For a lot of fantasy owners, now is the time to either look towards the playoffs, or go into damage control and try to salvage your season while you can. Both decisions are important, but for now, let’s talk about this week. One of the matchups I’m keeping an eye on is the Rams at home against the Bengals. It’s been an up-and-down season for Los Angeles, but this is still a good team that will play well against weaker opponents that we can take advantage of in fantasy. And to say that the Bengals are a weaker opponent… is putting it mildly.

Please, blog, may I have some more?

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I had a vivid dream last night. It was so real. I was in bed, buck naked, with my supermodel girlfriend on one side and the RazzBowl trophy nestled on my other side. When I awoke, only one of the objects of my affection was actually there: the RazzBowl trophy. That’s right, I sleep naked with the RazzBowl trophy every night! And my supermodel girlfriend is out of town for the weekend doing supermodel stuff.

But there’s another man with his eyes and heart set on the now moist RazzBowl trophy: Pat Fitzmaurice of The Football Girl. Our top dog, Fitzmaurice, has extended his lead out to a commanding 38 points and has now held the lead back to back weeks and, maybe even more impressively, his squad has been top 3 in the overall standings for the entire season except for one week when he fell down to 6th place. Can he close the deal and lay with the fabled RazzBowl trophy? Only time will tell.

What makes the RazzBowl especially unique compared to other best ball formats and industry leagues is our addition of a $10 FAAB budget for the entire way season with a minimum of $1 bids. This allows teams to cycle out dead roster spots (e.g. Andrew Luck, Lamar Miller, etc) but it also means each team will only be allowed a maximum of ten moves for the entire season. Every dollar of each competitor’s free agent budget is just as precious as a Bill Belichick smile.

When teams choose to pony up their FAAB, it’s worthwhile to take a look and see why. There could be a goldmine of speculative adds buried in the RazzBowl transactions this season.

Here were the top buys from the penultimate RazzBowl FAAB run (FAAB ends after next week’s run), along with some donkey thoughts:

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A clash between two AFC teams that enter week 8 with highest projected point total, thanks to the reigning MVP Patrick Mahomes sidelined while he recovers from a knee injury.

Per NFL Next Gen Stats, Derek Carr has the 11th highest passer rating and NFL best completion percentage (74.1). On paper, this is an interesting matchup for Carr who is: facing a defense that has allowed the 4th most receiving yards per game, just placed DB Phillip Gaines on IR, are without DB Bradley Roby until after their bye week, have DB Tashaun Gibson questionable, and are 6.5 point road dogs. BUT Carr ranks 9th in fewest pass attempts per game, has the 8th fewest passes over 20 yards, lacks elite receiving weapons outside of his TE and has a head coach who is enamored with running the ball. Carr is best viewed as a 2-QB league starter and desperation spot fill in 1-qb leagues. Rudy projects Carr as QB21 in week 8.

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Before Game Of Thrones, HBO had a terrible-but-awesome show about some bros in Hollywood. It was called Entourage. I guess it was called Entourage because the friends formed an entourage. High brow stuff! This show was exactly what 19-21 year-old me needed every Sunday. Would I again binge watch the show that got me into serialized television even with a lot better television coming out almost weekly? Hell yeah I would.

Anyways, if you haven’t seen Entourage, Johnny Drama is the less famous brother of Vincent Chase, but before Vince got famous, Drama starred in a terrible cult classic show called Viking Quest. The way Minnesota played last night is probably comparable to Viking Quest if it were an actual show.

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The NFL year goes by so fast and the fantasy football season with it. As we approach the halfway point of 2019, I plan to spend next week’s article with a blurb on the second half outlook of each team, or player from each team, from a data point perspective. For this week though we stick with the norm of finding trends and in-week matchups we can expose. Hope everyone has a great finish to the first half of the fantasy season!

Please, blog, may I have some more?

2019 Accuracy Rank QB RB WR TE K DST
Week 7 104 25 66 129 113 28 26
Week 6 81 74 118 28 76 76 37
Week 5 58 68 8 113 41 10 39
Week 4 83 37 64 90 120 77 80
Week 3 89 86 117 32 106 27 13
Week 2 2 17 9 26 39 69 35
Week 1 47 81 31 49 76 26 24
Cumulative 52 34 49 68 95 31 19

What are you ranking? Everything! You get a ranking, you get a ranking, everybody gets a ranking! You’ll find my Standard, Half-PPR, and PPR rankings below.

What are my rankings bona fidas? Well, there’s finishing in the FantasyPros Top-10 Draft Accuracy (7th Place) in 2017, Top-25 Weekly Accuracy (23rd Place) in 2017, Top-5 Draft Accuracy (3rd place) in 2016, Top-10 Weekly Accuracy (10th Place) in 2016, Top-25 Weekly Accuracy in 2015 (21st Place) and on average we’ve finished in the Top-10 Draft Accuracy (9th Overall) and the Top-20 Weekly Accuracy (18th Overall) for the past four years and finished 30th overall for our Draft Rankings with a 32nd overall finish in Weekly just last season. And this is out of over 100+ industry sites and experts year-after-year. I’d like to think we’re pretty good at this stuff…

What does the word bona fidas mean? According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, bo·na fi·des ˌbō-nə-ˈfī-ˌdēz , ÷ˈbō-nə-ˌfīdz means 1 : good faith : sincerity, 2 : the fact of being genuine —often plural in construction, 3 : evidence of one’s good faith or genuineness —often plural in construction, 4 : evidence of one’s qualifications or achievements —often plural in construction. On a separate note, I think it would make a great name for a cat.

What’s my ranking process? I’ve actually written about this in the past, and instead of working hard for new and enlightening content, I have chosen the more efficient (lazy, ahem) method and dropping in a link to that post here. Honestly, my process hasn’t changed much at all (the ole “don’t fix what ain’t broke” proverb comes to mind) and so my “A Day in the Life of a Fantasy Football Ranker” story still remains relevant to this day. (The TL;DR is: I’m lazy as fudge. Well, I mean the other “f” word, but I’m hungry.)

How should I use your rankings? The same way your mother does. Which actually makes no sense. (Unless your mother is in the running to always finish top-3 in your Fantasy Football league. And if that’s the case, say hello to her for me.)

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I have been following a simple metric this season for running backs: weighted opportunities (WO) per game. This summer I found that WO/g correlated strongly with fantasy points (FP) per game with an R2 of 0.88 based off 2018 numbers. Granted, this was a small sample size of only 1 year but it’s all the data I had.

In a nutshell, the idea is that players should have a FP/WO ratio of about 1, and if they are above that they are either very efficient or lucky (probably via TDs). If they are below that number, the inverse is assumed. In that piece I identified 4 backs that looked like strong buys this offseason, so let’s see if FP/WO helped.

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Remember when in-season trades never happened in the NFL? That was so, so, so long ago. This season we have had several notable players moved ranging from all-pro defensive backs to noted aerospace engineers (Josh Dobbs). However, the trade of Emmanuel Sanders has opened the opportunity for Courtland Sutton to continue his rise to fantasy glory. Sutton had already made a second-year jump prior to the trade and is currently sitting as the WR12 in half-PPR leagues. Sutton’s metrics support his rise to prominence with his player profiler athletic comparison being Alshon Jeffrey. He is 9th in weighted opportunities, top 20 in air yards, and top 20 in targets per game. His quarterback already stinks out loud so any mid-season change to a rookie, if Drew Lock were to get healthy, should have a minimal effect on his rest of season play. Expect the Denver Broncos to remain generally pesky as they fulfill a 5-6 win team destiny, and their air game to funnel through Courtland Sutton for the remainder of the 2019 season.

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We’re more than half of the way through the NFL season, and with more star players landing on the injury report, we’re forced to spend our waiver claims on backup players that have been forced into starting roles, like Ty Johnson in Detroit (more on that below).

Let’s talk about some of the players who landed on the injury report this week.

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