Big Blue View
Rides, fades, and sleepers to help you set your weekly lineups
Welcome to Week 11! Week 10 started with a bang on Thursday night, as the Ravens and Bengals got into an all-out air war for the second time this season. Thursday games are often dull affairs, but this one was plenty of fun. Lots of fantasy matchups were decided right then and there, if any of Lamar Jackson, Joe Burrow, or Ja’Marr Chase was involved.
The Ravens and Bengals are done playing each other this season, barring a third meeting in the playoffs. Meanwhile, neither of them has played the Steelers yet. In fact, we’re ten weeks in and Pittsburgh somehow hasn’t played a single division game. Neither have the Bears, whose brutal upcoming schedule is not what the doctor ordered for a team in free-fall. Each of the Falcons and Saints, on the other hand, have played five of their six division games already and don’t play a division opponent for the rest of this calendar year. In other bizarre scheduling news, four teams have Byes this week, followed by six in Week 12, then zero on Thanksgiving week, and then six again the following week (Week 14, which for many fantasy leagues is the final week of the regular season). Oh, and there’s a game on Black Friday and two games on Christmas Day, which is a Wednesday. NFL, make it all make sense!
Speaking of making it make sense, Joe Burrow threw five TD passes on Thursday night and his team lost, while Jared Goff threw five interceptions on Sunday night and his team won. And with that…
Stats of the Week:
The Chiefs have won 15 straight games, including playoffs. I’ll keep running this stat until they lose.
The Chiefs have won nine straight games when they’ve fallen behind by seven or more points (including playoffs), an NFL record.
The Chiefs are underdogs (+1.5) at Buffalo this week. With Patrick Mahomes starting at QB, Kansas City is 12-1-1 against the spread as an underdog.
Travis Kelce has 32 receptions in his last three games, the second most ever by a tight end in a three-game span (Jason Witten, 33, 2012).
The Titans currently rank first in total defense (273.6 yards per game), and 29th in scoring defense (26.7 points per game). Again, someone make it make sense.
Jared Goff’s five-interception debacle came on the heels of three straight games where he threw just four (or fewer) incompletions. Nothing makes sense any more.
Teams that score zero TDs and commit at least three turnovers were 0-147 since 2010, until the Vikings’ 12-7 win at Jacksonville on Sunday.
The Cardinals had 28 first downs on just 57 plays, and faced third down only seven times, against the Jets’ “good” defense.
Ja’Marr Chase leads the NFL in each of the “Triple Crown” categories of catches, yards, and receiving TDs. He also has three of the seven 50+ point fantasy games (Full PPR) in modern NFL history. I could...
