This article is part of our East Coast Offense series.
East Coast Offense - Year 10
I remember when the start of football season meant tracking my three fantasy teams, rooting for the Giants and the team I picked in survivor and handicapping games against the spread. It seemed like a lot of action at the time.
Fast forward 10 years, and we're in a different dimension. I cut down to eight leagues this year, not counting a best-ball one, whatever weekly contests Sirius XM has for us and the League of Leagues, a three-sport competition that runs over a two-year span. And I'll probably cap it at 3-4 survivor pools and one against-the-spread office pool.
But now Daily Fantasy Sports (DFS) is a big part of what we do, and I won't merely be dabbling in it like last year. One of my higher-stakes leagues is the DFS Crossover Challenge in which I'll be fielding a lineup every week on Draft Kings. And I'm in the weekly RotoWire Fan Duel contest too. I'm sure while I'm there, I'll probably set some lineups in the million-dollar contests - once I study and write about the topic, I'm going to see angles I'll want to play.
In short, I'll probably be rooting for and against every player and every team at the same time every Sunday, and I'm not sure whether what's left of my real team fandom and "home" fantasy league enthusiasm will survive this new hedge-fund/day-trading/high-stakes fantasy world. Rest assured if it does descend into greed, soullessness, addiction and despair, I'll chronicle it as straightforwardly as I'm able - right after I knife my league-mates in the back for another dollar.
Seriously though, the DFS angle won't dominate the discussion here, but it'll be part of it - all of these contests are just different derivatives of the NFL game and serve as a way for us to test our predictive and interpretive abilities. At root, however, I'm a football fan - even though I might despise the corporate entity known as the NFL and its feckless little weasel of a commissioner (the guy is seriously skipping the opening game in New England) - and this will again be a space for football observations, rants, theories and anything football related. I appreciate and encourage the usually excellent feedback and comments - just try to keep them on topic, i.e., save the lineup questions for Ask the Experts or the Weekly Rankings.
Players I don't Own
I finished my eighth and last draft on Saturday, and I put together a table of all the players I drafted, my portfolio, so to speak. While there's a lot of Dwayne Bowe (soon to be dropped in a few), Stedman Bailey and Vernon Davis, there are quite a few stars in whom I don't own a single share. I mentioned above I'd be rooting for and against every player in the league when we add in DFS, and that might turn out to be true on many Sundays, but right now I want Adrian Peterson, Julio Jones, Jamaal Charles, Marshawn Lynch, Odell Beckham, C.J. Anderson, Randall Cobb, Aaron Rodgers, DeMarco Murray, Matt Forte, Jordan Matthews, T.Y. Hilton, Jeremy Hill, Justin Forsett and LeSean McCoy to fail.
How is it possible none of these players landed on my teams? They fall into two categories: (1) Players I didn't get due to draft/auction circumstances; and (2) Players of whom I wanted no part at anything close to their ADPs.
The first category players are Peterson, Jones, Lynch, Beckham (as a Giants fan, I feel terrible about that), Murray, Matthews, Rodgers and Hill. I like all of them, and I expect them to have big seasons.
But I have a bad vibe about Charles, health-wise, I don't think Anderson's hold on the job is late-first or early-second round worthy, and I don't like Cobb, a smaller receiver who will get much more defensive attention, already nursing an injury. I'm worried this could be the "cliff" year for Forte, Hilton isn't a red-zone target, and his ceiling for volume is lower than comparable receivers like DeAndre Hopkins and Emmanuel Sanders, I don't trust Forsett to keep the job to himself all year and McCoy is coming of a down year and nursing a hamstring injury that could linger into the season.
I'm quite sure at least two of the players I intentionally passed on (Group 2) will have monster seasons. But if I knew who they were, I obviously wouldn't have passed on them.
20 Non-Obvious Predictions for 2015
I've done this each of the last few seasons with mixed success. That's another way of saying success mixed with failure or just mixed failure. Here are last year's for point of reference. Remember these are non-obvious, and no amount of mixed failure will deter me from making them in 2016, either.
1. The Colts will win the Super Bowl this year. They've made the incremental steps each season Andrew Luck has been in the league, and the timing is right. Don't ask me how their defense will stop anyone - defenses vary greatly from year to year, and having a great offense will keep them off the field and put them in hitter's counts.
2. Until/unless he gets injured Peyton Manning will be no worse than the third best fantasy quarterback. Manning was right there with Luck and Rodgers for the first two thirds of last year before he fell apart down the stretch. It's hard to believe an immobile passer who gets rid of the ball in two seconds got old between Weeks 11 and 12. It's more likely he got hurt, and no one said anything about it (Consider how John Fox explains his handling of Alshon Jeffery's injury this preseason, and it's likely if Manning were hurt, the team would have said as little as possible.
3. Speaking of Jeffery if he is healthy for Week 1 (and stays that way), he'll be top-five in the NFL in targets and touchdowns. If he's not healthy, this prediction is void.
4. Amari Cooper will see a ton of targets, but he'll fail to score seven TDs or crack 1,100 yards.
5. Ryan Mathews and DeMarco Murray will both rush for 1,000 yards.
6. Arian Foster will be a top-five back during the games he starts and finishes.
7. Blake Bortles and Derek Carr will not emerge by season's end as franchise quarterbacks, i.e., both will be shaky, and their organizations will have to figure out what to do in Year 3.
8. The player who takes the most quarterback snaps for the Browns this year is not currently on their roster.
9. No Cowboys running back will crack 1,000 yards. If one does, it'll be Christine Michael or someone not currently rostered.
10. Joique Bell will outproduce Ameer Abdullah in standard leagues.
11. One of the Falcons running backs will have 1,000 yards and nine touchdowns.
12. Ronnie Hillman will be a top-24 PPR back.
13. At least one among the Jets, Bears, Bucccaneers, Rams, 49ers, Titans, Jaguars, Raiders and Redskins will make the playoffs. (If you remove the Jets and Rams, I probably don't take that prop.)
14. Ben Roethlisberger has a decent year, but does not finish as a top-10 fantasy quarterback.
15. Martellus Bennett has a better fantasy season than Jimmy Graham.
16. Vernon Davis is a top-10 tight end.
17. Andre Johnson will not finish as a top-30 receiver.
18. Colin Kaepernick will either be a top-10 fantasy quarterback, get hurt or lose the job. He will not play 14-plus games and not be top-10 on a per-game basis.
19. Devin Funchess will approximate 2014 Kelvin Benjamin's production this year.
20. Some of these predictions are wrong.
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