NFL Week 1
We’ve all been there. Your team is doing awesome, you’re ready to take down that elusive GPP… and you forget to look at that one guy. That one guy who had the cake matchup, and was the most obvious play on the board, so you don’t even worry about checking how he did.
So you check.
And it all goes to hell as you see your “for sure” turned into a “for naught.”
Even though we all know this is a game of skill, there are often a few guys who abandon Lady Logic and join up with Lady Luck to punch you in the nuts. Let’s look at the top five Lineup Busters from Week one in this inaugural edition of
Misery Loves Company.
5. Shaun Hill: Nobody was expecting Hill to light the world on fire but, for his minimum salary against what should have been a relatively decent matchup, it was tough to imagine the absolute face-plant he pulled on us DFSers. He didn’t need hardly anything to give us value, and yet he miraculously managed to barely net a positive score in his first half of play before leaving with a fake injury. The coaching staff is claiming it actually was an injury, but he was so awful that that’s pretty hard to believe. Hopefully the money you saved on Hill’s turd allowed to pay up for someone else that canceled out his wretched performance, but Hill sunk many a lineup this week.
4. Ben Tate and Bernard Pierce: I’m lumping these two together because it just seems like they should be. Last season, both showed flashes of potential usefulness as strong backup RB’s in good offenses that fit their styles, and both found themselves as presumably three down backs at a very reduced salary. However, Tate got injured and saw over 100 yards and two TD’s get taken by his backups, and Pierce was just so awful he got benched, barely registering a positive score on any site. That’s just not what you’re looking for when hoping for value, and now Tate is probably injured and Pierce seemingly already lost his starting job. Whoops.
3. Demaryius Thomas: There are many people who think Demaryius could potentially be the top WR this year, and I can see how that would be possible seeing as how beastly he is with the ball. However, the seemingly 25% of DFS community who rolled him out for SNF were appalled as he channeled his inner Darrius Heyward-Bey and stone-handed pass after pass while never really getting loose to do any damage, despite a plethora of targets. Obviously, he will rebound from this week as Manning is all about sharing the wealth, but this is not the performance people were hoping for given Welker’s suspension and Decker’s departure.
2. Andre Ellington: What a frustrating situation this was, as we ridiculously were forced to experience mid-season decision-making before the season was even underway. Somehow, there wasn’t any news about his foot injury until the 11th hour of the regular season starting, and then we hear that it’s a 4-6 week injury. Not only is this stupid from a DFS perspective where he was probably going to be one of the highest owned players due to his projected three-down role, but there is a fantasy owner in every season-long league out there that got totally hosed with this news. To make matters even more confusing, he ended up being changing from a 4-6 week injury to a GTD on Monday night, leaving you with some decision to make since, typically “4-6 weeks” doesn’t translate to “4-6 days.” However, apparently he felt okay and opted to play just to make everything even messier from here on out, because foot injuries don’t seem to heal when they’re not allowed to (just ask every professional athlete in the history of the universe). Overall, considering this was just Week One, this had to have been one of the more frustrating situations in recent DFS memory.
1. Jamaal Charles: Was there any doubt JC would take the crown here? It’s not very often where the player who is generally the highest priced (and good reason) falls flat on his face like he did in Week One, especially when you consider how ridiculously consistent Charles was every week last season. Yes, the workload was lighter than it should have been, but it’s not like Charles was able to do much with it when he did touch the ball, averaging barely three yards per touch in what seemed like it was going to be a juicy matchup. McCoy and Forte didn’t exactly light the world on fire with this performances, but you could have survived due to their volume. Plug in Charles, though, and your week was over quite a bit earlier than it should have been.
