Hey fellas, here we are again! We had another week of heroics and heartbreak, and I’ve made it my job to zoom in on the misfit players looking for glory and the owners who for better or worse spend their precious resources on them.
This week had some interesting developments; with the official introduction of COVID-19 into the NFL, players were being added and dropped but still secured on the “COVID IR” which has confused some but surprised none. Week 5 games seem to still be up in the air, so expect some more craziness in next week’s column (if the season lasts that long).
A few clarifications to the main table above since I changed it up a bit from last week:
-Column K’s difference is Dollars minus Points, pretty much a Bang-For-Your-Buck metric. Obviously QBs will generally have higher points overall and kickers less, but it’s fun to see who “wasted their money”.
-Column N’s difference is your opportunity cost for the player you dropped. It’s a less effective metric if the players are different positions or weren’t a starter, but it shows your future-predicting skills nonetheless.
Now that that’s out of the way, let’s get into it. The MOST EXPENSIVE player of Week 4 was also the BIGGEST BUST! Max obviously saw my hilarious tweet about Rex Burkhead and decided he needed to have him, spending one-fifth of his total FAAB bucks on the RB (no one else even bid on him). Cam Newton contracting the ‘rona probably didn’t help, but Brian Hoyer and Rex look so much alike there should’ve been some kind of connection. Unfortunately that wasn’t the case, and Max dropped a close close game to Kris.
The story of the defenses continues with Kris in Week 4, where he picked up the number 1 Colts (8 points for 8 bucks) in exchange for the Cardinals (-2), the positive 10 point difference being the second highest of the week. The Norse Horse also had one of the most favorable waiver adds with Randy Bullock, who kicked his way to 17 big ones for the Bengals and Dirty Mike and the Boys. I just realized there isn’t even anyone on your team named Mike, what’s with the name? McKinnon, maybe? I guess anything to forget the implication of “Boats and Younghoes”. This will be the first of many wrong predictions I’ll have made in this series, but it turned out that Kris’ early scrambling last week worked out in his favor, and I bet he’s pretty glad his $1 offer for Mason Crosby didn’t go through. More on that later…
The next matchup played out entirely on the auction block, no waiver moves from either (as you’ll see in the new “waiver summary” at the bottom). Brendan had two very solid and efficient pick-ups for $7 each: Alexander Mattison (7.7 points, didn’t start) and Rams D/ST (12). There’s nothing really special about these picks, and Beans Corp. is pretty unstoppable regardless so I don’t have much else to say. This series is about good waiver moves, not so much wins and losses.
The clear winner of the week’s waiver moves was Abie, and I’ll tell you why. A pretty efficient offer of $11 FAAB for the ever-reliable Cole Beasley, a perfectly efficient $6 acquisition of Mason Crosby–as a numbers guy I just love when that K-diff is 0–and the late STEAL OF THE WEEK in Mr. Tom Brady. Sadly, Abie decided to start Patrick Mahomes instead (who wouldn’t?) and ended up losing a pretty close game. On the bright side, he saved $10 on an offer for Justin Jefferson, the most saved this week. Look out for this guy, he’s still got 2/3 of his FAAB bucks, he’s gonna be quick on the mouse all season, and might make a late-season push once he mixes and matches the perfect squad.
Now we’re getting to the moments that some of us would rather forget. The match-up of two 0-3 teams is like a slow-motion car wreck: agonizing to look at but you kinda want to see how it ends up. This was the battle of the Andrews. Vigs got Jared Goff for $2, pretty solid right? In reality, the guy turned into Jared Goof (another typo from when I was writing his name back in that last sentence) this week against the G-Men. To make matters worse, Carson Wentz scored nearly 10 points more than Goff while riding Brent’s bench (more on that later). Poor performances from Darrell Henderson Jr. ($10) and Russell Gage ($5) added insult to injury in a loss that could’ve been avoided had Wentz, Jarvis Landry, and Damien Harris started. Let’s not dwell on it though, this is getting long.
Lebron didn’t have a much better week, having to drop his precious Big Ben due to COVID delays and picking up Joe Burrow, who didn’t do great fantasy-wise in his first NFL win. Something tells be the Bengals win was more important to him, I don’t know. The only offer Lebron made this week hit for Justin Jefferson, although he could’ve gotten the Vikings WR for $1 or $0. Gotta start being careful with your budget there! He also made the blunder of the week by letting go of Tommy B for Gronk, my notes for this transaction just say “oof”. Guess it didn’t really matter, because God was listening and gave this man a win anyway.
The last two games had next to no auction/waiver impact, but here’s a (hopefully) quick rundown: I picked up the Cowboys defense (if you can even call it that) in the second-worst blunder of the week. Brent added Robert Tonyan for no one and then dropped him for Carson Wentz, sounds like there’s trouble in paradise for Brent and Deshaun Watson 0_0. Tonyan dropped a quick 30-burger but it didn’t matter because of Austin Eckler’s injury on my side and the Cowgirls defense (that wasn’t a typo). Alex had some pretty low-stakes, low-dollar pick-ups in Auction, added and dropped Dalton Schultz who turned out to be a hot item, but his big move was grabbing the Chiefs D/ST for free. They scored 18 points and helped him defeat Ryan, who played around on the waiver wire a bit but kept a tight fist around his FAAB bucks.
That about wraps it up for Week 4! If you made it this far, I love you (but you probably already knew that). Someone should write a new column about trades, I was thinking about getting into them here but that’d be way too much content for one sitting. My advice: don’t pick up the Cowboys defense, and as always, don’t spend it all in one place. This has been The Wire, go League.
Next week: Ryan finally spends some FAAB bucks!!
…on two tight ends??
Must Be Sunday 