Burning Questions

Jeff Miller

burning


Editors Note: Just because a deadline is classified as “Thursday,” (and days shouldn’t really go inside quotes) that doesn’t mean you should send it in at 11:21 PM and make the editor stay up late.

My deadline for Burning Questions is, “Thursday.” Since our fearless editor, Ken Kelly, is a fellow West Coast resident, that means I don’t really have to start writing until after Thursday Night Football, which isn’t unreasonable considering it usually takes me about 90 minutes to pound this baby out. Well, it shouldn’t be unreasonable, but myriad interruptions (two minutes four times to refresh my whiskey, nine minutes of my wife interrupting, 45 minutes on Twitter, 15 minutes of staring off into space, seven minutes eating gummy worms) seem to always make things tighter than I’d care for.

What all this means is, I am usually scrambling to finish Burning Questions by the deadline. But what if I wasn’t that way? What if I started during actual daylight hours? What if I didn’t watch TV, take a nap and play with the dogs when I should be writing? What if I had a time machine, used it to go back to 10am so I could write this morning instead of putting it off/not using the time machine to silence Baby Hitler?

All these “what ifs” gave me an idea: build a time machine. When that didn’t work (I could not get the worm hole to open no matter what I did), I had another idea: play my Nintendo 3DS XL. An hour later, it finally struck me: Burning Questions: The What If Edition.

What if Tom Brady really played another 10 years?

[am4show have=’g1;’ guest_error=’sub_message’ user_error=’sub_message’ ]

This week in a quote published by NJ.com, Brady replied to a question asking how much longer he plans to play by saying, “Maybe 10 more years.” This statement doubled down on a private email that was exposed in the Deflategate investigation where our intrepid quarterback told a friend he has another seven or eight years left in his career.

[inlinead]I already have Brady at eight in my QB rankings, the second highest among the nine of us who rank players. When I put the Pats’ great where I did, it assumed we had maybe three more years of this if things didn’t break bad. Since my feeling is Brady wouldn’t stick around if he wasn’t still at least mostly Brady, any length his career gets extended would be a very big deal. Heck, if we could be gifted even a couple more seasons than the three I projected, I would move Brady past Drew Brees and Ben Roethlisberger at the very least.

So what if he made it another decade? For me, it would be impossible not to put him in the top five.

Our more realistic window in mind, at the very least Brady is a player you can probably get cheaper than you should and will probably be better than we all think for longer than we could have imagined.

What if Radiohead wasn’t terrible?

Some scenarios are so unrealistic the human mind isn’t capable of considering them.

That’s right, Dynasty Aftermath readers, I am doubling down on my hate.

What if Arian Foster could stay healthy?

At the very least we would be looking at a Hall of Fame type player.

If we extrapolated out Foster’s career per game numbers since he became the starter in 2010 and then kick in one more productive season, you would be looking at a 15,000 total yard, 110 touchdown career. Of course, this assumes Foster never missed a game and all that, but it really does give us a sense of how great of a player he is.

From a fantasy perspective, the oft-injured star’s career 22 ppg average is a top-two figure annually. If Foster didn’t have the injury issues, Adrian Peterson may not have gone down as the greatest fantasy running back of the outgoing generation, which is a somewhat mind boggling thing to consider.

If you are a Foster owner and are desperate for running back help, I would understand moving him now. But if it is at all possible, I’m holding until he is close to returning. As with Jordy Nelson this fall, Foster’s value is at its lowest point and will be for the next eight or ten months. With that in mind, do your best to stash him until you can get a relatively solid return.

What if Russell Wilson isn’t a great quarterback?

There has long been a vocal minority who reject the notion of Wilson as a elite fantasy quarterback. A run through his numbers suggest they may have something. Aside from last year, where he ran for more yards than all but 16 running backs, Wilson has been a steady back-end QB1 type player. While owners, including yours truly, have bemoaned his poorer-than-last-year 2015, the former Wisconsin Badger is posting per game output completely in-line with his 2012-2013 seasons.

The problem is, we want improvement. And when we got it last season, we wanted it again this year. What we received instead was something less. Sort of. Despite the regression in terms of pure scoring output, there are a few encouraging signs:

  • At 69.6%, this is Wilson’s highest ever completion percentage, besting his career average by some 6%.
  • Wilson’s 2015 yards per attempt (YPA) is .2 better than his career mark and nearly half a yard ahead of last season.
  • His 238 yards passing per game is by far a career high.

Aside from the low touchdown total and not-great five interceptions, Wilson’s passing numbers are trending in the right direction. As we know, touchdowns are fickle, so I’m willing to overlook the fact he has only eight total scores on the season, well behind the pace needed to match the 26 or more he’s tallied every other year.

Still, there are reasons for concern. The five picks stand out as an issue, as does his proclivity for taking sacks (Wilson has gone down a league high 31 times, or nearly 4.5 per game). Much of the sack problem is offensive line related, but Wilson has always had a tendency to hang on to the ball too long at times.

When I take all of this and how I expect the Seahawks to trend in general into consideration, I don’t expect greatness, but feel comfortable saying Wilson will finish this season, and his career, better than he’s been the last seven games.

What if you missed your deadline?

I don’t think it would be hyperbole to suggest DLF would go out of business. The site needs me. The people need me. But most importantly, Radiohead is awful.

Editor’s Note: I LOVE Radiohead and Jeff Miller constantly avoids me when I visit his hometown,

[/am4show]

jeff miller