Twitter Reactions: Week Eleven

Luke Wetta

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Each week I will be walking through the Twitterverse extracting some of the best commentary from trusted fantasy football minds. Twitter can be overwhelming with the amount of information that streams live, but it also proves to be one of the fastest and easiest ways to communicate. In 140 characters or less, you can learn something about a player you may have never thought of from trends, stats or analysis.

Tweet of the Week

After an absolutely crazy and somewhat maddening week in the NFL and the world of fantasy we live in, this tweet had me rolling

Jonas Gray, NE RB

38 attempts for 199 yards and four touchdowns. No one truly saw the week Jonas Gray had coming. After averaging 4.1 yards per tote on 14.5 carries per game the previous two weeks, most were expecting decent returns against a soft Colts defense, but nothing close to what we witnessed. I did send a shout out to the best intel I saw on Gray this week, but only this helped me add Gray where I could and he did not play on any of my rosters.

Mike Clay of Pro Football Focus offered some interesting stats on Gray from the week tweeting,


Moving forward you would expect Gray to continue to shoulder closer to 20 attempts per game for the Patriots, but Bill Belichick has also shown a propensity to work within situations and game flow, which can essentially faze out a player any given week. While showing strength and running between the tackles, the one downside to Jonas’ game is that he not involved in the passing game, a role Shane Vereen continues to excel in. Looking ahead to the rest of the season, John provided some schedule analysis stating,

No matter what, Gray should be owned across all formats and despite a tougher schedule will still have weekly appeal in a high scoring offense. If you have not used all your FAAB, Gray is a player you should look to unload the majority of your stack on. Looking to next season Gray is a restricted free agent and I would assume the team will look to retain his services. Stevan Ridley on the other hand is an unrestricted free agent and after ACL & MCL injuries, it would appear less likely he will be around to muddy the New England backfield. The problem is you can rarely count on a New England runningback and there is almost always someone waiting in the wings (just ask Jonas). If you can cash in top value for more dependable fantasy assets, namely the rookie receivers, I would be selling.

Michael Floyd, WR ARI

[inlinead]I spoke about Michael Floyd last week in this same article, so I won’t go into too much detail. Coming into last week I said I would not have faulted anyone from simply dropping in redraft, but still considered him a very buy low opportunity in dynasty. While you are now likely forced to hold in redrafts, particularly with news on Larry Fitzgerald’s MCL sprain, you cannot feel great about starting him. My main takeaway was that Floyd caught only two of his five targets, granted they both ended up for scores. He saw only one target in the second half and while Drew Stanton’s day did not look too bad in the box score, after the first two drives resulted in touchdowns, the remaining drives looked like this: INT, Punt, INT, Punt, Punt, Punt, Punt. Floyd can be a weekly contributor for fantasy teams in the near future, I am just not banking on it this year. I also have to give some credit to DLF’s Karl Safchick for most accurately capturing the week 11 sentiments of many,

Travis Kelce, TE KC

All season long fantasy analysts and fans alike have been calling for Andy Reid and the Chiefs to unleash Travis Kelce. From the countless comparisons thrown about, one would assume Kelce is a mixture of Randy Moss, JJ Watt, Barry Sanders and, of course, Rob Gronkowski. Maybe everyone is correct and the pure talent and ability that Travis displays is unlike any other player to ever step on an NFL field. Unfortunately, fantasy football and the NFL are not dictated by guys like me sitting behind their laptops. They are run by coaches like Reid, who run their teams not to appease the stat-craving fans of imaginary teams, but to win football games. Despite a seemingly perfect setup for Kelce to shine in week 11, it was more of the same as Adam Levitan remarked,

As Pat Thorman points out as well, Kelce actually dominated the Chiefs targets, there just were not many to go around.


At this rate, you are likely starting Kelce because the options at tight end this year are not great and you are simply hoping for one huge player preferably ending in the end zone. Travis still has two more years with the Chiefs and I would be hard pressed to expect anything to change in regards to his weekly production any time soon.

Mike Evans, WR TB

The 2014 rookie wide receiver class was highly touted coming into the season and they have even exceeded those expectations. Sammy Watkins was the clear front runner for the group, but Tampa Bay’s Evans was often ranked closely behind. Now through week 11, Evans might be running away with the top honors as Pat Yasinskas shared,

Whenever a player’s stats are being compared to Randy Moss, you can be sure they are performing at a high level. Over the last three games, Evans has been outperforming his Pro Bowl running mate, Vincent Jackson, and it is not even close. Despite seeing the same number of targets over that span, Mike Evans has four more catches for 254 more yards and five touchdowns to zero. Cian Fahey weighed in with a good point regarding the young wide out tweeting,


All of Mike Evans’ recent success too has come despite changes at the quarterback position and a team that is struggling offensively. So of course Ryan McDowell asks a question most dynasty owners are asking,

This is still a stretch as you definitely want a larger sample size of consistency out of your elite dynasty players, but Evans is making a case for the top ten. He has to be the front runner for Offensive Rookie of the Year honors and he is anywhere between 3 to 8 years younger than the other receivers listed ahead of him in dynasty terms. If you are an owner I would be holding firm with an asset that can be the cornerstone of your team for years to come. If you are a buyer, get ready to offer a substantial amount as his price is only going up.

Tre Mason, RB STL

St. Louis has been one of the most frustrating backfields for fantasy owners this season. But the early season carousel of running back options appears to finally settled on a “workhorse” as John Paulsen and Adam Levitan shared,

Tre Mason has only continued to excel as he claims the feature role and his week 11 performance came against a top defense as Nick Mensio pointed out,


Zac Stacy is nothing more than an afterthought at this point while Benny Cunningham is mainly used to give Mason a breather. If Mason can continue to perform the remainder of the season, he will hopefully provide some long-term stability in a very unstable position.

The Week That Was

Despite countless metrics, analyses and theorems, fantasy football is unpredictable and random. Even with sound reasoning, trends and data points galore, the NFL can produce outcomes that no one, not even Vegas, could see coming. Below are just a few comments from a week that left many wondering, “What just happened?”

This advice from Rich is actually one I try and implement during drafts and throughout the season. The more you can avoid owning fantasy players on poor to downright horrible offensive teams, the better off you likely are in the long run.


Alfred Morris has never been a fantasy asset when it comes to the passing game, whereas Pierre Garcon came into the season a volume receiver who flourished with numerous targets and catches per game. Sometimes you just can’t explain how a game unfolds.

Is Andy Dalton a better quarterback than Drew Brees? Of course not, but in football any outcome is attainable on any given Sunday.


The sooner you accept this premise, the easier it will be to deal with the weekly highs and lows of fantasy football.

Special call out to Pro Football Focus’ Premium Stats for providing a great tool to pull some of the data and information in this article.

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