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We made it three weeks without any Covid-19 trouble which is far longer than I previously expected. Three players and a couple of other staff members for the Tennessee Titans tested positive and it was reported on Tuesday. The Titans have closed their facilities until Saturday. At the time of writing this, there has not been any word of if the game will be rescheduled until later in the week, played on Sunday, or some bye weeks will be switched around weeks 6 and 7. For now, I will rank the players as if they are playing during the week 4 period. I have also ranked Julio Jones and Davante Adams like they are playing for now. They were both at least close to playing last week so one has to think that there is a good chance that they give it a go this week. I have no idea what to do with Chris Godwin so I left him in the 30’s. Ahh, the difficulty of putting out rankings before the practice week starts. 

As you may know, my rankings are live up until kick off on Sunday morning, so be sure to check back all week and then click the primer post on Sunday morning where I answer all of your questions that you might have. I have had good fortune in the accuracy department through the first 3 weeks and I’m going to try and keep the train rolling as we near the quarter mark of the fantasy season. Here are the early rankings for week 4!

Please, blog, may I have some more?

It is another Victory Tuesday as I awaken in my parents’ basement. I put on my pants (one leg at a time, like everybody else), and this morning I won’t be needing a shower because I smell of success. I’ve been getting rich off of the sweet, sweet capitalism of the fantasy football trade market. That’s right, BUY! SELL! BUY! SELL! Wall Street? How about Waller St.? You know what I mean? I will spend the next 13 hours on various forums and social media platforms telling analysts that they are wrong and the exact reasons why. And of course, ripping off my league mates.  

I will tell tales of trading for Nick Chubb before week 1 during the great Kareem Hunt panic of summer 2020. After weathering the storm in week 1, returns have been nothing but PROFIT! I will brag about dumping my Leonard Fournette shares before Ronald Jones maintained his workload in the Tampa backfield in week 3. If I’ve proposed any bad trades, it has escaped my memory as I chuckle a satisfactory laugh to myself thinking about Cooper Kupp scoring his first touchdown in Buffalo after I bought shares following a disappointing first two weeks. My smile fades because it is time to get to work. Fantasy football success isn’t owned, it is rented, and the trade market is open every day depending on your league settings.

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It’s starting to feel more like football season, eh? The SEC is back, the Big 12 is playing in conference games, and the Big Ten is now under a month away from football. If that’s not enough for you, the NFL is sizzling through two weeks and we are on to week 3. I have far fewer complaints about the level of play than I thought I would and I am thrilled about it. Do you all remember the first weeks of the officiating strike a few years back? Do you remember how watching football wasn’t nearly as enjoyable as a result? That is sort of what I was expecting, but here we are. The quality of play is fine, our star players are dynamic. The injury bug was bad last week, but if 2020 has taught us anything; if there is a sliver of hope for normalcy, you just have to embrace it. 

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So far I have enjoyed the challenge of putting out a weekly start/sit article. A lot of these are foreshadowed in my weekly rankings (13th in accuracy for FantasyPros last week)! But also, writing this column has helped me take a closer look at my rankings the day after I publish them and it makes me notice that what I put out on Wednesday is far from a finished product. If you use my rankings, be sure to check back on Sunday because they will look a lot different. I love gambling on football. I’ve been doing it for years and I still have a roof over my head so I guess it’s not going too bad. I do a lot of digging from Thursday-Saturday when looking at game lines and totals and it helps find the errors in my ways from a fantasy aspect earlier in the week. If you’d like a second opinion on my start and sit options, be sure to check out Rudy’s projections each week! Now would be as good as a time as any to use that 7-day free trial. Let’s get to the plays for week 3. 

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I learned something in our fantasy football group chat this morning. It was a conversation between THE BOOF, DonkeyTeeth and B-Don (they didn’t know I was watching tehehe). If you think about it, it’s kind of obvious, but I’ll bet you two packs of smokes, a bottle of toilet wine, and 3 packs of ramen that you didn’t know that Jonnu Smith is the 0.5 PPR TE1 through two weeks this year! Crap, I keep forgetting that my time has been served for crimes I ALLEGEDLY committed and I don’t have to bet prison items anymore. Which is unfortunate because I really miss that sweet, sweet toilet wine. Another fun fact, getting last place in a prison fantasy league has a little bit harsher of a punishment.. But I digress back to Jonnu. If you followed my rankings in week two, you would have started him in any format! You also might have started Emmanuel Sanders, but it’s not my fault he sucks. I’m just the ranker, sheesh.

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This was bound to happen. This is the least prepared for an NFL season that players have ever been. Limited contact practices, no preseason games. Sadly, this is probably just the beginning of a season that will be filled with injuries. And fines for coaches not wearing their masks! Drama, drama, drama. 

Injury carnage can also create panic trades, even this early in the season. You can imagine how panicked Saquon Barkley, Christian McCaffrey, and Courtland Sutton investors are right now. Even if they are able to get their guys on the waiver wire, you better believe that they will be willing to have some conversations about acquiring some carries and volume in the passing game. Let’s get to the buys and sells of the week.

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Welcome to week 2 of the 2020 NFL season! Some of the stories that I have heard already from fantasy players have been downright brutal. I have a friend who thought that he had won his league right after the draft after starting with Michael Thomas, Kenny Golladay, and Chris Godwin. And I know he is not the only one. You just never know! The injury bug can kill even the sharpest starts of drafts. I’m looking to turn my own season around after taking Miles Sanders pretty much everywhere that I could. I have a lot of 0-1 starts to redeem. I hate sweating this early. We still have 12 weeks until the fantasy playoffs so there is a lot of time to turn it around. Let’s start with the injury report, follow that up with some DFS plays that I like, and then finish with the rankings that I will be updating all the way until kickoff. 

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I have been doing a lot of thinking about week 1 and what we can trust and what we should throw away. It’s a tough thing to not trust your eyes for future projections. I guess that’s what makes sports gambling so difficult. New casinos don’t pop up from everybody winning. How does one pick who to double down on off of a blah performance? The same goes for breakout performances. How do we know it wasn’t a one-off occurrence? Instincts plays a big role. When you’ve been playing fantasy football for over a decade you pick up on trends and apply it to new situations. Another thing, I’m really excited to be writing the start/sit column every week. Yes, the title alone brings a lot of eyes, but also I want to challenge myself to put personal biases aside to try and help build lineups for you, the reader. I had a BIG whiff last week on Ben Roethlisberger. That was a failure on my part to not weigh the matchup heavier than the overall narrative that I have for him in 2020.

The results from last week weren’t bad at all outside of that misstep. Shout out to Will Fuller! Nobody outside of him really popped. Taylor, Garappolo, and Ronald Jones were fine, I suppose. Desean Jackson didn’t do diddly squat, but that’s on his QB. Everyone outside of Roethlisberger that I suggested sitting did absolutely nothing. We’re on to week 2.

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Welcome to week 2! I was really encouraged last week when nobody in any organization tested positive for Covid. I’m really starting to thing we are going to make it through this year with minimal messiness. As for my week 1 rankings, the week 1 FantasyPros accuracy report hasn’t been released. Outside of Monday night, I felt like things went well. For sake of context, I was out on Ben Roethlisberger and JuJu but they put together some magic together. Can’t hit ’em all. 

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Ladies and gentlemen, this isn’t just a trade column. This week mostly won’t be. In the spirit of week 1 overreactions, I want to provide a buy and sell of narratives and performances this week. I can’t think of a better way to celebrate Josh Jacobs being on pace for 48 regular season touchdowns. 

Too often, people get caught up in overreacting to week 1 boxscores without seeing the whole picture, but sometimes the reactions end up being valid. August didn’t give us a preseason to work with so the week 1 sample size is what we have to work with. There were things that every analyst was right and wrong about coming out of week 1, including me. But whether you are heading into week 2 1-0 or 0-1, there is still a ton of football to be played. 

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Here comes your week 1 disclaimer! Individual roster talent has everything to do with how you use the information in this post. Different folks have different strengths and weaknesses on their roster. If I say that I don’t like JuJu Smith-Schuster this week and you are in a 14 team league and your next best option is Sammy Watkins, that doesn’t mean that you should take “sit JuJu” as gospel. It just means that I like other players in a certain player’s tier more. I’ll specify if I think a player is going to put up a donut. Let’s sort through the rosters and find the plays for week 1.

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