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At drinkfive, we like to think that trends of at least three games or more are something that should be a reliable indicator of future performance. That’s all fine and good, but how about we actually predict if the trends will continue or not and put our money (or beer in this case) where our mouth is.

Here are the predictions we made on last week’s show:

Russell Wilson: Wk 7 @ STL - 37.12 pts, Wk 8 @ CAR - 14.46 pts, Wk 9 vs Oak - 10.26 pts

Wilson has been up and down all year, which way does he go?

Last week, Dave and I both stated that Wilson would resume his proper fantasy output and score over 18 points. He did just that, putting up 21.58 points in a rout of the Giants last week. His passing performance left much to be desired, but 107 yards rushing and a late score on the ground saved his fantasy day in a big way.

Emmanuel Sanders: Wk 7 vs SF - 10.10 pts, Wk 8 vs SD - 30.60 pts, Wk 9 @ NE - 15.10 pts

Sanders averaged 9.8 pts per game first 5 games, 18.6 per game in the last 3. Which one do we see going forward?

Dave and I both said he will continue to do well, scoring 15 points or more. In Week 10, Sanders had 8 rec for 67 yards and 2 TD, adding in a 5 yd rush, good for 19.20 points. Sanders now has 6 TD on the year and is clearly a perfect replacement for Eric Decker in the Denver offense. Sanders is officially a stud!

Kelvin Benjamin: Wk 7 @ GB - 12.10 pts, Wk 8 vs SEA - 9.40 pts, Wk 9 vs NO - 1.80 pts

Benjamin has the 16th most fantasy points this season, but will he rebound from this slump?

We also agreed that Benjamin would stay relevant and put up 8 or more points. Benjamin was having another terrible performance on Monday night football, with 1 catch for 13 yards going into the 4^th quarter, but then scored twice and put up a 3 for 70 with 2 TD line, good for 19.00 points. Is this comforting as a fantasy owner? No, but then again, why do you care how they score the points, as long as it’s before the clock hits 0:00.

Alfred Morris: Wk 7 vs TEN - 5.40 pts, Wk 8 @ DAL - 14.50 pts, Wk 9 @ MIN - 22.90

Morris averaged 10.1 pts per game, first 6 games, and 14.3 pts per game last 3. He had a really rough stretch against SEA, ARI and TEN in there.

Morris was on bye Week 10, so we will follow up on this next week, but we both say he will score a solid 14 points or more.

Branden Oliver: Wk 7 vs KC - 7.80 pts, Wk 8 @ DEN - 6.30 pts, Wk 9 @ MIA - 2.60 pts

Oliver scored just 16.7 pts in the last 3 weeks after putting up 48.6 points in the previous two weeks. With Mathews coming back off the bye, is Oliver relevant anymore?

Oliver was also on bye Week 10 and both Dave and I see him continuing to fall into obscurity, especially with Ryan Mathews expected to return to the lineup against Oakland on Sunday.

Zach Ertz: Wk 6 vs NYG - 10.70 pts, Wk 8 @ ARI - 4.80 pts, Wk 9 @ HOU - 0.40 pts

Ertz is a great red zone target that isn't utilized. Will this change with Sanchez in?

This was the one prediction that we split on last week. Dave said Ertz will stay under 5 points, and I said he’d go higher. Looks like I’m drinking for this one – Ertz finished the game with 1 catch for only 17 yards. Clearly, no, Sanchez doesn’t change anything as it appears that Celek is his preferred TE.

Now let’s change gears and look at some trends that we can see after week 10 and make some more predictions. Remember, for all the ones we get wrong, we will drink five on the podcast. For all the ones we get right, you guys drink!

Cam Newton: Wk 8 vs Sea – 6.24 pts, Wk 9 vs NO – 13.34 pts, Wk 10 @ PHI – 15.84 pts

Newton is really a test of this trend theory. Everyone sees his play as being awful, but he’s actually trending up from his season low of 6.24 against the Seahawks. Newton also gets a bye coming up in Week 12, so is he going to stumble, or put it together for the rest of the season?

Julio Jones: Wk 7 @ BAL – 5.60 pts, Wk 8 vs DET – 5.80 pts, Wk 10 @ TB – 11.90 pts

Jones has really struggled this year compared to where his draft position was, making him a top 5 WR (preseason). Jones is still serviceable this season, but has just as many single digit games as he does double digit, which means he’s probably not as reliable as you’d like. Is this a product of Matt Ryan or Julio, and will he return to greatness or be cursed to NFC South obscurity?

DeAndre Hopkins: Wk 7 @ PIT – 8.80 pts, Wk 8 @ TEN – 9.50 pts, Wk 9 vs PHI – 17.50 pts

Hopkins is stepping up (trying to anyway) as the number one guy in Houston. He’s trending up and has 3 100+ yard games under his belt this year and is averaging about 10 targets per game over the last 3 games. Will Hopkins continue his upward trend, or will the new QB in Houston ruin his party?

Le’Veon Bell: Wk 8 vs IND – 14.80 pts, Wk 9 vs Bal – 11.80 pts, Wk 10 @ NYJ – 6.90 pts

Bell has scored double digit points in every single week except for Week 10 now as the Steelers appear to have all but abandoned the run game. Now, these numbers aren’t disastrous, but he’s moved out of RB1 territory. Bell has only 21 carries over the last two weeks, after 24 the week before, two of those games being blowouts for the Steelers. With the passing game working so well lately, will Bell continue to be the odd man out on the Steelers?

Ahmad Bradshaw: Wk 7 vs CIN – 18.80 pts, Wk 8 @ PIT – 14.70 pts, Wk 9 @ NYG – 7.90 pts

Bradshaw is trending down, which was a surprise to me. He has 8 total TD’s this year, so he’s been putting up points and is clearly worth a start the rest of the year, right? With matchups against NE, Jax, Was, Cle, Hou and Dal to finish the year, it’s a mixture of good and bad run defenses. Bradshaw seems a bit too TD dependent, but can you really sit the top back on one of the best teams in the league?

Make sure to listen to our podcast to get our predictions and discussion of the trends into week 11 and we will recap the results next week.

11/04/14, In which Mark Sanchez is a relevant fantasy player

This week we started off the show with a few beers and toasted Ben Roethlisberger's new record of 12 TD's in just two games. Jeremy Hill and Mark Sanchez were also topics, as were Terrance West, the Miami Dolphins and Arizona Cardinals, all big winners in week 9. Now let's move on to the trends.

We drank for the trends we predicted last week and picked a few new ones for next week. For week 10, we've got: Russell Wilson will score over 18 and resume his proper fantasy output, we both agree. Emmanuel Sanders will continue to do well, 15 pts or more. Kelvin Benjamin stays relevant and scores 8 or more points. Alfred Morris will score a solid 14 points or more, we both agree. Branden Oliver will continue his struggles and is basically irrelevant at this point. Zach Ertz is the only player we disagree on, Dave going under 5 points and Jason taking 5 or more.

Because this is the drinkfive podcast, we can't just stop there when it comes to bets. Beers for next week's show will rest upon the performances of Heath Miller for Dave and Zach Ertz for Jason. We've also decided to bet Portillo's with Dave taking the Miami DST and Jason taking the Lions DST. All points are determined via standard scoring.

Make sure to join us next week, live at 9pm CST on blogtalk radio (blogtalkradio.com/drinkfive). Feel free to send us your questions and we'll answer them on the podcast! Ask us on our Facebook page, follow us on twitter (@drinkfive), or send us an e-mail to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. You can also grab the podcast on iTunes.

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.

10/28/14, It Caaaaammeee from Week 8

This week we had a rather football appropriate beer. We had the excellent Firestone Walker Union Jack IPA. Firestone Walker's logo is a bear and a lion - under the cap it says "Bears, Lions and Beers". We'll have to get this again on Thanksgiving when those teams clash. On to the show - we broke down Big Ben's big performance, Tom Brady's resurgence and Mark Ingram's awesome showing on Sunday night.

Like a good Lannister, we paid our debts from last week and drank for the trends we predicted wrong last week. I hope you all drank for the ones we predicted correctly. This was a fun segment, so we picked a few more to track for next week. They are: Julian Edelman will continue trending down, scoring below 5 pts in standard scoring. We split on Michael Floyd, Dave says he'll continue trending down, I say he'll score over 10 points. Brandon Marshall is another guy we split on, Dave going under 10 points and me going over 10. We also split on Knile Davis, but the other way around this time. Dave says he'll score 8 or more points, while I have him scoring fewer than 9. We'll check out 3 of these next week (Marshall is off this week) and either we drink, or you do!

Make sure to join us next week, live at 9pm CST on blogtalk radio (blogtalkradio.com/drinkfive). Feel free to send us your questions and we'll answer them on the podcast! Ask us on our Facebook page, follow us on twitter (@drinkfive), or send us an e-mail to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.. You can also grab the podcast on iTunes.