Return of the Stats Machine

A long time ago (about a year) in a galaxy (Razzball) far, far way…

Guess who’s back, back again. The Stats Machine’s back, tell a friend. Guess who’s back. Guess who’s back. Guess who’s back. Guess who’s back. Unlike most sequels that barely measure up to the original, the first two Godfather movies excluded, the second coming of the Stats Machine looks to build on a successful model, expanding and even deepening an already superb, numbers-driven effort. For those whom are unaware of, or need a refresher on the origin of the Stats Machine (TSM), you can find that here.

Take me on in the Razzball Commenter Leagues here!

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Bills Not Going to Super Bowl?

by: Jay

This looks like a stroke. Someone should call a doctor at some point, yes?

Well, Thursday Night Football was once thought of as an offensive onslaught of the mind, soul, and body early in the season. At least, that’s how it accosted me with all those 50-point blow-outs and Phill Simms repeating “Well JEEEEM” ad nauseum. Then there was a two-week reprieve where normal football things occurred. This, obviously, was against nature itself. We now have some kind of ridiculous regression going on, and in the specific case of last night’s game, the Bills and Dolphins entire first half consisted of “let’s drive as close to the goal line without scoring a touchdown”. Spoiler Alert: The Dolphins came out on top in that intriguing game of chicken with twice as many field goals as the Bills… with two field goals. But hey, if you managed to fight off a brain aneurysm to watch the second half, you were rewarded with two Miami touchdowns, Kyle Orton doing very Kyle Orton things, and the refs doing their own homage to the Thursday Night Football derp.

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Go Home Bears, You’re Drunk

November 10, 2014 | 2014 Fantasy Football, Fantasy Football Daily Notes | 90 Comments

by: Jay

Well, that was interesting. But only if you’re a Packers fan. Ben Roethlisberger? This is Aaron Rodgers, and he just escalated the situation by scoring 6 touchdowns and NOT losing to the Jets. Which seems like an insurmountable escalation right there. If you missed it (you probably should have), the Bears once again confirmed that they are a terrible football team. If they didn’t come out after half-time, already losing 0-42, I probably wouldn’t have noticed. I doubt the Packers would have noticed, that’s for sure. But who doesn’t want to make history? So for the first time in 90 years, the Bears have now given up 50 plus points in consecutive games. And the ~~funniest~~ ~~saddest~~ realist part of all this? Oh yeah, that’s right, this is the Bears coming off a bye. Silly Jets fans, and you thought the 2015 first overall draft pick was yours for the taking…

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Start ‘Em and Sit ‘Em, Week 10: Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch

November 8, 2014 | 2014 Fantasy Football, Roster Strategy | 41 Comments

by: waterloo

When a starting quarterback goes down for a team, it’s usually catastrophic. Sure, you’ll have your Kurt Warner/Trent Green and Tom Brady/Drew Bledsoe stories, but more often than naught, it means a big blow to the team. That’s not the case for the Philadelphia Eagles. Sure, no one wants to see anyone get hurt, but this is fantasy, baby. It happens, and you look for the new shiny toy to come in and lead you on a run to the championship.

This week, that new toy is Mark Sanchez. Yes, that Mark Sanchez. The butt-fumbling, hot dog eating, former quarterback of the New York Jets. With a fractured collarbone, Eagles’ quarterback Nick Foles is expected to miss quite a bit of time. For fantasy and real life purposes, that’s perfectly fine.

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Handcuff Report, Week 10: Boobies, Bobbys, and Jonas.

November 7, 2014 | 2014 Fantasy Football, Roster Strategy | 29 Comments

by: Geoff

Over the past few weeks we’ve had handcuffs breakout as temporary starters (Jeremy Hill), handcuffs keep the seat warm (Bobby Rainey), handcuffs to handcuffs become starters (Boobie Dixon), and practice squad players become viable fuzzy handcuffs (Jonas Gray). It’s a crazy mixed up world this handcuffing game, but us real hustlerz stay on our grind. Snatching your handcuffs, before you can get mine. It’s the way to championships and riches, we brought you Justin Forsett, Chris Ivory, and Denard (Robinson) Snitches! Liffy Out! Sorry for the random freestyle, but I needed to put you up on game. Lifshitz is so street that I have hood passes witout expiration dates. That’s another story for a never time..Yes, I meant to type never, because I’m not telling you….nan-never-ever. You want to fight?? That was street right? Hay-Zeus I’m rhyming again, oops. On to the handcuffs!

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Waiver Wired, Week 10: Filling Nick Foles’ Hole

November 4, 2014 | 2014 Fantasy Football, Waiver Wire | 42 Comments

by: Andrew Nordmeier

The injury bug strikes again, and this time it’s a quarterback who takes the beating. Philadelphia will be without the services of quarterback Nick Foles for several weeks after breaking his collarbone in Sunday’s game against Houston. Mark Sanchez, yes he’s still in the league, came in and helped the Eagles the rest of the way to a win over the Texans. So who can you turn to now? Six teams have a bye this week in Houston, Indianapolis, Minnesota, New England, San Diego and Washington. There’s a ton of talent to replace and that’s before we jump into injuries. Let’s get into it and see who you can pick up this week to help your team out…

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The “Brandon Marshall: Motivational Speaker” Experiment has Ended

October 27, 2014 | 2014 Fantasy Football, Fantasy Football Daily Notes | 65 Comments

by: Jay

In what was an embarrassing display of defense, especially for the Bears, or even the Buccaneers, the Patriots took advantage of the brand new and radical “Cover No one” formation, laying down a 51-spot on the scoreboard. Gronk smash is correct. Much had been publicized on Brandon Marshall’s “motivational speaking” tour after a Miami loss last week, “motivating” everyone from Jay Cutler to Robbie Gould.

‘We’ve got Alshon Jeffery, Martellus Bennett, Matt Forte. We’ve got a stud offensive line. We’ve got a great, great group of guys. And this is unacceptable. What did we put up, 14 points? Was it 14 points? That’s unacceptable.”

You see something missing there? People, who, perhaps are in charge of preventing another team from outscoring yours? Pray tell… So, we’ll probably get another week of Marc Trestman blaming (somewhat warranted), Brandon Marshall yelling (probably shouldn’t call it motivating anymore) and Jay Cutler outrage (because he gave up 51 points all by his lonesome). Unless, of course, the media will focus more on fact that the Patriots are now 6-2, in first place, and look every bit as dangerous as they used to. Sigh, that’s exactly what’s going to happen, isn’t it? Oh God damn it Bears, did you really have to let that happen?

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Handcuff Report, Week 8: C.J. Spiller and the Great Pumpkin

October 24, 2014 | 2014 Fantasy Football, Roster Strategy | 62 Comments

by: Geoff

C.J. Spiller can’t catch a break man. Is there anyone else in the NFL as unlucky as Spiller? He’s like the Charlie Brown of professional football. When everyone else is getting chocolate bars and quarters on Halloween, C.J. is getting rocks. (Sad Trombone.) I’d like to tell you that I feel your pain, but I don’t. I avoided Spiller in drafts the way vegans avoid bacon. Which is the primary reason I don’t trust vegans, but anywho! Spiller is more than likely done for the foreseeable future and maybe the season. He was IR’ed with a designation to return, but his chances of returning from a separated shoulder are pretty slim. Just to make things that much more complicated, Fred Jackson decided to get hurt too, it’s a twofer! So now desperate fantasy owners are once again hitting the wavier wire to chase a third stringer promoted to the starting role. Enter Bryce Brown and Anthony Dixon.

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DraftKings: To The Lynch, Wench!

October 22, 2014 | 2014 Fantasy Football, DraftKings | 122 Comments

by: Sky

If you know anything about me, or at least have read more than a few articles, you’ll know that I have a few movies in my referential lexicon that I lean on heavily. Number will will probably always be Anchorman. I mean, seriously, within 17 weeks of fantasy football, San Diego gets referenced at least 17 times. How could you NOT go with the German definition when presented the opportunity? Rhetorical. Sixty percent of the time you do it…every time. So let that bring us to the present where I am yet again quoting a movie but this one might be before your time. I don’t know how young you are. Based on some of your texting-based understanding of the human language, I’m guessing at least 30% of you are of the ‘Y’ generation. Don’t worry, I can still understand what you’re saying even if you don’t use punctuation and end sentences with ‘LOL’ and don’t worry part two, I ain’t mad atcha nor am I picking on you. If there were ever a request for Samuel Johnson truncated, you’d have nailed it. Thankfully, my movie reference isn’t THAT old. Nah, I’m just looking back at The Neverending Story. I don’t know if it’s on Netflix. Damn, now that I say that I HOPE it’s on Netflix. FALCOR! But more to the point, Marshawn Lynch was one of the bigger disappointments for DK players last week but I’m here to tell you, dammit it wasn’t his fault! He had a TD called back and for what it’s worth, the Rams played a very good game, which limited his grind down yardage as he finished with a miserable 2.9 ypc and ended with a defeating 9.1 DK points on the day. Not quite what people signed up for when paying $7,100. Oddly, his price point hasn’t changed this week. Given he’s facing the Panthers – a team that is giving up 5,29 ypc to opposing runners – staying the course with Marshawn makes a lot of sense. Marshawn should be a good get for both cash and GPP given his price and him coming off a frustrating week 7. But that’s so last week, let’s talk about this week. Here are my hot takes for this week’s DK slate…

New to DraftKings? Scared of feeling like a small fish in a big pond? Well try out this 10 team league of Razzball writers and friends to wet your DK whistle. Just remember to sign up through us before you do. It lets us know that you care!

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Tony Romo: Interception Savant

September 8, 2014 | 2014 Fantasy Football, Fantasy Football Daily Notes | 144 Comments

by: Jay

An artist’s depiction of yesterday’s Cowboys game.

I’ve come to the conclusion that the ~~first~~ every Sunday of football should always have the Dallas Cowboys doing whatever that was they did yesterday afternoon. In fact, let’s start a petition to have them on Monday AND Thursday night as well. I mean, can we even say that the Cowboys actually did anything in training camp? This looks like the exact same team from last year, and I’ve already started decorating my house for the holidays seeing as how the Cowboys are already in mid-December form. True, as the sharp and always entertaining (in gouging your own eyes out sort of way) commentating duo of Joe Buck and Troy Aikman informed us, if not for all the turnovers, this would have been a close game. I’ve never seen something so beautifully and succinctly useless at the same time. If it weren’t for the Normandy landing and the eastern invasion of Russia, Germany had a pretty good World War II. And while the game was technically close without including large portions of events that happened during the game, I was left with this one burning question– What is it called when you throw to a receiver that had 12 people covering him?

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Handcuff Report, Week One: The 2014 Primer

September 5, 2014 | 2014 Fantasy Football, Roster Strategy | 31 Comments

by: Geoff

Welcome to the Handcuff Report, 2014 primer. The Almighty J-FOH has bestowed upon me the honor of keeping you knuckleheads up to date on the latest NFL arrests, felonies, and misdemeanors. If Steven Ridley and Shane Vereen are smoking weed in a Pontiac Firebird, we’ll be there. If Titus Young finds his way back into the league, we’ll be there. If Golden Tate decides to steal maple bars from a Detroit bakery, we’ll be there. You get the point…. Wait.?!?! That’s not what this post covers?…. It’s about running back committee’s? …Hmmm I don’t think that’s right. Jay, I think we have a problem…..I had 1,300 words about Ray Rice, Josh Gordon, Le’veon Bell, and LeGarrette Blount. It seemed reasonable, there are a lot of arrests, and they do in fact impact our rosters. But okay… I got it now, you meant handcuff in a less literal sense. Oops! Welp, time to refocus. I guess instead I’ll be discussing the ever evolving Running Back committee situations around the league. For today and at least the first few weeks of the season, I’ll be providing a list of depth charts and commenting on the situations I feel need to be covered. In other words I’ll be spending less time on teams like the Vikings, Bears, or Seahawks and more time on teams like the Lions, Falcons, and Dolphins. As the season progresses, I’ll probably switch to more of a “handcuffs to watch format”, where I’ll cover a handful of backs with expanding roles. But who knows, we’ll see, you guys can tell me in the comments if you like the depth chart rankings. I’m cool with that. After today I will be sticking with the tried and true tiered approach (say that three times fast Micro Machine Man) and the tier names that J-FOH had last year, because what else is there outside of Fuzzy, Standard Issue Police, and Duct taped handcuffs? That pretty much covers the handcuff gamut. No??? Are there other varieties besides the ones covered? Like those weird plastic ones, that cops use, maybe? Did you notice I said “cops use”… do you know why? Because Standard Issue Police That’s Why!!!

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The Fantasy Football Chameleon – Week 15 For 2012 Fantasy Football

December 10, 2012 | 2012 Fantasy Football, Fantasy Football Chameleon | 19 Comments

by: Kevin Kumpf

With the first week of playoffs in the books for most leagues, it’s rare that contending teams need a ton of help on the Waiver Wire. Your roster is set, and you don’t want to complicate things by creating unnecessary decisions. After all, there’s nothing worse than losing a close playoff matchup by making the […]

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