Smashville Fantasy Football
Join Andrew Banta and Will Ott as they dive deep into the Smashville Fantasy Football League's 10th anniversary season. This weekly podcast offers a unique blend of league analysis, player insights, and friendly banter. Whether you're a league member or just a fantasy football enthusiast, you'll enjoy our hosts' distinct perspectives on roster management, player performance, and league-wide trends. From draft strategies to weekly matchups, we've got you covered with armchair analysis, historical comparisons, and plenty of laughs along the way.
Smashville Fantasy Football
Week 5 Fantasy Recap and Predicting the Unpredictable
Week 5 Fantasy Football Recap: Smashville Results & Predictions!
Join Andrew Banta and Will Ott on the Smashville Fantasy Football Podcast as they dive into the highlights of Week 5 and look forward to Week 6. Discover which teams emerged victorious and hear Will defend his hot takes on top scorers. The duo discusses roster strategies, waiver wire picks, and football blunders while providing updates on injuries and team performances. Also, explore intriguing matchups and predictions with candid banter and insights for fantasy football enthusiasts!
Welcome to the Smashville Fantasy Football Podcast! I'm your trade-addict host, Andrew Banta, joined by our analyst who swears he can predict the future, Will Ott. Get ready for armchair analysis, friendly banter, and a whole lot of fantasy fun!
Welcome back fantasy footballers! We've wrapped up week 5 and we're launching into week 6 at the speed of light. So let's get right into it. This week our big winners of the week were Wu Tang Financial over Crunchy Leaves.
Worst eater around over the Meg in a relatively close matchup. The Meg is still searching for her first win, seeing it 0 5 now, very painfully. One player going the other way could have changed that matchup. Mixing it pretty good is our real powerhouse team, with a 143. 46 point win over Mitchy Mitch.
This solidifies Will's. Hot take, at least being partially to debatedly, almost entirely correct. Mixing it pretty good, sits at the top of the standings and the most points scored after five weeks. I count that as a win for him Will, you can elaborate on why that was only a partial victory for you.
I believe that I said she would maintain the most amount of points, through five games. I believe week two did not maintain the most points scored. And so therefore I would be okay with taking partial credit. But we would have to go back to the actual original recording to verify that is what actually came out of my mouth versus what I thought I said.
But that is what I thought I remembered saying so having almost 700 points through five games i'll take a good win on that hot take
yeah, and mixing it pretty good can certainly take the win on all but one matchup this year. 699. 81 points for sitting well ahead of second place in points, which is no hard deal, and with 634. Everyone else is in the 500s or below Sarah is sitting pretty good there Purdy good there to be precise. yeah,
him
what I was thinking that like injuries would start to play more of a role as we're going along. Hasn't come to fruition yet. I realized her team was strong. I just didn't think it was deep, but man, every player is just consistently scoring in double digits for her. Going really well so far. Also we had your win this week over simple Jack. How'd that go for you?
It went well, the original projection was 97 to 94 rounding. So I was the slightest favorite, but then Bixby opened up in that game against the Colts and really set the tone for things. And Jamar Chase also found his stride with Joe Burrow.
And then that basically got me very decisively winning. So it changed things and it made me feel good. So I didn't really lose sleep in the second half of the games. Cause it was pretty much wrapped up.
it wasn't particularly close, but you hate to see Chris leaving Dallas Goedert in there on a bye week. So that was zero points. It didn't make a big difference in the end because there wasn't anyone on the bench who did much better. But it was still a little glaring omission there. I just don't like to see biweeks in there that's going to get you zero.
get
next best option there with some shuffling of the flex spots would have been Ty Chandler with a measly 3. 9 points.
I honestly would have probably gone with Luke Musgrave over Ty Chandler. Luke Musgrave would have also gotten me zero points.
So it wouldn't have made much difference
It wouldn't have mattered. Since we're talking about roster spots, I feel like my opponent for this upcoming week, Mitchie Mitch has a similar situation where three players on by on their starting lineup from this last week, although they do have Jonathan Taylor and Saquon Barkley, Tony Pollard, they do have But at the same time, he's still gonna be missing a wide receiver and a defense, which he doesn't have right now.
So he has to figure out a defense and then also hope that he can pull a wide receiver or someone that overperforms. For him to be able to actually make that work. I think even after we move that around, I think I'm still maybe not quite a 10 point favorite, but almost 10 point favorite.
Yeah, only projected Mitchy Mitch there for 63 points. Yeah, he's gotta look
Without, without the swapping, that's a big thing.
Yeah, just eyeballing it barkley's gonna get you 14 to the projection, jonathan Taylor might even be back next week, I'm not sure.
But there, you're going to easily add 30 points there, minimum
then also drop another 7 from their current striving lineup for who they replace. So it's still a net of like 20, maybe, 25 net. And that's still,
I'm going to assume he picks up a defense. Hopefully you'll get one on waivers as well.
eh, we'll see.
Rounding out the matchups, we had a no hard feelings with a solid win over under the radar. No hard feelings sitting at four and one under the radar one and four. So moving on to our standings, as I said, mixing it pretty good, followed by no hard feelings.
They're strong at one and two. Our last four in one team is Wu Tang Financial with almost 200 points less than mixing it Purdy good. Of the four and one teams that's the weakest link there. With 510 points for that sits well below a lot of the teams at three and two and two and three.
Following them I've squeaked up into fourth place with a much undeserved win. I really escaped with this one. And I absolutely don't deserve it. I should be sitting at two and three, but nevertheless, I am in fourth place.
Followed by our commissioner, Chris crunchy leaves you're sitting in sixth and then simple Jack with a pretty strong points score of five 90, but couldn't get a third win in there. So he's sitting at two and three. Mitchy Mitch follows at eighth to round out our current playoff contending teams.
Our number nine team, Best Eder Around, has de evolved into Worst Eder Around. That was a name change that he either slipped in there this week or last week, but
I didn't see that. Yeah, I didn't
Yeah, so he is no longer the best Eder between him and his sister, Sarah. I like that name change. I like that self deprecating humor there.
I appreciate it. Mint Berry Crunch sitting at number 10 under the radar 11 and the Meg rounding out number 12 with no wins. I just don't know where she's going to get it from. I feel like facing you, who has had some trouble and then Worst Eder Around now.
I beat her two weeks ago for my first win,
so,
I know. And then a winnable matchup this past week for her that just didn't break her way.
There was nothing else she could have done with the players on her roster. At least. You got to try to be active on the waiver wire to hope you get something. if. Worse, Dieter around had made some mistakes, then it could have gone the other way. They picked up Cam Akers who I had just dropped.
That was a solid pickup, and I don't regret dropping him because he wasn't going to start, and this is probably his last viable week being the starting running back with Joe Mixon out. To start the week, it was questionable if Mixon would be back or not. But I didn't mind dropping him cause he wasn't going to serve me any more purpose, but that did contribute strongly to the win there.
What games did you check out this week? I was able to see a few, I watched highlights from many but we were talking pre recording a bit about how watching those highlighted plays I do it on YouTube TV it's hard to get a feel for the game you might see a couple big plays and think, Oh, this team had a really good game, but the majority of the game they were actually just stalling. I didn't feel like I got a great sense of how the tempo of the games went this week. Even though I did see a lot of highlights.
Yeah, I watched a little bit of the Colts Jaguars game on and off. I was trying to do some housework when my, kid was taking a nap but I had that kind of on the background it was hard for me to really say exactly when things happen.
Cause I was doing a bunch of stuff. It felt like Trevor Lawrence took a little while to get going, but then he ended up starting and like throwing 371, two touchdowns. Which is something I expected to be along those lines. When the draft happened,
So I don't know if that's him finding his stride or whatnot, or if it's just, hey, the Colts are struggling team right now.
Maybe both. The fact that the Jaguars finally have posted their first win. That was not on my bingo card. I expect
them to probably be at least
had to come against the Colts there, right?
It suits us, right? This podcast, we have a lot of Colts fans, I believe, in the
Yeah, a decent number.
I did watch the highlights from that. I didn't get to see the whole game from start to finish, but Richardson's still out, but Flacco's doing well. Despite the loss, it wasn't because of Flacco.
He managed the game well. He nearly secured a great comeback. They were down fairly significantly to the Jaguars and nearly came back. Jonathan Taylor's absence was definitely felt last week. Even though they did well offensively, it was definitely through the passing game. They didn't have the rain game to balance out.
They had less than a hundred rushing yards through five different players contributing to that. So no one was able to really, Pick up the slack left by him being out. Defense was also a big problem and a big player stepping up for the Jaguars, was Bigsby who
we made that tree last week, by the
He outshined Etienne by a mile and. I saw that as a distinct possibility. To get ETN on my team, wasn't my plan a, but that was my plan B in a trade with you. And then I was like I'll figure out who's going to do better between Bixby and ETN in a given week.
But I was worried about this. How are you looking at this duo in the coming weeks?
So because I traded you Josh Jacobs, I put myself in a really mediocre spot for this week, so I had to start Tank because Chubb's still out, and so a lot of my idea behind the trade was that Nick Chubb would come in the next couple weeks and then take over for a the second slot next to Trav's ETN. So now that it looks like Chubb is probably going to be out another week, which isn't surprising. There was some rumor that because he's now doing practices and he's been looking pretty good, but he might not be ready for the primetime spot. So I've heard rumors of, oh, he might get limited action or he's going to be out.
And to me, that's not really on my, foresight because I am sitting at a reasonable spot now. If I were 0 and 5, or 1 and 4, I'd be a little bit more frustrated and trying to maybe hitting that panic button a little bit, but I feel like my roster's done okay. And now that I have the handcuffed ETN, I can do some different things with it.
I don't know if Bixby is going to be taking over per se, but it was just nice to be like, Hey, regardless of who's going to be receiving or taking the handoffs from Trevor Lawrence I'm going to get points for it.
Yeah, Bigsby is looking a lot better and not just this week, but I have this week's numbers. ETN six carries 17 yards, 2. 8 yards per attempt. Tank Bigsby 13 carries 101 yards, two touchdowns, 7. 8 yards per attempt. And the yards per attempt has exceeded ETN's. most of the year. So I just don't know how long they can just ignore that.
I feel like this is a timeshare at best and I just don't know how to predict it.
So if you also look at this week and last week tank bigs B's Longest rush, 65 yards, 58 yards.
That's not a sustainable thing. So if you remove those longs and just, okay, we would drop an attempt, we dropped that longest rush. It looks a little bit more reasonable. It doesn't look like 12.
9 yards, an attempt or 7. 8 yards per attempt. They look a bit more mediocre. It's hard to really say why that is. I'm not really too worried about it right now. I haven't figured it out yet either I will just play it as we go. I also picked up rico doddle.
From Dallas, I forgot that I did that too.
I like that you didn't start him yet. Even though he did great you have to see how that goes a little bit. Play it slow, there's no rush. Could be an impactful pickup, though, for you for the whole season.
Yeah, and I also started Tankdell and Stefan
yeah, Hank
I was like, I need guaranteed points, especially since I told you before that I don't like doing that, but I figure running Diggs and Dell, two of three receivers that Houston's like primary three are, two of them are going to do well.
I couldn't take the risk of not getting the points. Let's say I started Stefan Diggs, and Tank Dell was the secondary target. That means I only get two or three points from Stefan Diggs, and in a matchup where it was a projected close matchup, I needed to guarantee points rather than possibly play Xavier Worthy or Kyle Pitts or someone like that, and not get the points.
Because a lot of those players have very easily been, hey they end up getting only three points. By running that, I hedged
Yeah.
to where I minimized my losses and guaranteed prop. There's no guarantee, but I've likely secured myself enough points to where the average between them is going to be better than if I missed on two.
Is that a reflection of your record? Does that approach of hedging your bet change if you're in the playoffs?
In the playoffs you'd go for broke.
Because you need, the win. Whereas this is like the wind's nice. If I'm wrong, it's not the end of the world. So I can play that card of hedge.
yeah, okay, makes sense. Did you see your Packers this week?
I watched a little bit of it. I was frustrated, I think from the first half a little bit, it didn't really look super great and they looked a little bit anemic. And then second half showed that, we do play some good offense here in green Bay.
Our green Bay offense is going to do some stuff that's going to put points on the board. We're not going to just consider playing the same type of offense from half to half. We can make changes and they'll be effective. The defense also did pretty well. They established what another two interception interception fumble intercept two interceptions.
I don't remember exactly,
was a pick six, I know, I made note of that. The Jalen McCullough pick six of Jordan Love near the goal line.
Was talking about the green Bay defense.
Oh, Green Bay. I was
Yeah, no, yeah, but yeah, that was a big error, but he was going to take a safety. So out of all the mistakes to have made there, it's not a maximum mistake,
Yeah, he got bumped pretty good and that caused the interception. But yeah, there was a couple good sacks. This was one of those games where I came away from it thinking, Oh, that was some good defensive play on both sides. But I'm not sure how much of that was a reflection of me only seeing key plays also.
I don't know if that was your takeaway, but it seemed like a defensive effort. Game rather than offensive
Yeah, Tucker Kraft tight end I was expecting Luke Musgrave to be the primary target for receiving from a tight end for Green Bay, but they did draft both of them, I believe in the same draft not this last year, but the year prior which was
a little bit weird for me, but at the same time with their tight end situation we can pick them both. And then we don't have to worry about tight ends for a while. I guess it's working for him.
Tucker Kraft an explosive
two He got the two touchdowns one was totally wide open. The other was kind of wide open. They were pretty uncontested so that was a pretty big breakdown for the Rams there.
Defensively, they had a fumble recovery, and they also had an interception, which Really cemented that, hey, their defense is not just a one off what Xavier McKinney's got five interceptions, I think on the year. He's had one in every game. He had one against Eagles, one against the Colts, one against Tennessee, one against Minnesota, and one against Los Angeles Rams. Yeah, he's on a really amazing streak right now. When a team's got a decent defense or a good defense when it comes to takeaways whoever's on that offensive side of the ball is going to also really benefit because they're going to have more chances to actually score. So I felt good about it.
Let's see. What's Green Bay sitting at right now? What's their record?
Three and two, they lost to the Eagles and the Vikings. It's actually Jordan Love's first win as the starter this year,
which is kind of funny, but at
I think that's okay, losing to the Vikings. They
Yeah, the Eagles, they made a
lot of
best couple teams. Yeah,
But, yeah, losing against the Vikings. And they actually came back and almost won that game. it happens. And the fact that they're sitting 3 2, you and Jordan Love was out for 2 games. It's almost, house money right now.
I did catch the end of the Bengals Ravens game. I saw their mishandled snap on the field goal attempt in overtime which resulted in a Bengals miss and the next play was a Derrick Henry run for 55 yards or something like that.
Which basically ended the game.
How is his usage? His usage has been trending up. I haven't seen any of this game,
15 carries, 92 yards, and most of them were on that one play, and one touchdown. So that's the reason why the Ravens were in that predicament to begin with, because they didn't use them enough.
yeah. uh, saw quite a bit of the Panthers Bears. Because I have multiple players that it concerns me for in fantasy. Chuba Hubbard looked better than I remember for the third game in the row now. The Panthers may be dismal, but he's a bright spot. It feels like there's no big rush to bring Jonathan Brooks back from his ACL tear. They can take their time with him. And I'm starting to think, okay, what's this going to look like when Brooks does come back? They going to do a timeshare hot hand approach?
Is Brooks going to take over as the RB one? I don't know. It'll be something to really play carefully and see how they're going to approach it. But I'm not complaining about Hubbard's production right now. So I'm not missing Brooks. On the other side uh, had DeAndre Swift.
He had his second big game in a row, which fulfilled my hot take criteria for him exceeding 10 fantasy points for two of the next three games at the time I had made that. I think the next few games are looking good for him too. So I didn't start him again. So it sucks that the games that I expect him to do the best, I don't end up starting him, but it was hard to make the argument to myself that I should.
Even though I did think he'd have a good chance to do well, I have Hubbard, who I'm thrilled about this year. I got Josh Jacobs from you. I'm not starting Swift over him. Kenneth Walker, had his worst game of the year this week, but still, I'm not going to regularly start Swift over him.
Swift had 73 rush yards, a touchdown, and 47 reception yards. He does get a lot of receiving work regularly especially as the season's gone on. That'll come in handy at bi weeks for sure. But he's just right there on the line of viability for me over my other running backs where I'm not quite pulling the trigger on putting him in my starting lineup now that I've strengthened my running backs up a little bit.
Which is a nice problem to have, I guess. I've teeter tottered from being weak at running back to now I'm feeling maybe a little weak at wide receiver. Maybe I need to try to shore that up. Yeah. I just, alternate, my first trade of the year was upgrading to Chris Olave.
Then I got Jacobs from you. Maybe I look back at the wide receivers again and see what I can do to make a little upgrade. I don't know. It was an underperforming week for my wide receivers though. So it was just tough. I don't expect that to be every week, but even CD lamb had a mediocre week.
That was just the luck of the draw.
With DeAndre Swift the last two games they played against the Rams, whose offense lacked their top two wide receivers which kind of resulted in the Rams giving up the ball to Chicago to have more attempts.
Then you also played Carolina Panthers. And honestly, I think My high school team would put up some decent points against Carolina just simply because they don't have anything going really on offense, and their defense looked pretty atrocious.
I don't really know if Jacksonville Jaguars are going to be as easy of an opponent for Yandere Swift to be a reasonable player to start. And then the Washington commanders are actually playing really well. I think really the schedule for Deandre Swift in the near future is suspect to maybe leaving him on the bench.
Yeah it definitely could be. I mean, they're marked as green matchups
still, they're against teams that haven't done as well against the run. But yeah, we'll have to see how that goes. The one really an annoying thing, even though swift is doing well, finally, is where Sean Johnson is just getting the ball at the worst possible moment.
If you are someone starting swift Johnson's not getting a lot of yards, but he's getting it right at the goal line. And he got two touchdowns this past week. He got one touchdown the week before. He's a vulture man, and at least he's on my team as a handcuff. But that doesn't help much if I need to plug one guy in on a bi week coming up it's a little bit maddening.
I didn't watch it, but the Dolphins Patriots game looked terrible.
Yep.
Hundley , doesn't seem to be the solution for Miami during Tua's absence. There have been some
quote unquote rumors, but not anything with any substance to see Malik Willis be cashed in by the Green Bay Packers to go to let's say Miami or New England or Cleveland, like some of the teams where they're having a struggling offense, or even the Raiders For goodness sake, the raiders just look terrible.
I didn't watch it, but it looked like it was one that was boring.
Yeah. I said, take the under on that 35. 5 points between the two teams and they scored 25. So my hot take was right in that sense. The other caveat I put on it to make it a little harder on myself was saying one touchdown between both of them.
They actually got two, but I hadn't watched the game and I looked at the box score and saw only one instance of seven points being scored. So I was like oh, I got it. I called it. But no, there was a missed two point conversion? They only got six.
So didn't quite nail all aspects of the hot take, but I'll count it as a partial win. At least I got under on the total score. It was a very low scoring affair. Not much offense. And now Jacoby preset is out as starting quarterback.
Have you heard that?
No, I have not.
Yeah, Drake may, we'll be replacing him as the QB for new England. So what new England has
you're going to see my thing different.
No, I don't think it's going to improve stuff much, but they're just searching for anything to get some offense going.
Like the Raiders benching Gardner Minshew. The Browns look terrible. Didn't watch that game, but there's been a lot of questions on exactly why Deshaun Watson has been looking so bad. And I'm like maybe partially because he hasn't played a whole lot due to having suspension and then also getting injured. It tracks and I think, even a long time ago, I said, the Cleveland Browns spent way too much money on the guaranteed contract for Deshaun Watson with the trade with the Houston Texans years ago. And I think that was an easy take.
Texas Bills didn't watch it but it was one that I was surprised that the Bills didn't put up more points, I'm also not surprised that the Texans won. But after seeing Nico Collins go down with injury I was surprised that they were able to maintain.
The advantage throughout the rest of the game for the win.
What about the jets vikings? I have some not too many specific thoughts on the game It was sloppy rogers was sloppy.
Darnold was sloppy.
The Jets have since fired their head coach.
Um, yep.
Love to see it.
Interim head coach was defensive coordinator.
Sometimes these coaching changes can change things in the short term, like energized players. It wouldn't surprise me if they won coming off of that change, but I think long term, it's not really a solution.
And this is maybe too much the Aaron Rodgers show at this point is in his career, like where this is going to perhaps even embolden Rodgers to just call the shots even more. And he's just. Not that guy anymore might hurt Breece Hall a lot in the running game. I just picture having a defensive coordinator come in as your head coach could lead to defaulting to the whims of Aaron Rodgers even more, which hasn't been working too well for them.
They have the same record through the first five games under Rodgers as they had Under Zach Wilson last year. And they actually have the same exact number of points scored to with 93 total points. Outcomes seem identical, despite the fact that you have someone who is It's considered historically a much better QB.
you can just be a Hall of Fame.
Hall of Fame QB. But, it's not leading the Jets to the playoffs.
No.
So one thing you were saying also with the change of head coach energizing, look at Antonio Pierce last year with the Raiders after Josh McDaniels got fired
He comes in as the interim head coach and they actually do something. I think they struggled, I think the first like two weeks, but then they won Five games over the next seven or something, which I believe included win against Kansas city. Especially with that roster. That was remarkable. So you might see it. I'm not expecting to see it. I expect to see, as you were saying Aaron Rogers leading the offensive show. He's got the ability to make those calls. But from seeing his last year in Green Bay and seeing some of the games that he's been in this year, he's almost resorted to like a quote unquote Brett Favre mentality of I'll chuck it and hope for the best.
The number of interceptions that he's thrown in his last two full seasons Versus the rest of his career, I believe are a bit higher than, what you would expect. And that's frustrating and also indicative of how inconsistent he's gotten or how much of a value fantasy tech that he could possibly be, because he's just not gonna give you the consistency that you used to know of 250 yards, two touchdowns, no interceptions.
That was pretty much like a standard and now it's, I don't know. It's
So they face, the Bills this week. Who you got?
The bills, I don't think
that's,
Yeah. Yeah.
I mean the Bills are the better team, obviously, but like, it wouldn't surprise me if the Jets It's not something that I'm betting on, but I've just seen it a lot of time with coaching changes where everyone bands together.
And there's that initial euphoria, if the team's behind them and by all reports, he has a strong rapport with his players. So it could be a positive thing short term but long term, this could make them more one dimensional even.
Brees Hall already hasn't been having a great year or too many carries, low teens carries each game. And it's just been getting worse as the season goes on. That could continue or get even worse, and we're just chucking it every time. Maybe that helps Garrett Wilson, who's had a pretty mediocre year.
I don't know. If more passes go to him. But long term being one dimensional wouldn't improve the team.
Yeah, and so in 2020, Aaron Rodgers through 48 touchdowns and five interceptions. And so far this year, he has thrown seven touchdowns and four interceptions.
He threw 12 interceptions last season in Green Bay. And if you like compare that, you see 5, 4, 8, 2. He's not someone that normally turns the ball over. So the fact that he's turning the ball over just tells me he's just being too aggressive.
just doesn't have it anymore. Maybe both are true. have Garrett Wilson on one of my other fancy teams and I'm sad about it, but that's besides the point.
Cardinals Niners... I didn't see it, but that was a little bit surprising, to see the 49ers lose in that one.
Brock Purdy Sarah has him and it's her namesake mixing it pretty good. But you seem to have enough data here to think, do I start Baker Mayfield over him? That's who's sitting on her bench.
Yeah, man,
been outperformed by Mayfield all, but one game this season.
So I don't know if you switch it up here at this point, which is scary because their team is so good right now and it could actually maybe get even better at QB.
I think you'll see a difference when Christian McCaffrey comes back, I guess one of the questions is, will Christian McCaffrey come back? I think that really settles the debate. If he comes back or when he comes back, Brock is going to be the easy starter. Until then, it's a small debate that one could have.
But is it really one worth having?
I don't want her to get any better, but
So we won't
say
anything more. Moving on.
Boy, the Cowboy Steelers game was a bit rough to watch.
Uh, Yeah.
That was a bit of a slog, and I was watching on the behalf of Megan to see who was going to win that matchup between her and Worst Eder Around. She had Doc Prescott in there and his points were coming very slowly. And then Pittsburgh did pretty well on defense, so that was the big difference there. It was a bit hard to watch the points go against my wife the further that game went on. But other than that, I don't really have much on that game.
The big game for Monday night for me was the Chief Saints. I was sittin nice I felt comfortable in the wind, Yahoo's givin me 80 something percent chance. was who I was facing, he had Mahomes left, Butker, and I had Chris Olave for the Saints, but oh my god, the Saints are looking so awful now after blowing me away the first two weeks. And now they are struggling horribly on offense and three losses to follow up their first two blowout wins. What is going on with this team? Olave had, uh,
injured.
Mahomes had another game that wasn't great for fantasy, but it was good enough. And Butker had a big kicking game. So with uh, 30 something yard field goal in the closing minutes that pulled mint berry crunch ahead of me by 2. 8 points or something.
And Derek Carr didn't do anything with it. So back to the chiefs with like a minute, 20 something left. I'm going to lose this game. Right. But I won. What happened? The biggest rip off in the history of fantasy football if you're Mint Berry Crunch here because of course the Chiefs are winning. There's nothing to do but run out the clock So you could hand the ball off to a running back or you could just kneel it if you're Mahomes and he kneels it Not once, not twice, but three times And I wouldn't have won if he knelt it only once or twice. I needed three kneel downs for negative three yards to get the win there.
And the margin for the record, was
0.08 points. Meant Berry Crunch got negative 0.1 for each kneel down. So, I was down by what. 2. 2. And that was the difference. I can't take any pride in that. My wide receivers certainly really underperformed this week, but I just lucked out on that one.
I'll take the win and move on and not take any pride in it at all.
I don't know what's happened to the Saints. Who'd they beat the first two weeks? I remember one was the Panthers we had said that as a potential warning point okay, they beat the Panthers.
No big deal. But then they beat the Cowboys. Debatable if that's good or not. But then the losing started. I had said after week two, I'm like, if you beat the Eagles, then I'll be a believer. But they didn't. Then they lost to the Falcons. Then they lost to the Chiefs.
You
non existent offense.
I don't know how they're going to look as the season goes on. They haven't been the same team through the last three games for sure.
It was funny because I picked up Derek Carr and I've had, three injured QBs so far?
Yeah.
but you got Xavier Worthy from me. How do you feel about him after seeing him that game?
I didn't really watch much of the game although I feel like he's going to bring more consistency right now with having Kyle Pitts and George Kittle. Those two guys have not been really living up to what I would expect from them.
So giving me a little bit more consistency, maybe lower ceiling. But higher floor will hopefully give me a little bit more chance of winning some of the closer games or giving me some more room to be able to score points to increase my position, hopefully in the playoffs.
I think you could feel good about what he did that game though. He had the most targets he's had this season. He got six targets. He hasn't been a huge sponge for targets this year. But as his role grows, that's what you want to see.
Three receptions for 25 yards, nothing great there, but he had a massive reception that had a defensive pass interference on. So he didn't get credit for that one. And that would have made it look much different. I don't know the total yardage on it, but he would have had a much bigger game there.
And he got a rushing touchdown, which I know is not what you're expecting from him but, but it helps, it helps the points. So considering that defensive pass interference the game would have looked much better for him. I think that's a positive and it should make you feel good about them going forward into the buy.
Yeah, the one thing I also thought was really great about the saint is the maining cast or whatever I guess Bill Belichick called out the Colts for pumping and fake crowd noise I love how everyone likes to talk about Inflategate and at the same time don't really mind about pumping fake crowd noise into the game.
Was that proven? I don't even know.
I would not be surprised if it was anything. That's not anything against Colts fans or anything, but just hey, it's easy to probably check to be like, yeah they definitely notice a. A break in the noise of the crowd and it like skipped or something like that. I think that's what he was saying. So I'm sure you could easily go back to that game that he's referring to. I don't remember if he actually said which game it was, you should be able to hear it skip and be like, okay, yep.
I know that the RCA Dome is a loud environment. I played in marching band. We had our state championships in there every year playing in the band. It was extremely echoey. I'm just gonna say that he was just hearing echoes, man. There's no tinfoil hat conspiracy theory here.
That's just the nature of the RCA dome, baby. Stop crying. Bella check.
He used the term skipped. So the crowd noise like skipped. So I, I like, I don't know if I don't know an echo that I could skip. and The fact that Peyton Manning's reaction was yeah, we did that. But we're going to overlook that. I don't know, he didn't actually say that last part, but his reaction is okay.
They also had Archie Manning on there. So that was interesting to hear from him with
the
gosh,
and everything
And soon we're going to see Arch Manning, right? He's the quarterback at Texas now. He's technically the backup to Brock Ewers. So we might see another Manning at some point in time. In the near future.
What else did you see
That's pretty much everything we had so it's more about the upcoming matchups this coming week. We might be able to start seeing some clear separation between a lot of the three and two teams. We have no hardly feelings versus mixing it. Pretty good. It's probably going to be our premier matchup. They're both foreign one. And then you're also playing Wu Tang financial, who's also foreign one. So that'll be an interesting one. And there's a lot of teams that are two and three that are playing each other,
Yeah, we're getting more buy weeks in here, so that's gonna shake things up as well. I think this one's not too bad for me. I don't have anyone on buy, actually. But I'm sure other teams are feeling it. I'm gonna feel it in a couple weeks here.
Mitchie Mitch
Do you have some awards?
Yeah, I can do some awards. Let's look at a waiver wire wizard. I had already mentioned a worst eater around picking up cam makers. I think that was a wise one. It's just a 1 week solution. Most likely. He also picked up Tyrone Tracy junior for a 1 week starting role.
So all good moves there. No hard feelings picked up Jacoby Myers. That was 1 that I was looking at as well as a possibility, but just didn't want to quite reserve a roster spot for it, but that role may benefit from a Devante Adams trade if it happens. Myers may get some increased work there.
Uh, Mitchy Mitch picked up Trey Sermon for a one week spot start with Jonathan Taylor out. I think that was a wise move. But I'm gonna give the Waver Wire Wizard Award to you for picking up Rico Doudle. That could be a game changer. Anytime you can get a starting running back who's likely to remain the starting running back for the season.
On a team that at least has
Enough, going for it. Panthers!
They're not tanking or anything. They haven't had much of a rain game so far. Yeah. They haven't had much of a rain game so far, but maybe that can pick up. It picked up for him this week. I don't know if you start them yet or not, but he's good to have, and it can make a big difference later in the season, as you're gearing up for the playoffs, hopefully.
So that's the nice thing too about that pickup was I now have both of them. So if a Dowdle does go down, I at least have the next
yeah.
Yeah, I've really tried to focus on getting the backups where I can. That's made me feel more secure in my roster, for sure. As for bench blunders don't think there were too many horrible ones this week. I can't be too hard on myself for leaving Swift on my bench, even though I scored a lot.
I had Walker, Jacobs, and Hubbard. I don't really regret leaving him on the bench for them. But hopefully he pays off for bi weeks or maybe he features in a trade coming forward. I don't know. We'll see.
Under the radar did bench fair, baron, I can never pronounce his name.
That was a pretty big one. And the fact that you have two kickers, makes it. To me to where, it's a bench blunder because you could have had him as your starter and never had McPherson on your roster to begin with and then that's a pretty big blunder to me to have two
it.
choosing the wrong one.
I noted it and then didn't nominate him in my own book because it's kickers. It's so hard to predict anyway, that it didn't bother me as much as I guess it bothered you because it is so hard to predict. I saw the crunchy leaves. kind of like Alec Pierce over Ray Ray McLeod.
I'm not sure if he actually consensus ranks above Ray Ray McLeod, but we've had a couple big weeks for him on the Colts. But I understand it. I'm not going to award him with the Bench Blender because I get him not wanting to stack Indie wide receivers. He already had downs in the lineup. I don't want multiple Indie wide receivers on my starting lineup, for sure.
No. No. No.
his starting job. So that kind of makes sense. But then it turned out to be, a very temporary benching. He didn't start the game, but he was back in the starting role very quickly.
Had a big game. It's a little debatable what you could have done there. I don't know, I might, even if he was the backup, bring him back, maybe rank him above Justice Hill Keenan Allen, Tyler Lockett. It's an iffy area for me. Notable, but, I'm just not sure. Will, I just, I get so annoyed every time you bench George Kittle.
What has he done to you? What did he do to your family?
He
didn't
the beginning of the season.
He was injured!
I don't know if
Well, I'm not giving you the
if And I don't know if I don't know if the injury
was gonna continue. He starts off
with four points, 13. 6, okay, good. But then he was like, I'm injured. So I was like, okay, then there's a question whether he'd be back the next week. And then he does 10. 5. know.
And
like a bad Matthew when you start pits over him So now you didn't start pits over him. You
Yeah. But I star Xavier Worthy and Tankdel.
Xavier Worthy I think's a good start, but Tank Dell. I thought we agreed. I thought we were waiting and seeing on Tank Dell It was a good pickup,
I
to wait and see.
I was going to wait and see, but then the fact that I really wanted to make sure I secured points from at least one of the Houston Texans wide receivers to secure my floor against my opponent that week. That was my primary reason for that. And I think I'm probably going to go with George Kittle over tank Dell.
I'm sure he'll score very few points next week for you then. Now that you've
no,
Yeah, I'm sure it'll go
Yeah,
Maybe I won't do that.
Kareem Hunt had a big game for No Hard Feelin sitting on the bench. I was okay with that though. I feel like that was a wait and see thing. With figuring out who's the starter there.
I was fine with that benching. Might not be fine with it after the bye week though. I think you gotta go hunt now moving forward.
I'm gonna give the Bench Blender Award to Worst Eder Around. For being the worst Eder around. I don't like benching say flowers.
I know flowers hasn't done great this year, but I still think. He's a better quality wide receiver than a lot of the other guys there, except for Greg Wilson especially Cole Kmet. think you should have taken your chances with Flowers there. what I gotta bring up, I gotta bring up the other players.
But Kolkommet stood out to me as why is he starting? Wandale Robinson, little debatable. He did okay though. Jackson Smith and Jigabah I think you could have done Flowers Ahead of Him.
Robinson a lot of the players on the Giants are just, I would stay away from with their situation, they don't really know if they want to run the ball. They want to pass the ball. Who's going to be the primary catcher except for Nabirs. But then he got injured. I think it was a concussion. So he's listed as questionable this next week. I don't know,
around
our Razzie award for Biggest Bench Blunder
this week.
What do you got? You got any hot takes for us?
Meg's gonna win her first game this week.
The Meg versus Crunchy Leaves. Uh oh, Chris, you're going down says Will.
Yes. That's gonna happen.
All right. That'll be fun to see. Any reason you think?
if we look at some of the matchup, you have a couple of problems with bye with Tyreek Hill and Shane, he's going to be, I think, lacking the depth to replace a couple of the players to where
I see a few more zeros
Yeah, he's going to be relying on B or C tier players to really make up those points where normally there's an A or B tier player making it I think in her favor. Her team isn't really that great to begin with, no offense, but at the same time, I feel like the bulk of her lineup that she's going to need to rely on is all healthy and all not on by.
So I went away with that one.
She can't take offense. It's an auto draft. Blame the auto draft, right?
Eh, that's true.
little off topic, but how are you feeling about Dolphins players? Tyreek Hill, are you a buy low guy on him right now? to, uh, maybe he comes back, that would change everything. It's
a big question mark. They don't look good now, but I don't know.
I'm getting a little tempted. I haven't put in an offer, but Chris, I'm starting to turn your way and think, what could I offer you for Hill?
think for Chris it's more of a wait and see. He's not in a position where he's in dire need to make any changes. If Ashain and Tyreek Hill are fine and Tua comes back in two weeks or something like that why would you give that up? I don't remember what week is our trade deadline, but I'd be waiting pretty much to the trade deadline to make any moves to offload Miami players because he's got the two primary ones on there other than Tua, which I understand now, especially like there's no point in keeping Tua on your roster.
Let him figure out if he's actually going to play this rest of the season.
I will mention your hot take from last week. You said that Aaron Rodgers would be pulled from the game in the fourth quarter. So that one didn't happen for you. His interception towards the end of the game was a big reason they lost.
that's fair.
But they weren't in a position to pull him at that point.
I thought Minnesota was going to be off to a bigger lead and therefore there's no real reason to keep him out there, but he played poor enough to where he probably could have been benched.
As for myself I'm looking at a couple things I was wondering if I should make some prediction on Rico Doudle But I don't think I will now because it's a season long thing If I did and I'm not sure how to quantify it yet I wanted to say that oh, I think he's gonna be a startable option for the rest of the season but I don't know what point value I put on that yet, so I'm going to hold off and maybe revisit later.
I'm going to say that the commanders here are going to lose to the Ravens this coming week. But Jaden Daniels is still gonna exceed his projection of 20. 46 points regardless I think they'll play from behind a bit, he's still gonna get some touchdowns he could even go well north of that, I think it's gonna be a positive game for him but yeah, I don't think they get the win there.
I'm like tempted to say the opposite, where he underperforms and then the commanders win, but I'm
not there
yet. I, no, I don't know. I'll take the nag. I think that's a spicy enough
Alright. Okay, that's my only prediction for this week that I'm gonna commit to. The Ravens, I liked what I've seen from the Ravens and the commanders have been surprising as well, too. But I wouldn't surprise me to see them hit a speed bump against the Ravens.
If they have a rough game, Jayden Daniels has shown the ability to air it out with some deep throws, and I think he can get some significant points there playing from behind, if that is indeed what happens.
The Ravens need to hand the ball off to Derrick Henry.
Do they? Where are you coming from with that? I can't
have no idea. I Heck, they barely skirted away with a win in the last week and they only handed the ball off to him 15 times.
Do you have anything else to add?
Maybe waiver wires. I do have one, but it's not going to be a game changer. I just changed in defense.
Yeah, I'm not planning on starting the Patriots again this week That was a one off thing for me because they were facing the Dolphins And guess who faces the Dolphins this week?
My other defense. Oh wait, no I was wrong. They're facing the Patriots.
I, oh,
similar idea. Start them. They're not facing the Dolphins, but they are facing the Patriots, the other low scoring team in the league right now.
I'm gonna start Houston. Hopefully I don't regret that, but the Patriots are plugging in a new QB. Hopefully they make some mistakes for my benefit here. We'll see how it goes. And hopefully all of you players out there have a good week as well. We'll try to get
some separation here. Yeah, we'll try to get some separation here. We have a lot of teams sitting at three and two, two and three. Let's get some clarity in the number four through 10 spots in our league. And then we'll be able to maybe make some more bold claims about the rest of the season. Have a good one, y'all.
That's it for this episode of the Smashville Fantasy Football Podcast! As always, we have aspirations of adequacy, so come back and we'll try to do a bit better next time. Who knows? We may even reveal that one sneaky trick guaranteed to win your fantasy league. But until then, keep those trades rolling and get your lineups set before kickoff.
See you next week!
