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 8 Highlights and the MVP Election
Smashville Fantasy Football: Mid-Season MVPs, Week 8 Recap, & Week 9 Predictions
Welcome to the Smashville Fantasy Football Podcast hosted by Andrew Banta and analyst Will Ott. In this episode, we dive into the highlights of Week 8, discuss key matchups, and analyze some crucial fantasy football decisions. We also feature a spirited MVP election for the 2024 Fantasy Football season, considering top players from each position. Plus, we cover waiver wire pickups, bench blunders, and exciting predictions for Week 9. Join us for expert insights, friendly banter, and all the fantasy football excitement!
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 to week nine of Smashville Fantasy Football. It is election season here and I voted.
And today you're going to get a chance to vote on your MVPs of the fantasy
football season. We are going to come up with a list of top players, one from
each position and their arguments for why you should vote for them to be 2024 fantasy MVP.
That'll be real exciting to see who we can get out in the polls. We got to get people to vote.
Let's look through the matchups, from week eight. No big shakeups in the standings. Worst Eder Around, came out with an underdog win against No Hard Thielens, getting him into playoff contention for the moment.
Mitchie Mitch continued his run of bad luck, with a loss against crunchy leaves, who had our luck of the Irish award last week. So those were our luckiest team and the unluckiest and the luckiest one got
the win with a high scoring affair. So he deserved it
this week. 140.
56 points for crunchy leaves versus 99. 58 for Mitchy Mitch. That was a underwhelming game
for him. So really can't chalk it up to bad luck for that
one. Even if, on the overall points for standings. He is ranked
a very solid third right now. He has more points for his team than I
do in third place.
Let's put it that way.
I was watching the Worst Eder Around
versus No Hard Thielens matchup. Going into the Monday night game, Pittsburgh versus Giants, worst eater round
was projected to lose by about eight or nine points, give or take,
and then Pittsburgh ended up chopping
up 20.
65 points, giving him the win. It was a really big last minute win. It was good to see, and it affects my hot take of him being in the playoffs from a couple weeks ago. So that's the main reason why I was looking at
that matchup.
the steel curtain came through for him there. On no hard feelings team though,
Detroit has been a killer defense this year. They got 31. 1 points that game.
They're one of the top, scoring, defenses. And they are unclaimed in our league. Why do you think that is? Do you think they've just gotten lucky and they're not really that good?
Should they be picked up? What are your thoughts?
One
of the things is that the NFC North has had the best win percentage collectively as a division since the division mergers. Big reason for that is they only had two or three divisional games up to that point. So, they haven't played each other yet.
Yeah.
They've already played the Vikings once, and then the Vikings have played the Lions once, so now that you're starting to see those divisional matchups come into play a little bit more, I think that story will change a little bit. So the
remainder of the lion schedule is going to be Packers Texans, both going to be, difficult defensively. Jaguars, which is maybe hit or miss Colts, which
may be an easier game, depending on how they're playing. Bears is kind of a toss up. Caleb Williams is playing good. Caleb is playing bad.
Then they
play the Packers again, which is not favorable.
The Bills, not favorable. Bears, again, another toss up. The 49ers, who probably will have Christian McCaffrey, probably
going to be a tough matchup. And the Vikings, who are also
going to be a I don't really expect that defense to hold serve most of those games. I would say that 50 percent of the time, they're going to be something to hold, as a starting defense. I don't think they were expected to be good coming into the season,
yeah. It's always hard to tell, like at what point you jump on a team that's low ranked because I've noticed a few too. Detroit being one of them, they're still not high on the defensive rankings, but look at the evidence and they seem pretty good.
Yeah, it's just, I don't know the answer to when you jump on them and
just play them cause they've already scored a lot or not. It's, hard with defense to know how good they
actually are because of who they've played.
I've had plenty of misses with defenses. It's something I'm not really sure on myself, but the lines have already played the Rams, the
Buccaneers is
probably their toughest matchup at that point. Cardinals Seahawks Cowboys, then they had the Vikings. So Vikings and Buccaneers at
this point are their toughest two matchups not to say that Buccaneers are anything to slouch over, but they're also not a premier team and then they also had the titans which was a very
There you got one of the lower end teams there.
Other matchups that I'm thinking about as I look through the record here my own one against SimpleJack, I felt like I was going to get, upset, going into Monday, I think. I
had to make a tough call with Jaden Daniels.
He was, questionable with that rib injury. And they're like, we're not going to say until pregame warm ups. But he had a later 4 25 game or whatever time it was. And even though I had two other quarterbacks available,
Tua Tagovailoa and, Anthony Richardson. Both of them played earlier, . I
decided to play it super safe and it worked out okay 'cause I did get the win against Simple Jack. But, for a while there I thought it was gonna really come back to bite me. Tua ended up gaining me 14.66 fantasy points, and Jayden Daniels would've continued his super strong run. He played, he got 25.24 fantasy points and.
Sealed the game on a, Hail Mary pass that was a lot of fun to watch.
Yeah, and also watching the breakdown of that play where the
Chicago Bears defensive back was taunting the crowd while the snap happened and it's like, dude, you are not checked into this game at all. It was terrible and I don't feel bad about it.
That questionable call, he was on the right side of questionable, just before the one o'clock tip offs,
one o'clock kickoffs. I was checking the updates and they were like, he's almost certainly going to play, but we're not saying for sure. And I still erred on the side of caution.
Yeah, with
my guy, Jordan Love going down with an injury, it allowed your new
guy to come into play and score 24. 5 points for you,
just Jacob's them. I knew
I believe most of those points really came after Jordan Love got
hurt.
He's got his
own slight injury.
It doesn't sound
major.
I think he's pretty adamant about playing next week. So I don't know if, love is going to play or not.
It kind of seems to me like he will.
he seemed to imply that he was going to, and that it wasn't going to be a problem, but if he weren't to play Josh Jacobs might be a very strong option.
I hope he plays though, because that Detroit,
uh, Looks
it's a big
one.
one. I'm excited for that game. There are not two teams I watch regularly, but I
think that's going to be an awesome matchup.
I picked up Sam
Darnold in my latest trade. So now Sam Darnold, they play at
820. So I have two later games. I can sort this out a little bit. I have the
ability to make the change that you were not able to have. so right now I have Sam Darnold starting.
I want to, play it on the more safe side. I think I'm projected to my matchup 56 percent to 44%. it's not a huge advantage, but I'm feeling pretty confident in who I have right now.
Yeah. But if you hear that loves playing, are you starting
Oh yeah, I'm starting him. The big thing that I
made a mistake on last week, I was not 100 percent sure.
It sounded like Tyron Tracy Jr. for the New York Giants, who I also picked up in that trade, may or may not be the running back one for this week. Because after Devin Singletary coming back from injury himself, I wasn't really sure on it, so I left on the bench to,
again, play it safe, and then he, uh, , putting up 24 points, so that was kind of like a feel bad
moment right there.
Was he officially the RB one that game?
Yes, yes. He, he carried,
that was kind of,
yeah.
that was your thesis for trading for him, right?
It's going to become the RB1,
I was hopeful. The big thing was getting, Puka, Nakua, and then also getting a solid backup for Jordan Love versus Derek Carr, who's been injury and inconsistent after a very strong start to
the season. So it really kind of even itself out.
If Tyron Tracy Jr. doesn't pan out, then it's an okay trade. If he does pan out and he ends up being RB1 for the rest of the season,
then it's a great trade for me.
Did you see that apparently he got concussed late in the fourth quarter? I had not watched the
game, so that was new to me, just as I was reading his info.
Yeah. He did. I didn't see the game or
anything, but I did hear about it. I am monitoring the situation to see exactly where he's at. Right now he's been working with training staff during practice times, rather
than being a participant in practice, sounds like he's hopeful. I don't know why they don't use the probable tag anymore.
Oh yeah,
they don't really use that anymore. It's just questionable or
I guess people just got angry when it was wrong.
It sounds like he should probably be labeled probable, but a lot of that comes down to how does he recovering from his concussion like symptoms?
I don't know if it was straight
up concussion or if he's just going
through concussion protocol for safety measures. Not sure.
That's probably all that I have to say about
the ones this week.
Yeah, the big thing was really seeing worst seed around end up pulling out a win
against no hard feelings in the last minute my matchup was mixing it pretty good. Who was number one. So it was a number one, two matchup this week. I had a reasonable showing
at one 17 versus one 19. If I would have started Tyrone Tracy jr. Or Sam Darnold, I would have won that matchup by the same time. I'm not going to complain about it. The other big thing too, is after starting the season, I was 0 2 and the bottom
two in scorers, I'm now in the top
four.
That's awesome.
It's a very, big turnaround as Chris was saying
last week.
Yeah, absolutely.
As far as standings, mixing it pretty good. Still
up at the top. You are still number two as well.
number three is myself. No fading on Jayden followed by
Wu Tang financial crunchy leaves in the fifth spot. Then no hard feelings is the first of our four and four teams. Worst eater around also at four and four with fewer points since seventh.
MIT Berry Crunch is an eight at four and four. Then our three in five teams just outta the playoffs now are Mitchy Mitch at number nine. Simple. Jack at
10 and under the radar at number 11, the Meg
Despairs in 12th place at one and seven.
Did she end up picking up
DeAndre Hopkins?
don't know why.
I couldn't spur into action on it. So, Mike got him under the radar. Um,
Congrats.
yep, he got him. It hasn't paid off yet, I think he just didn't take off as early as I thought he might. So my hot take from last week was that he'd have one touchdown this game and double digit fantasy points as a result and no, he had a pretty,
mediocre game, but he didn't play that many snaps.
They just weren't ready to involve them in the offense. All the way yet. So yeah, he only got three targets, 29 yards. Coach Andy Reed said that you'll get more of them next week. They're just building up to it. So I think it's still a great pickup for the course of the whole season, long term thinking.
It just didn't pay off as quickly as I
thought it might with my hot
needs more reps and practice to understand some of the audibles.
There's a lot
that really goes into that. I never played football, so I
can't really say too much.
What do you want to do next? Should we run a little election campaign given that it's election season.
like the election thing.
In honor of the 2024 election, which is coming up next week
we're gonna have our own little election of MVP candidates for fantasy football. I know the real NFL MVP is list. It's dominated by quarterbacks every year. That's boring. I think every position should have the chance to shine. So my criteria is a little different.
I took from Yahoo the players that appear the most often on the top 500 Yahoo fantasy public league teams. So if you're one of the best teams in all leagues, they're looking at the percent ownership of each player and they have a whole list of that. They intermixed all the positions, but I'm going to consider narrowing it down to one position of each, the primaries.
So the primaries are already over. with. Sometimes the top scorer got cut. That's just what happened if they weren't owned on more of the top teams, it doesn't correlate exactly one to one, but it's a pretty good indicator. If you have these players, you're going to have a great team. But much like that. Real presidential primaries. We can't guarantee always that the best candidate is going to move on to the general election. So to head it off with our quarterback candidate. His slogan is peace, prosperity, and passing touchdowns. It is Lamar Jackson who has 19 touchdowns this year versus two interceptions.
2, 099 passing yards and a 66. 9 completion percentage. And mind you, this is only just over halfway through the season. He leads all fantasy scorers at the moment with 26. 51 fantasy points per game. Next up, we have a king for all seasons,
a nightmare for all defenders. It is none other than Derek Henry. He has
for
versus one fumble and 946 rushing yards.
He's almost a thousand yard rusher and it's halfway through the season. So it's going pretty well, even with a slower two games to start the season. He has been good for 21. 53 fantasy points per game. Not as much as Lamar Jackson, but it's up to you, the voters, if you value those points, more in a quarterback or in a running back. Our next candidate comes from the wide receivers. He asks you to chase the dream, catch the glory. It is Jamar Chase. He has seven touchdowns versus zero fumbles this season. A little quieter than the running backs and quarterbacks that we have available. And he has 674 receiving yards.
He has gotten, you Will, 15.
31 fantasy points per game. Next up we have the tight end. He wants to make tight ends great again. We've had a lot of mediocrity out of the tight end position. Not many from the top of the rankings are really startable in most fantasy leagues, especially when you don't have to have a tight end like ours.
But George Kittle has been the most startable of all of them. You could start him in any format and be good to go. He has six touchdowns, zero fumbles and 503 receiving yards. And he would have netted you 12. 61 fantasy points per game. Hey Will, looking good. Two of the candidates.
it would be a lot
better if I started it more often,
Well you're in playoff
I've learned, I've at least learned, right. I've
good. So, that just clicked for me now that two of those are on your team. So that might bode well for you. Now we have the dark horse candidates, it's going to be hard, but not impossible for them to win here being a third party. We have from the kickers, Brandon Aubrey. He can get you three points. You can believe in. He has 18 field goals for the season on 90 percent accuracy, 66 points scored this season, including eight field goals from over 50 yards. So he's been great at long distance. He has 12. 57 fantasy points per game for my team currently, and crunchy leaves had him earlier in the year.
Last and maybe least is the defense. Maybe not least. Maybe the kicker is typically least.
The Pittsburgh defense implores you to build the wall and they will fall. They have 10 interceptions this year, five fumble recoveries, and have only allowed 117 total points from other teams. That's actually not the most of all teams this year.
The Chargers actually have the fewest points allowed. They're not one of the top fancy defenses. I mean, they've been solid, but pittsburgh is giving you more interceptions.
More more fumbles, more sacks than the charges would have got you.
Uh, even though the charges allowed fewer points, Pittsburgh gives even more fancy points per game than the kickers did with 15. 08.
So there you have it. You're voting between Lamar Jackson at quarterback, Derek Henry at running back. Jamar Chase at wide receiver, George Kittle at tight end, Brandon Aubrey at kicker, and Pittsburgh defense. Who do you think has made the biggest impact in fantasy this year? Please let us know, either through comments, or just send us a message at smashvillefantasyfootball@gmail.com. If you let me know in any way, I'll tally your vote and we'll let you know on our next episode, who the winner is of our election.
Do you have any thoughts, Will? Any people that you would have wanted to see, but didn't make it out of the primaries?
Nico Collins to degree would be someone that I would have considered over Jamar Chase.
I mean, who knows? If he hadn't have got injured.
Hmm.
owned list. Which surprised me, since he has been injured. I thought that might be a detriment to the teams and they wouldn't
appear in the top 500 teams in the league.
But they are on that list, which is awesome for them when he
finally comes back.
Yeah, I think a lot of it comes down to the fact does
the fantasy league that those top 500 players are playing have the IR roster spots available
Did they project him to
actually come back at
a reasonable time or did they just release him right
away? To quote unquote win now mode. I don't really know. That's like probably the biggest argument that I would have is Nico Collins versus Jamar Chase.
I mean, I feel like you could throw Justin Jefferson in there too.
yeah.
I could see an argument for it,
but the big ones for me would be I think Nico Collins, Jamar Chase. Everyone else is
pretty self explanatory. I was slightly surprised to see 54.
8 percent of the top 500 players having Derek Henry. I thought that would be more in line
with 40, 45%, but it is what it is. I, can't know everything. Right. I think for me personally trying to vote, a little bit easier for me to pass on George Kittle. Because a lot of those fantasy leagues require a tight end specific spot. So
that I think is a little bit inflated. Whereas Lamar Jackson, Derrick
Henry, are really the two big choices to choose from.
Yeah. I mean, the rest are, what other parties do we have?
Yeah, I know,
They're the green
party.
I think I have my vote down. I won't
say too much
Yeah. Yeah. I mean,
because it's private. It's
other voters anyway. It's a sacred process. Yeah. But yeah, I have mine in mind too. We'll tally ours along with anyone else who wants to, cast a ballot here.
Moving on to matchups. like you, I haven't watched a lot this week.
I just watched the highlights basically. So, as I've said before, it kinda stinks because you don't get a feel for the whole game, you're just jumping from one scoring play to another so you don't really know how they got there or which drives petered out and why. So, some of my opinions may be way off base this episode, especially because I'm just doing based on a very small sample of what I saw.
I watched the commander's bears
that way, checking out, the
top moments from it and it was a fun one to watch. It was lower score, but having two mobile quarterbacks that also can throw it pretty well,
Makes for a fun game, at least the highlight reel. Every time I see Jane Daniels throw a deep ball, I love how it looks.
His deep throws that I witnessed, which were the highlight plays, were just beautiful. They were so accurate. They floated down on a feather pillow to his receivers. Now at the end of the game, it was a little lucky with a tip but he had some long completions earlier in the game too that I just thought were
so precise and were exciting to see. It was his least accurate game of the year so far, not terrible by any means, but he
passed a 21 completions. 38 attempts,
what's the percentage on that?
55 percent just over.
Yeah, that's a pretty mediocre game.
Yeah. Part of this performance was saved by that Hail Mary at the very
end of the game to win it.
Credit to Noah Brown for bringing in the tip and getting the touchdown. Nevertheless, it was his, most yards thrown for this season. It was his first over 300. So it turned out to be a
good fantasy game for him.
I did see a couple plays from that game,
and it was mind boggling to see, I believe it was number 72, which I think was the right tackle just not
really know how to block either. either. he was really slow with the shuffling to be able to cover the defensive end, or he was expecting the running back
to also chip block
and they didn't. I think it was in the second quarter. It was just awful. Like the
three or four plays that I saw, two of them, I think led to either a sack or a really rushed pass that was just throwing the ball away. I love to pick on the bears, but at the same time, it, was, really sad to watch. When, Caleb Williams goes back to pass, you don't expect to finish your last step and then being hit right away in your drop back. It's just terrible. It even knocked them out of the field goal range, the last one. The big one that I saw was
obviously the Packers Jaguars game. Green Bay's defense looked really good and Jordan Love looked okay. He didn't look amazing got picked off and it was a, a really great play by the defense. The defense gets The credit on that one. Not Jordan love made a mistake, more of the Jaguars make a great play. And then he got injured and then you saw Josh Jacobs try to take over the game. Knowing that Malik Willis is more likely to run, or they're going to hand the ball off after the Jaguars tied it. They ran a play that they hadn't run the entire game.
Jalen Reed acted like he's. Trying to run block and then released and no one picked him up and Malik Willis just floated an easy one for 40 something yards or something like that. Put them in the field goal position, which ended up winning the game.
it's been nice to see that they also switched their kicker. it's actually nice
to see it when the kicker actually puts it between the uprights,
Tucker craft Had a pretty good game, game last
game, too.
yeah. I picked him up
off waivers.
I thought he was overrated,
but
I had so many injuries. I needed someone,
my
questionable guys ended up playing. So I didn't have to actually start
craft, 78 yards.
Touchdown Reception, including one that was over 40 yards in of itself, so bonus points there in our league.
14. 8 fantasy points, so that would have been better than a number of my starters, but I'm not to the point where I wouldn't start, Tyreek Hill, Deebo Samuel on a given week.
Okay.
Especially given that Tua Tagovailoa came back from his concussion injury that has to raise Tyreek Hill stock. He didn't have a blow away game this week.
It would have looked a lot better if he had a touchdown. He had 72 yards receiving. That's his most since week one when he last had to a thrown to him. So I think that's notable. I think he's going to normalize a lot this season. If he had a touchdown, his, stat line would feel much better.
But without it, I'm still hopeful for the rest of the season from him. I had just traded for him with crunchy leaves and, I had to glance over at his team to see how Amari Cooper did for him and he only got three reception yards, 0. 3 fantasy points.
It's just an unfortunate thing for, Chris, that he had a really bad game after a really solid game last week.
And then I watched a total of zero other games. I don't think I watched another play from any
of the other
Yeah, yeah, I saw just a
few from the Texans Colts. Didn't look good.
I know there are three great kickoff returns to start the game. That was the most interesting thing about it for me. Other than that, the Colts
just aren't looking good with Anthony
Richardson at quarterback.
Andy got benched.
this year. Yeah. Completion percentage has been abysmal. 44. 4 percent average. I picked him up off waivers to take a flyer on him. I've since dropped him. I mean, obviously, if the Colts aren't going to start him, and it's
probably the right call, given what we've seen from a few games from him, a few games from Flacco. the Colts look better with Flacco and I hate to say it nothing against Joe Flacco, but I was hopeful for Anthony Richardson I wanted him to be that dual threat quarterback and it's just not happening Hopefully he can continue to develop and maybe in the future. He'll provide a spark for the Colts, but the accuracy is just not there
So that's all I saw from Texans Colts I watched a decent amount of the Lions Titans and that was a little fun just to watch
a whooping. The Lions felt like the saints from the first two weeks of the year where it's just oh my gosh they look unstoppable and obviously Saints that changed big time as they haven't
won since, but the lions, I
think legitimately have good
this year.
Oh yeah, I project them to win the NFC North. I predict them to have the best record in the NFC,
Yeah, they had two quick touchdowns from, David Montgomery and Jameer Gibbs. A stat that they threw up on the screen was that they are 7 0 when both of them score. Montgomery even got to throw
a touchdown to Sam LaPorta.
I saw that on
were
scoring, yeah Lions were scoring through the air, on the ground, every which way, having to running back pass it.
It was like they could do no wrong. They were just scoring however they wanted in the Titans. Look totally lost
like they
usual.
know what to expect because they didn't know what to
expect. They were leaving guys wide open.
I did see the nickname that one of the signs had with Sonic and Knuckles for Jameer Gibbs
and,
David Montgomery. I thought that was really clever.
What do you think about
that detroit Green Bay matchup next week? You said that's going to be
a good one. I'm excited to watch it. Who do you got? I picked that as
my hot take this week
I think the Lions win this unless Jordan loves plays every
snap, in which case it's a toss up. would put money
in the lines
yeah, and that is the betting line for it.
They're favored by three and a half, which is, more than what I would expect.
yeah, they were, not one of the biggest spreads this week, but they're middle of the pack a little more than I would have thought as well. Most people have been picking the Lions. The Lions. have won four of their
last five games against Green Bay, actually.
Given as a hot take and I'm almost 50 50 on it,
I'm going to go a little contrarian and say that the Packers pull out the win at home.
I think love is going to play despite the groin injury and it's a big one for them.
It's a coin flip in my mind.
And because I want to be contrarian, I'm going to go for the Packers to win it. I really don't have a good argument to back it up. It's just
a feeling.
You just got to have the heart
man, got to have the heart. That team functions with or without
Jordan love.
It might not function to beat the lions
with Malik Willis, but at the same time, Malik Willis is, 2 0 as a starter, 3 0 if you also count him coming in when Jordan Love got hurt, during
the previous game, because he also
led the game winning drive.
I think he's got
enough tools and, Matt LaFleur did a great job of creating a secondary
offense for Malik Willis when Jordan Love was
out week two and three to where
it was a seamless transition to go from we're passing the ball with Jordan Love to we're running a kind of misdirection of pass run, run with Mollick Willis versus Josh Jacobs, and the team has bought into it and they, they keep Don't mind it. Wide receivers blocking really well. And then guess what? Boom. Hit you with Jalen Reed for a
big gain to win the game against the Jaguars. I don't think it's enough though to beat the
yeah, I mean, I
Regardless, I don't think it's enough to beat the Lions.
Yeah. I
almost feel like Green Bay's do more than anything because the Lions have had so much success lately, but the Lions are
undoubtedly a good team this year.
Oh, they're a great team. Yeah.
I kind of looked at their common opponents in the season schedule and was trying to,
Figure who might have the edge there. The Lions definitely had
an edge. With beating the Vikings by a couple points whereas Green Bay lost to the Vikings by a couple points but overall it seemed very close the strength of wins
And losses seemed super comparable and in a coin flip in my head I'm gonna go with the statistical underdog there on the betting line.
I will say that
the Lions so far this year have scored 234 points versus 216 points, and then points against Lions 134, the Packers 170. So
there's a pretty decent difference on both sides of the ball. I think it's slightly inflated for points for, for the Lions because they destroyed the Cowboys and the Titans. Points against, I think it's more accurate. We'll see. I'm not expecting any miracles on that game. I am excited to see honestly, the Dolphins Bills game. with To being back and being in practice and getting more reps you're kind of seeing more of a healthier dolphins
team. That game is now a lot closer than what I would have thought
two weeks ago,
Yeah for sure
I think Tyree kill, uh, two are going to have a connection for at least a touchdown and over 70 yards on the game.
We'll see if that actually turns out, but
I expect the Dolphins to play from behind. So I think that's gonna inflate They're numbers too.
But I also
are gonna score.
You expect the Dolphins to win
Yeah, I want to make that my hot take as a Dolphins win, to a touchdown to Tyree Hill for at least a total for the whole game, 70 yards.
think that's a pretty good hot take.
I'm looking
at the
spread here, negative six for buffalo.
Yeah, I think that's overrated, especially because Buffalo has
had a pretty rough going. don't think they've played as well as they should have over the last few weeks. beat the jets by three, which I don't think is an accomplishment.
They lost the Texans, lost the Ravens. They beat the Titans, but who cares? And the Seahawks
is, I think, a reasonable take there, 31 to 10. So, out of the last five games, one of those, I think, is a legitimate W. I'm not sold on them.
So your hot take, is it the whole combination
of dolphins win Tyreek Hill scores a touchdown and at least 70 yards?
Yes.
Okay, we're making it hard on ourselves.
Hey, you
I have other weeks. I've been overly specific and regretted
at other weeks.
Yeah, and then I think the Bears Cardinals
game might be interesting, but not really in a way that is like good football. It's more of they're both teams that are fallible.
And when you watch two teams that are fallible, you'll see. a fun game kind of thing.
The Buccaneers Chiefs,
I think is also going to be one that might be good to watch, but the rest of them other than the ones that we mentioned. I'm not
really super interested in watching. Do you have
any other comments on the matchup?
I had a second hot take actually that I think I'll throw in there as well. Looking at our fantasy matchups this week, we have not had all the. Favored teams win since week one, where the teams with the highest projected points And so I'm using favored in those terms. I know in the past you've done it by rankings for a hot take. The highest projected points At tip off or kick off. I guess I
keep saying tip off.
Hey, man, college basketball season is right around the corner. We can all be really happy about that because we're out of college football season of being Purdue
fans, get out of that and get into college basketball. It's always about the countdown.
How many more days for college basketball season to start? That
is always the
question.
I just skipped college football entirely to go to that. But looking at the projected points this week, it struck me as maybe they're a little more
realistic this week with who I think is going to win. It aligns.
So, I think this will be the second week that all teams favored in projected points actually win their matchups.
I know a few players currently have
some people out on buys where they haven't updated their starting lineup.
Hopefully that doesn't skew my opinion too much
once that does happen. But, looking at it now,
I feel good about most of the, favorite teams. I think the biggest potential risk is myself.
I'm about a 14 to 15 point favorite over Mitchie Mitch currently. He needs to update his lineup and put one in there. I've talked about how he scored well, he has scored more total points than I have this year. So I don't feel super comfortable about my matchup.
That's maybe the one least sure about, but I'll go ahead and throw that
in as a win for myself as well. Just for the sake of making that the prediction that all favorite teams are going to win. Do you see others that you're like, nah, that one's not going to win.
I can see maybe Mint Berry Crunch versus SimpleJack.
Yeah. I never know what's going to happen with simple Jack. Cause sometimes
he's not on his lineup as much.
yeah,
and that's, that's one of the reasons why I say that. I also would consider Chris's matchup
with
Caitlyn, the no hard thing unless there's a cringely use,
So by the point projected, it has no hard feelings winning.
That's a hard one. I feel like some of the players can underperform or overperform very easily in that matchup. If there's going to be one that busts it,
I think it's going to be that one.
Yeah, I can see that too. I guess I should for everyone's benefit list off the teams that are currently favored. So this week, no fading on Jaden is going to win. And the other winners are no hard feelings. Mixing it pretty good. Chase me if you can. Mint Berry Crunch and Wu Tang
Financial. They're currently favorite. That could change, but that's who I think the winners are
going to be.
And
then do you have, any awards?
Yeah. So our waiver wire wizard nominees for the week, there wasn't too many things that ended up making a tangible impact in game, I picked up to a tug of Viola and craft. Um, I'm
going to try to hold on to Tucker craft, even though I thought he was just going to be at one week band aid for me because I had a few questionable guys. I'm actually gonna try to keep him. He's been doing well enough for me to do that
Now that I dropped Anthony Richeson, who is my backup quarterback and my sole one. I'm gonna hang on to him as well No hard feelings picked up off the wire Cedric Tillman who had a big game
didn't end up being a starter for her team, but that could be good going forward.
Tillman has seen a major uptick in, targets and receptions since Amari Cooper has been traded. So that could potentially be a longterm deal. so that could end up being a really good deal. Pick up for no hard feelings.
Mixing it pretty good. Picked up Cade Otten. Otten has been a really good scoring tight end as of late. Had, eight receptions the game before this one, nine receptions this game and the two touchdowns were the big deal for him. So he scored 10 fantasy points in week seven, 20. 1 in week eight. He may have a few more really good weeks ahead of him.
Especially considering that,
mike Evans isn't expected back for a few weeks. Chris Godwin is out for the season now that could also improve his stats. So yeah, he could be positive impact for maybe the rest of the season, but certainly for the next few contests while they're looking for people to catch the ball. another potential one is under the radars pick 📍 of Deandre Hopkins. I had implored the Meg to pick up Deandre Hopkins and she didn't take action on that.
Mike came in, picked him up. DeAndre Hopkins didn't have a great first game.
But I think going forward, that's going to be a great. Pick up. That's kind of the long term view.
Think realistically DeAndre Hopkins is going to be the big one.
Yeah,
It's long term, but short term the performance this week does not match the expectation and the performance that he's going to give long term. That's the reason why I say that.
I'm glad you said that because that's was my reason as well. Two votes for him,
so he gets the award.
As for bench blunders, I talked a bit about how I didn't start Jayden Daniels, but I'm not gonna really consider myself given the injury concerns
and the timing of the games. Simple Jack left out Chris Godwin though, who is now on injured reserve. That had happened the previous game.
He needed to get in there and manage his roster to update that. He had Cooper Cup now back from injury, so that would have been the obvious guy to plug in for the injured Godwin.
Even if Godwin hadn't been injured, I think there were a few other starters in there who had put Cooper Cup above.
It was just a matter of not updating the roster. and then Crunchy Leaves chose Ray Ray McLeod over Josh Downs. I know Josh Downs has been super streaky and the Colts have not inspired confidence.
But just looking at their performance so far this year, I'd be starting Downs for his ceiling instead of starting McLeod for his floor. McLeod's had the more stable, low five point games,
but I'd rather have a few boom games and a few bust games. How do you feel
On floor performance versus kind of erratic play.
I think I try to go for a higher floor.
Okay. Yep. That seems to be what crunchy leaves did this week for sure. That'd be your reasoning for
mcLeod over Josh Downs this year.
A part of it is with a consideration of where you are in the league standings and leagues requirements are for
playoffs. With the way ours is set up and
where I'm at I would go with the higher floor.
Okay. Another
nominee, but not one I'm seriously considering is under the radar starting Aaron Rogers over Kirk Cousins. Kirk Cousins was coming off a really bad previous game.
The only reason I probably would've starred Cousins was that looking back at his schedule, he went off against Tampa Bay, and now he's facing Tampa Bay again this past week.
Trying to predict based on past performance against a given team, isn't always reliable. I know why he started Rogers just given the most recent game, but I probably would've done Kirk Cousins. Yeah, you would've as well. , I did not consider you for
Leaving a couple big scores on your bench
because I don't feel like you could have made a super convincing argument to start them You had Tyrone Tracy jr. And Kyle Pitts both get you
a really good number of fancy points
was just unexpected. Tyra and Tracy is where potentially nominate
myself.
Yeah, but you were a wait and see on him and he's been proving himself to you, which is good. The only guy maybe I'd start him over is Xavier Worthy
Mm hmm.
move worthy to the flex spot. I don't think you had him in the flex spot,
but you could have shuffled around. But think I would have been waiting to see more evidence on him also, so I don't
Fault you for that.
And another game of retrospect here. The Meg should have started David and Joku over Trey Tucker, Dontavian Wicks, and Evan Ingram. But it wasn't like an obvious start for me yet. It was also kind of a wait and see, but now we've seen two games of performance, with James Winston under center. And that's seems to have been a direct benefit to Njoku.
Plus you have the departure of Amari Cooper in there and I can draw the dotted line between. those two things and increased opportunities for the rest of the season. So I think going forward, you have to start them above those players. He wouldn't be started on every team, but looking at the Meg's roster, I think she has to start him.
So I don't falter this week, but going forward, I would falter for that same move, given what we've seen so far.
winner of our blunder award, I really didn't have much of a choice. I had to give it to simple
Jack for having. Chris Godwin in there on IR, not having Cooper cup in. It's too glaring of an oversight to forgive. So that's going to be our
bench blunder of the week.
We got to make sure we give a tally of how many bench blunders
yeah. I have been keeping them.
Well, you
know, it's near the end of the
episode,
we should make that our end of the regular season special.
Yeah, yeah, for sure.
If there's not anything else we can close out this week going into week nine, that also precedes the trade deadline for our league. It's November 16th.
Yes.
Yeah,
that you'd want to cover next week?
I think the big thing is going to be Trades Trades are possible trades or maybe even best
trades of the season. Who's worked out, who hasn't worked out. I think we
I know
hasn't, who hasn't worked out. I shouldn't have said that, but that we already know who
hasn't worked out.
We can reiterate it. Yeah,
Yeah, it'd be fun.
Quote unquote fun.
Yeah. Yeah. Most fun. You can have sober. Are you sober?
No,
fun. You can have with your clothes on or your clothes on
I
have a shirt on.
Okay. Take care. Keep your lineups updated. Hit those waiver wires. Start thinking about those trades for the next week and a half here. I want to see a couple more come through. I know I have one more for my goal to make Will's hot take correct.
So that's what I'm aiming for at least one more trade.
Good luck and lose to me. That's all I can say.
good.
you next week.
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. See you next week!
