I am a co-founder and the editor of drinkfive.com. In order to stave off fantasy football insanity, Dave and I have branched out to cover a variety of interests. When I'm not knee deep in wikipedia pages, I like to hang out at breweries or a disc golf course (especially both in the same day). FSWA Member for 5+ years.
10/21/14, Wow.. the Jaguars can win, after all!
Welcome to week 8! We're more than halfway through the fantasy regular season and it's been an awesome ride, as is tradition. We started out the show going over some of the headlines from last week - check out my breakdown of Week 7.
We started a new segment where we will be betting on trends. Each week, we will spot a few trends and decide if the trends will keep going, or if the player will buck the trend. We will bet 5 drinks on each outcome. This week our results are: Denard Robinson - continue trending up; Zac Stacy - Jason says he'll score over 8, Dave says he'll trend down; Jay Cutler - continue trending down, less than 20 pts for sure; Allen Robinson - continues to trend up, around 12 pts again; Justin Hunter - continues to trend down; Travis Kelce - continues to trend down, less than 6 points; New England D/ST - Dave says 10 or more points, Jason says they will score less.
We also fielded questions from the peanut gallery this week to help you with waiver wire and start/sit decisions. To ask questions that we will answer on the show, tweet us @drinkfive, hit us up on our Facebook page, or shoot us an e-mail. Finally, we placed a bet for next week's beers. In Dave's eternal struggle to not have to buy a Zach Ertz jersey, he is betting against him again this week. Dave has Jordan Reed in standard scoring against my Zach Ertz. May the loser buy fine beers and the winner enjoy them mightily.
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 7 featured all kinds of fun, a couple of broken records (the good kind), trick plays, last minute victories and Cecil Shorts and Barkevious Mingo on the field at the same time (a drinkfive wet dream).
- I would be remiss in my duties if I did not start this article without Peyton Manning's record breaking night. Brett Favre, the former record holder, threw 508 TD's in his career, spanning 302 games (1.68 per game). As of Sunday night, Peyton Manning now has 510 TD's in only 246 games (2.07 per game). If Manning continues at this clip and plays as many games as Favre, he will finish his career with 626 TD's. Absolutely crazy.
- The Jaguars can win, after all. With their victory over the up-and-down Browns came a glimmer of hope with their run game. Denard Robinson came to life when given a full workload. 22 attempts netted him 127 yards and 1 touchdown, but more importantly, it may have netted him the starting spot in Jacksonville. The Jags are desperate for stability anywhere, and look for them to go with the hot hand approach. Robinson will be a very popular waiver wire addition this week.
- Jerick McKinnon had another good showing, even if his team did not. McKinnon had 19 carries for 103 yards against Buffalo, a team with a tough run defense. McKinnon's match-ups coming up are against Tampa, Washington and Chicago. Buy low on him and take advantage of the weaker part of Minnesota's schedule.
- Ever since Aaron Rodgers told the good folks of Wisconsin to just "relax", they've done nothing but win games. Putting up 38 or more points in three of the last four games, Rodgers has thrown for 13 TD's during that span. Jordy Nelson has also catapulted to the top of the league in receiving yards (though Antonio Brown can pass him with a good game Monday night).
- The Bears continue to struggle at home and are now 0-3 there on the season. It's really the same story we always hear. Cutler struggled and Matt Forte put up numbers anyways. Forte does have two down games this year, but every other game he scored 17 or more points, going for over 20 in his last three games. This kind of consistency is very rewarding with all of the turmoil at the top of the RB draft board this year.
- The Bengals became the third team this season to be shut-out. After having none the first four weeks of the season, we've now seen one three weeks in a row. The Bengals are by far the best offense to be shut down during that stretch, but I think credit needs to be given to the Colts defense. The Colts limited the Bengals to 8 first downs, 135 total yards on offense and the Bengals didn't have a snap in Colts territory until well into the 4th quarter, on a drive that resulted in no points. They only sniffed it once more at the end of the game for just a moment.
- Jeff Fisher has a lot of special teams tricks, and he decided that the best time to showcase them was when the Super Bowl champs came to town. The Rams handed Seattle their second loss in a row, something that Russell Wilson has only experienced once before in his career. The fake punt deep in your own end at the end of the game probably took more balls than brains, but the play I'm in love with is the punt return. The punt return in the second quarter faked out nearly the entire Seahawks special teams unit, which is bizarre considering they ought to know what side of the field their punter is kicking it to.
- One thing from the other side of that game became apparent as well. Russell Wilson is shaping up to be an elite fantasy QB. Two games over 34 points this year and only one game with a low of 11 have him up to 142 points on the season, good for fifth overall. Keep in mind, he has already had his bye week and three of the guys ahead of him have not taken a break yet. Wilson is definitely on pace to finish this season as a top 5 guy.
- The Cowboys keep rolling and Demarco Murray is leading the way. With his record breaking seventh 100 yard game to start the season, he has an astounding 913 yards through 7 games. He has not scored below 17.1 points this season, making him one of the best weekly guarantee since Arian Foster in 2010, heck, maybe since LaDainian Tomlinson's golden years. Expect Murray to stay match-up proof and hope they keep riding him as much as they have, because hey, fantasy football only lasts a year at a time.
- Back to the Broncos, who had a stellar night which might have been overshadowed by Peyton's big record. Demaryius Thomas is living up to his draft position, maybe more than most first/early second rounders. He started slow, but after the bye has scored 34, 18 and 29 points over the last three weeks. In fact, he's the only thing keeping Jordy Nelson and Randall Cobb from being the top two fantasy receivers by points.
10/14/14, Revisiting RB/WR Consistency, Rating the Rookies
Thanks to mother nature, our rookie expert Shawn Foss had a rain out and was able to join us for tonight's show. Tonight we enjoyed beers from Stone, Rogue, 5 Rabbit and St. Bernardus. It's quite a selection, check out the show for details.
Tonight we went over Joe Flacco's excellent game against Tampa, Andre Holmes showing up against the Chargers and Knowshon Moreno winding up on the IR. Then we revisited the top 10 drafted WR's and RB's and where they are at. Once again, we found that the WR position is more consistent at the top of the draft.
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 6 brought us lots of good times. We saw another shut out, we saw a stupid tie, tons of TD's from Joe Flacco and an impressive 4th quarter win by the Packers.
- The Bengals can win or lose with grace, but a tie? Sometimes kissing your sister is really going to piss you off. After a game the featured Vontaze Burfict apparently trying to injure Cam Newton after a tackle, CB Adam Jones (nee Pacman) called out his kicker for missing the game winning field goal at the end of OT. Yes, a 38 yard FG should be a sure thing for an NFL kicker, but mayyyybe you don't want to point fingers after you gave up 37 points to a team with no RB's and no WR's.
- Yes sir, those Cowboys look like they're for real this year. We'll see what the second half of the season has in store for them, but so far their ground game has pounded almost all comers into submission. The latest victim? None other than the reigning champs and their stellar defense. But do not worry, Demarco Murray has no fear. He tied Jim Brown's record of 6 games with 100 yards or more to start a season. Murray leads the league in almost every rushing stat and as we've said before, ride this wave as long as it will go! Keep giving Murray the ball, PLEASE!
- Jordan Reed has returned to the Redskins lineup. It's not always apparent who will succeed at TE in Washington (usually it's Reed), what is certain is that there's tons of production to be had at the tight end position in that offense. As long as one of them can stay healthy, they will be an excellent streaming or low end TE1 option the rest of the season.
- Victor Cruz is done for the season and this opens up the gates for Randle and Beckham Jr. to break out in a big way. The biggest issue with this is trying to figure out when the good Giants will show up. Maybe they just ran into a hot defense last night, but an offense that puts up exactly zero points is one to be wary of, for sure. Randle and Beckham Jr. should be a match-up dependent WR3 for the rest of the year (home games should be good, for example) with very high upside if one of them really develops quickly with Eli Manning.
- Kicking for Detroit has not been easy this season. The Lions are a measly 5 for 15 kicking field goals which includes an astonishing 2 for 12 from 40+ yards. Matt Prater may be the answer for their kicking woes, but he only went 1 for 3 outdoors in Minneapolis. Conditions will be optimum indoors in Detroit, of course, and the Lions are fully behind Prater as their guy. I'd view this game as nothing more than return jitters and he'll be a great fantasy option going forward.
- Joe Flacco went nuts in the first half of the game yesterday, throwing for 5 TD's in the first 16 minutes of the game. After that fifth touchdown pass, the Bucs win probability dropped to 0.0%. Flacco did not even attempt a pass in the 4th quarter. Now the 7th highest scoring QB, he's doing better than the likes of Matthew Stafford, Tony Romo and Cam Newton.
- Running backs continue to be one of the more volatile commodities. Only 19 RB's scored 10 or more points, among them such names as Theo Riddick, Antone Smith, Isaiah Crowell and Fozzy Whittaker. This just goes to show that maybe picking the big time WR's makes more sense, as they are much more likely to perform on a consistent basis. Just 7 of the top 25 RB's this week would have been considered high round picks this year.
- Wide Receivers are much more consistent, with 31 of them scoring in double digits. Only a few more, about 10 or so out of the top 25 are high draft picks. Maybe what all of this is showing is that while WR's might be more consistent, the best bet is to be playing the waiver wire as best you can. For example, a look at the top WR's in the drinkfive league shows that 10 of those WR's out of the top 25 are available on the waiver wire.
- Minnesota seems to be tipping in the favor of Jerick McKinnon already. This week, McKinnon had 17 touches and got 82 yards total. Matt Asiata, on the other hand, had had 2 carries for -5 yards and 1 rec for 18 yards. This is a huge departure from his 20 or so touches per game over the last 4 games. McKinnon is clearly the man going forward and it looks like his coaches are in agreement.
- Finally, a look at the Tight Ends. Only 7 TE's scored in the double digits, three of those being free agents in the drinkfive leage. At least one thing can be said about drafting TE's, 5 of the top 10 drafted TE's were in the top 10 this week (not including Jimmy Graham). Keep an eye out for Jordan Reed and Scott Chandler on the waiver wire going forward.