WEEK ONE IS IN THE BOOKS, FOLKS, AND WHAT A WEEK IT WAS!
Rookie RBs and WRs are HOT
All QBs are NOT
One starting QB and 3 First Round picks were BENCHED
The last pick in the Special Ed Draft (Jax D/ST) outscored ALL first rounders
Let’s break it down:
SEXY SEXY ROOKIES
The 2017 rookie class is off to an historic start, and I think it’s safe to say that ROOKIES are the #1 hottest commodity in all of fantasy football. A number of rookies entered the NFL this year with very high expectations. Fournette, Mixon, McCafferey, Hunt, Cook, Williams, Williams, Williams… Now even Kupp, Golladay and Cohen are household names after just one week of play.
It’s gotten to the point where if I’m ever talking to my wife about football and I mention that so-and-so is a rookie, she always says “Oh, so he’s really good, right?”
Rookies are soooo hot right now, and even people who are only tangentially aware of football know it. DYM has actually been following this trend for several years, but this year really looked special for the youngsters. There could be multiple top 10 players in this rookie class and they were coming at GREAT values, so in this year’s drafts Our Plan centered entirely around maximizing our exposure to those sexy sexxxy rookies.
You see, now more than ever the NFL is a young man’s game. The league has evolved in many ways that favor the young player:
More coaches are more able and willing these days to construct their schemes around players’ natural strengths
More general managers are savvy enough to draft players specifically for those prescribed roles
More teams attempt to play faster by keeping a relatively small playbook that functions out of multiple formations
League rules pertaining to pass coverage have changed as to give an advantage to faster and less physical pass-catchers
Add to this the facts that EVERY player gets hurt and ALL the owners are trying to reduce payroll, and you have a league that is ripe with opportunity for only the youngest and most athletic players.
All of these factors have seemed to have been developing over several years. But what has been the real (fantasy) impact?
Take a walk with me through Recent Special Ed Rookie History:
2012: The watershed moment for Special Ed Rookies was in 2012, when Golden Richards took home the SESB title behind a rookie QB (RGIII) and RB1 (Trent Richardson). 2012 was also the year that DYM Legend DOUG MARTIN broke the mold by gaining 1,926 scrimmage yards and 12 TDs, both career highs.
2013: The next year Le’Veon Bell and Gio Bernard exploded onto the scene with over 1,200 yards and 8 TDs apiece.
2014: In 2014 Gio was unseated by another rookie, Jeremy Hill. That year Brandin Cooks, Mike Evans and Sammy Watkins were sought after draft commodities; but it was Odell Beckham Jr. who finished in the top 10 with over 1,300 yards and 12 TDs, taking home the DYM AWARD for Best Waiver Pickup of 2014.
2015: 2015 was a slight lull in Rookie Fantasy production. But they undoubtedly impacted the league: Amari Cooper was the only stand-out WR and the team that drafted him won the first 10 games of the ’15 season. That year it also seemed that potential future stars like Melvin Gordon, Stephon Diggs and Ameer Abdullah were gaining much more visibility (and Special Ed ownership) than rookies of the past.
2016: By the 2016 draft it was quite clear that the word was out on Rookies being the hottest dudes when Zeke Elliott (STILL NOT SUSPENDED!!) was drafted 8th overall by the Polk High Panthers. Jordan Howard and Jay Ajayi also became contributors to top Special Ed teams.
… and did I mention how funny these kids’ names are these days??
2017 ROOKIE POWER RANKINGS!
1 – SHHHH. BE VEWY VEWY QUIET. KAWEEM HUNTIN WABBITS
2 – DALVIN AND THE CHIMPMUNKS
3 – BABYTRON aka KENNY GOATADAY
4 – LEONARD FOURNETTE – (hard name to type, way too many vowels)
5 – TARIK COHEN “The Ultimate Semite”
6 – COOPER “SIPPY” KUPP
7 – CHRISTIAN MCCAFFEREY
8 – COREY DAVIS
[on the radar: Kizer, Watson, Trubisky, Mixon, Jones, Williams, Williams, Williams]
btw – I was fading Fournette cause of the foot situation, but he went off on Sunday. I should have never doubted the guy who has this as his Twitter Header:
HERE’S WHY ZEKE IS NOT GONNA BE SUSPENDED THIS YEAR
I mean, the real reason is that he was set up and the whole case is BS.
But @defendyourmoves followers already know that.
The DYM Legal Department sent us this article tho, it’s a good read.
AMERICAS GAME OF THE WEEK RECAP
AGOTW PREDICTIONS RECORD: 0-1
Like I said the other day, this was a tough week to pick AMERICAS GAME OF THE WEEK. Almost every matchup was marred by late injuries or hurricane-forced rescheduling. So we went with the Elite QB matchup in what turned out to be a week where QB play was in a shambles league-wide. Would you believe ALEX SMITH was the week’s #1 QB?
Nuts.
Only 4 QBs threw for over 300 in the Sunday games and 2 of them were GOFF and WENTZ, yuck. Rodgers got his yardage for Fay but added a pick and only 1 TD for a Ryan Fitzpatrick-esque 15.32 pts.
Still this was a closely contested matchup that was not decided until early Wedsday morning.
White Walkers’ non-QBs were solid all around. Highlights include a perfectly adequate 76 yards from the 2014 Special Ed Super Bowl Champ Delanie Walker; and Tucker held it down with a couple CLUTCH FGs.
Bell was a disappointment, but not nearly as disappointing as David Johnson. The highlight for WW was the return of Marshawn Lynch to full Beast Mode status. Not a rookie but still a very sexy fantasy play.
On the other side, of course Brady was a stinker, but a monster game from Antonio Brown and big contributions from Ty Montgomery and a smooth sensual Rookie RB kept Bitchslapped afloat until the DEN defense could seal the win.
It’s survive and advance for the BS squad. Her weak link was, as predicted, was Allen Robinson. Gillislee was the correct play for Abby this week, and she’ll likely make that move next week with Robinson OUT.
It’s normally not in good taste to laugh at a guy getting injured, but we saw this on twitter last night and had a good little chuckle.
I had some things on this in mind to DYM about this but then I listened to Pardon My Take this morning and they took all my jokes! So instead of those I’ll just take this opportunity to give yall the long-awaited:
DYM’s TOP PODACASTS OF 2017
BEST SPORTS PODCAST: PARDON MY TAKE
Most of the Podcasts I listen to are sports related, so this is actually the overall #1 as well.
I assume some of yall are already Award Winning Listeners like myself (back-to-back baby!!). But if you’re NOT listening to Pardon My Take, YOU’RE FUCKING UP. I feel like PFT Commenter and Big Cat are the fathers to our style here at DYM, even though we started about 3 years earlier. They get fantastic interviews from A-List sports personalities and their shit is just hilarious. We try really hard not to steal their jokes, but ya know, fair play.
BEST MOVIE PODCAST: THE FILMDRUNK FROTCAST It’s not even about movies most of the time and the movie takes aren’t even that hot, but it’s a very funny show. The host of the show is Vince Mancini of FilmDrunk.com but the STAR is Matt Lieb (@lieb123456789 on twitter) he’s a real sicko, sort of the Jim Norton character to Vince’s Opie and Anthony.
BEST POLITICS PODCAST: THE ALEX JONES SHOW
Hahaha! Nah. That’d be crazy tho, right?
BEST LEFTY POLITICS PODCAST: POD SAVE AMERICA
The best thing Bill Simmons ever did was give these guys a show on The Ringer last year (the extant “Keepin’ It 1600”). Now they run a network of left-leaning political podcasts called Crooked Media (get it?), Pod Save America is the flagship show, and really the best politics talk out there. The hosts are all former Obama and Clinton staffers and speech writers and they’re the most insightful and best informed bunch of SJW liberal cuck-tards you’ll ever hear.
BEST HATE LISTEN: REVISIONIST HISTORY WITH MALCOLM GLADWELL It was really close between this and The Bill Simmons Podcast. Really, whenever Gladwell goes on the Simmons show that’s the #1 hate listen of the year. If you ever want to LISTEN to two dudes try to suck themselves off, then pat themselves on the back, then applaud each other’s efforts to suck themselves off and pat their own backs, find any BS Podcast with Gladwell on it. It’s a real treat.
Gladwell’s own show is awful in really special ways. MG likes to explore Big Questions, which is why people think he’s a philosopher. Problem is he’ll introduce a Big Question then pick the most inane useless nuance of that question and just talk about that. Then he NEVER goes back to the actually interesting part of the question. Like the point of the thing is just to show you how much research he did on something you don’t care about. It’s just nuance for nuance’s sake. Very fucking annoying.
BEST FANTASY FOOTBALL PODCAST: LIVING THE STREAM
JJ Zachariason and Denny Carter host a podcast dedicated SOLELY to identifying weekly options for streaming QB’s, DEF’s and occasionally TE’s. JJ’s twitter handle is @theLateRoundQB, he wrote a book by the same name espousing the virtues of waiting until the late rounds of fantasy drafts to take a QB. It’s a pretty well-known concept nowadays but that’s his brand. They are also very funny and I DO steal their jokes. (eg: JJ is a big time Kenny Golladay truther and coined the name “Babytron”)
HAVE A GREAT WEEK EVERYBODY!!
