Fantasy football strategy, rankings, and podcasts

With the NFL season yet to see a significant upset, there still remains 1065 of the 1499 members surviving in the pool. Last week we just squeaked out a victory when the Dallas Cowboys defeated the Miami Dolphins 31-6.

I think I am seeing a trend developing here, and will be picking the San Diego Chargers of Los Angeles to defeat the woeful Dolphins this week. Hey, if it were not for teams playing divisional opponents twice a year, you could pick against Miami every week and you'd be right. This game checks off a couple boxes for me, resulting in the pick.

First, the Chargers are the biggest favorite of the week at -14.5, which they will cover. You also have a desperate Charger team that has let two games slip away that they should have won. Much like the Eagles last night, the Chargers will be heavily motivated for a good showing for fear of falling to 1-3 and getting left in the dust of the Chiefs who are looking to go 4-0.

Philip Rivers has too much pride to be part of the franchise that loses to two 1-15 teams in his career and will look to reignite the Charger Super Bowl hype. Lucky for me, this will be one of the local games for the San Diego market so I will get to witness first hand just how bad the Dolphins are.

Godspeed Mr. Rosen.

Bust out your folding tables and trim up your mustache, because this week we’re picking the Buffalo Bills. The Bills come into this week off a bye and should be getting back a healthy Josh Allen and Devin Singletary to take on the Miami Dolphins on their home field. They are also this week’s biggest odds on favorite at -17.

I would feel even better about this pick if the Fins were still rolling out Josh Rosen, but either way this ferocious Bills D should make that O-line look like swiss cheese. No amount of Fitzmagic can save them.

A close 2^nd this week would be to pick the 49ers on the road vs the Washington Redskins favored by 10. I opted to take the Bills though, for the home field advantage, and because San Francisco is a better team overall that I can use later on in the season.

Welcome to Statistically (in)Significant, the place to find great stats that probably only matter at the water cooler (or bar). Each week I'll dig through the stats of the week gone by and deliver you some choice conversation starters. All fantasy stats are standard Yahoo scoring unless otherwise noted.

158.3 Passer Rating

The NFL’s all-time leader in passer rating, Aaron Rodgers (with 103.2 for his career) finally posted his very first game with a perfect passer rating on Sunday. Rodgers went 25/31 for 429 yards and 5 TDs, adding another TD on the ground in perhaps the best game of his career. This was good for 43.76 fantasy points, which is 10 more than the next closest player this week. Perhaps Rodgers has finally figured out the new system that has been implemented in Green Bay this year. While they have done fantastic in the win-loss column, they definitely have not looked like the juggernaut offense that we all expected from a team led by Aaron Rodgers, until this week. This game was domination from start to finish, with Rodgers throwing for a TD in every quarter, and also spreading the love. All 5 TDs went to 5 different players. Honorable mention goes to Marquez Valdes-Scanting, who averaged 66.5 yards per reception (2 catches for 133 yards and 1 TD).

576 Rushing Yards

Lamar Jackson, after fooling us all with only 6 rushing yards in Week 1, just posted his third game out of the last 6 where we went over 100 rushing yards. This is a historic pace and projects to 1,316 yards over 16 games. If Jackson can keep this up, he will crush the single-season record by Mike Vick, which is 1,039 yards back in 2006. Jackson also continued his fantasy dominance, leading the league with 180.6 total fantasy points in 7 games. When you consider that he has not thrown for a TD in the last two games, this is just amazing. Not bad for a guy who was drafted 106^th overall on average (QB14). He’s the kind of player that allows for league dominance when you can find that kind of value. To further put Jackson’s rushing dominance in perspective, he’s on pace to break Vick’s career total of 6,109 rushing yards in only 111 games, versus Vick’s career 143 games. That’s two full seasons worth of games.

9% of Yahoo Leagues

This week’s leading RB scorer was Chase Edmonds, who was started in only 9% of Yahoo leagues on Sunday. Currently, he’s owned in 48% of leagues, which includes a 14% jump from yesterday. To me, this means that 14% of Yahoo leagues probably do not operate with a waiver system, which is bizarre to me, but I digress. Edmonds was able to dominate the Giants non-existent rushing defense, scoring 3 TDs all from at least 20 yards or more. Edmonds will definitely be the #1 waiver wire pickup this week, and deservedly so. It looks like David Johnson might wind up sitting a week or two, considering he spent almost all of Week 7 on the sideline and the Cardinals were able to win with only 104 passing yards. Edmonds’ 33 points basically doubled up the rest of his entire team combined, which was led by Kyler Murray’s whopping 6.96 points. On a side note, Murray joined Patrick Mahomes and Matt Ryan in the formerly high-floor group falling back to earth. At least Murray doesn’t have an injury he’s nursing.

1 of the Top 10 Fantasy Performers

Only one of the top 10 fantasy performances turned in this week was by a player owned in 100% of Yahoo leagues. To give some context, there are 23 players owned in 100% of leagues and another 15 owned in 99% of leagues. This is usually a stat that I like to track early in the season to find out who’s performing that we weren’t expecting. To see this kind of disparity halfway in the fantasy season means that we’re probably flat out ignoring some players. And I think we are – guys like Matt Stafford (58% owned) who is the QB8 in points per game, Jacoby Brissett (48% owned) who is QB10 in the same category and Kirk Cousins (64% owned), who is averaging 26 points per game the last 3 weeks. Throw in big performances by Latavius Murray and Marvin Jones and you have an average ownership of just 75% across the top 10 fantasy performers in Week 7. This is probably just a fluky week, but I think it’s time to take notice of a few of the QBs that fantasy players seem to insist on not rolling out there.

104 Rush Yards Per Game

The NFL’s rushing yards leader is currently Dalvin Cook, with 725 yards across 7 games. There’s only been one 200+ yard performance this season (Leonard Fournette, 225 yards, Week 4), so we’re lacking the gaudy totals that we have seen in previous years. But, none of that really matters to fantasy players as long as your guys are finding the end zone as well, which is what Cook is doing. Cook has scored 8 TDs on the season, which is tied with Aaron Jones for the league lead. Cook has also managed to have an amazing points floor, never scoring below 11.4 points on the season. Only Ezekiel Elliott can claim such a double-digit elite status. Even super fantasy RB Christian McCaffrey (who still leads Cook in points despite having his bye week already) cannot claim such a floor. Cook and McCaffrey sit alone in tier 1, about 30 points above the tier two guys, who all have 107-111 points. Cook’s ADP of RB10 this season makes him one of the few second round “steals” that are pretty rare any year.

Big news out of New England with an uncharacteristic move to bring in some much-needed wide receiver depth. The Patriots, who are typically very stingy trading draft capital, shocked many by giving up a 2nd round pick in the 2020 draft to Atlanta in exchange for Mohamed Sanu.

To me, this seems like a win/win for both sides. New England gets a veteran receiver who has put up consistent fantasy numbers while on the Falcons (at least 600yds and 4 TDs last three years), and Atlanta gets a high draft pick for a WR3. Considering the value of the draft pick you can almost guarantee Sanu will be a valuable part of this offense. He looks to be thrust into the WR2 position behind Edelman, though Sanu brings the big body (6’1” 211#) New England has been missing.

Another benefit for New England is that Sanu’s health has been great for most of his career. In the last three seasons with Atlanta, Sanu only missed 2 games, and he started all 16 last year. Considering the Patriots' issues with Josh Gordon not being 100%, Phillip Dorsett missing multiple games, N’keal Harry being on IR up to this point, and taking a shot at AB only to have that blow up, this move is safe and looks to be just what the best team in football needs. With all of that in mind, he is also a competent passer (7/8, 233 yds 4 TD). The Patriots have a keeper here!