Week 2: Not Even Close

 

As I sat on my couch watching the Dolphin's miraculous comeback again the Ravens, scrolling through twitter and seeing Browns fans melting down after a total collapse against Joe Flacco's Jets I had two thoughts running through my mind.

First: this is the best NFL game of the season so far and it's going to be hard to top it.

And second: this is going to make for a lot of boring, lopsided fantasy matchups.

As it turns out, crazy high scoring NFL games aren't really conductive to compelling fantasy matchups. When players vastly outperform their "projections" in a real game (and the other team is doing the same thing) we get the ultimate NFL viewing experience (as long as you're not a Ravens/Browns fan). But in fantasy the odds of those players being matched against each other are very low.

In our league this resulted in only 1 match decided by 10 points or less while 3/6 had 40+ point margins. (spoiler: I was on the losing side of one of those).

So next week, maybe lets hope for some boring football?

Matchups

Kelsey Lohan's Ghost vs Ballderberg

Monday night started alright for Kelsey as Mike Williams bounced back from an awful week 1, but Amon-Ra, the Sun God himself, shut the door quickly on Sunday. The fantasy community has been waiting for this guy to fall back to earth since late last season (Wait till Hockenson and Swift are back! they drafted a first round WR!!) but maybe he's never going to? 

Ballderberg also got a huge performance from the Bills D as they crushed the Titans in a game that had both teams playing their backup QBs midway through the 3rd quarter just to get some practice reps in.

Jets Fuel Can't Melt Steel Beams vs The Loch Ness Burrow

Hey look! It's that one close game of the week I was talking about. This game was all about the RB position. While both teams had a back over 30 points, Jonathan Taylor's pitiful 6.8 in a humiliating Colts loss was too little from the 1.01 to net Burrow the win.

There honestly aren't a lot of standout players in this matchup, although I have to give props to Herbert for battling through fractured ribs on Thursday even if he did seal the loss with a 99 yard pick 6.

Night Vale Scorpions vs KY

Ok, so I misrepresented things a little in my opening paragraph. This game was pretty close but at 10.7 points sits just outside the completely arbitrary line I drew for myself.

This matchup featured one half of the Miami offense, and you would think a combined 62 points from KY's WR pair would put this game way out of reach, but an injury to Schultz and weak games from Cousins and Conner kept the Scorpions around for a while.

Carson Wentz continues to bewilder fantasy players who wrote him off the last 2 seasons. He might just have the weapons to keep this going between WRs Dotson, McLauren, Samuel and Gibson at RB.

Roswell Lamartians vs Chipped by Billy G

As impressed as I was by LAMATtian's new team artwork, I'm even more awed by Lamar's play in this football game. 318 yards passing and another 119 on the ground for a dominant 47 point performance. Add in a comically huge game from the Bucs D and this one was never close.

Billy G got some ok-ish starts including a great game from Swift despite his tiny amount of usage, but it was far to little for this nightmarish matchup.

Oh Godwin He Can See vs Momo

I'm still not sure how this one happened. Oh Godwin got an absurd 37 points from Jaylen Waddle and... lost. And not by a little. Momo destroyed this matchup with a 44 point margin.

Partially because I continue to be wrong about how good Jaylen Hurts is at football, but mostly because Momo just got good solid 15-20 point performances from almost everyone on the team.

Cordarrell Patterson crashing back down to earth while Elijah Moore was upstaged by rookie Garret Wilson held Godwin back this week.

Hazers vs Ancient Allens

In the final blowout of the week, Allen was unable to keep up in a game where their quarterback scored 34 points because almost all of that production went to Stefon Diggs on the Hazers side.

That same game also crushed Derrick Henry's fantasy upside for the week.

Hazers got another disappointing performance from Russ but were somewhat bailed out in that game by an unfortunate injury to Jerry Jeudy on Allen's team. Will the Broncos figure out their offense? I honestly don't know. I really wanted Russ this year in draft season and feel like I dodged a bullet.

Pickup of the Week

I almost went with Curtis Samuel for Momo, but Carson Wentz for $0 is definitely the winner here. The QB3 through week two, this is a total steal.

Shameful Benching of the Week

I don't know if it's fair to blame Jets Fuel for this, but I will anyway. He started 3 WRs (AJ Brown, Marquis Brown, Justin Jefferson) who all failed to eclipse 10 points while holding two 15 point WRs (Lockett, Michael Thomas) on his bench that certainly would have flipped the outcome.

Honorable mention would go to LAMARtians for benching Tua ....if he didn't also have Lamar Jackson in the lineup.