This article is part of our East Coast Offense series.
Bye Week Decisions
Week 4 has six teams on bye - Arizona, Seattle, Denver, St. Louis, Cincinnati and Cleveland. That means you'll have to reserve players like Michael Floyd, Marshawn Lynch, Peyton Manning and A.J. Green. That's not a problem if you have reserves who can slot in and start in their places, but what if you're using your bench to stash lottery tickets like Aaron Dobson and Ka'Deem Carey? It's simply not worth taking a zero at TE, or putting one of them in your starting lineup (Dobson has only been active for one game), so you have to cut them if you need the space.
It's always a tough thing to do - last year in the Stopa 10K league, I had Alshon Jeffery as a training-camp stash before cutting him prior to Week 1 to pick up a kicker. In 2009, I held Miles Austin for four games but had to cut him when byes hit and watched him be the league's No. 1 receiver for the final 12 games of the year on someone else's team.
I also dropped Lorenzo Taliaferro after Week 2 when Justin Forsett and Bernard Pierce split virtually all the carries, and of course Taliaferro went off this week and will become an expensive waiver-wire pickup if he's not already owned. I'm not especially upset about it - at the time, he was the third string running back on a team not known for its dominant offense or running game, and his number just came up once Pierce got hurt.
It's like that with most backups - next week it could be Carey, Chris Polk, Ronnie Hillman or anyone. We don't know because - especially with running backs - it's largely situational. When does the coach give the player a chance, how does the line happen to block when he gets into the game, how does his style mesh with the blocking? It's tough to know, and so it's important not to overvalue your particular reserves if you need the roster space. It could be any of these players who pops, and while you should own as many as you can without damaging your starting lineup, the particular ones you own are probably not special.
If you look back to last year, the big pickups were Zac Stacy, Keenan Allen, Andre Ellington and Rashad Jennings, two late-round rookies, a fourth rounder on a team that hadn't had a strong passing game since 2011 and a 28-year old journeyman backup on the Raiders. Throw in Nick Foles, a backup QB without much pedigree or mobility, Bobby Rainey, a journeyman coming off of injuries and maybe Donald Brown, a failed first-round pick the with whom Colts wanted nothing to do - so much so they traded a first-round pick for Trent Richardson after Vick Ballard went down - and you can see how random it is. In fact, most of the backups everyone wanted like Kendall Hunter, Zach Sudfeld, Jacquizz Rodgers, Bryce Brown, Pierce and even Montee Ball didn't do much.
Moreover, the best time to cut bait is now. If you compromise your roster for a week or two, hoping to wait until the heaviest byes for your team hit, you'll probably still have to drop those players, and you'll have fielded worse lineups in the meantime. Once your heaviest byes are gone, you can go back to speculating with the back end of your roster.
This is also a good argument for the Scott Pianowski-style of drafting where you're rostering more immediately usable players in the middle rounds rather than the high-upside backups who can carry you to a title if they hit. While it seems you have all season to wait for them to break out, in practice you might have only three or four weeks. That dramatically shortens the window for the injuries and other chaos you need to take place. Meanwhile the guy with Darren Sproles, Markus Wheaton and Greg Jennings is subbing in reserves with only a moderate loss of points each week.
Of course, the hardest player to deal with in this situation is Josh Gordon. Gordon's upside is not speculative, and you know for a fact he'll be back in Week 12. But that's a lot of roster juggling to carry him until that point. A huge variable is format - in the NFFC where you have 10 bench spots, you start three receivers and a flex, it's PPR scoring and the overall contest is heavily weighted toward playoff weeks, there's almost no case where you'd drop Gordon. But in a non-PPR with five bench spots and only two starting receivers, you have to have uncanny injury luck to find room for him all year.
What To Do With Adrian Peterson - Part II
We had Greg Ambrosius of the NFFC on the radio Monday, and in six of his 180-something RotoWire Online Championship Leagues, owners dropped Adrian Peterson. Because Ambrosius is not only dealing with individual leagues but an overall prize, he's making Peterson ineligible to be picked up, lest someone win the overall simply because someone else in his particular league dropped him. Of course, erroneous drops happen all the time - Jeff Erickson pointed out someone won the 2012 overall NFBC championship after picking up a dropped Mike Trout.
But the difference here is when Trout was dropped, his owner did it purely as a fantasy-baseball-value proposition - he didn't know when Trout would be called up or how well he'd do in that event. For Peterson - who could be done for the year - it's likely at least a couple people dropped him because they didn't want to roster a player who beat his four-year-old kid with a tree branch. While dropping Peterson might have made that owner feel better because he now no longer has to root for him - that's not a sound fantasy-football reason to cut him.
Accordingly, it's closer in impact to a case where someone's deliberately trying to mess up the league by dropping useful players than it is to the Trout one where doubt about Trout's actual value is motivating the decision. Put differently, if you think a player belongs on your roster value-wise, but you drop him for some other reason, you're potentially altering the outcome of the league in an artificial way - just as someone dropping a valuable player for a malicious reason would be. The motive is different, but the result is the same: there's now a player on waivers who should not be.
I've mentioned on our SXM show I'd start Saddam Hussein if I thought he'd score touchdowns because my fantasy team has zero fans, no ties to the larger community and affects zero people in real life except the other guys in the league whom I hope to destroy. While people can differ in their moral views, I have a hard time understanding the case for dropping a player you think is otherwise rosterable on that basis.
I suppose someone might simply feel better about himself by cutting ties with a player he associates with terrible behavior, but considering you never had real-life ties with that player in the first place, I'm not sure what you imagine you're doing. It reminds me of a wealthy friend with whom I grew up whose parents moved out to Greenwich, Connecticut because they couldn't stand to see all the homeless people in Manhattan (this was the '80s before Rudy Guiliani banished them.) This didn't solve the problem; it just solved their problem.
If Peterson is on your waiver wire, then, go ahead and bid on him. He's kind of Josh Gordon-lite - you know the upside should he come back, you just don't know if or when he will. Obviously, all the league-parameter, bye-week issues apply here too - in NFFC, I'd probably use 30-percent of my budget, though as I said he won't be available in that contest. In leagues with shorter benches, I'd make a token bid, to the extent I had roster room, but I'd also cut him the second I needed the spot for a useful option.
Week 3 Observations
•Geno Smith moves well and has a nice arm, but he plays herky-jerky as if he's doing everything too fast and too recklessly. I also wish he wouldn't throw even short passes at 100 mph - have a little touch, make it easy on the receivers. In his defense, one Eric Decker went down, Smith had no one who could get open or make a downfield play.
•Chris Ivory runs like he's trying to injure himself and others, but he's good and even looked fairly smooth as a receiver.
•Chris Johnson seems somewhat lifeless, without a lot of burst or power. His year-end totals from 2011-2013 are deceptive because he's been so durable. On a per-game basis he was less valuable than someone like Jennings, Stacy or Ellington last year.
•Alshon Jeffery looked healthy and should have had a touchdown but for Jay Cutler missing him on an easy throw.
•Matt Forte ran hard, but the Jets run defense is a terrible matchup.
• The Giants won by 13, but the score was closer than the game. The Giants defense dominated early, and the offense was crisp. An early fumble and botched FG snap kept Houston in the game, but eventually the Giants took over. Rashad Jennings looked like peak Arian Foster, breaking tackles and making nice cuts while slashing for extra yardage. He also saw 34 carries to Andre Williams' six. No one has a bigger share of his team's backfield than Jennings right now.
•Victor Cruz stopped on a dime during his TD catch, before accelerating toward the corner of the end zone – shades of the superstar he was in 2011. It'll take more than one strong game to trust it, but there's upside in this offense. and I'm interested to see what happens once Odell Beckham gets back likely in Week 5.
•DeAndre Hopkins made a great one-handed downfield catch that was called back due to illegal motion. He looks more like the No. 1 right now than Andre Johnson. Alfred Blue got stuffed a lot, but broke off one 46-yard run, boosting his average. He didn't do anything to lose the job should Foster remain out.
• I didn't watch much of the San Diego game, but they bucked two trends simultaneously: (1) that west coast teams don't travel well for early games on the east coast; and (2) that teams playing the Seahawks don't cover the following week. Of course, San Diego dominated time of possession against the Seahawks and did most of the the aggressing, so maybe that was an exception. But my feeling is most of these factors – if they mean anything, and usually they don't – are priced into the lines already.
• What a drive by Peyton Manning and the Broncos to tie the game. It was 80 yards in 59 seconds with no timeouts against the Seattle defense in Seattle. It doesn't get tougher than that. And the throw to Demaryius Thomas for the two-point conversion was perfect. Of course, the Seahawks' drive in overtime was a tour de force in is own right as Russell Wilson methodically took the Broncos defense apart. But if the two teams were to meet again in the Super Bowl, you have to think Denver would feel a lot better about it after getting back in the game.
• So annoying the Darren McFadden touchdown to tie the game in the closing seconds was called back due to an inconsequential hold. Not only did I have McFadden going in a league (it didn't matter), but it could have caused quite a bit of survivor damage as well. How are the Pats life and death with the Raiders at home?
• I was down onJulian Edelman before the season, and so far it looks like I'm very wrong, but part of my assumption was the Pats wanted to get more than 6.5 YPA. But Aaron Dobson was scratched again, and the Pats were content to target Edelman 13 more times (84 yards, 6.5 YPT.) Maybe Bill Belichick – who won 12 games and made it to the AFC title game while missing Rob Gronkowski most of the year – knows something I don't, but I don't see this team's upside.
• Normally laying a full TD on the road with a big-name quarterback against a league doormat is a sucker play, but Jacksonville's decision to start Chad Henne over Blake Bortles despite Bortles clearly superior play in the preseason spoke volumes. And the Colts at 0-2 were a desperate animal, so I uncharacteristically laid the points. It was such a sucker play, the line finally went off at 5.5, meaning the sharp money probably jumped all over the Jaguars at seven. Now that Bortles will start going forward, I'd expect the Jaguars to rally – maybe not right away, but they'll go on a run of near-upsets and actual upsets at some point.
• It's hard not to like the Cardinals passing-game setup – even Drew Stanton is serviceable with those targets and in that system. Arizona has to be on the short list of Super Bowl contenders right now, assuming Carson Palmer can come back at full strength before long. Meanwhile Stanton is doing a poor man's 2013 Josh McCown impression. And you have to love how far down the field Michael Floyd is getting his targets.
• After Andrew Luck's huge day, many might have him as the clear No. 4 QB – or perhaps higher – but I'd still go with Nick Foles whose receivers always seem to be wide open. Even though Washington shut down the running game entirely, Foles still put up another 300-plus game and three scores. Jeremy Maclin is easily a top-15 receiver right now and probably top-10.
• It was hard to fathom the Packers scoring only seven points against a depleted Lions secondary. Eddie Lacy now looks slower than his predecessor at Alabama, and Aaron Rodgers was running for his life much of the day. Of course, Matthews Stafford putting up 10 offensive points at home against Green Bay's defense is perhaps even more disturbing.
• The Saints won and covered at home, but it wasn't pretty. I was expecting to see the well-oiled machine that routinely scores in the high-30s and 40s, but Drew Brees and the offense weren't especially crisp. I suppose you could do worse than 293 yards, 8.4 YPA and two TDs, though.
• I let my SXM producer Trevor Ray co-manage my second "Beat Chris Liss" NFFC team, and I had the lineup set this week when he emailed me during the second half of the early games saying he wanted to bench Alex Smith for Geno Smith. I told him I was leaning Alex, but if he felt strongly he could do it, as it was close. The issue was Geno could be without Eric Decker (it turns out he played about a half), and in the NFFC, passing TDs are worth six points, so running QBs don't get as much of a boost when they score on the ground. Trevor made the switch anyway, and Alex scored 28 points on our bench. We entered Monday night with our opponent up 24.35 points. Geno scored about 21.
•Kirk Cousins had a huge game, and it's possible he'll be a poor man's Nick Foles this year given the weapons and the system. It's also worth remembering Chad Henne threw for 400-plus yards as a second-year player on the Dolphins once too.
• The Panthers looked like a contender, while the Steelers were blown out by the Ravens and nearly lost at home to the Browns, and yet Pittsburgh was getting only three points in Carolina. That line moved up to 3.5 by kickoff, but it still seemed like an easy call to take the Panthers. Of course, the Steelers destroyed them and bullied their usually stout defense. It's a good reminder not to get too wedded to recent results when evaluating a game.
