Big Blue View
Welcome to Week 15, and the Fantasy Football Playoffs!
The NFL’s Week 14 slate was loaded with pivotal games, and it delivered the goods. Fans got a little bit of everything: Snow games, unheralded rookie QBs stepping up, inexplicable coaching decisions, a player turning the ball over twice on the same play for the first time in NFL history, circus catches, refereeing controversies, monster kicking performances, and much more. It’s fitting that the week ended with an overtime game (albeit, a really ugly one), and that the overtime game ended with a team driving for the win and turning it over near the goal line.
The NFL continues to entertain us week in and week out, and remains very close to undefeated. I for one am going to be very sad when there are no more games to watch this season.
But that’s then, and this is now, and you’ve got a playoff bracket to win. Whether that’s a ‘Chip, or a Toilet Bowl tourney to see who must get some sort of embarrassing tattoo or eat something terrible, read on for this week’s solid gold fantasy advice.
Stats of the Week:
The 10 points that the Chiefs scored against the Texans on Sunday night is their lowest output at home in any game started by Patrick Mahomes (which covers eight seasons).
One week after being skunked 26-0 at Seattle, the Vikings pitched a shutout of their own, blanking the Commanders at home, 31-0. The last team to pull off this rare feat was the 1992 Broncos.
In his first 12 games of the season, Jalen Hurts threw just two interceptions. He threw four against the Chargers on Monday night, and on one play he threw a pick AND lost a fumble. For those who needed a big game, or even just anything but a meltdown from the reigning Super Bowl MVP to make the fantasy playoffs, Monday night’s debacle was a really rough watch.
Since OT Lane Johnson’s rookie season (2013), the Eagles are 120-62-1 (66% wins) in the games in which he has played, and 15-27 (36% wins) in the games he has missed.
The Lions have not lost back-to-back regular season games in more than three years (it last happened in October, 2022).
Brandon Aubrey is the first kicker to hit three field goals of 55+ yards in a single game.
Cameron “Dicker the kicker” was a perfect 5-for-5 on Field Goals Monday night and provided what turned out to be the winning points in OT against the Eagles. Dicker is the most accurate kicker in NFL history (minimum 100 attempts) at 94%, and only he and #2 Aubrey are above 90% for their careers. Irony of ironies: The Eagles cut Dicker in 2022 when Jake Elliott returned from injury. Elliott was 4-for-5 on Monday night, in a game Philly lost by three points.
The PIT@BAL game featured the NFL’s two longest-tenured coaches, and it was the 39th time...
