Week 3: Lee (0–3) vs. Pish (2–1)
Lee: 10th in points scored, 1st in points against
Pish: 5th in points scored, 11th in points against
How They Got Here
Lee’s team is hobbling like they just tried way too hard on the final play of the 2016 Burrell Turkey Bowl and blew up their ankle for no real good reason. The main cause of the stink is losing the #2 overall pick to injury for the season. It didn’t help that Lee used a third rounder on Lamar Jackson who is currently the 13th highest scoring QB in our league.
When we look at Lee’s top ten scores we see just two trips over the 30 mark and four trips into the 20's:
Lee’s best player may be a running back he picked up off of waivers. Needless to say, Lee’s team is like Pish when Alex Jones is broadcasting live about how Joe Biden is a snake person robot — going nowhere.
Pish started the year off much like how high school was for him — without a bang — scoring just 117 points in week one. That was enough to get him a win over a real bad score from Randy, and then he’s had two big weeks following that with a 142 in week two and a huge 173 last week. Most of that is thanks to the #1 scoring player in the league so far — Russell Wilson.
Starting QB’s in this league are averaging 30.4 fantasy points this year, Russ is averaging 46! He already has 925 passing yards and FOURTEEN Elmer Tuds.
Tyler Lockett has clearly been a big beneficiary of it as well, piling up 74 fantasy points to slot in as the #2 WR in fantasy this year. Times are good for Pish.
What’s That Smell Like?
ESPN is giving Pish the nod here at 132–122, but let’s not assume that ESPN knows what the hell they’re talking about. It’s important to taste the mulch yourself instead of just listening to what the elites tell you about it.
What Pish Smell Like
The Seahawks match-up with the Dolphins is an interesting one. Russ can clearly pretty much do whatever he wants, but his fantasy ceiling is dependent on the opposition keeping pace. I think the Dolphins can probably do that to some extent, but it also wouldn’t be a surprise to see this game put away by halftime. That said, Seattle sits at just -6.5 here so the sharps don’t see too much of a blow out here. If Ryan Fitzpatrick can hit on some big plays, Russ could be popping the cap off another 40 like he’s back in college.
It also certainly helps that Chris Carson is out for this game, so that could force the ball into Russ’s hands a few more times even if the Seahawks want to run some clock.
The rest of Pish’s team is less inspiring. Kenyan Drake has had an incredibly disappointing season so far, yet to eclipse 100 all-purpose yards and averaging less than two targets a game. The Cardinals get another super soft matchup with the Panthers though so maybe this is the week.
Austin Ekeler’s points graph looks a lot like Lombardo’s weight graph after the calendar turns to February:
With how much the Chargers are using Josh Kelley though, there are sure to be more pretty bad games from Ekeler. The highest share of the team carries he’s received so far is 52%, and before last week (11 targets) it was looking like he wasn’t a huge factor in the pass game either. He went for one target in week one and two targets in week two before that eruption last week. I think it’ll be a pretty volatile season for Ekeler.
Pish’s running back trio ends with David Montgomery, who I really wish I could have back now with Nick Foles at the helm and Tarik Cohen out for the year. I think we’ll see some really strong numbers moving forward from Montgomery.
Robert Woods and Robbie Anderson find themselves with strong starts to the year and in good matchups this week, although I think a big fat zero is coming for Anderson real soon.
He’s seen at least a 20% target share in every game so far but you’d just think there’s a game coming when he gets like three targets and doesn’t connect on any of them.
All-in-all I think this is a good but not great score from Pish, I’ll slide him in at a 136.
What Lee Smell Like
Lamar had a shockingly bad week three in a juice spot with the Chiefs, so obviously that means that his confidence is shot and he will regress into a back-up quarterback incredibly fast.
He does get the Redskins (I typed it without thinking and I’m just leaving it to get Pish a little more aroused!) this week, so he should have his way. I think the only way Lamar ever fails is in those games where he’s down a bunch early, and I don’t think there’s any way that happens here.
James RoB1nson (see what I did there?) saw six targets last week and totally smash dicked the Dolphins for 31 DraftKings points even in a game the Jaguars lost handily! Now he gets the Bengals, so the Jaguars should be able to put up some points and all signs point to him being a big factor there. I’m not sure I believe the six targets thing — that was in a game without DJ Chark playing, but either way he should get 15+ touches and the Bengals seem like one of the worst run defenses in the whole league — so this is a good 1–2 punch for Lee.
Remember that time we played wiffle ball on a Saturday and Team Cope came all high out of their minds and like didn’t get a hit for three innings? Then the drugs started to wear off and they actually scored some runs and made it a close game? Lee’s team this week is like that, but opposite. Lamar and Robinson start it off really hot, but the rest of this is just a do-nothing-stay-home-do-drugs-eat-chips situation.
TY Hilton got three targets last week, three. Ridiculous, what are they doing? The Bills gave Singletary just 13 carries last week despite building up a big lead in that game and without Zack Moss active. I mean you can’t blame them there. Honestly if I had Josh Allen I wouldn’t want anybody else touching that football. I would want him throwing passes to himself and playing middle linebacker.
Mark Ingram has 10, 9, and 7 carries with 0, 3, and 1 targets so far. Alarming stuff.
Noah Fant better build an ark and get out of Denver because he’s catching passes from some dude that might not start at QB over Clint on my Turkey Bowl team. True story, Pro Football Reference (the website) didn’t even have this guy in their database last week. My script that collects all the box scores failed on that game because his box was just blank in the box score. Actually they still haven’t fixed this yet.. look at this shit:
I have scraped literally thousands of box scores from these websites and this has never happened. Drop all Broncos, just drop them. There is no excuse to be playing someone who is dependent on a literal no name quarterback to score fantasy points.
Remember when the Marlins all got COVID and everybody was like omigod competitive balance! How will they ever compete! We should cancel the season! This is way worse than that. The Broncos should change their name to the Donkeys.
I think I might even make a protest about this and not watch Thursday Night Football this week. Brett Rypien starting is more egregious than anything any criminal, police officer, or politician has ever done.
I got caught up there, but sorry Lee — things aren’t looking great for you bud.
The Final Smell Like
Pish 136, Lee 107. Russ and Lockett come back to earth but Pish picks up solid games from everybody and comfortably moves to 3–1.