2023 Week 6: Perfectly Balanced

 

as all things should be

Week 6 is in the books, and while some teams might feel like their seasons are over, or they're a lock for the championship, we currently have a nicely balanced standings list that could easily swing people from one side of the spectrum to another.

Currently there is:

• One team at 5-1, that would need extraordinary bad luck to miss playoffs (I wonder who...?)
• 3 teams at 4-2 with pretty strong chances
• 4 teams at 3-3 who could end up on either side
• 3 teams at 2-4 in striking distance
• Steve at 1-5, patiently awaiting elimination

None of the 2-4 teams are separated from the top of the 3-3 bracket by more than 100 points, and there's plenty of time to regain that ground.

At this point in the season it really feels like every matchup matters a lot. If you picked up your second win of the season you're now feeling much more hopeful (I assume) and if you were a previously unbeatable team that has now dropped 2/3 games (Kevin) my guess is you're feeling a bit more mortal.

Matchups

Kuppheads 114.15 vs TJ Hock’s Pro Skater 98.30

TJ Hock got off to a great Thursday night start with 20 points from their kicker, but ultimately this team was just too banged up to pull off the upset this week. With AR gone for the season, Saquon not fully healthy, and Deebo leaving the game with 11 rush yards and 0 catches there, was just a lack of firepower on their side. Joe Mixon continues to be mediocre option in a surprisingly poor Bengals offense. He's not killing TJ's team but hasn't hit a single big performance yet.

Kuppheads lost CMC to injury, but he was nice enough to turn a short shovel pass into a TD before leaving. This team has been greatly helped by the return of a healthy Cooper Kupp, a 2nd round pick they had to wait the first 1/3 of the season to play.

Ja'Mario Kart 91.15 vs DK King of Swing 103.85

It was a down week for a lot of NFL offenses but man, this George Kittle performance was shocking. For a guy that's usually only at peak value when 1-2 WRs on his team are out/injured this felt like the perfect opportunity to play him. 1 catch for 1 yard. There were a lot of meh players on Ja'Mario's team but losing by 12 when Kittle is outscored by Kyle Pitts by 11.7 makes the difference pretty easy to identify.

DK had a pretty average week, but I do want to highlight KWIII. A lot of players (myself included) expected Charbonnet to take a bunch of his workload after getting essentially the same draft capital a year later, but that hasn't happened at all. This dude is awesome. 

Diggs Dug 92.00 vs 128.30 Pollard's Gate III

In our biggest blowout of the week, Pollar's Gate took him the highest score with a remarkably balanced roster. No single player put up more than 21 (Etienne) but aside from David Montgomery's mid-game injury everyone else was solid. 3rd year player Rashid Shaheed continues his quiet breakout campaign with his 4th double digit game on the season.

For Diggs Dug, Damien Pierce continues his disappointing 2nd season with just 34 yards this week. For the most part the rest of his roster did ok, but he was significantly outscored in the K and DST categories making this more of a blowout than it would ordinarily have been.

Praise the Sun 117.20 vs 102.65 momo

In the dramatic battle of our two 1-4 teams, Praise the Sun pushed themselves pack into relevance while momo dug their whole deeper. While Puka finally fell back to earth a bit this week for Praise the Sun, his namesake ARSB made up for it with a huge game against TB. The continued value of Pacheco has been a huge boon to this team and propelled them to the 3rd highest score on a bit of a down week.

Strategy or not, dropping Joshua Kelley to waivers ended up being a pro move for PTS, as momo scooped him up to play in this matchup earning him a very cool 0.9 points on 4 total yards. Much like the first matchup discussed here, when your kicker is your most exciting player you're probably going to have a bad time.

Lockett League 90.00 vs 106.80 Bass Hunter 64

Quarterbacks? WRs? Kickers? Who cares. As long as you've got superstar RBs Raheem Mostert and Kyren Williams how can you lose? Bass Hunter got 61/106 points from two guys who were afterthoughts going into the season and it was enough to carry them even with injuries to Justin Fields and Davante Adams (maybe? he's hurt now but hard to say how much it impacted the game)

It was a gross week for Lockett League, who had only one skill position player break double digits. The high draft cost of selecting Mahomes also hasn't paid off yet, as he has been solid week to week but failed to put up any explosive games from a fantasy perspective.

Allen Wake 86.15 vs 117.35 B ROB1NSZN^2

Keenan Allen is back and so is ROB1NSZN, stopping their 2 game skid to remain 2nd in the league. It's crazy to think that this team should continue to get better as Jonathan Taylor gets re-acclimated to the game and takes over more of the workload from Zach Moss. Despite picking up those losses this is still the best team in the league.

For Allen Wake, it's crazy how much the ancient (33 year old) Adam Theilen has carried this team to a 3-3 record. With both Justin Jefferson and James Connor on IR this team is in for a rough stretch, and will have to piece together wins any way they can to stay in the playoff race. Theilen being a top 5 WR out of nowhere definite helps.

Pickup of the Week

It really wasn't a good week for waivers. If you didn't waste 50% of your budget on KJ Osborn and Emari Demercado then congrats!

I'll give the award to Pollard's Gate III for their $3 pickup of a KC DST that turned in a 16 point performance.

Shameful Benching of the Week

Michael Pittman, Allen Wake. It wouldn't have made a difference it turns out, but benching him (15 points) for Josh Reynolds (6) was an odd call even without hindsight.