Week 9 2023: Bad quarterbacks, disgusting offense

What do Aiden O'Connell, Brett Rypien, Clayton Tune, and Tommy Devito have in common? They all pretended to be NFL quarterbacks this week to the dismay of fantasy players everywhere.

• Davante Adams? Horrible
• Cooper Kupp, Puka Nacua? Unplayable
• Marquis Brown? Trey McBride? The Cardinals had 58 yards. No, that is not a receiving stat line for their best pass catcher, that's the total. For all four quarters. The entire game.
• The Giants WRs? Well ok, Wan'Dale actually did catch a TD. But you weren't starting these guys anyway right? I hope not

Every year NFL fans (probably fairly) complain that it's impossible to play defense in this modern interpretation of the game. If you hit a QB a fraction of a second after he throws, land in an awkward way on a routine tackle, start your tackle at the same time they begin their slide, etc you're going to get penalized. And I truly to empathize with the defensive players who have to deal with that.

But this.

This is why.

No one wants to watch 2nd and 3rd string QBs play football. It seriously just destroys the watch-ability of these offenses. 

Matchups

TJ Hock’s Pro Skater 118.40 vs Lockett League 154.90

TJ Hock is cursed, and no one can convince me otherwise. With this beat down, they drop to 3-6 on the season, good for 9th place while sporting the 5th highest scoring team in the league. If you remember our week 1 history lesson, this is not the first time this has happened to a team managed by Cody.

Anyway, the Houston/Tampa Bay game produced some truly ridiculous fantasy numbers, and Lockett League was a major beneficiary, getting a combined 54 points from Tank Dell and Dalton Shultz, who were projected for just 7 and 6 points respectively.

Shockingly, this matchup actually wasn't settled going into MNF, but the Chargers dismantling of the Zach Wilson Jets ended up giving Lockett a very comfortable win. He added another 48 points during that game from Ekeler and the Chargers DST.

Ja'Mario Kart 154.80 vs momo 125.85

Here we find our highest scoring matchup of the week. Despite the 0 from Michael Thomas, momo put up a very respectable and well rounded score this week, their highest of the entire season. Unfortunately for them, they also ran into the buzz saw that was the Houston Texans offense this week.

CJ Stroud set a rookie QB record for fantasy scoring, absolutely torching the Tampa Bay defense for 470/5, turning in 52 points for Ja'Mario Kart. Big games from the Cleveland DST and TE Jake Ferguson almost elevated Ja'Mario to the high score on the week, but he was narrowly edged out by the aforementioned Lockett League.

Diggs Dug 94.85 vs Allen Wake 109.90

Oof. This was actually a very winnable matchup for the now 2-7 Diggs Dug. Seattle got absolutely wrecked by Baltimore this week, and the result was a pathetic 5 points from Geno Smith, who has not been the same player that was a fantasy darling in 2022. Through 9 weeks, Geno has only cracked 20 points 1 time. Solid games from Diggs, Stevenson, and Njoku kept this fairly weren't enough to overcome the deficit between him and Josh Allen.

Allen Wake, meanwhile, clawed their way to the top of the playoff position pile, with a 1 game lead on the 6 teams fighting for the final 4 spots. They owe a lot of this week's win to an Atlanta offense that just couldn't finish drives, resulting in a 22 point week for Kicker Koo. The return of good Josh Jacobs is also quite welcome.

Jonathan (Taylor’s Version) 90.15 vs Bass Hunter 64 119.15 

It was another disappointing week for Lamar Jackson and (Taylor's Version). The Baltimore defense and rushing attack has been so effective these last two weeks Lamar simply isn't being asked to do much at all, resulting in 2 sub 15 point fantasy performances. Confusing usage for Bijan Robinson and a rare down week for Tyreek Hill solidified this 30 point loss.

Bass Hunter climbed their way right into the heart of the playoff race with this win thanks to an amazing performance from Tampa's Rachaad White. It turns out when both teams score 37+ there are a lot of points to go around, and this RB has quietly but together a pretty ok season. The other great news for Bass Hunter is that Dalton Kincaid appears to have broken out as a start-able TE for buffalo. Double digits in 3 straight outings is as good as it gets at TE if you aren't named Travis Kelce.

DK King of Swing 60.50 vs Pollard's Gate III 128.70

Oh look, it's our biggest beat down of the week. In a rare feat, Pollard's Gate doubled the output of DK's crew. 

Pollard's Gate rises into the large group of 5-4 teams with this win, well within striking distance to overtake several teams on points in the next week or two. The RB performances on this squad were honestly very bad, but that doesn't matter when your WR1 and 2 combine for 51. Pollard also got a very strong 31 from their Kicker and DST.

Where do we even start with DK? No touchdowns for Herbert in their destruction of the Jets. 17 total yards for Ken Walker, 0 touches for Gabe Davis in a game that also saw his Buffalo DST produce just 2 points. This team tried very hard to post the lowest score of the week but....

Kuppheads 86.55 vs Dobbs Space Program 58.75

That honor belongs to this matchup.

If there was ever a week to knock Kuppheads off their pedestal, it was this one. They posted their first sub 100 point performance since the week one loss that lead to this 8 game winning streak.

This one was gross. There isn't a single QB, WR or RB worth writing about in this entire matchup. A combined 38 points between Kupphead's TE and DST were enough to put this game out of reach for the hapless and newly renamed Dobbs Space Program (Possibly a pun I don't understand?)

Pickup of the Week

It's another Sunday morning pickup! As Cody pointed out, Ja'Mario Kart made a list minute pickup and start of CJ Stroud to amazing success. This guy seems like the real deal and I'm honestly glad for the Texans if only because living in Austin means I get their games in the noon slot almost every week and would love someone better than David Mills to watch.