November 28th Weekly Release Notes

The final week of November means the fantasy football playoffs are just about here.  With an injury riddled season it has been a very tough year for just about every team. Now, its just a matter of holding it together to make it into the playoffs and from then on anything is possible.

Here is this weeks release notes:

  • Transactions are no longer free for all users. To view full league transactions a user must be on a trial period or a paying member.
  • Initial podslice implementation is done, but awaiting last minute fixes before going live.
  • Player Alerts have proper naming associated with them. Low means less alerts and High means more alerts. (This was backwards before.)
  • Player Alert settings change via email link has been updated to include a more detailed explanation of what you changed and how it effects your alerts.
  • Mobile Transactions are now live!  View your transactions on the go for any league. (AWESOME!)
  • Mobile site has minor facelift next to the logo. It now shows links for “News”, “Teams”, “Trans” plus your user name.
  • RSS Feed datetime has been fixed. Its been an hour off since daylight savings time (thanks wtapppp)

Week Thirteen Defenses- New England

The New England Patriot defense has struggled at times this year but they have been playing well as of late.

Analysis: After great fantasy performances against the New York Jets and the Kansas City Chiefs, the Eagles torched (from a fantasy perspective) the Patriots in week twelve. The Patriot D is owned in a little more than half of fantasy leagues nationwide and now is the time to pick them up. New England hosts the Colts in week thirteen and it could not get any better. Expect the Colts to trail early and expect the Patriots to get their fair share of sacks and interceptions. The Pats are scoring the third most points in the NFL while the Colts are thirtieth in scoring offense.

The Colts haven’t scored more than nineteen points in a game since week five. Curtis Painter’s passer rating is now 66.6 and with nine picks on the year we shouldn’t expect much from the backup. Painter has also been sacked sixteen times in eight games started and he has also fumbled five times, losing three. In short, this is another great week to stream a defense against a winless Indy squad.

Donald Brown Is Available

With another fine rushing performance against the Panthers Sunday, Donald Brown is quietly putting together a solid four weeks of fantasy numbers.

Analysis: Although the Colts are awful, Donald Brown has been relatively impressive recently. Brown rushed for eighty yards on fourteen carries with a score Sunday. Brown now has double digit carries in his last four games with two scores. On the other side of the coin, Joseph Addai only managed seven carries for twenty-three yards against Carolina in his first game back from a hamstring injury.

As of Sunday, Brown is only owned in about ten percent of fantasy leagues. Backs who are this fresh this deep into a season who are getting double digit carries need to be seriously considered. He may be a fringe RB3/FLEX play but he is certainly worth owning at the moment. Meanwhile, Joseph Addai looked old and slow in the first quarter on Sunday. Donald Brown is the hot hand in Indy and in standard leagues we may not have seen his peak in terms of numbers this year.

Keep expecting double digit carries going forward from Donald Brown while Joseph Addai continues to look fifty-six years old in running back years. Brown is widely available and the touches are there.

November 21st Weekly Release Notes – Introducing Lineup Status

The first significant update in the month of November is all about your synced fantasy teams.  FantasySP is now able to detect each team’s starters, bench, and injured players.  The benefits of this can be seen immediately throughout the site in the following ways:

  • My News now shades player names in gray if they are reserve/benched players
  • My News has the ability to hide reserve players or show the full roster
  • My Teams shows a breakdown of your lineup based on active/bench/injured
This is just the beginning of course.  Soon I will be applying these changes to fantasy team ratings to more accurately score teams based on their starting rosters AND their entire roster.  As you might imagine, this will change greatly week to week and day to day based on your lineup moves.  My goal is to start working on that feature next.
Keep in mind this will be a shortened work week due to Thanksgiving in America, but I’ll see what I can get done. 🙂

Pick Up Toby Gerhart

Adrian Peterson is most likely out for Minnesota’s week twelve matchup with Atlanta as the fantasy world turns its attention to Toby Gerhart .

Analysis: While the injury to Adrian Peterson is not as severe as once thought, high ankle sprains do tend to linger. Even if Peterson was somehow able to go next Sunday, why risk it? At 2-8, the Vikes are going nowhere this year and there is no point to putting the top back in the league out there.

Toby Gerhart who is available in well over ninety-seven percent of fantasy leagues is the logical fantasy replacement for Peterson. He should be in line for a solid chunk of carries in week twelve. He’s physical enough to be playing in goal line situations and he is one fresh back at this point in the season.

It isn’t all good when it comes to Gerhart’s potential this week and beyond. Atlanta is second in the NFL is rushing yards allowed and seventh in yards per carry against. Atlanta is at home and if they can put the Vikes in a hole early- it will not be a good fantasy day for Gerhart. Either way, he is an absolute must pick up this week. Start him at your own discretion.