Burning Questions

Jeff Miller

burning

Saving Private Ryan has fewer injuries than the 2015 NFL season. With Mark Ingram and Robert Quinn joining approximately 1139 others on injured reserve, it’s gotten so bad that things named Draughn, Buck, Charcandrick and Kamar actually matter in fantasy. If the first 13 weeks were a movie, they’d be Waterworld plus Battlefield Earth times 100 except worse. Lindsey Lohan’s career is less messy (but probably involves more pain killers).

As my therapist has said to me every week for six years now, dwelling on the negative won’t change anything. So while it feels good to complain to Twitter or your friends on Voxer, as I may have done numerous times since Ingram went down, maybe it is time for the first ever love and happiness Burning Questions?

This may feel like wearing two left shoes, but I guess I’ll give it a try.

Marshawn Lynch being hurt is a bummer, but this Thomas Rawls guy is pretty awesome, right?

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Player A: 179 attempts, 849 yards, 4.7 YPC, 34 receptions, 324 yards, 10 total TD

Player B: 141 attempts, 786 yards, 5.6 YPC, 9 receptions 76 yards, 5 total TD

Player B is our boy Rawls. Player A is 2014 C.J. Anderson.

Just because these guys are the same size and have similar games (although Rawls is a bit faster) doesn’t mean they are the same player. Not every unheralded running back to break out half way through a season ends up struggling in subsequent campaigns. But there are reasons for concern.

Maybe Marshawn is back or maybe Seattle opens up the offense. Rawls could pull a C.J. and get dinged up. Perhaps he mimics C.J. in a different way, catching lightening in a bottle this year only to show he isn’t quite as good as we thought. At the very least, Rawls poor draft pedigree offers him little protection in the event Seattle adds another running back this summer.

Right now, the Seattle rookie RB seems to still be fairly reasonably priced, but that could change very quickly if he continues to run well, or Lynch, who’s averaged a Seahawks-career low 3.8 YPC, continues to struggle upon his return.

If you think my Anderson comparison is bunk, buy now. Me? I’ll probably pass, even if it means I miss out on a relatively reasonably priced future RB1.

Wait a second. I thought you said this was a positive Burning Questions? It seems like you just spend five paragraphs poo-pooing a player. What gives?

Considering the first draft of the answer had me organizing a mob to burn down the entire city of Seattle, I’d say that was a pretty heartwarming response

What players did you hit on this year and how do you feel about them going forward?

I am in 12 leagues. Three of them are salary cap, four are two-QB or super flex, one has ten teams, one 14, one 16, and the rest 12. Across all those rosters, my five most owned players are Allen Robinson and Brian Quick (seven times owned each), Mark Ingram (six), and Tyler Eifert and Keenan Allen (four). I also own DeAndre Hopkins, T.J. Yeldon, and Marvin Jones three times apiece. Let’s run through them one-by-one.

robinsonRobinson – I was initially very much on the fence with ARob, but as the 2014 draft season approached, I began to warm. That turned into a full, frothy fervor this past summer, leading to me stashing the current WR6 on nearly 60% of my teams.

Robinson only statistical albatross sees him rank 23rd among the top-25 fantasy receivers in catch percentage (ahead of only Mike Evans and T.Y. Hilton). The inefficiency can be traced largely to the erratic QB Blake Bortles and the Jags’ willingness to throw the ball to Robinson in contested situations. As Robinson gains experience, I’d expect him to be more efficient on the whole, leading to even better production.

As my WR7, ARob has moved all the way to the bottom of my top WR tier. I love him like I love bacon, which is a lot.

Quick – If you’ve read anything I’ve written in the last nine months, you know I am heavily invested in Quick. So far that hasn’t exactly paid off, but because I paid almost nothing to acquire him, I’m mostly OK with it.

I still feel strongly Quick can be a fantasy asset. Odds are good he won’t be back in St. Louis next year, giving him a chance to land somewhere he will be used. And if not, that’s fine too, as I have almost no capital invested.

Ingram – Here is another guy I didn’t pay a ton for. But unlike Mr. Quick, I got plenty out of what I did spend.

Ingram is exactly what I thought he was, a steady, unspectacular producer who reached 14.8 points in nine of 12 games this year (and 9.4, 12.8, and 13.4 in the ones he didn’t).

With Ingram displaying passing game chops, he is locked into a major three-down role with the Saints in 2016 and beyond. In a positional landscape littered with older players and uncertainty, that is enough for me to make him a top-five dynasty RB.

Eifert – The TDs have been a very pleasant surprise, but even if we remove them, Eifert has been a very good player this season. The question is whether that high level of on-field performance will translate in future seasons where he doesn’t lead the league in TDs? I reckon so, and have made him my TE3 (in a virtual tie with Travis Kelce) as a result.

Allen – Of all the players on this list, Allen is the one I felt strongest about coming into the season. I have been pretty bullish all along on his return to form, a stubbornness that paid off. Well, until he got hurt.

Nothing happened in 2015 to dissuade me from my love for Allen. He currently sits 13th among WRs in my rankings, but could just as easily be in the top-10.

As for the other three names I, uh, named, everybody has good reason to love Nuk, and they do, Yeldon is an ascending RB1 and I covered Jones last week. All-in-all, I’ve had a pretty good season when it comes to players in which I am heavily vested.

With the positive vibe this week, do you feel better?

Let’s just say I haven’t taken Michael Jackson’s doctor off speed dial quite yet.

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jeff miller