After a slate like we just had, sometimes the best course of action is to send its memory down the river in a blazing canoe at dusk. Good riddance to Week 4. Football fans from the East Coast snicker and thumb their noses at the Pacific time zone whenever there is a game on Euro soil that has us up before the rooster to scramble to swap out last-second inactive players along with our eggs. It’s their “retribution” for struggling to stay awake three nights a week during primetime, while some of us in sunny California can catch a post-football viewing of The Irishman.
London calls us again in Week 5, but you can bet your tea and crumpets I’ll be wiping the crusty sleep from my eyelids and pouring extra whiskey in my coffee as they kick off from the Tottenham pitch at 6:30AM. I know full well I’ll need to get a lot of stuff done around the house on Saturday to earn another uninterrupted 14-hour Sunday of wall-to-wall NFL football. The problem? I have committed to spending the whole day Saturday playing golf (for charity). Sunday’s penance will be a doozy. Here are the fantasy football storylines I will (hopefully) enjoy monitoring before my own Viking funeral.
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Et tu, Javonte?
Many fantasy managers are simply “not okay” after hearing the news of Javonte Williams‘ devastating knee injury. The budding star from North Carolina tore his ACL and LCL, a similar injury that kept Ravens RB JK Dobbins out for a whole year. The Broncos were already struggling to score points this season behind new-to-them QB Russell Wilson and already-chided head coach Nathaniel Hackett.
Melvin Gordon has been hobbled and putting the football on the ground in 2022, leaving the door wide open for former Viking special teams ace Mike Boone to earn some low-efficiency work. Denver also signed upright plodder Latavius Murray off the Saints practice squad for depth. The Broncos also succumbed to the winless Raiders on Sunday, while the Chargers and Chiefs were victorious. The air is already thinner at Mile High and the once-promising Broncos’ season is gasping on life support.
Chef Geno
It was the West Virginia legend who “surprisingly” led the assumedly-rebuilding Seahawks to a win over the unlimited rides wristbanded Broncos in Week 1. Geno Smith got written off, but “ain’t wrote them back.” After a 33.70-point performance in Detroit on Sunday, Smith is QB9 on the season. He is vastly outperforming Russell Wilson too. It remains to be seen if Geno and the upstart Seahawks can continue this improbable run, but I am officially rooting for him to succeed and for Wilson to crash and burn. Geno is genuine and humble. Russ is fake and corny. If Geno continues to also be a better fantasy option, we will have to hang that massive W in the Louvre.
Transcendent Tongan
Defensive players simply don’t get enough love from the fantasy football community. I compete in numerous leagues that roster Individual Defensive Players (IDP) and the 49ers’ second-year safety from USC has been an absolute revelation this season. Talanoa Hufanga‘s family hails from the island of Tonga. The young defensive back was an absolute game-wrecker in college, earning the Pat Tillman Defensive Player of the Year and was a Consensus All-American in 2020.
Somehow, he slipped to the fifth round in last year’s draft and was a menace on special teams as a 49ers rookie in 2021. The propitious Polynesian is now the starting strong safety on one of the league’s best defenses and has completely transformed San Francisco’s identity on that side of the ball. Hufanga already has 25 tackles and two interceptions this season, including a heady game-sealing pick-six versus the Rams on Monday night. Hufanga could be the next Troy Polamalu. He is a must-watch player already at 23 years old.
C-E-H P-U-R-E
There were very few people who still believed in Clyde Edwards-Helaire entering the 2022 season. He was a massive disappointment as a highly-touted rookie first-round pick. Last season was derailed by injury and illness. CEH was drafted as RB24 this preseason, according to FantasyPros PPR ADP. He has scored five touchdowns in four games and is currently RB4. Amazingly, the LSU standout only just eclipsed a 50% snap share for the first time in Week 4. He is still expected to share the backfield with Jerick McKinnon and Isiah Pacheco, but CEH is garnering some very valuable red zone touches.
The Chiefs are awful at WR, which means they need to feature an alternate weapon in scoring position when Travis Kelce draws a heap of coverage. So far in 2022, Edwards-Helaire has answered the call. Can we expect this insane efficiency to continue? Probably not. Can the diminutive RB earn a bigger slice of the pie to hold steady in RB1 territory? Absolutely. Andy Reid and Kansas City need him to keep eating in order to compete in this rugged division (and conference).
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