What is FGW? Check out the full lowdown here or watch the video here.
TL;DR – FGW is the number of Head-to-Head fantasy football matchups a player has won his team, on average. dFGW is FGW adjusted for draft ADP rank.
Week 3 featured more jublant Dolphins than an Aaron Rodgers self-hypnosis tape.
But before we get into Football’s resident chirping sea mammals, about all the chirping I invited on Reddit with last week’s column…
Scroll to the end of this post for my full thoughts on the matter. Suffice to say, I am not done discussing Ja’Marr Chase’s superior talent.
Achane’s percent started on Yahoo! Fantasy Football this past week was 0%. Charitably, it could have been as high as 0.49%, as Yahoo! Rounds to the nearest percent. If you assume this, Achane increased his managers’ win rate up to 98% – but only 0.49% of the time (at most). His FGW comes out to 0.0024. There’s no other player for which rounding at percent started is going to be significant here, so leaving the rest of the board where he is, he comes out to 71st in FGW – thus the 71st most helpful fantasy player – for Week 3. Right between the middling Tyler Higbee and Dameon Pierce, both of whom were average but at least sometimes used.
It’s certainly possible that this is the start of a great year for Achane. It’s also possible that this will inflate his percent started numbers and he will roll out a bunch of below-average weeks, which would net hurt fantasy teams in the long run.
All we know for certain is that if Achane does return to sea level, we will have more drowning Achane owners than even Flipper could save.
Who Won The Week?
- Keenan Allen is back on top! And with Mike Williams hurt yet again, the 31 year old is on track for a career year, or what Snakes on a Plane was for Kenan Thompson. Yeah, really.
- Davante Adams with a great game, but in a loss. Imagine if he had stuck around for Jordan Love.
- Raheem Mostert surfed his way to the top spot for Dolphin FGW. Actually pretty impressed he hit an 84% started number. His raw data went up from 42% to 78%, but his weekly expert rankings numbers meant competitive fantasy teams swung harder (33% and 84% by calculation).
- Turns out it wasn’t George Kittle with his semi-annual good game, it may have been Kenneth Walker with his semi-annual good game in Week 3.
- Ja’Marr Chase, thank you for not sucking.
- Check it out: Mahomes and Kelce stackers were only the 3rd best stack in Week 3, after Tua+Tyreek and Herbert+Allen. Herbert and Allen was the best stack, despite them not being on a first-name-basis like the ‘Fins due.
- Drake London continues to be a painful player to own. Who could’ve known that Desmond Ridder isn’t a second coming of Matt Ryan?
- The Kyren Williams bandwagon might be unloading. That was a short trip.
- Rhamondre never should have evolved from Andre into Rhammondre. Now he’s not leveling up as fast.
- Does Dallas having a bad week mean Dallas Goedert had a good one? (Checks notes…) nope, not really.
- Tee Higgins paid the price for Ja’Marr’s return.
- Meanwhile Derrick Henry is now in the Terminator: Genisys phase of his career. I have never seen that movie, and I don’t think I want to.
- Thankfully Achane’s game is prominent enough that I am now forced to learn how to pronounce his name right.
- Adam Theilen and Andy Dalton stacks did amazingly this week in the hypothetical world where they exist. Superflex leagues probably had some.
- Watch out for Tank Dell. At this point, shouldn’t every player make a list of the players drafted ahead of them at their position?
Leaderboard Updates
- Crazy levels of consistency from Jefferson and McCaffrey. Only players to be notably above average in all 3 games.
- Interestingly enough, almost everyone else has at least one game that was average or below average. It’s only 3 games, I would have expected a few more consistent players at least by chance.
- So yeah, what exactly happened to Dallas? No way Trevon Diggs was that pivotal.
- Despite no Aaron Jones, AJ Dillon has not taken off.
- Despite struggles from Breece Hall, nothing to speak of for Dalvin Cook.
- Despite no Austin Ekeler for two weeks, Joshua Kelley owners probably wish Ek was back.
- The most talented Tight End in football, Kyle Pitts! Kidding. Sort of. Honestly I don’t even know if it’s on him this year.
- Justin Fields and Trevor Lawrence would make a much different FGW example this year.
- There’s no way you can keep starting Najee.
- Keenan swaps into the top spot once adjusted for ADP.
- Shows how bleak of a year it has been when Aaron Jones is still 19th after only playing one game AND adjusting for ADP.
- Starting to look like 2022 Josh Jacobs was a mirage.
- I don’t know if there’s a more difficult decision to make in fantasy football than whether to start a stud who’s fighting through an injury. If you have Joe Burrow, I don’t envy you, even though you probably had Matthew Stafford this past week.
- Through 3 weeks, it looks like the best team you could have realistically drafted is: Tyreek Hill, Davante Adams, Aaron Jones, Keenan Allen, Justin Herbert, James Cook, Mike Evans, Tua, Raheem Mostert, and Dawson Knox (Allen too good to consider Hockenson in round 4).
Week 3 Swims With The Fishes Dolphins
I kicked off last week’s post with a claim that Ja’Marr Chase is the most talented WR in the NFL.
I still believe this.
I also believe there is a significant link between draft capital and talent, at least early in your career.
This belief is not shared as widely as I thought.
My goal every week is to lead off the column with an interesting tidbit, something to tantalize the reader. Damnit, Byron, stop thinking about dolphin courting. The Chase talent claim could be backed up by more data, as it actually has nothing to do with FGW.
This is not the end of the Chase vs. Jefferson talent comparison.
And hopefully your team’s talent shows through in Week 4! If it doesn’t, well, at least we’re all going down in this ship together. It has been a privilege and an honor.
Byron Cobalt's Lazy Analysis 