Thursday, August 16, 2018

An Eye Towards Fantasy Football

Baseball is the name of the game here, but we definitely have an eye on fantasy football season. August has been known for the month of the fantasy football draft, and ours will be held one week from tonight.

With the baseball season starting to fade – soon enough leaves will begin to change. Pumpkin spice latte will be sold, a nip will be in the air, and it will be football season. One of the players that we can’t wait to watch most is Houston Texans Quarterback, Deshaun Watson (like everyone else, right?)

I’m a little nervous. I have Deshaun Watson in a keeper league; and yet I see some things written like this in the New York Post:

No, we don’t expect the type of steep decline we saw in Robert Griffin III a few years ago. From a fantasy perspective, Griffin was more reliant on rushing production — RG3 gaining roughly 15 more yards per game and averaging almost one TD every two games, compared to less than one every three games for Watson.

But we do anticipate a decline, both in Watson’s rushing production and his production throwing the ball. Simply put, accounting for nearly four TDs per game is not something that happens. Russell Wilson was the leading fantasy QB last season, by a lot. He averaged 27.48 per game, or almost five points less than Watson during his incredible run.

Adding to our worries, the Texans’ offensive line isn’t great, the running game in general doesn’t have threats who worry defensive coordinators, and as the legend goes, you need four games of film to begin to identify a player’s tendencies. We have barely crossed that threshold.

So, sure, we would love to have Watson. We are willing to gamble on his upside, but only at our price. And it seems, there always is someone willing to pay more.

Aye, that reads like a Tolstoy novel if you’re a Watson owner. I already have some reservations about him in his sophomore season due to returning from major knee surgery.

Now, there are items of equal and opposite reaction to calm my concerns. Looking at NFL Power Rankings like these calm the fears a little bit. It does a nice job of showing who Watson is spreading the ball around to in the preseason action; and this might lead to a late round pick by me of a guy like Bruce Ellington if I can manage it (or waiver wire pick-up) just so I can get the QB to WR connection in my lineup.

One thing Watson has to his benefit is all world talent. His college coach at Clemson; Dabo Swinney, once compared him to a football version of Michael Jordan. That’s just not praise you hear thrown around often, especially by one of the top coaches at the collegiate level who has seen world class athletes on a daily basis for around a decade.

In any event, we will have our answers to so many football questions soon. This of course as, inevitably, the boys of summer give way to the legends of the fall.



from Diamond Hoggers https://ift.tt/2MiVDB7

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