How To Celebrate Richard Pryor’s Birthday Using #FantasyFootball

It’s @TheBLeagueSays here with this week’s ‘Game Plan, where I give you plays to make for seasonal and daily roster construction, prop bets, and dynasty evaluations. Before you make any start and sit decisions this weekend make sure you check out our weekly rankings also.

Happy birthday to legend Richard Pryor this week and to my son Roman on the 4th… Probably should have started with the son, ah well…

“There’s a thin line between to laugh with and to laugh at…”

Due to the thanksgiving coma that I’ve just woken up from I can’t say I’ve been overly interested in listening to anything other than the treadmill belt rolling about.

Which is fine, I earned that coma. But being in that coma I somewhat managed to slip away from the fantasy vacuum which we live in and get a grip on what’s real and what is not.

T.Y. Hilton’s career decimation of the Houston Texans is indeed ridiculously real. Try a few of these gimmicks on for size:

• In his first game back from injury this season he walked into a 4-4-80 afternoon. Doesn’t seem like much… But…
• In 19 career regular season games he’s posted sub-50 receiving yards only four times which is mental. But more mental than that…
• He’s had eight games with over 100 receiving yards – the most recent was last season. Sounds consistant, but even mroe consistant than that…
• Since week 14 in 2016, Hilton has had eight games with over 70 receiving yards – five of which went for over 100 receiving yards as well.
• In his career against the Texans he has also had two games with over 195 receiving yards (199 and 225).
• In those 19 games hes had nine or more targets ten times with a couple of multi-touchdown games as well.

I feel like I have made my stance on him this week against the Texans somewhat known to be favorable… But there’s nothing more favorable than coming up against the 21st rank opposition against receivers with a $4400 price tag.

Cheers, thanks for coming!

“I told him comedy – real comedy – wasn’t about tellin’ jokes, it was about telling the truth…”

Super-specific circumstances with this one, but…

It’s still such a weird thing to see sooooo many insanely great players facing free agency this offseason.

From Davante Adams to Rob Gronkowski, to Chris Godwin, to the Juju’s, the A-Rob’s, the OBJ’s, the Ertz’s, and so on.

Let alone the temperamental environments that encompass Aaron Rodgers, Russell Wilson, Jalen Hurts, Tua Tagovailoa, and of course Deshaun Watson.

But there is one position whose cupboard feels kinda bare, Old Mother Hubbard: the running back position.

For those draft beatniks out there grinding the 2021 NCAA tape telling us that the rookie running back class will feel like last year’s – somewhat top-heavy.

Then listening to dynasty deadbeats telling me to sell any aging running back (26 or older for some reason, don’t know why, or care why – the number is 26) hitting the market that never gets the payday or long term deal that they are/were looking for – it makes you feel like looking for something else which comes with as much risk as a guy without a deal (like Melvin Gordon for example) or a rookie that gets the hype and doesn’t deliver (similar to Trey Sermon this year).

I’m not one to reinvent the wheel, let alone ride a bike, but if my season was over I’d want a few guys who are now laying (I’d say flying but that’s not physically possible) under the radar like J.K. Dobbins, Cam Akers, and/or Travis Etienne who have been simmering on theirs and your leagues’ IR long enough to know that there could be teams in your league who are competing for a playoff spot or looking to maybe cash out on someone with that injury risk now baked into their equation for someone else on your roster who can get them there.

Time’s are tough and desperate and it’s time to capitalize on that.

“Imagine people calling you to find out if you’re dead…”

The New Orleans Saints play tonight and if this article gets out before then – yay me!

But seriously they play Dallas tonight on the back of a four-game losing streak. Weird to think that Jameis Winston leads this team to a 5-2 record at one point.

Still, you look at the sad state of affairs that the ‘boys from the Bayou have faced lately and it’s hard to imagine a team that had Winston, Alvin Kamara, and potentially Michael Thomas to Trevor Siemian, Tony Jones, and Deonte Harris.

Such is the life of an NFL franchise.

For what it’s worth it looks like overpaid, overpriced, and overrated wildcat Taysom Hill is set to get the start to maybe kick start their season back up (without getting off-topic, I still can’t believe some dullards thought Hill was going to beat out Winston for the starting quarterback job… Blows my mind that people thought he was going to win that one out. In the immortal words of Ric Flair: “to beat the quarterback, you gotta be a quarterback..”).

But someone has to step up and get to work, and while they likely welcome back Kamara (turns out Kamara has been ruled out for tonight’s game and you know how I feel about editing my work as I go on – it stays in the article, dammit!) and Mark Ingram from injury, I like the idea of Tre’Quan Smith taking another step forward. Dallas (sixth-most points given to receivers) still gives up about 180+ receiving yards and a touchdown to wide receivers a game, the fourth-most in the league.

In three of Smith’s last five games, he’s had double-digit fantasy points and is still rostered in only 72% of Sleeper leagues. With the Jets (eleventh post points given to the position), Buccanneers, and Dolphins (3rd most points given to the position) coming up after the matchup with the Cowboys, he could be a solid Flex play for your run in towards the end of the season.

Unless Taysom Hill is that bad… and in that case, we are all shit out of luck…

“From my earliest days, I learned that expectations had to be balanced against reality…”

If any of you have read my word – thanks a bunch – but for those new, to my written work, you would know that I live for the ‘I told you so’ moments. Hell, I have another one of those moments below as well…

Only because it’s rare that I get anything right. We can call this article for what it is, I’m ok with that.

A few weeks ago I called for the 49ers to go on a bit on a run and here we are, 3-deep in wins with a 6-5 record looking like a team that could be a problem come playoff time.

Can they win out with their remaining games? Their run-in suggests they very much could. It will be hard to do so without Deebo Samuel. But very much in their realm.

Their future holds the Bengals, Titans, and Rams who have all flashed this year – as well as shown deficiencies too. But this streak of theirs can keep going against division foe Seattle, who just don’t look the part of a team anymore.

Russell is making even weirder videos than before. D.K. Metcalf is starting to lose his mind. And Pete Carroll finally figured out that arthritis in the neck is bad and that Chris Carson should have had his season ended weeks ago…

All the 49ers are pretty cheap with week, starting with Jimmy Garoppolo at $5700 (OPRK 28th), Elijah Mitchell $6000 (OPRK 32nd), Brandon Aiyuk $5700 (OPRK 8th), and George Kittle $5900 (OPRK 20th).

If you are also looking at a guy in a red shirt to bring your price down, Jauan Jennings could see more work as their second receiver opposite Aiyuk, and at $3100 is interesting enough to roll out in GPP’s. As many will load up on the obvious guys above, he could be a super-cheap option to run your lineups back with.

“I’d like to make you laugh for ten minutes, even though I’ll be on for an hour…”

I have this love/hate thing going on with Kirk Cousins. I love him for fantasy, he’s efficient, puts up points, he’s durable, and knows how to get the ball into his best players’ hands frequently.

He also doesn’t know how to lineup under center in high-pressure environments. Low-hanging fruit aside…

Over the past month Cousins has been the QB2 in fantasy punching a solid 20.2 ppg, and is the current QB9 for the season averaging 20.04 ppg. He’s giving you that consistent floor every week.

Funnily enough, despite their tough loss to the above-mentioned 49ers last week, I still kinda like their run in to close the season. Detroit, Pittsburgh, and the Bears are pretty generous to quarterbacks and, well, every other position at this point of the season.

I don’t see them taking any backward steps despite the blip last week, and their shot at a wild card spot for the playoffs goes from 44% to 87% with three wins in a row. I am very well aware that they are yet to do that this year, but still, I can see it happening.

But for it to happen, it has to kick off at  Detroit this week, and without D’Andre Swift and at -7 I can get on board with that. They’re currently 6-5 against the spread this year (4-2 on the road).

“I never met anybody who said when they were a kid, I wanna grow up and be a critic…”

I told you once…

I told you twice…

Now everyone eight months later is telling you for the third time… I mean better late than never…

Alright, I won’t be a dick and pretend that with one of the articles I wasn’t banging on about Cam Newton for a bit (or that I said to fade Leonard Fournette…). But there’s now a chance they could end up with the Rookie of the Year in Mac Jones (I know – Ja’Marr Chase this, Najee Harris that – I get it) which is a pretty decent consolation prize right? Jokes…

But I stand by the Kendrick Bourne pickup from earlier this year. He was a solid player for the 49ers, performed above expectations when he had the chance for them, and was a shoo-in to be a solid possession receiver for them.

Although Bourne is third amongst wide receivers for targets, he leads them for yards and touchdowns which is a nice thing to see the progress – he’s about to surpass career highs for receptions and yards, and has matched his best season for touchdowns as well already.

Still, the Patriots have moved from not only being outsiders to make the playoffs at +400 to their new adjusted odds of winning the East at +110, but moved to +450 to finish as the number one seed in the AFC.

Speaking of the AFC, they are currently the second seed with five games remaining. I’m not saying their run-in is great (Buffalo twice, the Colts, and at Miami) but the form is on their side more than anyone else.

This week the Patriots at +3 travel to face their rival in Buffalo. For what it’s worth, are 8-4 covering the spread this year and are 4-1 covering on the road. I’ll take that, the +120 on the nose for a road ‘upset’ before their bye next week.

I want to thank you for checking this article out! As always you can follow me at @TheBLeagueSays and feel free to check out my @GothamCity_SR podcast out (Linktree) – subscribe, rate, review, share, and listen.

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