Fantasy Football Week 8 Start and Sit

Hello Heat Seekers, welcome to episode 109 of Sully’s 2 Cents Fantasy Football Podcast, I am you host Rob Sullivan. Sully’s 2 Cents Fantasy Football Podcast is a proud member of the RotoHeat family of podcasts.

We are nearing the mid way point of the most bizarre NFL season on record.  I vowed last episode to not being up the pandemic and I will stick to what I said last week.  There really is no denying it has had its impact on this season.

Injuries man,  they are the defining story of this season and this fantasy season.  Every year someone utters the phrase, this must be the year with the most injures.  I have said it this season weekly.  I have tired to find out if it indeed is and I have not been able to find those numbers.

What I did come across is from 2012-2019 the most injuries recorded was in 2017, 281 in total.  91 injuries in the preseason and 190 more in the regular season. 

The latest version of the 2020 NFL Injury report updated on October 27, 2020 has 472 names on the list.  Now not all 472 will miss time, any player with an injury distinction included players that decided to opt out are on that list.

Its not just the sheer volume of the injuries, it is the star names that have been hurt that makes this year resemble a shit sandwich on moldy bread.

Saquon Barkley and Christian McCaffery.  Barkley for the season and CMC hopefully for not much longer.  The first two players selected in 99.99% od 1 QB leagues drafts lost.  We lost Austin Ekeler for an extended period, Same for Michael Thomas.  Recently we lost Kenyon Drake for an undisclosed period and Dak Prescott for the season.  There are many more and I could easily talk about injuries and the impact on fantasy and the team in which the injured are rostered, but we would be here for days.

Dak Prescott stands out above all the rest.  First off, his fantasy mangers lost the #1 overall fantasy scorer at the time of the injury. What makes the loss of Dak infinitely more catastrophic is the impact it has had on the Dallas Cowboys offense.  This was an offense everyone should have wanted a piece of.

Three fantasy relevant WRs in Amari Cooper, Michael Gallup, and rookie CeeDee Lamb.  Tight ends Bake Jarwin (lost himself for the season), and Dalton Schultz.  Oh, and one of the best RBs in the League in Ezekiel Elliott.  What made Dak so valuable was his ability to make that offense tick.  He kept that team, a truly terrible football team in every game.

Week after week Dak put the team on his back and often led them back from massive deficits.  Along for the ride is the talent names I recently mentioned.  With out Dak this offense and team is lost. 

Including week 5, the week that Dak went down, he was averaging 27.93 points per game in 4pt per TD scoring leagues.  Cowboys QBs (Dalton and DiNucci) since then have averaged  9.28 per game.

Amari Cooper 18.84 PPR points a game week 1-5 WR8Cee Dee Lamb 17.12 PPR points a game week 1-5 WR11Michael Gallup 11.56 PPR points a game week 1-5 WR33

Blake Jarwin/Dalton Schultz 10.74 per game in week 1-5. Schultz TE12

Ezekiel Elliott 22.34 PPR points a game week 1-5 RB3

In Weeks 6&7

Cooper 18.20 points per game WR18Lamb 6.75/ game WR63Gallup 2.15/ game WR105Schultz 5.85/game TE24Elliott 9.