Fantasy Feedback
Nov 19 2008, 04:25 PM
Bucs RB Earnest Graham has been placed on injured reserve, ending his '08 season.
Contributed by: Perry Van Hook, Premium Contributor
Welcome to the 2008 season at FantasyFootball.com. Each Wednesday I will take a look at some of the most interesting questions that have been brought up on Live Advice or on the Platinum Forums in hopes of giving people more perspective and perhaps answering their own question in advance.
Obviously some questions are very league specific in their applications and while I don’t think those are the best for this column, they may well illustrate something very important, so don’t gloss over something just because your league is a different size. You may own the same player but have a different valuation – the information may well be valuable at a later point in the season.
Okay, let’s look at some Week 11/12 questions:
Q) My quarterback scoring is the weak part of my team which is going to the playoffs. I have Matt Ryan and Matt Schaub. With Schaub now out longer, which quarterback should I add for the playoffs in Weeks 14-16? The FA available are Gus Frerotte, Shaun Hill, and Kerry Collins (with three week schedules for each)
A) First a parable – Give a hungry man a fish and you feed him today. Teach him how to fish and he can feed himself whenever he needs to. FFwise – go to TOOLS o the front page and click on that > towards the bottom of that page look for “Strength of Schedule” and click on that – it will then have a box to “select player” – put in Ryan and click “add player”. Repeat with the others. Now look at all of them for Weeks 14-16. Now first throw Collins out – the matchup with Pittsburgh in Week 16 is not playable. You will see that both Frerotte and Hill look to be good complements for Ryan….and they are……….BUT if Hill can hold the job, and he played well last week, he has the better matchup – facing the Rams again.
I would drop Schaub and pick up Shaun Hill.
Q) With Jacobs being questionable for this week and not being able to afford a loss, do I pick up a free agent RB – Hillis and Pittman are available or do I start one of my reserves (Fargas, C. Taylor, A. Bradshaw, C. Williams)? I am also frustrated with Delhomme as my second quarterback with Roethlisberger. Should I drop him for insurance for the playoffs? – Orton, Quinn, Bulger, Collins and Hill are available.
A) First of all if you drop one of your reserve running backs, you could be dropping a player who would be valuable later in the year. Secondly, you don’t really have a problem – if Jacobs does not play, you plug in Bradshaw – share or not, they ARE playing the Cardinals who can’t stop the run very well. On your QB situation, I do think you need to make a change……although probably not the one you think. Delhomme is not the right answer – look at the weeks you might (probably not, but might) sit Roethlisberger – they are NOT good weeks for Delhomme. I don’t particularly like the group you listed (they might have a week with a good matchup but I would want to HAVE to play them. If it were my team I would drop Delhomme….and pick up Leftwich and be happy to play the Steelers passing game for the rest of the year.
Q) I just lost Graham for the rest of the year and I was very light at running back anyway. An owner in my league wants Witten and is offering me LenDale White, Cadillac Williams and Donald Lee for Witten. Should I go ahead and make the deal?
A) Tell him to make it Shockey, LenDale and Caddy and then you will trade Witten to him. He is always going to play Witten over Shockey and then you will at least have the upside if Shockey makes nice with Brees and stays on the field.
Note: Generally when you are offered several players for one of your studs there are two things in play:
1) All of the players the other team is offering are not starters for him;
2) You are losing total points out of your lineup.
In this case the extra running backs will help the team field a decent lineup each week and the potential of Shockey being close to Witten for the rest of the year makes it worthwhile. (Don’t forget there is also potential that Witten can’t fully outplay the injured ribs and is just a “good” TE for the balance of the season instead of the leader at the position and he is further hampered by Romo’s current ineffectiveness and the team’s likely need to rely on Barber and Jones a Lot for their remaining games)