Dave Portnoy Takes A Rare L
Dave Portnoy has been a fantasy football revelation this season. Despite not having any recent season-long fantasy football experience, he has started out 4-0. But his undefeated season came to an end at the hands of Wil Myers, who as a member of the Padres, continues to stack Ws (I'm typing this before Game 1 vs. the Dodgers)
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Myers team went absolutely bananas. 163.58 is the highest score by a team in the league this year and it could've even been bigger had he started Tyler Lockett. Dave had a solid lead heading into Monday Night Football, but Patrick Mahomes, Josh Jacobs and Davante Adams combined for over 96 points! Just an incredible performance from that trio. Wil also got a big boost from the Cowboys D/ST which almost did 3X their projection in a dominating win vs. the Rams. Meanwhile, Dave's team didn't have a great showing. New TE Gerald Everett had a mere 1 catch. JK Dobbins didn't do nearly enough, underperforming his projection by 8.7 points and Tom Brady was the worst QB on the roster despite a tasty matchup vs. the Falcons. Both teams are now 4-1 on the year.
Now only one undefeated team remains and it's managed by Jake Marisnick.
Josh Allen proved to be the real QB1 after being neck and neck in most analysts pre-season rankings with Justin Herbert. Marisnick also got good performances from Saquon Barkley, Travis Etienne, DK Metcalf, and Amari Cooper who all outdid their projection. Meanwhile, Team Questionable, managed by the Brewers duo of Christian Yelich and Jace Peterson had a rough week with nobody on their team scoring more than 16.5 points. Another tough look was having their team's highest scorer, David Montgomery on the bench.
And don't look now, but the Guardians duo had a strong performance for the second straight week and are squarely in the playoff picture after defeating Manny Machado.
Shane Bieber and Austin Hedges were carried by Barstool Lenny's 10 catch 2 TD performance which is 22 points without even gaining a yard in a PPR league. It could've been a wider gap, but they sat Hollywood Brown who was their 2nd highest scoring WR. What will they do with Ja'Marr Chase who could be an interesting trade chip for a team on the rise. Meanwhile, Manny Machado squandered a massive game from Austin Ekeler who matched Fournette's output with 35.9 to tie him for RB1 on the week. He also sat Gabe Davis who put up a monster 32.1 points for Romeo Doubs which eventually cost him the matchup. With even records and points being the tiebreaker, these two will be duking it out for positioning the next couple months.
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Two other squads in that mix are the Miami ThunderCoxs and the 2nd Half Savages.
Napoli falls to 3-2 after putting up a dud with only Jalen Hurts and Cooper Kupp really showing up. Meanwhile the trio of Joc Pederson, Austin Barnes, and Alex Wood overcame a donut by Tee Higgins to get their 2nd win of the season. It's a dangerous life with Carson Wentz as your fantasy starter, but he came through in Week 5 with 25.86 points. They also got 20+ point performances from their backfield of Dalvin Cook and Dameon Pierce. Meanwhile, they may have dealt a lemon in Michael Thomas who missed this week's game with an injury.
As for tough breaks, Mike Trout cannot catch one.
He loses by 4.14 points to the league's scoring leader Mike Moustakas and gets another subpar game from his signal caller position. Trevor Lawrence didn't put up a TD in a 6-13 loss to the Texans. His backfield nearly carried his team to the win with Derrick Henry, Nick Chubb, and Raheem Mostert averaging almost 24 points per man. He got a tough break from his Defensive unit as well with the Dolphins giving up a 40 burger to the Jets, meanwhile the Colts scored 13 points in fantasy and only gave up 9 points in real life. Trout falls to 1-4 with the loss, meanwhile Moose gets back on the winning side after dropping two straight. Despite Lamar Jackson having a subpar game, he pulled through on the backs of Justin Jefferson and Alvin Kamara. But he started the Broncos Defense against Matt Ryan's corpse which scored 13 points and was the difference in the matchup.
And then at the bottom, we've got defending champ, Alex Bregman, who fell to 0-5 after getting shellacked by Eric Hosmer by nearly 50 points.
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Bregman's move to trade for 4 RBs and only start 2 of them was bizzare. Relying on JuJu Smith-Schuster doesn't appear to be a winning formula in 2022 and Christian McCaffrey can only do so much to help. Meanwhile, Hosmer is starting to cook with his QB rotation of Aaron Rodgers and Matthew Stafford and his $100 waiver wire pickup of Jeff Wilson Jr. actually paying dividends. Oh yeah and he got 4 TDs on Monday Night from Travis Kelce.
Here's where we stand through five weeks:
And since Dave's name is in the headline, be sure to check out the Dave Portnoy Show featuring a hectic negotiation with Rico Bosco and his super agent Kirk Minihane.