Week 9 featured plenty of winners and losers (an equal amount of each, as it turns out), but who wants to hear about losers anyway? Here's a breakdown of 10 real winners in week 9.
- Ben Roethlisberger, step right up into the history books. Ben is the only QB in NFL history to have thrown for 12 TD's total over two consecutive games. He has 862 passing yards in those two games, and a glorious zero interceptions. The Steelers seem unstoppable right now, manhandling the likes of the Colts and Ravens, both good teams. All of Ben's offensive weapons seem to be playing well during this stretch, and rookie Martavis Bryant is a sensation, scoring 5 TD's in his first 3 games. The Steelers have two more juicy matchups against the Jets and Titans before they go on bye for Week 12.
- Jeremy Hill lead all RB's with 28.3 pts in standard scoring leagues in Week 9. Hill was called upon with Giovani Bernard out with multiple ailments, and delivered in a big way. Hill put up 154 yards with 2 TD's and added 1 catch for 9 yards. Hill showed great versatility, scoring on a 1-yard run, doing short yardage work, and torching the Jags in the fourth quarter with a 60-yard touchdown run that sealed the game for the Bengals. Hill should get the start at least one more time as the Bengals play on Thursday night next and will likely sit Bernard one more week. Don't expect 20+ carries to continue for Hill once Gio is back.
- Mark Sanchez played three quarters in relief on Sunday, leading the Eagles to victory in Houston. Impressive is the best word to describe Sanchez's play in this game, but is it really a surprise? This is a guy, after all, who played in two straight AFC championship games while being a wild card team each year. Enough about the past though, how well did he really do Sunday? Pretty damn well, from the coach's perspective. Sanchez had 202 yards passing on 22 attempts, so very efficient. He also found the Eagles best target Jeremy Maclin early and often. Finishing the game with 2 TD's and 2 INT's shows there's still room for improvement, but the early indications are the Sanchez could finish the season as the Eagles' starting QB.
- Brady vs Manning #87 (or whatever) wasn't that different than most of the previous matchups. Peyton "Crybaby" Manning (This is about as tongue-in-cheek as it gets. We used to poke fun at him, but he's seriously a QB god at this point...anyways) struggled in bad weather in Foxboro and the Patriots smashed his team. Manning is now 5-11 against Brady, and while his stats weren't bad for fantasy, his 57 pass attempts show that they were not balanced on offense at all, mostly due to being down for the whole game. Make any team one-dimensional, and Bill Belichick will own them every time. So who is the winner here? Clearly it's Tom Brady owners, who after sticking out a really bad start, have been rewarded with 27.4 points per game over the last 5 games.
- Terrance West continues his march up the Browns depth chart. He's already passed Isaiah Crowell, but on Sunday he also out-touched Ben Tate 16 to 14. West is a rookie still, but has run the ball OK on an offense that isn't that great. His biggest splash on Sunday was his pass blocking. He picked up a huge block in the 4th quarter which gave Brian Hoyer time to find Taylor Gabriel for a 34 yard TD in the 4th quarter, sealing the win for the Browns. The Browns are now a comfortable 5-3 and don't have a particularly tough schedule going forward. As for West, he will settle into the main role for the remainder of the season, but look for more of a committee approach on Thursday night with the short rest. Bonus: Check out Terrance West's awesome block.
- No team was as impressive on Sunday as the Miami Dolphins. They thoroughly whooped the Chargers, who yes, had to play at 1pm on the east coast. But seriously, is it that hard on a professional athlete going from San Diego to Miami. Life's tough, I know. Back to the Dolphins and Ryan Tannehill, who would likely be discussed as one of the better young QB's if it wasn't for Ben Roethlisberger throwing a TD every few minutes. Tannehill is now a must-start in 2 QB formats and is a great streaming option with lots of bye weeks coming up. One more note about the Chargers - I have never seen a team do something like win 31-0 and lose 37-0 in the same season...only 5 weeks apart too! It takes a special kind of...well special to accomplish that.
- The Cardinals have established themselves as the best team in the NFC thus far. They have lots of things to hang their hat on so far - they are the the last team in the league with only 1 loss and they are the first team to hold Demarco Murray to under 100 yards rushing. On a side note - congrats to Demarco for beating the great Jim Brown's record by two games! The Cardinals are getting contributions from everyone on their team on offense, including a bunch of people that were anonymous in the fantasy world at the start of the season, like John Carlson, Jaron Brown and Marion Grice. The Cardinals have the offense and defense to keep winning games, and if they secure the #1 seed in the playoffs, they will be a tough team to beat since they seem to have an answer for everyone they play in the NFC.
- The Rams defense was quiet stat-wise to start the season, but they have really turned it up lately. Sacking Colin Kaepernick 7 times is a great way to get a win on the road, it turns out. The defense nearly lost the game too, but had perhaps the play of their season when they recovered a Kaepernick fumble with just seconds left in the game. The Niners had just drove all the way down to the Rams 1 yard-line and were positioned for a winning score or at least a tying FG. Kaepernick fumbled away the game and James Laurinaitis was there to scoop it up and secure the Rams victory. The Rams DST should be a good start later on in the season, but they do need to play Denver before you want to try and grab them.
- On a day when everything went right for the Chiefs, they were not going to be denied victory. After a first quarter crazy tipped pass touchdown to Anthony Fasano, you knew it was the Chiefs' day. Jamaal Charles continued his excellent production, gaining 88 yards from scrimmage and scoring a TD and Alex Smith was very serviceable with 199 yards and 2TD's and no picks to go with that. In all, a pretty ho-hum afternoon for the efficient but not flash Kansas City offense. The Jets were a little more interesting, if only because of their drama. While giving Geno Smith a timeout and having Michael Vick start, there is talk that Vick might not be available in Week 10. Vick wasn't great, but he wasn't bad either, not turning the ball over, but only scoring 1 TD.
- The Seahawks are just not the same team they were 11 months ago. With a record of only 5-3, you would have still expected them to handle the 0-8 Raiders better than they did, letting it come down to an onside kick at the end of the game. Russell Wilson may be the biggest up and down QB in fantasy football, scoring in the 20's just once, but in the 30's twice. He tends to have huge games, or games where he's just managing things and handing the ball the Marshawn Lynch all day. Don't expect this pattern to change much as the Seahawks will want to milk every last carry out of Lynch before they (likely) part ways with him at the end of the season.
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