they’re not getting the chance to attempt field goals, it doesn’t matter what their make percentage is.
Outside of the Week 2 loss vs the Eagles, the Vikings have attempted at least one field goal every week and multiple field goals in 4-of-6 weeks. Minnesota is favored by 3.5 points over Washington in this Week 9 matchup and Joseph is rostered in less than 20% of Yahoo! leagues.
🦵️ A Viable Underdog: Michael Badgley (Linda's Rank: K17)
Remember when I asked you to bear with me? I need your trust now more than ever.
Badgley is rostered in less than 20% of Yahoo! leagues. The Lions get the Packers this week, at home with both teams stuck in a rut of losses. Detroit is not favored, but they are tied for the highest over/under of the week and Badgley has attempted multiple field goals in his first two starts with the Lions.
You can find my Week 9 kicker rankings at FantasyLife.com.
The Walkthrough is the most comprehensive matchups column in the fantasy space. Every Friday, Rotoworld's Pat Kerrane outlines all the critical fantasy football context for each and every game. Today, he shares a team he's excited about for Week 9...
🚀 Aaron Jones is your Week 9 superstar
Jones is by far the most interesting play on the Packers. Jones' playing time has bounced around this season, but his season-high 74% snap share in Week 7 felt different... because it was accompanied by a 30% target share. Before that point, Jones' highest target share was just 14% in Week 1. Jones continued to be a major factor in the passing game last week, with an 18% target share. That gives Jones a 25% target share over the last two weeks, which would easily lead all running backs over the course of the full season.
Jones' recent involvement in the passing game might not fully maintain, but it's still a very strong sign that the Packers want to get him involved in the offense. And in this matchup, they don't necessarily need to throw it to him.
Jones is a great receiving back, but he's also been excellent as a rusher. He ranks 10th in NFL Next Gen's rush yards over expected per attempt, second in NFL Next Gen's success rate, and fourth in PFF's elusive rating. Jones can rip off big plays regardless of how the ball gets into his hands and is more than capable of punishing a bad run defense. That's exactly what he gets here. The Lions rank just 30th in EPA allowed per rush and 30th in rushing success rate. Per PFF's expected points model, Jones has had the seventh-most valuable workload of the last two weeks. If the Packers continue to feed him, he could deliver a week-winning performance.
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never gonna forgive miles sanders for telling me to not draft him in fantasy football