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Fantasy Sports

Week 12 Waiver Wire: In Gus We Truzz

The Week 12 waiver wire has a trash-talking quarterback, a pass-catching back, and a dirty bird receiver to fill out your roster. There’s just six weeks are left in the NFL regular season and playoff races are in full swing. The resurgence of the injury bug has taken its toll; both in real-life and fantasy football.

Cincinnati Bengals rookie quarterback and first-overall pick Joe Burrow suffered a gruesome knee injury that will end his season. Rex Burkhead seems likely to have suffered the same fate. Theirs were the most-significant injuries but not the only. Kyler Murray injured his shoulder way back on Thursday so some may have forgotten. We also saw Julio Jones and JuJu Smith-Schuster both leave their respective games early yet again.

You likely need injury-replacements if anything, as we have a bye week from bye weeks. Still, while always disheartening especially for the individual players, just means more opportunities to work the waiver wire for us.

Big Truzz for Ravens RB in Week 12’s Waiver Wire

Quarterbacks

Philip Rivers

Indianapolis Colts

Through the first five games of the season Philip Rivers was the QB26 on the season; completing better than 70 percent of his passes, but throwing just four touchdowns to five interceptions, there was no scoring to offset his averaging just 245 yards on 30 attempts per game. Since then, he ranks a modest but improved 17th among fantasy quarterbacks averaging 291 yards on 39 attempts with 10 touchdowns to just three picks.

Rivers has been dealing lately

He’ll draw the Tennessee Titans for the second time in three week in Week 12, a team he just beat 34-17 to regain control over the AFC South. Rivers only threw one touchdown in that game but he did cross the 300-yard threshold for just the third time this season. For their part, the Titans have given up the 10th-most fantasy points to quarterbacks this season and had given up at least 249 passing yards in six straight games before facing Lamar Jackson on Sunday.

Daniel Jones

New York Giants

As the old adage goes, “no risk it, no biscuit”. Starting Daniel Jones comes with an insane amount of risk baked in due to his propensity to turn the football over but he checks in a few spots higher than Rivers on the year as the QB23. The rollercoaster has been mostly down for him this season, as he’s had six games with fewer than 15 fantasy points, three games with single-digit outputs, and only two games with 20-plus points (depending on your league’s scoring format).

Sometimes, though, a squishy opponent can allay concerns. The Bengals fall just into that category, ranking 19th in fantasy points allowed to quarterbacks. Before facing the Washington Football team on Sunday, Cincinnati had allowed over 300 yards passing in three of its last four contests and four of its last six. The Bengals have also allowed the third-most passing touchdowns on the season. If Ryan Finley can at least keep the Bengals on the board, Jones should be able to deliver.

Running Backs

Gus Edwards

Baltimore Ravens

Okay we’re breaking a few rules on this one but the circumstances justify it. Typically, you won’t see a player repeated here if they were listed in a prior week as Gus Edwards was in Week 9’s edition. You also wouldn’t see a player who scored fewer than one point that week unless they were on a bye or something injury related. J.K Dobbins was the star in the Baltimore Ravens loss to the Titans on Sunday.

The Ravens Truzz Gus on the goal line

But he and fellow back Mark Ingram were placed on the COVID-restricted list on Monday, leaving Edwards and Justice Hill  as the only backs on a short week.the matchup is far from ideal. The Pittsburgh Steelers are third in fantasy points allowed to backs. Not that it matters much for Edwards, but they are equally as stingy through the air as they are on the ground too. Edwards got 16 carries in Ingram’s absence turning them into 87 yards and a touchdown when these teams met back in Week 8. With no Dobbins or Ingram this time around, it could be a big day for the big back.

James White

New England Patriots

Everybody, say it with me now, “you can’t trust a New England Patriots running back”. Great now that we’ve got the legal disclaimer out of the way, James White could be a very useful piece to your fantasy roster down the stretch. Just the RB46 on the year in PPR, White has just three games with double-digit fantasy points. He also missed two additional contests with the tragic loss of his father. White finished as the RB15 through Sunday.

Burkhead vacates White’s old role as the pass-catching back in the Patriots backfield. That;s significant because neither Damien Harris nor they soon-to-return Sony Michel are utilized much if at all in the passing game. They face the Arizona Cardinals in Week 12. They’ve allowed three receiving touchdowns on the season, eighth-most. Meanwhile the Los Angeles Chargers, who they see in Week 13, have allowed the eighth-most receptions and 10th-most receiving touchdowns to backs.

Handcuffs

As mentioned in last weeks edition, and will be mentioned every week until the playoffs, pick up your running back’s handcuff if you have or can clear the bench space. Nothing is worse than being caught flat-footed in the middle of a playoff chase because you snoozed on a player that was always more valuable to you than others. This is a time to be proactive and not wait for injuries to happen. Every owner could use another starting back. Don’t get caught needing one for some fringe wideout you’d never play.

Wide Receivers

Cole Beasley

Buffalo Bills

Bye weeks can be very useful for fantasy managers. For one thing, when a player has a good game right before their bye, they often go overlooked on the waiver wire. Enter Cole Beasley, who had 11 catches (13 targets) for 109 yards and a touchdown in Week 10 before the Buffalo Bills went on hiatus. It was his first time hitting double-digit PPR fantasy points in three weeks but he’d hit the mark in six straight contests before that.

Beasley left all alone

John Brown looks like he could miss some time with an apparent ankle injury suffered in that Week 10 contest. Beasley has averaged the 16th-most fantasy points per game with Brown out of the lineup. Buffalo also returns to face the Chargers, a defense we told you about earlier. They allow the short passes by design so Beasley could be set up for success regardless of whether or not Brown plays.

Damiere Byrd

New England Patriots

After three weeks of being the number-one guy on the Patriots, Jakobi Meyers ceded the role to Damiere Byrd. Cam Newton’s former teammate with the Carolina Panthers delivered with 26.3 PPR fantasy points, good for WR4 through Sunday. It was a helluva bounceback for Byrd (six catches on seven targets for 132 yards and touchdown) after he was blanked in Week 10. He also carried once for 11 yards. It is a similar three game stretch to the one he had from Weeks 2-4.

The Cardinals roll into Foxboro for Week 12, meaning Meyers will likely see a good deal of Patrick Peterson. That means Byrd should see his fair share of Dre Kirkpatrick. He’s allowing nearly 77 percent of passes thrown at him to be completed at more than a first down per completion. Newton has looked *better* over these past few weeks and maybe that means this offense will start to click more down the stretch. Or at least produce two fantasy viable wideouts.

Olamide Zaccheaus

Atlanta Falcons

We’re breaking one of the rules we broke for Edwards yet again, this time for Atlanta Falcons wideout Olamide Zaccheaus. He only had one catch for 10 measly yards in the Falcons 24-9 whooping at the hands (and legs) of Taysom Hill and the New Orleans Saints. More disappointing that the situation being right, Julio Jones had to leave this one early. Worse yet is Zaccheaus was coming off 4/103/1 day against the Denver Broncos.

Jones’ injured hammy could be enough to keep him out by itself or due to an abundance of caution. Russell Gage had the better game this week, but it was Zaccheaus who stepped up when Jones re-aggravated the same hammy against Green Bay earlier in the year. Zaccheaus had eight catches for 86 yards in that one and looked like an explosive playmaker. The Las Vegas Raiders is 20th in fantasy points allowed to wide receivers. Gage is probably an option too, but his role seems rather locked in.

Tight End

Jordan Akins

Houston Texans

In case you haven’t noticed, tight end is a wasteland for fantasy once again. So much so that we should rightfully be interested in anyone showing a pulse in the previous week as we are more often than not banking on a touchdown anyway. Well, Jordan Akins is your guy. The athletic Houston Texans tight end was the TE8 in Week 11 following his five-catch, 83-yard performance against the Patriots.

Be warned, this was just the second time all season Akins has produced double-digit fantasy points, and that’s in PPR. It was also just the second time he’s caught more than three passes or had more than 50 yards in a game all season. Again, anybody with a pulse. He’ll face a Detroit Lions team that is actually in the top-12 in tight end fantasy points allowed so, again, be warned. Just keep telling yourself, all it takes is a touchdown.

Uncategorized

Kyler Murray: The NFL’s Next MVP

Kyler Murray will be the Most Valuable Player in the NFL in 2020. Yes, we are months out from training camp, let alone the regular season. So much can change from basic cuts and trades to devastating injuries. But the Offensive Rookie of the Year in 2019 is uniquely outfitted to bring the award to the desert.

Sure, this sounds crazy now. The Arizona Cardinals just finished a 5-10-1 season. It was their fourth-straight losing season, and seventh in the past decade. But there were some mitigating factors (on top of Murray’s inexperience) that played a large part in that. Not the least of which is the defense that allowed the fourth-most points in team history.

Since this is about the MVP, an individual award, we can (somewhat) take his team’s success with a grain of salt and focus on Murray and why he makes sense for 2020 MVP.

Kyler Murray Will Be the Next MVP

History

Before we get into the numbers that Murray put up himself, let’s do a quick skim of the history of the MVP in the NFL. And we don’t even have to look too deep to recognize the pattern that has developed over the years. One that has shown a clear bias towards who will and won’t win the most-coveted individual award in the League.

Established in 1957 (yes, the award pre-dates the AFL-NFL merger of 1970), the MVP award has been awarded to the player thought to be the most indispensable to his team. That has usually been an offensive player.  More often than not, that has meant awarding a quarterback. More specifically, 38 quarterbacks have been named MVP compared to just 16 running backs.

That pattern has through recent times as quarterbacks have won every MVP since Adrian Peterson won it back in 2012. Before him, it was Shaun Alexander (05) and LaDainian Tomlinson (06) winning back-to-back. But this isn’t the biggest historical factor leading to this proclamation. We only need to look at the past few years to find that.

The past two winners of the coveted award were Lamar Jackson of the Baltimore Ravens and Patrick Mahomes of the Kansas City Chiefs. Aside from both sharing the NFL’s glamour position, they both won the award in their second season. Unlike either Jackson or Mahomes, however, Murray started every game of his rookie campaign, perhaps giving him a leg up in development.

His Story

Murray enjoyed a fantastic collegiate career at Oklahoma playing for Lincoln Riley. His dynamic skill set made him the perfect fit for Kliff Kingsbury’s Air Raid scheme and he proved it in 2019. It was an uneven start but it didn’t take long for the jitterbug passer to show what made him special.

The Cardinals quarterback threw the sixth-most passes (542) in for a rookie in NFL history and joined some notable company in doing so, including a Hall of Famer. He joined Cam Newton and became just the second rookie ever to throw for over 3700 yards and run for over 540 yards, and the ninth player overall to do so.

Arizona, as mentioned, was bad on the whole and the porous offensive line allowed the sixth-most sacks. But they still managed to rank 10th in rushing. That was thanks in no small part to Murray who finished 36th overall in rushing yards. His dual-threat abilities were on full display during a three-game stretch where he averaged 10 carries per game.

He did all this with the terrible blocking, yes. But he was also the victim of depleted weaponry. His All-Pro running back David Johnson has been reduced to a shell of his former self. He saw himself replaced by his backup Chase Edmonds and later (and for good) by Miami Dolphins castoff Kenyan Drake. His top receiver was the ageless Larry Fitzgerald. That’s not good.

The Sooner the Better

Murray finished the season 15th in passing yards and completion percentage despite all the shortcomings around him. He’s in a system that is geared towards his strengths, something else he has in common with Jackson and Mahomes. This system has never featured the run and the defense will still be bad next season. In other words, he’ll need to throw a lot.

An infusion of talent is on the horizon via free agency and the draft. Depending on how they feel about young pass-catchers Christian Kirk, Damiere Byrd, and KeeSean Johnson they could focus heavily on the offensive line. They could also focus on cornerback and pass rush help because they will want to at least try to stop their opponents.

The success of Mahomes has been the result of the perfect marriage of a great situation and superb individual talent. And he still sat for a season behind Alex Smith. Baltimore overhauled their coaching staff to implement a system that would best utilize Jackson’s abilities (a novel concept, right?). But only after his rookie season.

Murray will enter his sophomore campaign with far more experience than either of those two. He’ll also have a system in place that was seemingly designed for him and that he won’t have had to learn in one offseason. All this along with the organization assumedly having a better understanding of what pieces he needs around him only enhances his prospects.

Kyler Murray, 2020 MVP

This is speculating to the extreme. No one knows how anything in the offseason will play out. But Murray answered two very important questions last season. He proved he could play in the NFL and he proved he can survive a 16-game season at his size. The next step will be improving his consistency and turning drives into points. If he does that, he will certainly be the MVP in 2020.