A sports blog by and for Midwest Sports Fans
Every Sunday morning starting at 10:00 CT (11:00 ET) we are here to answer your last minute start/sit questions.
Zach will be the main man today, so fire off whatever questions you have and he’ll be sure to take good care of you. The next two Sunday, I’ll be holding down the fort with Zach off enjoying some family time.
Week 8 of fantasy football has arrived, and the playoffs are seemingly right around the corner. While it is important to get your rosters set now for the long run, you also needs wins, especially during these bye-riddled weeks, to make sure you get a shot at the second season.
Here are some last minute tips on some players who could disappoint this week, as well as some others who are set up for success to help your fantasy team in Week 8.
Did you know that every team that is on a bye this week has a winning record? I’m not sure if that has ever happened before but I’ll send John Clayton an email and see what he says. One of those teams on the bye, the Bears, has a running back that has two labels thrown at him. Is Matt Forte underrated or undervalued? He may be both. The Bears front office better figure it out soon.
Now for this week we have some interesting picks for you, but a lot of them are on the down side of the stock. I had one person ask me how I could have DeMarco Murray down this week after his big game last week; easy. Just look at Adrian Peterson’s stats after he set the NFL record for yards in a game. Stay here: he scored 5 points.
We have a special treat for you in this installment of the stock report: kickers, tricks and more.
The fantasy analysts here at Midwest Sports Fans have been invited to compete in the Fantasy Football Crystal Ball accuracy ranking challenge. I have volunteered to tackle the weekly task of doing our week-specific rankings. (Jon will still chime in periodically with his rest-of-season rankings, and we’ll still post the consensus rankings from Play This Guy as well.)
If you all would prefer more than just a list, let me know and I can spice it up a bit!
Here are my Week 8 player rankings. Hope they help!
I’mmm baaaaaaccccckkkkk!
Did you miss me?
Jon has himself a busy schedule this week, so he texted me this morning and asked if I’d be up for reprising my role as the author of our weekly Start/Sit column here at MSF. I have to admit, as soon as I saw his text I was pretty pumped.
Doing these posts every week, week after week, can admittedly be a bit of a grind, as I learned over the last couple of years; so I was happy to let Jon take it over this year and focus my efforts in other areas. But I’ve missed the weekly challenge of poring over matchups and stats and trends to figure out which players to recommend to you as starts and sits.
So it’s good to be back in the saddle.
Anyway, It’s not like I’ve been totally absent. I still offer commentary on Jon’s posts, answer questions in the comment sections, and monitor the @FantasyMSF Twitter account. So I haven’t really given you a chance to miss me even if you wanted to. Now though, for the first time all year, I have to go on record with start and sit picks.
I’m ready. Let’s roll.
Yesterday was a brutal Sunday in the NFL, both in terms of injuries and the quality of play. With so many prominent fantasy players banged up and six more teams on bye in Week Eight (Atlanta, Chicago, Green Bay, New York Jets, Oakland, and Tampa Bay), the waiver wire will once again be a popular destination.
DeMarco Murray was spectacular yesterday. The Cowboys’ rookie running back shredded the St. Louis Rams for 253 yards, including a 91-yard scamper on his first carry of the game. I will proudly pat myself on the back for seeing this one coming* and recommending him as a start to many people who inquired last week.
* – Okay, so I didn’t see 253 yards coming; no one did. But considering the amount of good RBs on bye, the matchup, Felix Jones’ injury, and the Cowboys’ lack of trust in Tashard Choice, the writing was on the wall for Murray to put forth a startable performance. Boy did he ever.
Murray was only started in 42% of Yahoo leagues yesterday, and he is owned in only 58% of leagues. The latter figure will preclude Murray from being mentioned in Andy Bottoms’ weekly Waiver Wire Pickups column (due to be posted later this afternoon), which is why I wanted to take a few minutes to write about Murray this morning, who will undoubtedly be in high demand on waiver wires where he remains over the next 48 hours, and with good reason.
But here is a side of the Murray fury that is sure to be overlooked: if you already have Murray, or if you are awarded him on waivers come Wednesday morning, you may be best served by selling high on him immediately. It’s possible his value it at its absolute highest right now.
Okay, I waited a little longer than usual to post the final rankings this week. There are so many up-in-the-air injury situations (namely in the Indy backfield) that I wanted to get as much information as possible.
Make sure you join us for our Sunday morning live chat to get all of your last minute start/sit questions answered. Also check out this week’s start ‘em, sit ‘em post and my Week 8 waiver wire pickups if you still need more info as you set your Week 8 lineups.
Brett Favre is injured everyone. Seriously.
What? You hadn’t heard yet? Yeah, he’s got a bum ankle. He’s been in a walking boot all week. Hasn’t practiced. The streak – the streak – is in jeopardy.
Look, let’s just get the Brett Favre portion of this injury update out of the way right off the bat. I will believe that Brett Favre is not going to start on Sunday when Tarvaris Jackson is under center and has taken the first snap of the game. Until then, I don’t care if practices or doesn’t practice. I don’t care if he says he’s going to play or not. I don’t care if Brad Childress says Favre will play or not.
If we’ve learned one thing from all of the Favre nonsense over the past few years, it’s this: no matter what, when the issue is Brett Favre playing football, expect him to play. That’s it, it’s that simple.
The Week 8 Rankings have been updated. Click to view.
If it’s Tuesday you know it means two things here at MSF Fantasy Sports: the start em sit em projections go up and I take my first stab at ranking all of the fantasy-relevant players for the week.
Here is attempt #1, with updates to come as the week progresses.
We are now 7 weeks into the 2010 Fantasy Football season and my combined record in six leagues is 32-10. In only one league am I not at least two games over .500. I don’t keep records of these sorts of things, but I cannot ever remember jumping out to such a strong start in so many leagues.
Making this especially exciting is that in one of my leagues, the P&G-sponsored Blogger Fantasy Football League*, the stakes are a trip to the Super Bowl for the winner. Those are the highest stakes I’ve ever played for. Add in the potential for bragging rights among my blogging buddies, and you can undoubtedly understand why I spend so much time attempting to optimize my lineup each week.
Speaking of the Super Bowl, do yourself a favor and check out the Text It To The House promotion. It’s a fun, easy weekly game you should be taking part in where you pick the five players who will have longest plays from scrimmage this week (Pierre Garcon! Pierre Garcon!).
Anyway, so far in BFL2010, despite making a few boneheaded decisions (dropping Thomas Jones) and losing one of my top WRs before the season even started (Sidney Rice), I’m sitting in a three-way tie for the best record in the league. Please, if you would, do me a favor and knock on some wood.
All of this early season success, of course, has me terrified.
This is probably the single most important week for this column. Why? Because there are six, count ‘em six, teams on bye in Week 8.
That means the player pool is two teams smaller than it typically is during the mid-part of the season and that people will be scrambling for fill-ins during the early part of the week.
Get a head start on your competition by knowing who the Week 8 diamonds in the rough are. Everyone in this post should help you in a pinch this week.
This post is from 2009!
Go to MSF Fantasy Sports for the 2010 Fantasy Football Week 8 Start Sit Projections.
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First of all, my apologies to anyone who asked questions in the comment section last week from Friday afternoon on. I was hoping I’d have time to get some of those answered once I got to Cleveland, but I did not.
I don’t have any more trips planned between now and the NFL playoffs, so that should not be a problem again.
Secondly, my apologies to anyone who started Jay Cutler and Greg Olsen last week. I really miscalculated how the Bears-Bengals game would go — as did most everybody — and had to take my medicine on that one.
Otherwise, Week 7 was relatively prosperous. The good: Laurence Maroney, Austin Collie, and the Patriots D/ST as starts; Donovan McNabb, Jerome Harrison, Zach Miller, and Steve Smith (Carolina…if you needed a TD) as sits. The bad: Cutler and Olsen obviously, and the Pittsburgh D as a sit.
Now let’s look forward and gaze into the crystal ball for Week 8. A little bit different format this week; hopefully you like it.
Week 7 is in the books with an amazing milestone: Peyton Manning did NOT pass for 300 yards (the first time in six games that he had not done so).
Week 7 was also a week of blowouts. Six NFL teams lost this weekend by 28 points or more, and one of those teams was the Bears…at the hands of the Bengals! Unbelievable.
Most of this we all saw coming (Week 7 Start Em or Sit Em), but the Bears game was a shocker.
Let’s break down the fantasy football landscape for Week 8, including which players you should play and which players you should bench. (By the way, week 8 is a bye week for the Bengals, Chiefs, Patriots, Steelers, Buccaneers and Redskins.)
As a side note: My ban on starting any Bills, Browns or Raiders offensive players has not been lifted! This rule is still in effect.
