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Every fantasy player is searching for the coming season’s new league-winning quarterback. The guy you pick up in the later rounds who leads you to the promised land. Sure, you could spend an early pick on the boring, safer options like Josh Allen and Patrick Mahomes, but that’s not where the value is! You want […]

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In a casual conversation with my future mother-in-law this past week, she adamantly described Derrick Henry as “sexy.” Now, I’m no expert on the perceived attractiveness of 6-foot-3, 250-pound behemoth running backs, but I do know one thing: there’s only one. There’s only one Derrick Henry, and as he approaches a fantasy playoff schedule as easy as hiding a piece of Thanksgiving stuffing in Matt Patricia’s beard at the end of No-Shave November, we’re likely to see history repeat itself yet again. Remember, Henry averaged 24.2 half-PPR points in his final five games of 2019, which was only slightly better than the 23.1 points he averaged across the final five games of 2018. Historically, Henry is stretch-run hero — a fantasy playoff superman in a class all his own. Even if Henry hadn’t erupted for 37.5 half-PPR points in Week 12, he would likely enter the Week 13 rankings as the RB1 overall, as an upcoming matchup with the Browns is the only thing that stands between him and a remaining schedule against the Jaguars, Lions, Packers and Texans. No matter how your league is structured, those matchups scream league-winning upside, and there’s no doubt in my mind Henry will again have a high ownership percentage on championship rosters. But, since Henry did pop off in Week 12, let’s unpack it: 27 carries, 178 yards, three rushing touchdowns; two receptions (four targets), seven yards. All three of Henry’s rushing touchdowns came in first half, as he legitimately provided three healthy weeks of fantasy value in a single half. Now I understand the “sexy” part. 

While Henry is up to RB1 this week, there’s a lot of other movement on the top-60 list and, as always, an overwhelming amount of injury updates to digest. So, before we get to the rankings, let’s take a quick trip around the league.

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As my Kerryon Johnson fathead and I prepared for our first Zoomsgiving on Thursday morning, I could feel the Excitement growing. Yes, I’ve named my dong “Excitement.” So I fired up AOL dialup connection to join the Razz-family Zoom call. Nothing could have prepared me for what I’d see on the other side of the screen once my 17 minute dial up was complete. The things Rudy Gamble, Pigskinonator and their Will Fuller fathead were doing would make Louis C.K. blush. A couple hours later ,Will Fuller came through again with a monstrous game against the Lions, catching 6 passes for 171 yards and his 7th and 8th touchdowns. The great Pigskinonator foreshadowed all of this, of course, projecting Fuller as its #3 fantasy wide receiver for week 12 and projecting Deshaun Watson (17/25 for 318 yards, 8 carries for 24 yards and 4 touchdowns–he now has 24 touchdowns) as its #2 QB for the week. If you haven’t tasted the deliciousness of the Pig-bot yet, we’re still offering a free 3-day trial and then it’s only $5.99 for the final month of the season. Anyway, here’s what else I saw yesterday for fantasy football:

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Frank Reich is a fine man. A good man, even. Sometimes, I sit around daydreaming, wondering what it would be like if he were my father. He would no-doubt instill many wholesome values in me, his son, and be a great fishing partner. He simply has that look about him — the one that comes with a Geppetto-eque twinkle in one’s eye — that exudes wisdom and level-headedness. Personally, I believe he’s a tremendous football coach, perhaps one of the most underrated in the entire league. The Indianapolis Colts are incredibly fortunate that Josh McDaniels spurned their head coaching offer back in the February of 2018 to remain with New England, leading to Reich landing the job as a sort of second choice candidate at the time. Since then, he’s done wonders with the team and carries many strengths as the man in charge, but he’s largely been a fantasy enemy to this point — especially as it relates to the running back position. That’s because he treats his backfield like a true father figure would: he believes in all of his backs, especially the young Jonathan Taylor, and is always willing to give dish out a second chance. The issue is… it’s hard to predict when those second chances are going to come. Heading into the week, Nyheim Hines was one of the highest risers up most rest-of-season rankings after receiving 12 carries in Week 10, rushing for 70 yards and one touchdown in addition to his typical receiving workload: five receptions for 45 yards and another touchdown. Jonathan Taylor saw just seven carries in that game, to which he translated to a mere 12 yards, which came on the heels of a Week 9 game in which Reich gave Taylor a measly six carries. Fast-forward to Week 11: Taylor rushed 22 times for 90 yards, also catching four passes (on four targets) for 24 yards. Those 22 carries equated to 68.8% of running back carries (22/32), as his 26 total touches were by far the highest amongst the Indy trio. Jordan Wilkins (four carries, 21 yards; one reception on one target, 15 yards) touched the ball just five times, while Hines (six carries, two yards; three receptions on four targets, 31 yards) registered nine touches. It’s certainly encouraging to see Taylor so involved in a crucial, competitive game that the Colts ultimately won in exciting fashion — but what can we expect from him moving into the home stretch of the 2020 fantasy football season?

After sinking to RB30 overall in my rankings last week, Taylor is back up into RB2 territory thanks in large part to an incredibly easy schedule from here on out. The only truly difficult matchup remaining for Taylor will come in Week 16 against the Steelers, which isn’t ideal as it’s when most fantasy championships will occur, but until then he’ll go up against the Titans, Texans, Raiders and Texans, again. There are certainly RB2 options with safer floors, but Taylor is once again trending up and represents a much more attractive Flex play than he did one week ago.

There’s a lot more to dive into this week, so before getting to the rankings, let’s take a quick trip around the league.

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Week 10 is very underwhelming on the wire, as most players who were going to break out have done so. From here on, we’ll be scraping the bottoms of rosters and trying to find suitable bye week fillers. I’d get more aggressive with your FAAB now, as there’s probably not much to be saving it for. 

I group the adds by position and then within the position, rank them in order of preference. The sherpa will only advise players who are rostered in less than 50% of ESPN leagues.

This went to press before the New England/New York game.

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Week 5 was light on the injuries until Dak Prescott broke his ankle and needed immediate surgery. COVID postponements continue to be a difficult thing to navigate both for managers and commissioners. Alas, we must press on. The rookie WR class is really showing out and a number of them will be big parts of championship lineups. 

I group the adds by position and then within the position, rank them in order of preference. The sherpa will only advise players who are rostered in less than 50% of ESPN leagues.

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Welcome back, my Lovelies, to another e-rousing week of Hit it or Quit it, with Yours Truly, your Goddess of innuendo. It has been some time since I was here to regale you with all of my wonderful musings, but a girl has to do what a girl has to do…and this girl was DO-IN! I know it has only been two weeks for me, but for many of you it may seem like a lifetime. For that I promise to make this week all that more fulfilling for you.

So, you missed me, huh? Well I am sure the boys here at Razzball have been taking care of you. Mind you, not in the way I do (well, maybe Zach) but even they cannot hold a candle to me in certain areas. We are slowing moving on forward to the end of the fantasy season and that can only mean one thing, playoffs. Yes, my lovelies, playoffs are right around the corner. The Curse does not seem to be letting up either and those of you who have been with me from the beginning know that her thirst and hunger only get more insatiable as the season goes on.

So far, I have been faring well and even pulled out a blowout win in my sacrificial league this week. I do have to admit, the past two weeks have been fun since I have been able to play with my Fournette, but it may be fun while it lasted thanks to a “my d**k is bigger than your d**k” fight that ended with his being tossed. With a suspension looming, I think my playtime is over. Oh, well. Such is life in the fickle fantasy world. I still have all of you to keep me happy and I will continue to return the favor.

As I sit here in the Dungeon and look about, I am starting to feel some kind of way because I know we only have a few, short weeks left together and I want to make them memorable for you. I mean, it is what keeps you coming back so I have to make it worth your while, right? Therefore, I suppose I should get to why you are here. As always, talk is cheap, but I am not so, without further ado, I give you Week 13, Hit it or Quit it.

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Last week we finally had a reader tie the touts. Three folks achieved the high score of 8 correct: reader Sweaty Pants tied two of Razzball’s own in Brandon Myers and Matt Bowe. The reader bell curve was normal, but the touts was smashed to the ends. That’s interesting in a way someone better at data analysis could tell you. The winner of this week’s reader side will receive the DJax chain that Matt Bowe wore with his FitzMagic Halloween costume (*may be a replica). As usual, you can get an extra point if share your favorite of these props on any social media. THIS WEEK’S PROPS are live so get crunching. You can see the response distribution of the tout side here.

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Another Election day has come and gone. Whether you’re red, blue, or somewhere in between, hopefully you made it out to the polls and made your voice count. Politicians are a lot like streaming fantasy options. You don’t really know if you made the right choice until it’s too late. Regardless of your choice, it’s very possible that you get absolute nothing out of them. And every now and then, you find one worth of holding on to for the foreseeable future.

To be honest, the vote with the most impact on my life was to the Sunday brunch bill that will move the alcohol service time in Georgia on Sundays up from 12:30 PM to 11:00 AM. Brunch is a huge thing in the South and it always felt odd to me that you couldn’t sit down on Sunday and enjoy a nice mimosa or bloody mary until about the time NFL games start. And don’t even get me started on the lack of alcohol on the golf course on Sunday mornings…

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Happy Halloween! Or belated Halloween since you’ll be reading this after all the kids have gotten loaded up on sugar and the adults have let out their inner child, demon, or slut. At least a couple of the Razzball crew had sports themed costumes. Who would’ve guessed that sports obsessed people would then look to sports for a costume. My office costume this year was Bill Murray from Space Jam, unfortunately, I do not have any photos. However, I won’t leave you hanging on photos, as this is a former sports Halloween costume that I wore when I went as Kim Jung and hanging with my friend, Dennis Rodman.

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Seriously. I could not wait for Monday Night Football just to listen to the absolute nonsense from Jason Witten and Booger McFarland, the latter of which should be prepared for someone in the crowd to black out and see a table on top of the #BoogerMobile. But despite that disaster of a football game taking place, let’s look back at at some of the action from Sunday’s games…

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