A sports blog by and for Midwest Sports Fans
The Ravens head into San Diego tonight looking for a win to stay in a good spot in the tightly contested AFC playoff race and also maintain their lead over the Steelers in the AFC North. At the same time, the Chargers are looking for a win to keep their playoff hopes alive.
It’s playoff time. Enough said.
Here are some last minute tips for this week in fantasy football on guys like Philip Rivers, Rashard Mendenhall, Roy Helu, and others.
Week 14 is here.
For some of you, that means you have a team (or hopefully teams) on bye this week. If so, major kudos to you.
For others of you, Week 14 means that it’s the first week of the playoffs. If so, good luck, and hopefully the advice in this post will help you move on.
For others, Week 14 is the last week of your regular season. Maybe you’ve clinched a playoff spot or maybe you’re still scratching and clawing for one. Regardless, hopefully we can do you and your lineup some good with our picks in this week’s start em, sit em.
And for some of you this may be your first week without fantasy football – if your playoffs start this week and you did not make it; but if that’s the case, why would you be reading this?
Alas, if you’re here, you are looking for help in Week 14. And you’re in luck, because that is exactly what you’re about to get.
Who would have thought that Week 13 was going to be so flippin’ intense, entertaining, surprising or WHATEVER you want to call it?!
Anyways…Let’s take a look at your Monday Night entertainment!
There are many different factors that make fantasy football difficult: bye weeks; injuries; random lucky days for your opponent; and worst of all, Chris Johnson.
In my opinion though, the hardest thing is staying in the present.
What do I mean?
All the talk this year has mainly been of the struggles of Chris Johnson and Philip Rivers. As painful as it is to watch, dwelling on the problems will set you back.
Six team byes have been scaled back down to four this week, so fewer players will be sitting out of your matchups, but it will still likely necessitate at least one or two touch decisions; decisions you shouldn’t take lightly, because while this may be the middle of the season for the players, our playoffs are right around the corner and crunch time is upon us.
The Halloween Nightmare at Arrowhead proved even worse than feared for the San Diego Chargers last Monday night.
As if Marty Schottenheimer showing up in the Kansas City owner’s box – in a Chiefs blazer that Hank Stram would had been proud of – wasn’t enough of a knife twisted in the backside, Philip Rivers’ Joe Pisarcik impersonation at the regulation could end up ultimately spelling doom for San Diego’s season.
Based on what they are being paid by their real life teams, and the production fantasy owners were expecting when they drafted them in the first two rounds, there have been no two bigger non-injury busts in fantasy football this season than Philip Rivers and Chris Johnson. (We’ll forgive Jamaal Charles and Peyton Manning for their season-ending injuries).
They are the stars of our latest photo story: “Bust Buddies”.
Before we get to the Week 9 fantasy football start/sit advice, I want to add a couple more thoughts on my Tebow article from yesterday. (And don’t worry; I’ll analyze his fantasy prospects for Week 9 too.)
Late in last night’s Monday Night Football game, Philip Rivers was caught muttering something on the sidelines.
Here is animated GIF of Rivers’ mumble. Let’s watch it and then see if we can use our lip reading and context clue skills to figure out what he said.
How many teams would trade their current QB, right now, for Cam Newton?
This is a question I’ve been thinking about a lot over the past several weeks, as I continue to be more and more impressed (and surprised) by how well Cam Newton is transitioning to the NFL in his first season.
Division rivals will fight for a win tonight, and this might actually be a Monday night game worth watching as many of the Monday Night Football matchups this season have been less than entertaining.
Leading the AFC West, the San Diego Chargers (4-2) will travel to Kansas City to take on the Chiefs (3-3). Kansas City looked buried at 0-3, but they have a huge opportunity tonight to get right back into the thick of the AFC West race.
Let’s take a look at the teams.
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.
Well, that was fast.
As soon as I opened up my big mouth and proclaimed that 2011 was going to be the most prolific fantasy year ever, scoring around the league plummets. No worries.
At least I had a great week on the predictions front, as I was right on nearly 80% of my picks.
As always, here is a quick look back at last week before we move on to week 7.
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Injuries!
Andre Johnson is gone. Ben Roethlisberger is banged up. Miles Austin is on the mend. Marques Colston is back, but when will he get on track?
With the bye weeks now here, the time has come when fantasy leagues are truly won and lost. If you drafted well, and got a little lucky, you should be near the top of the standings. But nobody can ever completely escape the injury bug. Managing your lineup properly when byes and injuries attack is what separates the good owners from the great ones.
So let’s look at the Week Five games and decide who to start and who to sit this week.
