Roundtable: Bye Fill-Ins
Patrick Daugherty: The fabled six-team bye week is finally here. Who is your favorite fill-in this week? Jeremy Hill? Alex Smith? Martavis Bryant? Someone much, much crazier or depressing?
Smith is someone I keep seeing getting bandied about as like the ultimate streamer, but dude has nine total touchdowns, six of which came in two games. He has one or zero scores in five of his seven starts. Yes, the Jets are a DREAM matchup, but honestly, so were the Rams, and Smith generated zero touchdowns. He’ll close the book on October with two TDs in three games. He simply doesn’t have touchdown threats to throw to. My guess is that he sets up the pins against the Jets, but that Jamaal Charles knocks them down.
Raymond Summerlin: It depends on how many people are missing from your team. If I am just down only one or two guys, I am happy to roll with the likes of Alex Smith. I very much doubt he will give me a week-winning performance, but I also trust him to give me a solid fifteen points. That may be all I need to win.
If the majority of my team is missing, though, the formula changes. Since there is little chance I will win with half of my starters gone anyway, I want to replace them with the most upside possible. A loss is a loss regardless of how respectable the score is, and I would rather lose by 100 and have given myself a chance to win than lose by 15 because I played it safe. That makes players like Michael Vick, Andre Williams and Cordarrelle Patterson very interesting plays for teams with a lot of players on bye.
Ryan McDowell: I love Jeremy Hill this week assuming Gio is out. Over the last month, Hill has been a mid-range RB3 on limited touches. With no Gio and facing a terrible Jaguars team, Hill should be in the RB1 range this week. He's also a great DFS value.
Nick Mensio: I like Jeremy Hill to an extent, simply because he's going to see plenty of work. We like touches when it comes to RBs. But I wouldn't go on to say the Jaguars are "terrible." They've been playing stout run defense the past month or so after coming out of the gate hemorrhaging points to RBs. They've worked their way to middle-of-the-pack status. But when there are few true three-down backs across the league anymore these days, and Hill projected to be one of those this week, he makes for an intriguing play even if he only manages 90 or so yards and a score. At $5200 on FanDuel, Hill is what we would call dirt-cheap.
Mike Clay: I love Hill, as well. We know Hue Jackson wants to run the ball and this is a game Cincinnati should win (handily if they're a legitimate Super Bowl contender). That would allow plenty of attempts for Hill, who should approach 25 hauls. Additionally, he was already involved (and effective) as a receiver. With Bernard out, his targets will rise.
As for the Jacksonville defense, they struggled against Philadelphia, Washington, Indianapolis and the Chargers before doing well against Pittsburgh, Tennessee, Cleveland and Miami. There's obviously a pretty large talent gap between those two chunks of the schedule. I don't suspect Hill be able to walk all over them, but he's good enough and the volume will be large enough to allow RB1 production.
Brian Hoyer, Ryan Tannehill, Bobby Rainey, Cecil Shorts, Malcom Floyd and Jared Cook are a few other guys who should be on radars this week. I also have a sneaky suspicion Paul Richardson is going to be a popular waiver wire add in the coming weeks. He's about to explode for a long touchdown or two. I'd roster him where possible.
Adam Levitan: The quarterback spot is interesting for streamers this week. Yes, Robert Griffin III was terrible in the preseason and not good in Week 1. But he'll bring upside for owners thanks to both his weaponry and his legs. I think in the limited time RG3 was on the field for Week 2 we saw Jay Gruden adjust the scheme a bit — he's not going to call zero read-options, rollouts etc.
From a FanDuel perspective, my hope is that Michael Vick faceplants at Arrowhead Sunday — a very difficult place to play. Then no one will be on him in a home game against the Steelers in Week 10 — that's where I'd unleash him. From a season-long perspective, owners of Philip Rivers, Tom Brady and Andrew Luck should looking to hold Vick for that Week 10 bye spot.
Patrick Daugherty: Raymond is 100 percent re: how to approach bye weeks.
Mike, a lot of interesting names there. I want to be on board with the Cook love, but I’m sort of sensing a disaster week for the Rams’ entire passing attack. Cook has obviously been Austin Davis’ boy, but especially with Patrick Willis back, that strikes me as a stream I would end up regretting. Of course, it’s not like anyone playing Cook will have super-high expectations.
