Your Week 4 Fantasy Football Review

Week 4 of the NFL is in the books and it wasn’t one of the prettiest weekends for Fantasy purposes. You won’t see too many flashy stat lines in this article, but needless to say, there are some intriguing storylines coming out of the weekend. I don’t want to keep you guys waiting any longer, so let’s get into my Week 4 Fantasy Football review.

Five Key Storylines from Week 4

1. Chicago’s Fire Sale

I mentioned on Twitter Sunday that if you’re a Matt Forte owner, you’re going to need to pay close attention to the news over the coming days as word is coming out of Chi-Town that every player on the team is on the trading block. Since Forte is the most Fantasy relevant player at this time, he stands either the most to gain or the most to lose from a trade. Early rumblings are that the Broncos and Buccaneers would be interested in Forte’s services. Forte is 29, which in running back years is old, so I think the Bears need to be reasonable with what they expect in return. Whatever the case may be, keep an eye on this situation because I think it may come to a conclusion rather fast.

2. Welcome to the NFL, Todd Gurley!

The Rams stunned the previously unbeaten Arizona Cardinals, 24-22, on Sunday. As important as that W was for St. Louis, the progress that rookie RB Todd Gurley showed in only his second NFL game, was amazing. He had 19 carries for 146 yards against a very good Cardinals defense and proved that if (and that’s a big if) he can stay healthy, he’s going to be a force that opposing teams will have to deal with for years to come.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IarAvpLCQZc&feature=youtu.be

That’s just a small taste of what the league is in store for…

3. Dolphin Disaster
One of the saddest teams in the league right now is the Miami Dolphins. They came into the season with so much promise, but man do they suck right now. From former head coach Joe Philbin (fired as of Monday), to QB Ryan Tannehill, to RB Lamar Miller, to their soft defense, they’ve looked brutal lately. Their game against the Jets felt like a Thursday Night Football game. The Dolphins made Chris Ivory look like Marshawn Lynch and they forgot they had Rishard Matthews on their team and it was just ugly all around. Big changes are heading the Dolphins way.

The Miami Monster Mystery has been solved.

4. Andrew Luck’s Injury

We may now know what the root cause of the early season struggles by Andrew Luck are. Luck was forced to miss the first game of his career on Sunday, due to a shoulder injury. He just hasn’t looked like himself this year and the Colts are struggling as a whole. Head coach Chuck Pagano is calling the injury day-to-day. It’s a short week coming up for the Colts as they play on Thursday Night Football, so we should know more about his availability towards midweek. It doesn’t sound like it’s too serious of an injury, but the Colts need him back at 100% or this season isn’t going to turn out how they expected.

5. Pigeon Season (The Philadelphia Eagles)

The Eagles irk the hell out of me and at this point of the season and there’s only one man to blame and that’s Chip Kelly. Sure, there are a bunch of areas that need real work done to correct the issues – penalty after penalty, offensive lineman dropping like it’s hot, kickers not able to make kicks – but Chip put this team together and they have yet to play one full game of solid football. They came out sluggish again on Sunday against a division rival who are terrible, if not worse, than the Eagles. At halftime it was 13-0 bad guys. Sam Bradford finally showed signs of life in the second half, as the Eagles stormed back and took a 20-16 lead with a few minutes to go in the game. Do you think a Billy Davis led defense could hold the lead for the Eagles? Phhhhhhffffffftttttttttt. Hell no. Pierre Garcon scored the winning touchdown with about 30 seconds left in the game. It’s bad enough that Chip has essentially made all of his players useless for Fantasy, but for the love of all that is good in the world, coach your damn team to have a good game from start to finish. Rant over.

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Have You Played DraftKings or FanDuel? You’ve Been Scammed! News just broke last night that you should find interesting. You’ll want to read this.

Waiver Wire Watch (*Keep an eye on, **Time to consider it, *** MUST Grab)

Each week, I will supply you with a list of players that you should consider adding from the waiver wire. Above, I listed the three tiers of players they are. So let’s take a look at the guys that you should be paying attention to. To qualify as a Waiver Wire guy, I’ll only consider those players that are owned in less than 60% of Yahoo! leagues at the time of this writing.

**Antonio Gates (SD – TE) – 53% owned – There aren’t many great TE’s available and Gates is one of Philip Rivers targets. If you need a TE, he’s your guy.

**Thomas Rawls (SEA – RB) – 45% owned – Beastmode is dealing with a hamstring injury and we know how those injuries can linger. Rawls is a nice player to have, especially if you have some RB’s coming up on a bye week.

**Ronnie Hillman (DEN – RB) – 33% owned – He’s outplaying CJ Anderson, just keep an eye out on the Matt Forte situation. Denver could be a landing spot for him, if so, Hillman has no value.

**Ted Ginn, Jr. (CAR– WR) – 33% owned – Ginn is finding his groove in Carolina and may be able to keep this solid play up throughout the year.

***Rueben Randle (NYG – WR) – 38% owned – Victor Cruz is still injured and even when Cruz does come back, that foot injury is going to linger. Randle could be set for a big season.

Here are Week 4’s Studs:

Quarterbacks

Eli Manning (NYG) – 20/35 for 212 yards, 3 touchdowns and 1 interception – Big win for Eli and the Giants up in Buffalo. Don’t look now, but the Giants have a shot to take the NFCLeast crown.

Philip Rivers (SD) – 23/38 for 358 yards and 3 touchdowns – “There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home.” Rivers is a different player when he plays at home. He secured the 3 touchdowns that I thought he would.

Drew Brees (N.O.) – 33-41 for 359 yards and 2 touchdowns – Brees only missed 1 week due to his shoulder injury and he looked great leading the Saints to a big OT win against the Cowboys. It’s the type of win that could build up some momentum for the Saints.

https://vine.co/v/e21iau1Jipi

Running Backs

Chris Ivory (NYJ) – 29 carries, 166 yards and 1 touchdown – Ivory was a bruiser against the Dolphins and if he can stay healthy, he could prove to be one of the more dominant backs in the league going forward.

DeVonta Freeman (ATL) – 14 carries, 68 yards, 3 touchdowns – Freeman is a man on a mission as he’s taken full advantage of the Tevin Coleman injury. He now has 6 touchdowns over the last 2 weeks and the Falcons are now 4-0.

Jeremy Hill (CIN) – 9 carries, 40 yards and 3 touchdowns – There we go! Jeremy Hill’s yardage isn’t anything to go gaga about, but he found the end zone 3 times against a solid Chiefs D. More importantly, the Bengals coaching staff didn’t give up on him. I hope you didn’t bench him this week.

Wide Receivers

Jeremy Maclin (KC) – 11 receptions for 148 yards – Well what do you know? Andy Reid has now used his best receiver 2 weeks in a row and Maclin is now thriving in this offense. The Chiefs lost again, but I now have a bit more confidence that Andy Reid will find a way to get Maclin the ball more.

DeAndre Hopkins (HOU) – 9 receptions for 157 yards – Hopkins is seeing a lot of balls thrown his way this year and that means big time Fantasy production. The Texans got rocked by the Falcons, but it wasn’t because of the performance from Hopkins.

Allen Hurns (JAX) – 11 receptions for 116 yards and 1 touchdown – Hurns was a sleeper for some coming into the year and there’s no reason that he can’t see similar production to this down the stretch.

Tight Ends

Martellus Bennett (CHI) – 11 receptions for 83 yards and 1 touchdown – The Bears finally got in the win column as Jay Cutler returned to the lineup. Bennett is Cutler’s favorite targets, so expect Bennett to get plenty of opportunities to put up solid Fantasy points, as long as he’s one of the players on the Bears that isn’t traded.

Charles Clay (BUF) – 9 receptions for 111 yards – This is the type of performance that the Bills were hoping for when they signed him in the offseason. He didn’t find the end zone, but he did prove that he could be quite valuable to this team if used properly.

Coby Fleener (IND) – 9 receptions for 83 yards and 1 touchdown – I damn near had a heart attack when I saw this performance by Fleener. Still, this man will never find his way on my roster in any league.

Defense

Green Bay (vs SF) – Only gave up 3 points to the Niners. This could probably be more attributed to the fact that Colin Kaepernick runs an anemic offense in San Francisco, but the Pack forced 6 sacks and had 1 interception and the 49ers couldn’t get anything going. It’s going to be a long season Niners fans, so hopefully you guys can learn how to behave properly and not continue to get into fights like animals at your stadium every week. But that behavior only happens in Philly, right?

Kickers

Cairo Santos (KC) – 7/7 FG’s for 27 Fantasy points – Santos had more Fantasy points than most players on Sunday, including Aaron Rodgers. Let that marinate in your brain for a second.

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Here are Week 4’s Duds: