Ryan Grant is D – U – N. That spells, no longer available to score fake points for your fake football team. Enter BJax. Yes, the -Jax nickname is old and cliched and all that, but I like how it sounds. BJax, Beej? BJ Honeycutt? Dunno, but I do know you have to do what you can to pick him up if he is available.
Look at it this way, if Ryan Grant was injured during the off season and Jackson was named the starter, where do you think he would go in drafts? Well, Grant was going in the early third round. Jackson, who is unproven, would still probably go in the late 3rd to early 4th based on his team’s offense alone. When are you going to get a chance to pick up an every week RB2/Flex play off waivers? Not too often, not too often. (repetition = emphasis)
But this isn’t really news to you. If you have the number one waiver priority there IS someone on your team worth dropping and you are grabbing him. Done and done. But, what about leagues where you have to bid on your free agents? There are two types of leagues with free agent bidding. One is where, after waivers are over, you can pick up guys for free and the other is where you have to at least pay a dollar for them no matter when you clickety click. With the first way you can still grab someone to fill in during a bye or after an injury even if you’ve blown your wad on Beej. Those freebies may rot, but they’ll probably be better than an empty slot.  So, in these leagues you can bump your BJax bid up pretty high. I did an informal Twitter poll to see how high people were going with their $100 and the numbers were all $80+.  And if the Ryan Grant owner is paying any kind of attention at all they are going to break the bank, so 90+ isn’t out of the question. In the second type of league you will need to factor in how many times you will need to make moves. I like to stream defenses, so I would like to have at least a move a week. A lot depends on how deep your benches are. Do you have enough bench players and the right bye weeks to go all season without picking anyone up? If the answer is yes, then you are in a little better shape, but of course you will not go the whole season without making any transactions. It is impossible. So leave yourself room. No player is worth handcuffing yourself for the rest of the season. So I would say the max is 70-80 depending on bench spots.
Is BJax worth all this hoopla? Maybe. Nothing is set in stone and you could pay 99 dollars for him and he gets hurt in practice. It’s a big crap shoot! (has anyone gone on a crap shoot?) But he has looked much better this season and seems poised and able to take over the lead back role. Kuhn could take away some goal line carries, but not many more than he would have taken from Grant. Jackson has ability to catch the ball out of the backfield as well, so his versatility will come in handy even in PPR leagues. He’s an unknown quantity as far as how he will do for an extended period of time, but he’s going to get the opportunity and that is all you can really ask for.
