Fantasy football strategy, rankings, and podcasts

Last week, we finally had some upsets in the NFL, and 568 entrants were eliminated from the pool. I gave you an easy winner last week with the Chargers, who stomped out the Dolphins like everyone else has this year. But alas, this week the Dolphins are on bye, so I'm going to have to really put on my thinking cap to pick this week's winner.

Looking at the schedule I was inclined to pick the undefeated 49ers against the Cleveland Browns at home, but I just don't know which one of those teams is for real and which one’s a pretender yet, so I'm going to skip that one. After seeing I've already used some of the biggest favorites of the week, I decided to go out on a limb a little bit and pick the Minnesota Vikings.

There's been a lot of drama and shit talking regarding their terrible quarterback Kirk Cousins, but I think that it just motivated guys like Stefon Diggs and Adam Thielen to really go off this week and put a whooping on a resurgent Giants team. Danny Dimes is looking good so far, but the Vikings defense is fierce and I think the Vikings will win this game. Plus, one Golden Tate minus one Saquon Barkley equals negative Saquon Barkley's. That pretty much sums up how I feel the Giants are performing this game.

On a final note, I would like to add a suggestion. Stefon Diggs should to request a trade destination like either the New England Patriots or the Kansas City Chiefs. My fantasy teams would really enjoy that. This article was written while driving to Sequoia National Park for a camping weekend so I hope it's plenty coherent and enjoyable enough and that the pic is a good one. Have a good weekend everybody.

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.

16 Point Fantasy Floor

This season, only 3 players in the NFL have a solid fantasy floor. The always reliable Patrick Mahomes, even when his team scores a scant 13 points, has not scored less than 18 fantasy points all season. The other two guys are a bit more surprising. Kyler Murray and Gardner Minshew II. Murray notched his first win on Sunday against the hapless Bengals. He had his best day statistically as a fantasy QB, not turning the ball over and gaining 93 yards on the ground to go with a TD. Murray ended the day as the QB6 to Minshew’s QB8. Both guys are rookies, one was the first overall draft pick and the other is clearly a future hall-of-famer and worthy successor to Blake Bortles in the eyes of Jason from The Good Place. Minshew had a tough matchup against fellow rookie phenom Kyle Allen on Sunday. Unfortunately for Minshew, he doesn’t have Christian McCaffrey on his team. Speaking of the guy leading ALL fantasy players and the MVP race at the moment…

866 Yards from Scrimmage

Christian McCaffrey had himself a game on Sunday. His 237 yards from scrimmage and 3 TDs were actually only good for the 3^rd best point total on a day with huuuuge points, but more on them later. McCaffrey is now on pace for 2770 yards from scrimmage this season, smashing the record of 2509 set by Chris Johnson in 2009. So far, McCaffrey leads the league in rushing yards and, second in receiving yards among RBs. He is the top point scorer in all of fantasy football, with 128.60 points, just nudging out QBs Lamar Jackson and Russell Wilson. Next up, the Buccaneers, the only team that has managed to hold McCaffrey to under 23.9 points this season. I expect him to have a much better performance this time around.

6 Players Above 30 Fantasy Points

This week was all about big performances. The early games, and there were a lot of them (10!), had the Texans hanging 53 points on Atlanta. Along the way, Deshaun Watson threw 5 TDs and notched 41.74 fantasy points, a season high at the position. Three of those scores were via the hands of Will Fuller V, who had his own monster day of 217 yards and 3 TDs for 39.70 points. This was more than double his season points total so far, having not exceeded 6.9 points in a game all year. Falcons QB Matt Ryan continued his excellent, but quiet year. His 32.9 points on Sunday was excellent for fantasy players, but a terrible losing effort for his team. Ryan also gets an honorable mention in regards to my earlier stat about QB floors – his lowest game this year is 15.68. Michael Thomas put up a ho-hum 30+ point game, showing that he’s good no matter who’s throwing him the ball. I already mentioned Christian McCaffrey, who was sitting on top of the RB list this week until Aaron Jones had something to say about it. Jones basically beat the Cowboys all by himself. Putting up a whopping 42.2 points, he had 182 yards from scrimmage and 4 TDs on the ground. Aaron Rodgers owners may not be thrilled, but clearly, we all see who the real A-a-ron is in Green Bay right now.

35 Fantasy Points

But wait, there was one more entry to the 30 points and over club! A D/ST had a huge day and surprisingly it wasn’t the odds-on favorite New England Patriots against the hapless Washington Redskins. The Philadelphia Eagles just dismantled the New York Jets, limiting them to only 9 first downs, putting up 10 sacks and scoring TDs on both an interception and a fumble recovery. They added another interception just for fun and because, apparently, it’s easy to pick on Luke Falk. The Jets need Sam Darnold back as soon as possible. Maybe Darnold can get tips from Jason Witten on how to rehab one’s spleen. I don’t really see this performance as indicative of the Eagles getting better, but rather it just shows how bad the Jets are. The Eagles play Minnesota, Dallas and Buffalo coming up, and I see no advantage to keeping them around this week. Continue streaming, friends!

3 of the Top 10

Finally, a bit about kickers in fantasy football. Only 3 of the top 10 performers in Week 5 were owned in our drinkfive fantasy league. Those three kickers are owned in at least 78% of Yahoo leagues. The remaining 7 kickers have an average ownership of just about 19%, showing that nobody knows what the hell a kicker is going to do week to week, mostly because it’s not up to them! This is just my latest entry to my argument that kickers probably don’t need to have anything to do with fantasy football. Any Sunday, you’ve got an equal chance, it seems, to have a guy like Dan Bailey (10% owned) put up the same amount of points as a guy like Justin Tucker (99% owned). It’s just ridiculous that 2 of the top 5 kickers on the year are owned in fewer than 25% of Yahoo leagues, Matt Gay (22%) and Zane Gonzalez (17%).