Monday Morning Review, Week 1, 2019 Fantasy Football

There wasn’t much that the Cleveland Browns could do for your fantasy teams but we’ll get to that in a little bit. I’m talking about Marquise Brown and A.J. Brown, the pair of rookie wide receivers that played their way into triple digit receiving yards in week 1. A.J. Brown was probably the bigger surprise for the Tennessee Titans. For one, there wasn’t much buzz around him during the preseason. Also, nobody really believes in Marcus Mariota. A.J. Brown caught 3 of his for targets for 100 yards but wasn’t able to score a touchdown. HOLLYWOOD Marquise Brown did sneak through the secondary and score two touchdowns against the Dolphins. He caught 4 of his 5 targets for 147 yards.

These two receivers combined for 9 targets and one of them played against the Miami Dolphins. If you didn’t hear, a bunch of the Dolphins asked for a trade after the game. Seriously. These are still NFL yards, catches and touchdowns, don’t get me wrong, but, we don’t want to react over the events of week 1. If I were to put in a claim for either one of them, which I probably won’t, it would be for Marquise Brown because Lamar Jackson is the real deal. I do want pieces of that offense, because despite playing against the Dolphins, he looked unbelievably poised as he spread the ball out to 8 different receivers. I really want a piece of DK Metcalf. Metcalf caught 4 of his 6 targets for 89 yards. I believe that more opportunities will be the for Metcalf than the other two receivers. Metcalf led the Seahawk’s receivers in targets on Sunday and is still only owned in 63% of ESPN leagues and 37% of Yahoo leagues. There is a chance that he is out there in one of your leagues and he would probably be my #1 waiver claim if he is.

Performance Checks

I guess that you have to pick up John Ross III off of the waiver wire. He’s a speed demon and he was targeted 12 times by Dalton.
Other than a fumble by making one too many moves on a catch, Chris Carson looked like himself. Carson scored a touchdown on the ground and also caught one. He went for a really good value during draft season.
The Chargers really don’t need Melvin Gordon. Austin Ekeler was phenomenal catching the ball out of the backfield and Justin Jackson was a nice Robin.
Keenan Allen’s ankle looks fine!
I was all over Jamison Crowder this week. Robby Anderson had a crappy match up and I figured Crowder would be fed often. One more yard and a touchdown would have been nice, but that would be greedy.
It wouldn’t be a bad idea to pick up either Cole Beasley or John Brown.
Man, I wish I had more Marlon Mack. He was still so cheap after Andrew Luck retired and I didn’t pull the trigger enough.
One more bad game out of Derrius Guice and you should be able to buy low on a player that has a ton of talent. He’s going to get it going, be patient.
Miles Sanders will be fine as well. He will see more and more touches, I promise.
James Conner will be fine. It’s kind of hard to figure out where he is at when the Steelers have been trailing the entire game.
I knew Roethlisberger was going to stink without Antonio Brown, but not this bad.
Jameis Winston looked like a terrible quarterback on Sunday. His blocking wasn’t that bad. He had time to make good decisions and he most certainly did not. All three of his interceptions were very ugly interceptions. He looked worse than Mitch Trubisky did on Thursday night. Jameis is still a fantasy asset, it’s just going to be difficult to pick those spots. I don’t think it helped that Mike Evans was under the weather, but I don’t want him in my lineups against Carolina after watching Goff struggle against them at times.
Chris Godwin and Ronald Jones were the highlights on Tampa Bay’s side of the ball. Although Godwin only caught 3 balls, he did catch a touchdown pass and a couple 15+ yard plays. Ronald Jones looked slick in between the tackles ripping off a few 8-10+ yard runs.
Once Tevin Coleman left with an injury, Raheem Mostert looked like the best back on the field for the 49ers. He had great vision and looked like a closer.
George Kittle was the only 49er with more than 3 targets. He had 10 targets in the passing game.
Dante Pettis caught his only target for 7 yards. Deebo Samuel was on the field a lot more than Pettis was.
I’ve been wrong about Sammy Watkins. Even before Tyreek Hill left with an injury, Watkins looked like the star that Buffalo drafted him to be. His price will likely be too high for me to poke around with trade offers but if you drafted him, good call so far.
Leonard Fournette ran the ball well today but there weren’t any opportunities for him to push it over the goal line.
D.J. Chark caught all 4 of his targets for 146 yards. I like Chark’s pedigree, and he caught a beautiful pass from Foles on the play that broke Fole’s collar bone. I’ll probably be putting some claims in for Chark.
Gardner Minshew looked good filling in for Foles. Good enough that I can still believe in this passing game for fantasy assets like Westbrook and Chark in this offense.
Christian McCaffrey should have went off the board first in your fantasy drafts and he showed why today. He does things that only a handful of players can but the offense is built around him and that gives him an advantage over everyone else.
D.J. Moore was targeted 6 more times than Curtis Samuel. Let Curtis Samuel loose and you might win some games. I’m going to try and sneak Samuel into a few lineups against Tampa on Thursday.
Todd Gurley was written off too early in the game by fanalysts. He looked like the bruiser that he is in the second half once he got in a groove and ended up averaging 6.9 yards per carry for the day.
Malcolm Brown had 3 fewer carries than Gurley but saw the red zone work and walked in two touchdowns. This is something to monitor going forward. Malcolm Brown is worth a waiver wire stab if he is available in your league.
Cooper Kupp didn’t miss a beat catching 7 of his 10 targets for 46 yards. He will no doubt find more space in the weeks to come but Robert Woods is still the Jared Goff favorite. Kupp was left wide open a couple of times while Goff was trying to force the ball to Woods.
Derrick Henry just keeps plodding his way along to fantasy points. Hooray. He averaged the same amount of yards per carry as Nick Chubb, who I thought played well. But, Henry is the one who punched one in and also caught a 75-yard touchdown pass.
The Browns’ offensive line is going to have to improve a lot if Baker Mayfield is going to live up to what he’s capable of this year. It sounds like they have quite a bit of a mess going on behind the scenes when referring to the offensive line. That’s so Browns of them. Nothing will ever be easy in Cleveland.
Odell Beckham looked to have good burst despite his sore hip and led the Browns with 11 targets. I don’t think there is anything to worry about in the OBJ camp.
The boring guy in your fantasy league took Delanie Walker, started him, and got two touchdowns out of it. He/she wins.
Rudy and I were both going back and forth on whether or not to like Mark Andrews during draft season and it looks like he’s the real deal. Andrews led the Ravens with 8 targets, building on the chemistry that he built with Lamar Jackson last season.
Julio Jones continued his struggles against the Vikings secondary. Matt Ryan looked lethargic until garbage time, but those points still count!
Kirk Cousins seriously only attempted to 10 passes in this game. I’m really glad that I avoided drafting this passing offense.
I drafted a ton of Dalvin Cook and it was a really good start. This offense is built around Dalvin Cook. Thank you for sucking, Kevin Stefanski.
Saquon Barkley fumbled the ball and the offense recovered. His very next carry, he took it for 59 yards down the side line. Barkley didn’t touch the ball a ton on Sunday, but when he did, he averaged 10.9 yards per carry.
Evan Engram caught 11 of his 14 targets for 116 yards and a touchdown. He’s going to be a force in a bad offense. Or is it really a bad offense? *Checks notes and confirms that Eli Manning is still quarterback* Yes, this is a bad offense.
I might have been wrong about Dak Prescott. Or the Giants might be really bad on defense. Or maybe both. I’m still leaning towards that I was probably wrong about Dak. He has weapons in Amari Cooper and Michael Gallup and it looks like he knows how to use them.
I wasn’t wrong about Kyler Murray! Murray played against a fantastic defensive line, and after looking like a 5’10 quarterback for 3 quarters, Kyler Murray balled out in the fourth quarter and led an 18 point comeback in the fourth quarter. That has to do a lot for his confidence. While Murray hasn’t ran the ball as effectively as I thought he would, he threw for over 300 yards and 2 touchdown.
Larry Fitzgerald caught one of those touchdowns. Larry led the team in targets with 13 and turned 8 of them into 113 yards.
Better days are ahead for Christian Kirk. Despite his lethargic stat line, he was still targeted 12 times by Murray. I have a feeling this won’t be the only game that Murray attempts more than 50 passes.
David Johnson is back, folks! This offense fits him nicely.
T.J. Hockensen is a baller! Those Iowa high asses are still no joke.
Arizona’s secondary is pretty bad and Kenny Golladay was just okay. I figure that this is a sign of things to come for him. Not a fan this year.