Dave Portnoy Might Be A Fantasy Football Genius
Dave Portnoy is not a season-long fantasy veteran. He's a newbie and he's absolutely cleaning up in The Show fantasy league featuring some of the best major leaguers in the world. He moved to 4-0 this week after a beatdown of the trio of Joc Pederson, Alex Wood, & Austin Barnes.
Things certainly looked bleak after Tee Higgins went off on Thursday Night outdoing his projection by 10.8 points. But Big Ben's Quarterback situation is an unmitigated disaster and they simply cannot overcome it. To make matters worse, the star RB they just dealt for, Javonte Williams is now out for the year after tearing his ACL. Dave pulled almost all the right levers again, with his only oversight being not starting the Eagles D/ST. But he still handled the other team behind a monster game from Tom Brady, getting his first start for the squad all year. JK Dobbins and Breece Hall stepped up big time and CeeDee Lamb continues to shine. Portnoy also made a potentially invaluable pickup over the weekend nabbing Tyler Allgeier off waivers and he now looks in position to succeed with Cordarrelle Patterson getting hurt. Portnoy is just seeing the board and pulling all the right levers. The biggest hole on his team is the Tight End position, which he just made a move for with the only other unbeaten team.
Will that work out for him as well? Only time will tell. But his starting roster certainly gets a boost with that acquisition.
As for Marisnick, he will now own Antonio Gibson and Brian Robinson, so he'll have a good hold of that team's backfield. With George Kittle as TE1, it didn't make a ton of sense to carry a second TE. Marisnick stayed unbeaten after handing Manny Machado's squad over the weekend.
Machado got a breakout performance from Austin Ekeler, but leaving Rahaad Penny on his bench for Chase Edmonds ultimately cost him 18.7 points and the win. Manny got let down by his WRs with Gabe Davis and Drake London both underperforming projections by 10+ points each. Meanwhile, Jake Marisnick just keeps dominating. A monster performance from Deebo Samuel on Monday Night sealed the deal for him to move to 4-0 despite getting 5.1 points combined from his RB2 & WR2 spot.
Meanwhile, we had a MAJOR upset with the previously 12th ranked duo of Shane Bieber and Austin Hedges defeating the league dynamo, Mike Moustakas who still leads the league in points scored, despite his 2-2 record.
Despite getting monster performances from his two stud WRs (Justin Jefferson & Tyreek Hill) before the 1pm kicks, Moose fell short after Lamar Jackson finally came down to earth and Alvin Kamara was a late scratch. The Guardians duo got big performances on Sunday night from their two Buccaneers (Mike Evans & Leonard Fournette) who combined for 3 TDs. A huge W for that squad in a must-win situation. They now move into 8th and have a viable path to the playoffs.
Now this next matchup between Alex Bregman and Mike Napoli was very interesting considering that they just made a massive trade this week.
This trade immediately looks terrible after Miles Sanders outscored Christian McCaffrey.
Cooper Kupp also put up 26.2 points on Monday night. Bregman is really putting all his eggs into the DeAndre Hopkins basket, but he's still got two weeks when he's out. The receiving trio of Curtis Samuel, Garrett Wilson, and JuJu Smith-Schuster might not be enough in the meantime. Napoli was vulnerable this week after a rare down week, but he was carried to the W by Sanders and Kupp as they were his only 20+ point scorers.
The week's high scorer was the duo of Chrisitian Yelich and Jace Peterson with 151.2 points.
The Brewers duo overcame another stinker from Jonathan Taylor who has been wildly disappointing this year. But he had TJ Hockenson who basically put up a 40 burger. His FLEX, Jamaal Williams was also elite, outdoing his projections by almost 10 points. Trout got more bad luck at the QB spot with Tua getting hurt in the Bengals game. But his bench wasn't much better with Trevor Lawrence putting up a stinker. His RBs continue to be elite with Nick Chubb and Derrick Henry. Cordarrelle Patterson got hurt, but Isiah Pecheco could be a sneaky good pickup.
As for heartbreak of the week, Eric Hosmer may take the cake for this brutal L to Wil Myers.
Had Hosmer just started Adam Thielen or Jahan Dotson in place of either Rashod Bateman or Brandon Aiyuk, he'd have the win. His team played a great game with all seven of his other players either being right at their projection or outproducing it. But Wil Myers had big performances from Patrick Mahomes, Josh Jacobs, Davante Adams, and Tyler Higbee who had 10 catches on Monday Night to edge out Hosmer by under 2 points. A painful way to lose, but here's where we stand after four weeks: