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I don't have a lot of injury analysis for you in this one.  Just some quick hits and an amazing Tyler Eifert update.  Tyler Eifert missed last week's game with a neck injury... Perhaps he was malingering so he could do this instead of playing on Sunday:
Okay, not that the picture was taken on Sunday.  I don't think it was.  But look, this picture is just.. weird.  A grown man probably shouldn't be sitting on Santa.  So I hope this had some tie in to an official appearance or some kind of charity benefit.  I wonder if his #NiceList refers to what he's done for fantasy owners this year?  Jay, maybe you need to get in the holiday spirit and come out with a "Naughty/Nice" list for fantasy football this year.  You know, the list more commonly known as Bust/MVP.  I'm not saying it's a good idea, I'm just saying it's an idea.  Anyway...  Tyler Eifert (neck) was "limited" for practice Wednesday after he missed last week's game. So that makes me think he'll play this Sunday.  But they'll probably want to be certain on this one so I wouldn't be completely surprised if he missed.  But I think he'll play.
Rob Gronkowski's sixteen game, standard scoring, fantasy point pace for 2015 was 214.4.  That's a hefty number.  That's a number good enough to keep the "is he, or is he not worth a 1st round draft pick" debate going.  If there exists a knock against Gronk, it is most likely that he can't stay healthy.  Which is something that I think is technically true, but it also might be unfair.  I think we need to acknowledge that most tight ends are injury prone.  For whatever reasons, they just seem to miss more time than their wide receiver counterparts.  This has been especially true for the most dominant tight ends in fantasy of the past several years: Antonio Gates, Rob Gronkowski, Jimmy Graham, and Julius Thomas.  Gronkowski and Thomas have missed the most games, while Gates and Graham have mostly managed to stay on the field, albeit often with lesser production as they struggled with injuries . So it's arguably not really Gronk being injury prone, per se, because the top tight ends as a whole get injured a lot.  Other oft injured tight ends include Jordan Reed, Kyle Rudolph, and going back a little further to when he was useful... Owen Daniels.  Going back even further, you have Dallas Clark.  Arguably, Tyler Eifert and Jordan Cameron deserve to be labeled as injury prone.  The only exceptions I can think of are Greg Olsen, Jason Witten and Tony Gonzalez, three truly durable players.
Anyone experienced in playing fantasy football knows that NFL player performance is difficult to predict on a year to year basis.  That's in large part because of injuries.  The other components making it difficult are teams divulging very little information and teams simply not putting their best players on the field.  Sometimes teams do things that are flat out stupid.  Exhibit A for the last two points: Stefon Diggs, who started the year as an inactive for the Vikings' first three games.  Nobody knows precisely why the Vikings had their best wide receiver inactive for the first three games but it obviously had something to do with them not knowing exactly what they had in the rookie. So as the folks that play fantasy football, we have attempt to know what even the teams themselves don't know.  I bring up Stefon Diggs because I nearly wrote a paragraph on him and Adam Thielen in my Week 4 Injury Report.  We knew their roles were increasing that week due to injures to wide receivers Charles Johnson and Jarius Wright.  I ultimately scrapped it as unnecessary due to the fact that the Vikings bye was the following week and it seemed like it would be difficult to hold Stefon Diggs through the bye what with him being a player the Vikings didn't truly believe in yet.
Julian Edelman's Sunday shoes are most definitely going to be "kicked off" for the next several weeks.  I actually started, umm, researching, let's say, the Kevin Bacon movie Footloose to see how I could work a Julian Edelman Footloose pun into this post.  Then I came across something... interesting.  See, I've also spent a lot of time researching Star Wars: The Force Awakens as well.  And OH MY GAWD OH MY GAWD OH MY GAWD, you guys, it turns out the character's name from Footloose is Ren McCormack! [caption id="attachment_40120" align="aligncenter" width="757"]The Knights of Ren follow Ren McCormack? Perhaps all of these fellas just want to... cut footloose?[/caption] Anyway, depending on whom you ask, injuries might be the worst thing about fantasy football, the NFL and football in general.  (Another candidate for worst thing might include the fact that playing fantasy football can put us in a position where we end up rooting for some real scumbags...).  Writing this post sometimes makes me feel like I'm the bearer of bad news.  Nevertheless, I'm tasked with bringing you information to help you succeed in playing fantasy football.  In my quest to provide actionable fantasy analysis I like to reference people with medical credentials.  Well, this primarily turns out to be one person (named David Chao), not people, and as it turns out he is a very controversial figure in the NFL.  Yet he also has some of the best, readily available, film based injury diagnoses.  I've included a paragraph at the end of this post that addresses why I'm ultimately OK with using him as a reference for these injury situations.  So with that out of the way let's talk some fantasy football injuries... (and I promise it's delightful and full of people missing weeks due to foot injuries).
Another week, and unfortunately another huge injury. On Sunday, Arian Foster tore his Achilles’ tendon and is out for the season after coming back only a few weeks prior from preseason groin surgery. A tough blow for owners who had seemed to have gotten a steal when drafting him back in August and September. The situation in Houston tough and to try and replace their star running back is not going to be a pretty one. Alfred Blue is expected to receive the first shot at replacing Arian Foster, but it’ll be hard to trust someone that outside of a 31 carry/139 yard/1 touchdown in Week 3 versus Tampa Bay (it’s Tampa Bay for Godsake), has gone for 95 yards rushing on 29 rushing attempts (3.28 yards per carry). He should still be picked up in most leagues but stashed on benches as he can’t be trusted as more than a low end RB3/FLEX option for the time being. Neither Chris Polk nor Jonathan Grimes are worth rostering for the time being, however.
Jeremy Maclin (concussion) missed practice on Wednesday. Occasionally you see a player suffer a concussion on Sunday and return to practice by Wednesday.  At another extreme, you have players that miss several weeks with a concussion, something that seems to happen to players with a concussion history.  To my knowledge, Maclin does not have a history of suffering concussions, but I suspect he'll miss this week.  I'm thinking it's a one or two week injury, but with the Chiefs having their bye in week 9 expect him back no later than Week 10.
Is there still such a thing as an ACL injury after effect?  Adrian Peterson famously rushed for over 2000 yards the year following a December ACL tear.  Jeremy Maclin turned out to be a 2014 draft day bargain after suffering an ACL tear in the 2013 preseason.  Rob Gronkowski also went undervalued in 2014 drafts after coming off an ACL injury.  Now Todd Gurley is meeting or exceeding his expectations.  The fact is that risk is always built into the value of post ACL tear players, but they have a pretty good recent track record.  I literally can't think of a single player that failed to come back from an ACL tear in the last few years.  Recently the upside has outweighed the draft cost of buying a player coming off an ACL injury.
In what was a interesting-because-it-was-close-but-sorta-kinda-boring-anyways Sunday Night Football game, Dallas once again proved that they are two different teams depending on which half it is. It's almost as if they are preserving the long-held tradition of Romonobyl. An homage, if you will. While the Saints are hanging on to dear life and Brees' busted shoulder with an 1-3 record, they'd be hard pressed to catch up with the surging Falcons and Panthers as the season progresses. I'm actually still bewildered by the fact that NFC South teams are actually capable of surging. That being said, the Cowboys find themselves in the untenable position of having everything needed to dominate a weak NFC East, but having those things injured for more than half the season (including Lance Dunbar tearing his ACL last night). The Giants were gifted a win against Buffalo, who had 17 penalties, and the Eagles were beaten unresoundingly by Washington. These teams are not good at all, and hilariously any one of them can take the division. But like the Cowboys, none of them seem to want it. Almost like some kind of derpy game of hot potato. Now that I think about it, this is actually peak NFC East. Carry on... Here's what else I saw in Week 4: New to Daily Fantasy Football? Try out this new free FanDuel’s contest, where half the league is guaranteed to win. (Played on FanDuel before? You can build a team for $5 for a chance of $100,000, part of a one million dollar prize pool!)
Last week I may have said something like "the worst part is we don't know how these injuries will affect the players' performances".  Then Chris Ivory was active without receiving a carry, which is to say there was no performance to affect.  Ouch.  But on the plus side, hey, he could have re-injured himself had he played, right?  In a way it feels like the fantasy football season hasn't truly begun until something like this happens.  Because it happens.  Every.  Year.  This week we need to discuss the injury situations for newly injured players such as:  Ben Roethlisberger, Davante Adams (newly re-injured), Sammy Watkins, Jonathan Stewart, Crockett Gillmore and others.  We'll revisit some other players situations with notes on players (finally) nearing their returns.  And if you are wondering about the order, the first section is by biggest affect to least affect on fantasy teams, "On The Mend" is by team.
Hello Razzball! This is the first in a series of weekly articles written by yours truly that will be looking into each of the week's match-ups and picking out one player I Love and one player that I Hate from each game. Before I get into this week's picks, I'll give some background into how I make my picks. The first thing I look at is the Vegas betting lines, specifically the point spread and the over/under totals. These are two huge factors when making picks, especially for daily fantasy sites. If I'm ever debating between two similarly rated players for my Flex position, checking out the point totals could be a deciding factor for me. Of course, between now and kickoff, some of the lines could change by a few points, so it is important to check these again later in the week after some injury situations are cleared up. I'm also going to try and avoid making the obvious picks, as those won't help anybody. Now, onto the picks!
So, Week 3 is upon us and if you read my post last week, then surely you won your league already, right? That’s how it works but maybe you need another healthy dose of fantasy football information and that’s what this will provide you. Currently, the NFL is going through an injury epidemic right now with Dez Bryant, DeSean Jackson, Tony Romo, Andre Ellington, Tevin Coleman, Jay Cutler, Alshon Jeffery, Eddie Lacy, DeAndre Hopkins, Dwayne Allen, Lamar Miller, Drew Brees, Brandin Cooks, Eric Decker, Chris Ivory, DeMarco Murray, Ladarius Green, and Delanie Walker all dealing with injuries right now that either have them missing games or potentially missing games/limiting them. And we just started Week 3... This is where having the right handcuffs is most important and who to have on your bench could be the difference between a win and a loss on any given week.
Greetings! I've just now pulled myself out of the filthy pit of wretchedness that losses from MY Seattle Seahawks and MY Buffalo Bills placed me in. Well, them and the mass quantities of drugs and alcohol partnered with 12,000 calories of ribs, cupcakes, and peach cobbler I made for myself and all my guests on Sunday. Say one thing for Tehol Beddict, he's a binger. Anyways, speaking of wretched pits of despair, I'm curious to know how Philadelphia Eagles fans are feeling at this moment in time. Prized free agent running back DeMarco Murray has been useless thanks to an offensive line being treated like Donald Trump, if he were to show his face at a "Mexican Lives Matter" rally. Sam Bradford resembles a teenage girl in shoulder pads and I feel like it's just a matter of time before he goes down like a Kardashian at a Grammy's after-party. And big-money free agent Byron Maxwell has been toasted so many times thus far, I believe he'd need to hold the opposition catchless for the remainder of the season in order to receive a positive grade from all the professional scouts out there. Chip Kelly is still looking for "his precious", a quarterback that can flourish in his system (preferably an agile one), and it doesn't seem like he's going to discover it anytime soon being that they're going up against Darrelle Revis and that vastly improved Jets secondary in Week 3. Maybe some wizard-protected Hobbit is boguarding the secret treasure that Kelly has seemingly lost in 2015, but unless he's able to see invisible beings, he just may be out of luck. Maybe a couple extra kale smoothies will fix everything, but this has the look of a total dumpster fire. FIRE EVERYONE! I am Tehol Beddict and this is Disgrace/Delight! Take heed!