Byes: Indianapolis (Andrew Luck), Minnesota (Teddy Bridgewater), New England (Tom Brady), San Diego (Philip Rivers), Washington (Robert Griffin III), and Houston (Ryan Mallett)
Last week was an up and down one for my QB2 recommendations.
Carson Palmer and Ryan Tannehill both produced QB1 performances, with Tannehill finishing as the QB3 (28.22 fantasy points), and Palmer wound up the QB7 (19.76 fantasy points). Alex Smith was close (QB14-15.96 fantasy points), and Brandon Weeden was a non-factor (QB24 – 7.52 fantasy points).
After nine weeks, I decided to check in to see how this experiment has been working up to this point, and I thought my readers would be interested to see the results as well.
After nine weeks, my QB2 recommendations have averaged 17.18 fantasy points/game. When you multiply those numbers by nine, you get 154.62 fantasy points (using FantasyData scoring settings), and that number would be good for QB8 on the season.
There have been some hits this season (Eli Manning in Week 4, Austin Davis in Week 5, Kyle Orton in Week 8) and there have been some misses (Alex Smith in Week 1, Drew Stanton in Week 5, and Teddy Bridgewater in Week 7). It’s part of the game, and my hope is to provide more hits than misses. Hopefully the second half of the fantasy season will be kind to us.
Week 10 QB2 Circle of Trust
Ben Roethlisberger @ New York Jets
It might seem like I put no thought into this recommendation. Sure, list the quarterback that has been the QB1 the past two weeks, and who has thrown for a combined 862 passing yards and 12 passing touchdowns during that span. Nice job, moron.
Okay, so maybe this seems like lazy analysis. But that doesn’t mean you should hold that against me. Not only is Ben Roethlisberger the hottest fantasy quarterback of the past two weeks, he also has the best matchup of the week, going up against a New York Jets defense that has allowed 24 passing touchdowns. That’s six more than the second worst team, Washington. I hope this is not a trap.
Carson Palmer vs. St. Louis Rams
It might not seem like much of a breakthrough, as Palmer was providing us with quite the consistency this year, having thrown for 250+ yards and two passing touchdowns in each of his four starts prior to Week 9, but throwing for three touchdowns vs. Dallas last week was a welcome change.
This week Palmer and the Cardinals take on the St. Louis Rams; a team that has been middle of the road against fantasy quarterbacks.
In the past two weeks they’ve held Alex Smith and Colin Kaepernick to under 12 fantasy points each, and allowed only one passing touchdown during that span (Kap in Week 9).
However, prior to that, they had given up a combined 9 passing touchdowns to 2 interceptions in their last four games, and a couple of 300+ passing yard games. The quarterbacks they faced during that four game span included Tony Romo, Nick Foles, Kap, and Russell Wilson.
Heading into Week 9 the Rams only had six quarterback sacks, but exploded for eight versus San Francisco. Arizona has only given up 13 sacks on the year, so that will be an interesting battle to watch.
With the way Palmer has been playing as of late, he as safe as they come at the QB2 slot, and might even be a QB1 rest of the season.
Mark Sanchez vs. Carolina
The Panthers are allowing the seventh-most fantasy points/game to opposing quarterbacks this year, to a tune of 19.48 FPs/G.
Russell Wilson in Week 8, who scored 14.46 fantasy points, accord to Yahoo data, was the lowest fantasy output by a quarterback facing Carolina this year.
Four out of nine opposing quarterbacks have scored 20 or more fantasy points in a game vs. the Panthers so far in 2014.
The biggest factor going into this QB2 streaming option is how much can you trust Mark Sanchez as a starting fantasy quarterback? Once you answer that question you’ll be able to decide if Sanchez is worthy of streaming consideration this week. I think he is.
*Stats used in this article from FantasyData and ESPN
