Weekly Twitter Observations

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.

Quote of the Week

This felt extremely accurate from Allen and I would assume if you think back on prior years you will remember how crazy they all have been. I have said it before, but I believe the unpredictability of the NFL and fantasy football is what makes the game so much fun to watch and play. Chase Stuart highlighted this point tweeting,


I applaud anyone’s NFL expertise if you had even the slightest idea either of these players would make an impact in 2014 let alone know their names prior to your drafts.

CJ Anderson, RB DEN

Speaking of the Broncos CJ Anderson, he has been pretty good. Adam Levitan highlighted how important he likely was to owners who acquired his services midseason and likely rode him to fantasy championships.

His fantasy success also came from leading NFL rushers in yards and carries as Chase Stuart showed,


If it were not for injuries to Montee Ball and Ronnie Hillman, we may have never seen how good a running back CJ could have been. The interesting question for the offseason and 2015 is where to rank Anderson. He still has two years on his contract with the Broncos, but both Ball and Hillman are signed for cheap deals as well. One would assume Anderson will be the starter next season and he clearly displays elite value when provided the opportunity. Things change quickly though and if you can sell Anderson as a top ten dynasty running back today I would be moving him. Anything less of that and you could be feeling buyer’s remorse.

Russell Wilson, QB SEA

The Seahawks quarterback had himself a phenomenal fantasy season out producing the likes of Peyton Manning and Drew Brees. As Rich Hribar noted, the majority of Russell Wilson’s points did not come from being a traditional quarterback.


Many in the fantasy community in both redraft and dynasty formats have only the highest grades for Wilson moving forward. Unfortunately looking at Wilson’s career stats and also seeing Rich’s tweets I am not as optimistic Wilson can be a standard top five fantasy signal caller for years to come. This season, Russell was able to throw the pigskin 45 more times but only increased his passing production by 118 yards from 2013. As Rich showed, it was the reliance on the running game that thrust him into the top tier of quarterbacks. Wilson rushed for 335 more yards this season than what he averaged the first two years in the league. He also had six rushing scores compared to just one in 2013. Remove two rushing touchdowns and even 200 yards from his totals and he would fall in as the number QB6 just ahead of Matt Ryan. We have seen that running quarterbacks have not been able to continue their stats as defenses and injuries have stacked up against them. Russell Wilson has shown to be a solid passer with a 63% career completion percentage, but the offense he is in does not call for him to win games with his arms. Looking ahead, I worry the passing stats will not be enough to offset regressions in the running game leaving us with a quarterback who will more likely finish amongst the seventh to tenth best fantasy quarterbacks each season rather than a perennial top five.

Randall Cobb, WR GB

Full disclosure, Randall Cobb is one of my favorite receivers today along with Antonio Brown. After Cobb capped a fantastic season with another two touchdown performance it appeared as though others in the fantasy community shared my sentiments as well.

Randall will only be 25 years old next season and I fully expect the Packers to lock him up long term particularly when Aaron Rodgers believes the receiver should remain with the team. Cobb will have the luxury of an elite quarterback continuing to throw passes his way unlike the aforementioned Mike Evans. He also has proven himself as a playmaker and reliable weekly option. Currently I have him ranked as the number six overall receiver in dynasty.

Marc Trestman, Former Head Coach of the Chicago Bears

On Black Monday, the Chicago Bears parted ways with Marc Trestman after only two seasons. Whether this was fair or not is beside the point. While he may not jump right back into a head coaching spot, it is very likely he will find a position as an offensive coordinator. The fantasy community will be watching closely as you can see from tweets by Denny Carter and Adam Pfeifer,


Schemes and situations are normally just as important as an NFL players skills and abilities and tracking coaching changes will be important when evaluating players next season. Trestman was able to turn Josh McCown into a top weekly option and even breathed a little life into Jimmy Clausen, so stay tuned and get ready for fantasy values to jump wherever he lands.

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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