Zack’s Thursday Night Fantasy…Football

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I don’t think I could think of a creepier way to say, “Fantasy Football Analysis of Tonight’s Giants at Redskins Game,” but maybe it got your attention!

Anyway, sorry I haven’t been able to do The AmeriMan Life podcast regarding weekly recaps and looking forward to the next weekend’s games, but I’ve been swamped with stuff and just trying to catch up. I just wanted to give a quick take on

On to tonight’s game…

There are a few reasons I won’t touch this game from a betting perspective:

I really don’t know who these teams are yet and definitely not enough to know how they’re going to play on a shortened week. I love the way the Giants played last week against a tough Houston defense, but I’m scared away by the Little Giants that showed up against Detroit and Arizona, then again they’ve played three playoff caliber teams in three weeks and the Redskins could be just the slouch they need to get to .500?

With the line all the way down to Washington -3.5, I’m not comfortable with it, but I might have been if it stayed around -6 as I do think this will be a close game.

I think Kirk Cousins is a top-10 quarterback until he shows us otherwise. I’ve been lucky enough to get him in both of my 2-QB leagues and he stepped in for Big Ben last week, to lead my team to victory during a week where Peyton Manning and Montee Ball were facing the best defense in football, while Dennis Pitta re-injured his hip to put himself out for the season and out of the game with about 4 fantasy points.

He’s so good, that in a 2-QB, PPR league where I have Drew Brees and Andrew Luck, I’m hesitant to trade him for Ryan Tannehill and Josh Gordon even though I know I’m going to need WR help later in the year and I (hopefully) won’t need Cousins other than bye weeks. I’m just nervous to trade away someone who could be a top-QB like Nick Foles was last year, for the arguably best WR in the NFL, but who has to sit out until late November.

I’m just not sure where to rank Cousins from a value standpoint yet, but I like the way Evan Silva from Rotoworld describes him, he’s like Andy Dalton, but a little bit more athletic. If he can be a better version of Andy Dalton with Desean Jackson, Pierre Garcon and whoever their athletic TE for the week is.

In terms of the other players on the Redskins, I really like what we saw out of Desean Jackson and Pierre Garcon last week and I think that makes them must-starts this week and for the foreseeable future, especially in PPR formats.

Alfred Morris…you just don’t realize how frustrating he is until you have him. I was helping my girlfriend draft and when Morris dropped to the 5th round, I said, he’s too much value here to pass up. While he’s the 10th highest rated RB in her half-point PPR league, he’s a very frustrating player to have if he fails to score a touchdown.

Like I said, thankfully it’s a half-point PPR league as it limits the points that other running backs get, but when he has a good game for his role, when he does his job running for 77 yards on 23 carries with no catches, he only gets 7 fantasy points, while Darren Sproles getting 6 catches for 77 yards nets him three more points in this format. Definitely something to remember moving forward. Outside of that issue, I think that if you drafted him, then you’ve gotta start him as Alfred Morris is better than Alfred Blue, so he’ll be fine going up against the Giants defense that gives up the 14th most fantasy points to running backs. Also, Morris gets too many goal line touches to leave on your bench.

On the Giants side, I think that you can’t start Eli Manning, if he’s available and your starter has a bye, he’s a good bye week fix, but you don’t want him being your every week guy.

I think Victor Cruz played his way back into must-start territory. If you drafted him, then Week 3 is exactly what you were expecting from him, so you have to be happy he got out of his funk and back in the gameplan. With Jerrel Jernigan out for the year, he, Randle and Donnell are going to get most of the targets that went his way in the first two weeks.

After Jennings’ performance last week, he’s played himself into RB1 status, but the Redskins have a very tough run defense, so if you have someone with a better match-up like Lamar Miller at Oakland or Pierre Thomas at Dallas, then you might want to roll with one of those two, especially because it’s a short week.

To finish this off, let me reiterate, I’m very iffy regarding Thursday Night games because of the short week. Every team is different, some of it’s riding on momentum and you might want to take the Giants because of how they played last week, but, then again, the Redskins got a moral victory going toe-to-toe with a Super Bowl contender and they’re at home.

If I had to pick someone, I would take the Giants with a score like 31-27 as I think they’re passing offense will come together to take advantage of a depleted Redskins secondary who just lost their leader DeAngelo Hall.

I do hope you gained some insight into my fantasy advice for this game, but I’ve gotta get going. I’m going to pay my respects to a role model who helped show me the right way to play the game, Derek Jeter. To close this one out, hit it Frank!

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Contact me @ZackMooreNFL if you want to comment on this article or want to share your thoughts for this weekend’s slate of games!

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