Regretfully I am back stateside after traveling to Curacao last week. If you enjoy traveling I would highly recommend checking out the island. It didn’t take long for the afterglow of the trip to wear off though, I had to fly home with a slight cold. It’s safe to say that I will never get irritated at screaming children on a airplane again. I thought my ears were going to explode. As I stepped off the plane I noticed that my ears were completely blocked. Despite this, I managed to make it through immigration and TSA to catch my connecting flight, only to go through the process of having my eardrums almost burst once more. It took a full week for my hearing to come back, but during that time I was able to catch up on week 2 and 3 and now I am back to help you with your Dynasty teams.
Let’s start with last Thursday night with the Jets at Cleveland. The game started off with the Jets defense flying around the field. They had no problems getting to Tyrod, and after going up 14-0 everything was looking good. The Jets front got to Taylor again with the 1st half winding down and Taylor sustained a concussion on the play. Enter Baker Mayfield. We finally got to take a look at the most hyped quarterback in the draft. Mayfield lived up to that hype. I watched Baker’s first 2 throws in complete awe, both of which were zipped into tight windows with confidence. Mayfield looked great, leading the Browns back from a 14-0 deficit to victory. He was getting the ball out quickly and slinging it into windows like a veteran. He completed 74% of his passes and picked the Jets D apart for 200 yards in just over 1 full half of football. The QB change in Cleveland means all arrows are pointing up for this offense. I’ll not only be patiently awaiting the inevitable breakout of David Njoku, but we may get to see something rarer than a Cleveland Browns win. The elusive, fantasy relevant, rookie WR.
Heading into rookie drafts this summer there were two groups of people planting their flags on Callaway, the risk takers and the risk averse. Callaway was a potential first round talent for fantasy purposes but slipped into the 3rd after multiple off field issues. After getting a look at him in the pre-season he started creeping back into the 2nd round. With the change at QB, and the departures of Corey Coleman and Josh Gordon, the stars may have aligned for Callaway. He has a legitimate chance to carve out a role in the Cleveland offense. Baker seemed to look his way often, and has the ability to get him the ball down field. Callaway’s line from Thursday night is not indicative of what he is capable of. Taylor missed him on an easy 75 yard TD where he flashed his speed and got behind everyone. He also dropped a couple of routine passes down the sideline. He could have easily gone 6+/100+/1. Now the bad, there are rumors that Callaway doesn’t work on his craft outside of a game setting. This may be evident in the multiple drops we’ve seen from him. He also comes with all the off the field issues, he is a suspension risk at any time. Callaway is still very young at 21 and can turn that around. He has enormous upside, if he can establish trust with Mayfield. He has the potential to crack WR 3 value this year with WR 1 upside in the near future.
Buzz McCallister
Sam Darnold has looked mediocre at best through the first 3 weeks. It’s a small sample size, and it appears that the training wheels are still on for Darnold, but I’m not liking what I see so far. The Jets need to allow Darnold to stretch the field with Anderson in order to open up some passing options for him. He has been falling back on his safety blanket Enunwa too consistently and it showed on Thursday night. The future is still looking good for Darnold, but hopefully you were not planning on starting him this year.
I’ve got a Chubb
We’ve only seen 7 attempts from the highly touted RB in the first 3 games. While Hyde is the back to own in Cleveland for 2018, now is the time to buy Chubb. Barring injuries we will need to wait until 2019 to see what Chubb is capable of. Chubb is a talent on par with Saquon Barkley and has the skills to be a Gurley-esque running back. There may be a few disappointed owners out there that were expecting to get production this year and will be looking to move him.
