With one great week of fantasy football beyond us, it’s time to look over the events of the weekend and see what we’ve learned. It’s safe to say the league looked a little rusty in just about every opening game. The Vikings-Saints match up was a disappointment offensively and that set the tone for the weekend.
One guy who wasn’t a disappointment was Arian Foster. Ben Tate had been one of my favorite fantasy sleepers, but his injury opened up the spot for Foster to take over the Texans run game completely and he didn’t waste the opportunity. Some analysts are looking to blame the Colts defense more than praise Foster, I think they’re being too clever. Right now Foster is a #1 RB until proven otherwise. Don’t trade him, don’t think every RB match up against the Colts is guaranteed money, don’t get too clever yourself.
That being said, the rest of the Texans offense should be a lot better for the rest of the season. Everybody else’s production had to take a backseat to Foster’s absurdly high 33 carries, and that’s not going to happen this second week. Schaub, Johnson, Daniels, etc will all be back and probably putting up decent numbers.
There are quite a few wide receiver situations that seem up in the air right now. It’s okay to guess one way and adjust your roster accordingly, but do so realizing that nothing is for sure yet. To start with the Vikings pass game was atrocious Thursday, and it’s hard to say where Favre, Harvin and Berrian will end their season production-wise. Favre looked old and out of step, but then again so did a lot of younger QBs this week. He missed training camp, so did Harvin, and they’ll all improve with a little warm-up practice. I’m prepared to cut Berrian in favor of some bigger waiver wire pick-ups, but I do think he will come back and have plenty of value this year.
Speaking of good waiver wire pickups, Legedu Naanee of the Chargers distinguished himself in his team’s loss to the Chiefs. For the first three-fourths of the game I would say, he was Philip Rivers favorite wide receiver target. Malcolm Floyd ended the game with more targets, seemingly fitting his role as #1 wide-out, but a lot of those came at the end, and if those last drives worked out a little differently, Naanee could easily have ended the game with more targets. Definitely a good pickup.
The third team with some possible future value are the St. Louis Rams. Slot-guy Clayton got 16 targets while Amendola took in six receptions and could have gotten more if he didn’t get banged up during the game. Meanwhile Laurent Robinson only got three receptions on nine targets despite being at the top of their depth chart for receivers. I’m not sure you can read too far into anything here. I know on one web-site I read them predicting the Rams will immediately flip the depth chart and Clayton will be #1, and just calm down. If Clayton does a good job being the slot guy, that’s where he’ll stay, and defenses will key in on him more. They’re not going to turn their whole offensive package upside down on the basis of one game. But Clayton and Amendola look like good bench pickups if you’ve got a bust to get rid of, while Robinson is a hold.
As for the running game, there are more question marks for under-performers than possible future starters. There’s this problem for fantasy owners of RBBC situations on teams where they don’t have two starting running backs, they have one stud and one clear backup. And I understand it’s absolutely frustrating. Jamaal Charles should not be losing carries to Thomas Jones. And I don’t just mean for fantasy football, I mean in real football. Chief’s coach Todd Haley can either figure that out and give Charles at least 15 runs a game, or he can lose quite a few winnable games. So you have to believe he will and Jamaal Charles gets enough carries to make him a stud. Because he has the talent.
A similar situation exists for the Jets. Shonn Greene blew it for the Ravens game, I think everybody gets that, but if Rex Ryan thinks LT is going to be his lead, or even 50/50, back, then he is high. And his team will not even match it’s rather sad 9-7 record from last year. Tomlinson is running back emeritus at this point, yeah he can look decent while carrying you to a 10 to 9 loss, but that’s about it. Notice the trend with the Jets coaching staff: scaring Mark Sanchez about turnovers to the point where he checks down every play and can barely complete a shovel pass, refusing to trust in their true starting back Greene, and basically refusing to play to win. This is a fearful coaching staff with a head coach more concerned about not making mistakes than about making big plays. And until that entire team gets their heads together, it’s hard to say what you have with Shonn Greene.
Meanwhile, the very real, very workable platoon of DeAngelo Williams and Jonathan Stewart disappointed on Sunday but look for them to be back. Some web experts are already writing off Stewart, I have a feeling they are confused. This is a platoon, Williams will start, but Stewart is going to be close behind him, both are going to rack up major yards and decent touchdown numbers. And when one of them gets hurt, the other is going to become a temporary beast.
That’s all for this week. Now it’s time to dust yourself off and go set your lineups for week two. Get out there and good luck!
