End of Week 8 Thoughts

1) Let's start off today's post with some #Week8lulz. Should've posted these on Monday, but I got busyz. Oh wellz.

a) Guess who Luke left on the bench this week? Oh just this guy:

and his historic, once-in-a-lifetime performance. #lulz

No biggie, Luke At least you got the win!

b) Guess who else had a major bench fail this week? This handsome guy:

Here was Eli's historic stat line from Week 8:

Tim went onto lose by 9 points. #lulz

c) J. Randle gets demoted, throws a Ryan Mallet-like fit, and literally disappears from the Cowboys' practice facility. Justina decides to start him anyway and loses by a point to Duke.

Justina would've been better off starting herself at RB#2. #lulz

d) If David Lin had played only 4 players (Hoyer, OBJ, Washington, and Walker), he would've beaten my entire team. #lulz

e) I'm not sure which is funnier. The fact that David Li's team only managed to score 71 points.

 Or Yahoo's description of Luke's sudden upward momentum. #lulz

3) It's time to check in on Tim's chances of making the playoffs this year. Will this be the year that the drought ends???

With a 4-4 record and #6 ranking, I rate Tim's chances as:

4) These are worth sharing. Business Insider photos from the Cowboys' Week 5 matchup against the Patriots. Pretty surreal looking. Some look like paintings.

5) We are only halfway through the NFL season, and it's starting to get ugly out there. Here's a list of the most notable injuries from Week 8:

-Keenan Allen (out for season with a lacerated kidney). This one is crazy. How hard does someone need to hit you in order to crack a kidney?

-Le'Veon Bell (out for season with torn MCL)

-Steve Smith Sr. (out for season with Achilles tear)

-Reggie Bush (out for season with torn MCL)

-Matt Forte (out at least 2 weeks with some sort of MCL injury)
-Ryan Fitzpatrick (injured ligaments in hand)

Then again, from looking at the waiver wire, I guess y'all already knew this:

Three quick observations:
a) There will hardly be any star players left at this rate. The team that wins the league will probably be the healthiest.
b) Poor Aaron. Two star players out for the season. His team's chances just took a huge hit.
c) Gabs has had the worst luck at QB this season. Flacco gives him less than a point in Week 1. His replacement, Kaepernick, proved equally awful. Gabs finally lands Tyrod, who got injured a week later. And now his replacement, Fitzpatrick, goes down with a hand injury after three throws.

5) Here are Peter King's (MMQB writer) thoughts on the NFL injury epidemic:

6) Speaking of injuries, apparently Andrew Luck has been playing with injured ribs since Week 3. Nah they don't look bad at all...

In light of the broken ribs, I have to commend Luck for his gumption. He played pretty darn well in the 4th quarter comeback he engineered against the Panthers.

7) Adding to Justina's woes, it looks like things have gotten weirder in Dallas. J. Randle has now been released by the Cowboys. Why yes, I do get all my FF news from Business Insider.

8) In yet another illustration that the NFL is a topsy turvy place, I want you to take a wild guess who the top 5 RBs in FF scoring are this season.

For me, I'm going to pick... Freeman, AP, Forte, Chris Johnson, and Martin. Let's see how I did.

A few observations here:
a) The gap between Freeman and Ingram is absolutely insane. He'd better be in the running for NFL MVP this year.
b) Speaking of Ingram, who would've thunk that he would be the #2 RB right now in FF? That's VERY surprising.
c) I'm also surprised to see Ivory sitting there at #5. I know he had had a couple of good weeks, but a top 5 ranking? 0_0

9) Now I want you to take a wild guess who the next 5 RBs are in terms of FF scoring. Surely, AP, Chris Johnson, and Bell are in the mix. As for the other two? I have no idea. I'm going to guess Gio and Forsett. Let's see how I did.

Three additional observations here:
a) I got a majority of the picks right, but Woodhead at #7?!?! Maybe David Lin is onto something.
b) Miller had two big games, and now he's a top 10 RB? I don't believe!
c) If you remove the recently injured Bell from this list, the next two RBs on the list would be:

Gurley's going to be a top 5 RB by the end of the season. He's already reached #12 in just 5 games.

10) Now just for funsies, let's compare this year's top 20 WRs (through Week 8) with last year's top 20 WRs (final season). Let's see how much turnover occurs between top WRs each year.

2015 WR Rankings by Total Points (Through Week 8)

2014 WR Rankings by Total Points (Final Season)

a) The only constants I see in the top 10 for both years are:

-Julio Jones (trending up - averaging more points/game this year than last year)

-Antonio Brown (trending down - playing worse due to Big Ben injury)

-OBJ (trending down - averaging 13 points/game this year vs. 17 points/game last year)

That means 7 out of the 10 top WRs this year are fresh faces (A. Robinson), old faces (AJ Green, Fitz, B. Marshall, K. Allen) that reemerged, or second tier WRs that made the jump (Edelman and Hopkins).

b) The only constants I see in the top 20 for both years are:

-Julio Jones (trending up - averaging more points/game this year than last year)

-Antonio Brown (trending down - playing worse due to Big Ben injury)

-OBJ (trending down - averaging 13 points/game this year vs. 17 points/game last year)

-DeAndre Hopkins (trending up - top 5 WR this year vs top 15 WR last year)

-Calvin Johnson (trending down - playing slightly worse than last year; 10 points/game this year vs. 11 points/game last year)

-Demaryius Thomas (trending down - playing a lot worse due to Peyton)

-Steve Smith (trending down - was playing better this season but now out for season with Achilles tear)

That means 13 out of the 20 top WRs this year were not in the top 20 the year before. And of the 7 WRs who were constants, only 2 (Julio and Hopkins) are playing better than they were last year.

What does all this tell me? 

a) The NFL is very unpredictable. A lot can change in a year--namely injuries to the WR himself or weak play at the QB position.

b) When drafting WRs, it's best to diversify as much as possible. Get a mix of players who played well last season (top 20 ranking) as well as proven vets who did not have good seasons last year (injuries/outside top 20). Don't get caught up picking the same WRs from last year unless it's a stud like Julio Jones, Antonio Brown, or OBJ. At the end of the day though, it's still hard to predict who will do well and who won't.

c) Be ready to scour the waiver wire for talent. James Jones, Travis Benjamin, Allen Hurns, and Rishard Matthews all went undrafted this year.

11) Let's wrap this post up with a roundup of the most interesting plays from the last couple of weeks:

a) Has anyone noticed this "hurdle the center on field goals/extra points" trend that's spreading across the NFL? It looks like more and more teams are trying to do this provided they have a super athletic player on their roster. (The catch is that hurdler must clear the line completely or else the play will result in a penalty). While I don't think this trend is going to spread like wildfire, I do think we will see more of it in two distinct situations: a) extra point attempts (these are pretty low risk for the defending team because getting a penalty on a PAT is no big deal I think) and b) critical game changing field goals (where the reward is well worth the risk of getting a penalty).

I'm also interested to see how and/or if teams will try to counter this phenomenon. It doesn't happen a lot to be worth dedicating a lot of practice time to it, but if I were an NFL coach, I would make like Bill Belichick and leave no stone unturned. Maybe the kicking team will start using hard counts to throw off the hurdler's timing. Or maybe the kicking team will instruct its center/linemen to stand up quicker once the ball is hiked. Or maybe the kicking team will keep an extra blocker behind the line of scrimmage to knock the hurdler on his butt once he clears the line. I don't know. Just a my thoughts on the situation.

That being said, I do believe this idea has been around for at least a couple of years now. Polamalu tried it back in 2013, but his timing was off.

Apparently, the Rams' Darren Bates has been trying to do it for awhile now. He finally pulled it off against the Giants last year.


Kam Chancellor also did it against the Panthers during the 2014 playoffs. He was unsuccessful on his first try, but got a second crack at it due to a false start on the Panthers. of which he was successful. (After seeing Kam hurdle the center the first time, you'd think the Panthers would've tried to do something to slow him down the second time around).





In Week 6 this year, the Patriots' Jamie Collins (former high jumper) pulled off the same feat against the Colts. He successfully blocked Vinatieri's extra point attempt.


I'm sure we will see more of this hurdle trend as the season progresses.

b) Biggest head scratcher goes to the Colts in Week 6. They tried a weird fake punt in Week 6, but it blew up in their faces. At least, the Colts can take solace in knowing that Pagano didn't actually want the play to happen.

c) You gotta love the "never give up" attitude of Julio Jones in Week 8. He runs Alexander down to prevent the TD.

d) Not sure what's more embarrassing. St. Louis leaving Torrey Smith wide out on this play, or Kaepernick not seeing him.

e) On MNF, the Panthers players who did not attend Ohio State for college decided to make fun of their teammates who did.