Buy, Watch or Pass - Week 8
Buy, Watch or Pass Every week, I will examine some of the more obscure top performers in Fantasy Football. Here are the names I came across in Week 8: QB’s Steve McNair, Baltimore Ravens – 159 pass yds, 23 rush yds, 3 Total TD’s (2 Pass, 1 Rush) Brian Billick fired his offensive coordinator after Week 6 & took over the play calling duties. After one game, it’s so far so good. Steve McNair posted his highest QB rating of the season along with 3 total touchdowns in the Ravens dominating effort at New Orleans. Still, one game doesn’t define a season, and it sure doesn’t wipe out those sub par outings before hand either. He still has only one 200+ yard passing game this season & the rest of his schedule isn’t anything to be excited about either. He may be an efficient starting quarterback for the Ravens, but not for your fantasy team. PASS Seneca Wallace, Seattle Seahawks – 198 pass yds, 3 TD’s, 2 INT’s With Matt Hasselbeck out for 2 to 4 weeks, Seneca Wallace got his first NFL start at QB against the Chiefs. His performance was a mixed bag. The 3 TD’s are nice, but the 2 interceptions & 50% completion percentage is not. Wallace is listed at only 5’11”, much shorter than what scouts look for, so the low completion percentage may stay. Seattle also doesn’t have much of a run game, currently ranked 26th in the NFL. Certainly he will get his throws in, but if a defense is expecting pass all the time, turnovers are more likely to occur. If Hasselbeck was out for the year, he’d be an interesting guy to watch for due to some good matchups on Seattle’s schedule. However that isn’t the case, and for the short time he’s starting, doesn’t warrant a fantasy roster spot. PASS Sage Rosenfels, Houston Texans – 186 pass yds, 3 TD’s, 1 INT David Carr committed 3 turnovers (1 interception & 2 fumbles) which landed him on the bench in the 3rd quarter. Sage Rosenfels came in and did a nice job for the Houston Texans, engineering 3 touchdown drives & almost pulling off a comeback win. After the game, head coach Gary Kubiak was adamant that Carr was still the starter. Carr has played well this year, considering he hasn’t had much support from the ground game or his offensive line. Carr will be the starter the rest of the year unless there is an absolute meltdown. Don’t read much into this. PASS Vince Young, Tennessee Titans – 87 pass yds, 44 rush yds, 2 Total TD’s (1 Pass, 1 Rush) Vince Young had his best fantasy game on Sunday, but it was against the lowly Houston Texans. His stat line may not look like much, but you get more fantasy points for rushing yards & touchdowns, which is where Young’s value lies. He has some nice matchups down the road, but it’s hard to trust a rookie QB to lead your fantasy team to victory. Especially one that completes less than 50% of his passes & plays on the Tennessee Titans. PASS Damon Huard, Kansas City Chiefs – 312 pass yds, 1 TD This guy continues to surprise me. Damon Huard pulled out another solid outing on Sunday and has the Chiefs at a 4-3 mark. With the uncertainty hovering around Trent Green, Huard makes an interesting pickup. But buyers beware: Seattle was the last good matchup Kansas City has. The rest of the passing defenses they will face are brutal. Huard also needs to work on ball security, as he has fumbled 8 times this year, 5 of which he has lost. It’s hard to argue with someone who keeps posting results, but he’s definitely not a buy, not even as a backup QB. I need to see more, especially against these defenses he will be facing. WATCH Tony Romo, Dallas Cowboys – 270 pass yds, 1 TD, 1 INT If you got a chance to watch the Sunday Night Football game, you certainly got to witness the beautiful start to the Tony Romo era in Dallas. While completing 66% of his passes, Romo showed the mobility & playmaking ability on the run that it takes a QB to possess in order to win against these fast defenses now a days. Everything that was heralded in pre-season and practices about him was true. Although it was only his first start, Romo isn’t a rookie and has been familiar with the Dallas offensive scheme for 4 years now. With a multitude of weapons and an unbelievably lax schedule against pass defenses, don’t miss out on your opportunity! BUY RB’s Mike Bell, Denver Broncos – 136 rush yds, 2 TD’s Ever since Terrell Davis went down with an injury in 1999, Denver has produced 4 different 1,000 yard rushers. Every year fantasy owners get headaches trying to figure out who’s going to get the bulk of the carries in Denver’s backfield, because you know someone is going to get them, and they will produce. It looked like Tatum Bell had a stronghold on the position, until of course the other Bell, Mike Bell, runs for 136 yards on 15 carries with 2 TD’s on Sunday compared to Tatum’s 27 yards on 13 carries. Tatum still has the starting job, but Mike looks like he’s going to be eating up more of his carries. Obviously anyone who is running in Denver is worth a roster spot, but I hope you have a bottle of Excedrin for the headaches you are going to have trying to figure out this mess. Pick him up if he’s available. BUY Wali Lundy, Houston Texans – 116 rush yds, 33 rec yds, 1 TD Wali Lundy busted on to the fantasy scene in Week 7 with a strong performance against Jacksonville, and continued that to last week against Tennessee too. Lundy has a stranglehold on Texans starting job and won’t be letting go considering his competition has done nothing thus far. The only concern at this point is that Houston will be playing catch up most games and therefore forced to pass more than run, so be cautious with the risk involved. Houston has a nice stretch of weak run defenses that they will face starting in Week 11 with Buffalo. Lundy has some great value, especially during fantasy football playoff time. Get him now while you have a chance. BUY WR’s Chris Henry, Cincinnati Bengals – 81 rec yds, 1 TD Talented but troubled wide receiver Chris Henry was back on Sunday and contributed nicely with 5 catches for 81 yards and a touchdown. Henry had been inactive the previous 3 games which included a 2 game suspension for violating the NFL’s substance abuse policy. Henry also has been arrested four times since December 2005, so the risk of losing him is high. He was a very talented wide receiver in college at West Virginia who slipped in the draft due to off the field issues, otherwise he may have been a first round pick. In Henry’s last three games he’s played, he has 263 yards & 3 TD’s. Looking at Cincinnati’s schedule, he has some great short term value until Week 14 when the rest of his season will be very rough. While Baltimore is tough on fantasy QB’s due to turnovers, wide receivers have fared quite well against them, & Cincinnati plays them twice the rest of the year. Considering there isn’t much out there, take Henry if you need help at wide receiver. BUY for the short term Eddie Kennison, Kansas City Chiefs – 132 rec yds Eddie Kennison has had the rotten luck of facing too many tough secondaries. He’s had only 2 favorable matchups so far, Week 4 against San Francisco and last Sunday against Seattle, and performed well in both those games. Without having a complementary number 2 receiver, he has to face the top cornerback each week, making it tough to have big games. Looking at the rest of his schedule, he’s got a great matchup next week against St. Louis and good matchups in Week 13 against Cleveland & Week 14 against Baltimore. Besides those, he’s going to have a tough time doing anything else. I hope you have other options. BUY if you want the 3 matchups, otherwise PASS Reche Caldwell, New England Patriots – 84 rec yds, 1 TD When New England wouldn’t cave in to Deion Branch’s contract demands, they shipped him out and that made Reche Caldwell one of the Patriots starting wide receivers. He really hadn’t done much until Monday night’s shellacking of the Vikings, where he caught 7 passes for 84 yards and a touchdown. Caldwell showed promise in 2004, where he got out to a great start but landed on the IR six games into the season. While having Tom Brady may be his greatest asset, it could also be his greatest downfall, because Brady distributes the ball so well (he completed a pass to 10 different receivers) and will limit the amount of touches he will receive in a game. However, he has some pretty good matchups down the road, so keep your eye on him. WATCH TE’s Owen Daniels, Houston Texans – 99 rec yds, 2 TD’s Owen Daniels came out of left field on Sunday and hauled in 9 catches for 99 yards and 2 TD’s. After primarily being used as a goal line threat to start the year, both Carr & Rosenfels were targeting him all game long, showing that Kubiak is possibly starting to incorporate him more into the game plan. While that remains to be seen, Daniels is Houston’s starting tight end & he does now have a total of 5 TD’s on the year. A consistent receiving fantasy tight end is hard to find, so keep a look out the next couple of games to see how he’s doing. WATCH Do you have questions regarding your Fantasy Team? Send them to Alex The Great at http://sports.enterto.com/ask_alex.html. Every week I will answer a couple questions and post them directly at http://sports.enterto.com This article is dedicated to the most charismatic and heroic king of all times! Alex Martinez is a fantasy sports writer for Enterto.com. He has been following sports & playing fantasy sports since he was a kid. |
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