Hope everybody had a Happy Thanksgiving!
Thanksgiving is a nice time to spend with your family, a time of happiness, togetherness and positivity. I love Thanksgiving. We had 4 generations of Bernsteins at the house on Thursday and all those smiling faces, both young and old, was just a beautiful sight to see. It was a home overflowing with holiday joy! There was food, drink, laughter and song the whole day through! Truly a blessing.
But today is a new day. As the brisk autumn winds blew in this morning, those warm holiday feelings have begun to turn cold. Now, with a steely resolve we turn our attention once again to the Fantasy gridiron.
Many fantasy seasons are on the line, and playoff scenarios are coming closer to reality this week. The intensity has never been higher as this strategically crucial week also happens to be SPECIAL ED RIVALRY WEEK!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thanksgiving always gets us EXTRA amped for football. We’ve got 5 straight days of football action this week, so get comfortable! Now there are some fun NCAA matchups today and tomorrow and we highly recommend watching them because, we also perused the NFL slate and there are no “good games” this week. None. And it’s weird because the NFL has made an effort of scheduling more divisional games during these last few weeks to make the playoff races more intriguing. That didn’t quite work out this week, where divisional games include: Bucs/Falcons, Browns/Bengals, Colts/Titans, and Pats/Dolphins. We DARE you to give a fuck about any of those games. You can’t do it.
There are 5 games on Sunday with spreads of over 10pts, plus a few others that could also be blowouts as well, like Jags/Cardinals and Bills/Chiefs. Yuck. This all looks pretty ugly for real life NFL fans, but there are some very juicy fantasy matchups in those blowouts. "Game Script" is the word of the week out here – Favored teams like the Chiefs and Steelers will lean on their RBs to drain the clock and Underdogs like the Dolphins and Cardinals will be forced to open up the passing game playing from behind.
Many Special Ed teams are positioned to take advantage of this unbalanced NFL week, 5 teams have at least 4 players with GREENLIGHT matchups on Yahoo!:
-10 Yards
White Walkers
Golden Richards
Trump National
Randall Cummingham
Plus Bitchslapped will start 5 Patriots against the Dolphins, probably the worst blowout of them all. Yahoo doesn’t have that as a “green” matchup but trust me, it is. Patriots will win this game 65-0.
Don’t be surprised if all six of these teams put up over 120 this week. In fact, WhosHotStradamus foresees this being the highest scoring week of the season for the entire Special Ed league. LETS GO!!!!!!!!!!!!
WHOS HOT:
Who’s Hot has been less predictive of weekly results than in the past in large part because this year so many players' performance (and even their role and workload) have varied so bigly from week to week based on the matchups they face. Like we said above, the positional matchup distributions this week are extremely skewed. Those matchups will be the #1 factor in all Special Ed contests this week, regardless of who's hotter.
We believe this fantasy unpredictability is here to stay tho, and may become a hallmark trait of our evolving league. Many NFL teams are realizing the importance of self-scouting and of having a more complete and nuanced picture of their own team's strengths, as well as their opponents'. At the same time, teams seem to value flexibility more highly than any single "team identity". A supposedly “run-first” team could, one week, face a particularly stout defensive line the flexible teams are more likely realize it may not behoove them to force the issue if they can exploit another matchup elsewhere. Case in point, in week 10 the Jags faced the Chargers who are known to have a very athletic D line and LBs, but does not have CBs who can keep up with the speedy Marquis Lee and Allen Hurns. The Jags would win that game with Bortles throwing the ball 51 times, while Fournette gained only 33 yards on the ground.
Watch those matchups carefully as we enter the fantasy playoffs, folks. Don't be afraid to bench your studs.
SPECIAL ED MATCHUP PREVIEWS:
By the way, there were only 8 moves this week across the league so no Dumpster Diver Award. But the Special Ed matchups this week are so intense we couldn’t feature just one:
RANDALL CUMMINGHAM vs. ¡QUE LáSTIMA!
STAKES: Winner will enter week 13 in First Place
First of all, ¡Que Lástima! are FRAUDS. To say that they’re ice cold right now would be kind. The team is playing much worse lately than their season average, but that average is not even good. They’ve only scored 120 once this year and that was 6 weeks ago. 4 of their 9 wins came against the lowest scoring team of the week. We’re not mad though. We're glad they already clinched cause we’d LOVE to meet their 80-point ass in a playoff game. Really looking forward to it.
RC, on the other hand, has become RED HOT the last few weeks with a very solid lineup headlined by a pair of DYM Award Nominees. Mike Evans, their first round pick, has been very disappointing so far, this would be a great spot for him to put up his first 100 yd game of the season.
Prediction: RC WINS as Zach Ertz stays cold against an underrated Chicago Defense!!!!!!!!!!!
BITCHSLAPPED vs. -10 YARDS OF ELI
STAKES: Elimination game for Bitchslapped
Doug’s teams had beginners luck for the first 4 to 5 years they were in this league, but now they’ve finally come back to earth. Their two game win streak now seems like an aberration after they posted the lowest score in the league last week.
But this game is all about Bitchslapped: After an ugly 6-week mid-season stretch, Bitchslapped has put together a couple of nice games in a row and are STILL in contention for a playoff spot. They will need a win here and next week against the garbage team in 1st place. But she’ll also need to stay hot and outscore White Walkers and/or PHP with whom she would be tied at 6 wins.
Prediction: BITCHSLAPPED WINS with a HUGE game from Brady and the Pats at home against Miami!!!!!!!!!!!!
POLK HIGH PANTHERS vs. TEAM MEH
STAKES: Team Meh effectively clinches with a win (they own tiebreakers over everyone below them).
Four of PHP’s five wins came in games where either AJ Green or Chris Thompson had over 100 receiving yards. AJ has a very exploitable matchup against the Browns. But, PHP will need all the AJ they can get as they will be without their top 2 RBs (Thompsons and Freeman).
On the other side, Team Meh has a ton of action in the Chiefs Bills tilt that will likely be a fantasy bonanza. This should be the game where Kelce and Hill both score, the Bills can’t stop anybody. Big Ben has another great matchup at home against the Packers.
Prediction: TEAM MEH WINS by a lot, just too many great matchups for TM!!!!!!!!!!!!
GOLDEN RICHARDS vs. WHITE WALKERS
STAKES: Elimination Game for WHITE WALKERS. GR moves to 2nd with a win, a DYM loss and an RC loss.
This is the Sunday Romo game. Both these teams have several great matchups. This could be the week’s highest scoring and most closely contested game.
For WW, Kenny Stills and Lev Bell are the Game Script all stars of the week. Miami will be forced to throw a ton after they’re down by 50 to the Pats, and Stills seems like Matt Moores guy. Pittsburgh could blow out GB early and just run Lev 35 times in the 2nd half. We also like Delanie Walker to score a TD against Indy. Forget Yahoo’s projected points, this is a 120+ team this week.
Golden Richards has five Green matchups left but they are not locks. Russell Wilson only threw for 198 in a low scoring affair last time Seattle met the Niners. In San Fran cant keep up the pace Russell could be a victim of game-flow here. Julio gets Tampa Bay but has still not scored 20 fantasy points in a game. TY Hilton has the green light against Tennessee but the Titans held TY to 1 catch for 19 yards in week 6.
Prediction: WHITE WALKERS WINS and enter a double elimination game next week against PHP!!!!!!!!!!!!
TRUMP NATIONAL GOFF CLUB vs. SAQUONS HEISMAN
STAKES: DYM moves to 2nd with a win and an RC loss.
After being swept by Bitchslapped, Saquons Heisman is eliminated from playoff contention. Unfortunately they will also be on the wrong side of this week’s matchup dichotomy. Matt Ryan (like Julio) has not yet scored 20 points in a game this year, and we don’t see any reason why that has to happen this week. Davante Parker will get a bunch of targets in extended garbage time, but they will come from Matt Moore, so he might not catch half of them. Sterling Shepherd’s absence has forced Amari Cooper back into the starting lineup against Denver who held him to 2 catches for 9 yards in week 4.
Meanwhile our team has the best slate of matchups we’ve seen all year. Keenan Allen did it big once again yesterday. Goff will face New Orleans without DYM Rookie of the Week Marshon Lattimore. Kareem Hunt has a get-right game at home against The Bills’ league worst Run Defense. And best of all, #SACKSONVILLE travels to Arizona to beat the shit out of the Cardinals.
Prediction: TRUMP NATIONAL GOFF CLUB WINS and I’m gonna put leftover stuffing in the waffle iron!!!!!!!!!!!!
