Andy Dalton has been putting up very good points this year (averaging 27.08 a week) for reasonable prices. Do you see Dalton continuing to be a long term alternative to the very expensive top end guys like Aaron Rodgers and Tom Brady? What do you see as a potential reason why his price is so far behind Rodgers/Brady as well as guys like Andrew Luck and Peyton Manning, both of whom he’s outscoring regularly?
Maurile Tremblay: Dalton is priced in the right range, I think. Andrew Luck and Peyton Manning shouldn't have higher salaries than him, but Cam Newton and Eli Manning probably shouldn't have lower salaries than him. Pricing isn't perfectly efficient, which is what makes it possible for good players to have an edge over lesser players. There are better deals and worse deals. I react to this situation by putting Dalton in significantly more of my lineups than Andrew Luck or Peyton Manning, but in fewer of my lineups than Cam Newton or Eli Manning.
James Brimacombe: The nice thing about Andy Dalton is that he is always under owned as he doesn't have the big name as the Brady, Luck, Rodgers or Manning. I am not sure why he is always underpriced but from the outside looking in you almost always have to cringe a little when you put him on your roster and remember all the times he has just had a dud in the past. As long as the Bengals are winning and the star players around him are healthy you have to feel safe rostering Dalton as the Bengals have done a great job of game planning for his skill set so far in 2015.
Andrew Garda: To James’ point, I think the stink of playoff failure bleeds into how everyone sees Dalton, even in fantasy. Also, AJ Green hasn’t quite performed how people expected – or at least in relation to the red-hot start of guys like Julio Jones (who has cooled recently), Odell Beckham Jr(currently hurt and not practicing) and Larry Fitzgerald.
I like this offense a lot against Buffalo though, and I think he’s worth consistently leaning on, especially at the prices he continues to be rated at. As James said, as long as the supporting cast is healthy, he’s worth a start.
Alex Miglio: Why is Andy Dalton's price so far behind? Because Bad Andy Dalton still lurks. Whether or not he will make an appearance, though, is an entirely different question. If there was any time where we would have seen that, it would have been down big against the Seattle Seahawks last week. It didn't happen, a sign Bad Andy Dalton might have been banished forever. He has another tough matchup against the Bills this week -- this time on the road -- hence his price. I definitely have him in a GPP or two.
Many owners are riding the wave that is Devonta Freeman or Dion Lewis. Freeman has seen his price rise dramatically ($8300) while Lewis is still reasonable ($5900). Do you feel hesitant to continue riding them either because of price, situation or something else?
MT: My projection for a player is basically his projected workload multiplied by his projected efficiency. Devonta Freeman has been off the charts in both workload and efficiency over the last three weeks, and I don't see a good reason to expect anything different in the near future. Dion Lewis is another story. Over the last two games, Dion Lewis got 45% and 57% of the touches in the Patriots' backfield. That's perfectly good, but it doesn't compare to the 97%, 49%, and 90% that Freeman got in Weeks 3, 4, and 5. (He lost touches to Terron Ward in Week 4 only because he'd already scored so many touchdowns that the game was a blowout.)
That said, I still like both of these backs quite a bit at their current FantasyScore prices. I'm not as high on Lewis as many others are, but he'll still be in plenty of my lineups due to his sub-$6,000 salary.
JB: I just saw that Dion Lewis is 40%+ owned on FantasyScore this week and that alone makes me want to fade him a little in GPP games. Sure the price is great at $5,900 when you compare him to Freeman at $8,300 but Freeman also comes with much more upside. Lewis seems to have a very high floor and he is becoming the type of player that you know what you are going to get from him before the game even begins.
AG: As we saw Thursday night, even Freeman (for as well as he has been playing) isn’t immune from a benching. Tevin Coleman is lurking and that concerns me, unless Coleman continues to cough up the ball. We might be hitting the tail end of playing Freeman confidently, though it’s hard not to keep riding the wave.
Lewis is useful as long as Tom Brady throws him the ball. He’s been doing it consistently so far, though one week he tosses it towards Lewis 11 times and another, just 5. So that is a bit of a concern when the value is largely based on receiving yards.
I’ll play him in a game like this weekend’s against Indianapolis (assuming he’s healthy), but in his case I’m getting a bit skittish and might be looking elsewhere soon.
AM: Well, we saw Devonta Freeman go nuts yet again, proving it's dangerous to fade chalk plays with unencumbered playing time. It does feel like the other shoe is going to drop with Lewis any day, but I think that is just PTSD from Bill Belichick's capricious past. Lewis looks very much the part of the main man in New England as long as he can stay healthy, and his pass-catching upside means he is an every-down back.
What’s your read on Antonio Gates for this weekend? He’s facing a solid defense in Green Bay and they have to be planning for him after his two-touchdown performance against Pittsburgh. What are you expecting from him and how confident are you in playing him?
MT: Steve Johnson will probably be out another week, so I'd expect Antonio Gates and Keenan Allen to be head-and-shoulders above the rest of the receivers in terms of downfield targets (not including dump-offs to the running backs). I plant to have Gates in a lot of my FantasyScore lineups this week. He's the same price as Gary Barnidge. I like Barnidge, but come on, he's no Antonio Gates.
JB: Philip Rivers loves this guy and is going to love him anytime he is on the field in any matchup. Gronkowski is in a TE tier all by himself but in the next tier down you have to put Gates in there and for that reason and for the price you have to feel confident in Gates.
AG: You have to think Dom Capers and the Packers defense looked at last Monday’s game and went “Hmm, maybe we should try to stop Gates?” So while I agree with James and Maurile that Rivers will target him, especially with Stevie Johnson out, I think we need to be careful with expectations for him.
Gates is still Gates though, and since the tight end group has been inconsistent this year, he’s worth a start.
AM: I'm certainly not expecting another two-touchdown performance, but you never know. He didn't play a full complement of snaps last week, perhaps because he hadn't practiced with the team while suspended. The Packers are far better defensively than the Steelers, too.
Which medium priced wide receiver do you like most this weekend? Allen Hurns ($4100) against Houston, Marvin Jones ($4600) against Buffalo or Ted Ginn Jr Jr ($4200) against Seattle? Or if not one of those three, why and who do you like around that price range?
MT: Allen Hurns is clearly the best value of that group this week. Even if you like Allen Robinson better, it's got to be at least kind of close. But Robinson is fully $2,700 more expensive than Hurns. Hurns jumps off the chart for his value this week. But I want to comment on Ted Ginn Jr quickly because I found it difficult to do projections for the Panthers' passing offense this week.
The Panthers have had a very high run-pass ratio so far this year, but that's largely because they're 4-0 with wins by 14, 11, 7, and 5 points. And in those respective games, they've run the ball on 60%, 53%, 47%, and 49% of their offensive plays. You see the pattern? Like most teams, they've run the ball more often the further ahead they've been. But this week they're projected to lose by 7 points. If you put those previous games on a graph and draw a line through them extrapolating back from 14 points down to -7 points, you end up going from 60% down to ... 31%.
That's overly simplistic and I don't actually project them to pass 69% of the time, but the point is that they could very easily end up putting the ball in the air far more than they have at any point so far this year. And I think Ted Ginn Jr is in as good a position to benefit from that as anybody. So I actually like Ginn pretty well this week as a cheap GPP play with underappreciated upside potential.
JB: Hurns hands down as he has showed what he can do in multiple games last year and has become very consistent this year. The Jaguars are a passing offense that is still under rated despite the spike in production over the past few games. Hurns will be highly owned at this reduced price though so I think he is only a good play in cash games.
AG: Add me to the chorus of Hurns for all the reasons above and how overlooked he still seems to be. Jones has been inconsistent, and while I like Maurile’s math, I’m not totally sold on Ginn as much as I am Hurns.
So I would rank it Hurns, Ginn and then well behind them both is Jones.
AM: I kind of like Marvin Jones this week. Stephon Gillmore has done a nice job against No. 1 receivers thus far this season, though A.J. Green hasn't had much trouble with matchups thus far. Still, Andy Dalton has done a great job spreading the ball around, and non-No. 1 wideouts have had some good games against the Bills this year.