Get your sausage, juicy sausage, right here! On this week’s Ditka affair, Donkey Teeth and B_Don chat about the LeVeon Bell aftermath, AFC/NFC favorites, and then dive into some film review of Aaron Jones and John Ross.
Later in the spectacle, the fellas tell you whether to hold the Ditka on Alshon Jeffery, Allen Robinson, Josh Gordon, and Donte Moncrief. And guess who might be the A-hole of the week and possibly the year! Hint: his name rhymes with Flaveon Snell. Sniff the free sausage fumes below:
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i think it’s silly to say bell isn’t a top 3 RB, i didn’t mean that a bit back. what i meant was there’s been at least 8 completely wrong “updates” since late august on bell returning, at least one of which was attributed to a bell statement itself saying “he’d be back on week X”. i think (i’m guessing which one at this exact point though, although i do remember reading about it when it happened); it was somewhere in the week 8 range when a direct quote from him said he’d be back THAT week. NONE of those “updates” proved to be at all true obv by now. i’m very curious where these updates and their info even came from, as man, all the people who wrote those should forevermore either be naming their sources OR saying “hey guys reading this, don’t trust us on this topic” since this was a many times boy who cried bell situation. this didn’t affect ME in fantasy as i got massively scared off of bell entirely (most of my redraft leagues, if not all, draft very late in preseason); and i never seriously tried to trade for a holdout guy. holdout guys routinely do at least one of these:
1. holdout well longer (at least 1-3 weeks longer) than the earlier reports claim is likely
2. when they show up they aren’t simply in game shape or rhythm, and don’t perform up to their standards usually for an additional 2-6 weeks
3. in RARE cases they don’t return at all (bell here, but this is rare)
4. in VERY frequent cases they just get hurt either right off or after playing badly to their standards for a bit before (dez is a good example here)
i’m including late signees as “holdouts” even though they technically aren’t, but all the same conditions apply to their health, rhythm, conditioning almost every time.
so for me bell was always going to miss (i’ll take the average of my ranges) miss at least 6 games, and that doesn’t even take into account the injury/bad rhythm/possible conditioning risks. in dynasties however i absolutely would’ve traded for him, but it’s hard to get a good price on a guy that good.
as to the exact thing as of nov 8th of trading connor for bell in redraft as a connor owner:
-upside, you get a top 3 minimum RB, who very arguably might take 2-3 weeks to get that top 3 value, gotta think minimum 2 IF he started exactly week 10
-downside, you get nothing when bell’s holdout continues and lost a top 12ish RB for this year minimum, if not top 6ish maybe.
if you don’t do the trade:
upside: you keep that top 6ish RB (12ish at worst) value
downside: bell stops holdout, comes back, IS back to top 3 or better RB value in 2-3 weeks starting week 10, or 11, connor falls to losing probably at least 65% of current value, easily more. but at same time PIT’s doing just fine with connor’s production, AND we see stuff like the whole team hates him (besides probably AB his buddy, or ben) in quotes, coach seems pissed, coach has to know giving connor’s reps away while large chunk of team is pissed at bell can’t at all make for trust from coach to player etc AND they’d owe a bunch of money (do they even have cap space here anyway? i forgot that i always wondered that one earlier in year)
but look at how late in the year it is to make that trade, even if you KNEW he’d be back to top 3 form we’re looking at week 12 to start it, so you better be in playoffs already for sure. meanwhile i’ve never seen a holdout come back week 10-11 (and it had to be by 11) and we’ve seen those at least 8 “updates” claiming when he’d be back, each of which we’d watched fall into what looks now like just lies or at best empty guesswork sent into post as if it’s “insider knowledge” including an actual definite lie by bell himself in week (8, guessed this exact week). would scare the hell outta me. back in week 4 i’d still do that trade though.
@The Harrow: one last thing, it’s possible bell himself leaked all those “updates” to media, but man, in so doing they ALL look like assholes for having reported them since they just said this was either happening or very likely to, and they kept doing this, without having any sort of critical sense of themselves (i.e. intellectual integrity). so either lies, guessing, bad info, and/or plain stupidity (or a mix of course).
@The Harrow: I don’t know where the reports all come from. I expect it’s a combination of Bell, Bell’s agent, and media sites just trying to find things to report, especially in the pre-season. In general, I try to ignore these reports as it can be difficult to determine what is real vs what is just noise that can be ignored.
I admit it was definitely a risk to take Le’Veon, more and more so as the pre-season wore on. I have drafts with wide ranges of draft dates. However, the possibility of getting a top 4 RB on your team during the season is very tempting even if he were to miss some time.
I have explained on the podcast before, but I build my rosters to win a championship and expect that my roster management ability will get me to the playoffs. It is not without risks as you can be caught in this type of situation, but FIRST OR LAST, right?
For what it’s worth, I have Bell on 6 teams, 3 are 6-4, one is 4-6, and one is 3-7. On both the sub .500 teams, I lost another player that was a first 3 round pick, but it was not the kiss of death to draft Bell and 2 of those leagues were dynasty where there wasn’t a whole lot that could be done about it.