Fantasy football strategy, rankings, and podcasts

drinkfive.com contributor and all-around nice guy Tad Bukowski joins your hosts Dave & Jason in the studio to dish on Week 14, bye weeks, injury updates, trends, and matchups to exploit in the first week of the fantasy playoffs. Study up!

Can you guess the musical theme for this podcast? Contact us via email with your guess and we'll send a prize out to the first person to guess correctly. Cheers! Feel free to consult This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or ask us your lineup questions @drinkfive on Twitter. Best of luck going forward!

Listen to the Fantasy Finish Line, 12/4/2019: Week 14 Preview: The Playoffs!...

Subscribe to our podcast on iTunes to get notifications whenever we release a new episode. We also broadcast the shows live at http://www.mixlr.com/drinkfive on Wednesday nights. Feel free to browse over and join in the discussion in the chat room!

We're here, in the fantasy playoffs and all aiming for the championship. Have it in your sights? Tune in to the Fantasy Finish Line podcast with your hosts Jason and Dave and special guest Shawn Foss, as we discuss some difficult lineup decisions from each position, go over the top 10 rookies so far this year, and analyze some of the most impactful injuries looking forward into Week 15 & 16.

Can you guess the musical theme for this podcast? Contact us via email with your guess and we'll send a prize out to the first person to guess correctly. Cheers! Feel free to consult This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or ask us your lineup questions @drinkfive on Twitter. Best of luck going forward!

Listen to the Fantasy Finish Line, 12/12/2019: Week 15 Preview: The Nitty Gritty...

Subscribe to our podcast on iTunes to get notifications whenever we release a new episode. We also broadcast the shows live at http://www.mixlr.com/drinkfive on Wednesday nights. Feel free to browse over and join in the discussion in the chat room!

This week's episode of the Fantasy Finish Line Podcast will be highlighting trends (over 3 weeks) that can be spotted and used to your advantage on the quest for your league's championship! Your hosts Jason and Dave of drinkfive.com will navigate you through the rough seas (sometimes charted, sometimes not) of the fantasy landscape moving in to Week 4 of the 2020 season. This is also the first live video broadcast of the podcast ever, and so we expect things to go very smoothly and without any issues. Yep.

Listen to the Fantasy Finish Line, 9/30/2020: Week 4 Preview: Fantasy Trendsetters

Cheers! Feel free to consult This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or ask us your lineup questions @drinkfive on Twitter. Best of luck going forward!

Subscribe to our podcast on iTunes to get notifications whenever we release a new episode. We also broadcast the shows live on our YouTube channel Wednesday nights at 9pm CT. Feel free to browse over and join in the discussion in the chat room and subscribe to the drinkfive channel for updates!

Watching trends in fantasy football is a key way to measure how a player is doing and to try and predict future success - or lack thereof. This week I present to you a pair of players trending up and a pair of players trending down and attempt to extrapolate which direction to expect them to go in the future. For our purposes, a trend is a player that has gone up or down three consecutive weeks. 

Trending Up

Kenyan Drake (RB-ARI) – Wk 4 @ CAR, 3.5; Wk 5 @ NYJ, 12.7; Wk 6 @ DAL, 28.4. Drake currently finds himself in a classic trending up situation where nearly all of his stats are trending in the correct direction. His carries, yardage, touchdowns, and fantasy points are all trending up. He put on a show on Monday night, running all over the busted Dallas defense, capping it off with a 69-yard rushing TD at the end of the game. Drake did what he is supposed to do against bad teams in the last two weeks and wound up as the RB2 just last week. He’s averaging 5.9 yards per carry in the last 2 games and has 3 total touchdowns as his team has put up at least 30 each week. Now Drake has some more nice matchups coming up. He’ll play 2 of his next 4 games against Seattle, who give up double digits to anyone with a respectable running game. He also has a game against Miami coming off a bye which should be a fine matchup as well. With the Cardinals offense past their early season jitters and back to their winning ways, I expect Drake to be a large part of the offense going forward and think his upward trend is a good indicator of what’s to come.

Darren Fells (TE-HOU) – Wk 4 vs MIN, 3.1; Wk 5 vs JAX, 12.7; Wk 6 @ TEN, 17.5. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king. I’m not looking for TE magic here, just a one-eyed man…if you’ll let me stretch this metaphor. Fells is the TE5 when measuring across the last 3 games of all TEs. If you are not currently in possession of George Kittle or Travis Kelce, then it’s likely that you’re a blind resident of the TE wasteland. Fells is only owned in 32% of Fleaflicker leagues, so he’s been trending in the right direction if you’re streaming TEs. In the two games since Bill O’Brien was fired, the Texans have scored 66 points. They only had 80 points in the previous 4 games, so clearly they have identified at least part of what was broken on their offense. Fells has increased his yardage total 3 weeks in a row, and scored each of the last two weeks. He had 7 targets last week, good for third on the team. Fells has a mixed bag of matchups coming up, which means he will continue to just be a good streaming option and probably not a permanent fixture on your team. Regardless, it’s hard to find your way around the TE wasteland, best to at least go with someone who has an eye for the end zone.

Trending Down

Antonio Gibson (RB-WAS) – Wk 4 vs BAL, 20.8; Wk 5 vs LAR, 7.6; Wk 6 @ NYG, 7.5. Gibson was trending up and peaked in Week 4 with a rather good performance of 128 yards from scrimmage and 1 TD. Since then, however, his yards per carry has dropped to below 3.3 in each game. He’s seeing fewer carries and is also less effective in the passing game. Credit for his reduced workload goes to J.D. McKissic, the #2 RB in Washington. He has technically started half the games this season, and is definitely receiving a lot more attention in the passing game when compared to Gibson. The Washington offense is in QB limbo and there’s barely enough production on that team to support one fantasy WR, let alone a RB on a committee. The nature of this split has actually led to McKissic getting a larger percentage of the snaps than Gibson over the last couple of weeks. It was a nice idea, but the rookie is just not producing enough to warrant starting every week. Another week or two of this, and I expect to find him on Dave’s cutlist.

Juju Smith-Schuster (WR-PIT) – Wk 3 vs HOU, 14.3; Wk 5 vs PHI, 4.8; Wk 6 vs CLE, 1.6. On the season, Juju has not broken 70 yards and since the Steelers impromptu bye week, he is averaging a dismal 5.7 yards per reception. With the emergence of Chase Claypool and Diontae Johnson back to full health, it looks like Smith-Schuster is relegated to 3^rd or 4^th on the target list. The Steelers are playing well, a 5-0 start is the best they’ve had since the steel curtain of the late 70’s. There’s no need to fix what isn’t broken, so I don’t see a bounce back in store for Juju any time soon. He is still rosterable because he will have a role on this high powered offense if there are any injuries ahead of him.

(dis)Honorable Mention - Joshua Kelley (RB-LAC) – While not officially trending down by our standards, Kelley has been just utterly useless when it comes to fantasy. Justin Jackson has assumed the role of the injured Austin Ekeler, who will be back “later than sooner” according to coach Lynn.