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Week 6 Preview – Let the Bye Weeks Begin!

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By Steven Van Tassell (@SteveVT33)

One of everyone’s least favorite things about fantasy football probably has to be bye weeks. They limit your lineup choices, especially in weeks like this week with four teams (Atlanta, New Orleans, New York Jets and San Francisco) on bye, and turn fringe candidates for your FLEX position into players who are suddenly in your Starting lineup for a couple weeks in the middle of the season. This week is bad with four teams off, but next week is even worse as six teams are on bye. Six teams! That’s nearly one out of every five teams sitting at home. Combine bye weeks with all of the injuries that have been happening throughout the NFL and it’s enough to drive a Dynasty Owner crazy.

For Dynasty Owners, last week was the final week that you likely have all of the players on your roster at your disposal. Sorry about that, I should have warned you. That’s right, it’s nine straight weeks of smaller rosters available for Dynasty Owners but still the need to fill out a full Starting lineup and Bench. Every week, Dynasty Owners are relying on 15 different players to score points for their team. Even if you have the maximum of 30 players on your roster (not counting Injured Reserve), that’s still half of your players who need to produce. If you don’t have room under the salary cap for 30 players, your team could be left with as few as only ten players on the Practice Squad, including players on bye. Unlike a “regular” fantasy football league, you can’t just add players on a whim or drop them because they are on bye. It’s going to cost you Dynasty Dollars to drop players and you’ll still need salary cap room to afford replacements. Geno Smith might be cheap ($1,212,500 in salary), but he’s not free.

If you drafted this year and paid attention to bye weeks, hopefully you have enough players on your Practice Squad who can suit up and make a contribution on your Bench this week, while that Bench player is substituting for a Starter on bye. If your draft was last year, it might not be your fault that a bunch of your players have the same bye week now. Both Derrick Henry and Christian McCaffrey are off in Week 13. If you drafted both of them last year, you didn’t know that was going to happen. Besides the first season when you draft, there’s no way to control how the bye weeks are going to hit your team.

Dynasty Owners don’t get a regular season bye week. You only get one if you finish in first or second place and don’t have a Week 15 playoff game. If you finish in 7th or 8th place, you also get a Loser’s Bracket bye, but that shouldn’t be your goal five weeks into the season.

Thanks for not taking a bye from reading my weekly preview article. Every week of the 14-game Dynasty Owner regular season and three game playoffs, I’ll present a player at each position (QB, RB, WR, TE) who you should have as a Starter in your Dynasty Owner lineup. After that, I’ll name one player per position who should be on your Bench or Practice Squad. With bye weeks, it’s going to be tougher than ever to find those players to Start this week who were clearly drafted to be on your Bench or Practice Squad, or who currently rank outside the Top 12 QBs, Top 24 RBs, Top 24 WRs and Top 12 TEs. For the Bench recommendations, I’ll suggest players drafted to be Starters or who should be in your Starting lineup based on their play so far this season, but who shouldn’t be in there this week based on matchups, past performance against a team or something else.

Finally, I will look at one Dynasty Owner game, our Match-up of the Week. For the second consecutive week, it’s a pair of undefeated teams with one team in the Top 25 of the Chase for the Ring. Both teams have few bye week issues, so it’s an evenly matched game. If you’d like to see your team featured next week, then send me a tweet (@SteveVT33).

All stats cited are based on the Standard Dynasty Owner scoring system as outlined in the updated Dynasty Owner Constitution. Standard Dynasty Owner scoring gives you .1 points for every yard rushing or receiving, .1 point for every 2 yards passing, 1 point per reception, 6 points for a rushing, receiving or passing touchdown and 2 points for a successful 2-point conversion (rushing, receiving, or passing). Interceptions or fumbles lost cost you 3 points, while a fumble that is recovered by the player’s team is a loss of only 1 point. Bonus points are available for 100-199 yards rushing (2 points), 200 yards rushing or receiving (6 points), 300-399 yards passing (1 point) and 400 yards passing (4 points). There is also a 3 point bonus for clutch scoring, which is a score that results in a lead change in the final two minutes of the 4th quarter or overtime. Kickoff and punt return touchdowns are worth 6 points for the player and kickoff and punt returns are worth 1 point for every 40 yards.

For the purposes of this article, ADP and Dynasty Owner rostered percentage statistics were current as of the morning of October 15th.

These Guys Should be Starters This Week

First, let’s look at how my recommendations from the previous week fared (Good, Bad or Just Ok). I predicted performances worthy of being in your Dynasty Owner Starting lineup for these four players. Here’s how they all did in Week 5.

QB: Jacoby Brissett – 19.7 (Just Ok recommendation)

RB: Damien Harris – 8.8 (Bad recommendation)

WR: Laviska Shenault – 6.8 (Bad recommendation)

TE: Hayden Hurst – 10.0 (Good recommendation)

Seeing Hurst as a Good recommendation with only 10.0 Dynasty Owner fantasy points seems surprising, but he was in fact the TE9 for the week. He lost 4.0 points because he fumbled twice and lost one. Otherwise, he would have been TE6. Harris was the fifth consecutive Bad RB recommendation, but both of the past two (Harris and Trey Sermon) have finished with just under 10.0 Dynasty Owner fantasy points so at least they had decent performances. Shenault had no points until the fourth quarter and just one reception for 58 yards. Brissett wasn’t great against the Buccaneers, but he did have more Dynasty Owner fantasy points than 13 other NFL starting QB, so the recommendation was Just Ok.

For the first time this season, I’m recommending a stack from a single team and also repeating a player who did Good back in Week 4. It’s what you need to do when four teams are on bye.

Taylor Heinicke (QB – WAS): The last time Taylor Heinicke played a low-rated defense, he scored 36.8 Dynasty Owner fantasy points for the Washington Football Team in Week 4 versus Atlanta. The Atlanta defense is actually better against QBs than the Football Team’s opponent this week, the Kansas City Chiefs. Before facing Heinicke, the Falcons’ defense had allowed 31.7 Dynasty Owner fantasy points per game to opposition QBs. Kansas City has allowed 36.5 Dynasty Owner fantasy points per game to opposition QBs after five weeks. Take out their Week 1 opponent (the Cleveland Browns with Baker Mayfield at QB who only scored 15.8 Dynasty Owner fantasy points) and the average jumps up to 41.7 points per game. Heinicke is averaging just over 25.0 Dynasty Owner fantasy points per start. He also averages 5.1 yards per rush and the Chiefs defense allows 5.9 yards per rush from QBs. The fewest number of rushes by Heinicke in his four regular season starts this season is four, so an average game is between 20-25 rushing yards. The Chiefs defense is also allowing over 300 yards passing and two passing TDs per game. That adds up to almost 30.0 Dynasty Owner fantasy points if Heinicke is average this week. His play has been above average and therefore, he should score at least 32.0 Dynasty Owner fantasy points this week. That’s Starting QB production.

Brandon Bolden (RB – NE): Last week, Damien Harris was listed here because the Patriots game plan should have been run-focused. This week, Brandon Bolden is the choice because the Patriots game plan should include plenty of passing. With James White out for the rest of the season, the top Patriots pass catching RB is now Bolden. Bolden has 14 targets in three games since White’s injury with no fewer than 4 targets and 3 receptions in a single game. Bolden doesn’t run the ball much (only 7 rushing attempts for 29 yards all season) as that’s Damien Harris’ job, while Harris doesn’t catch many passes out of the backfield (8 targets and 7 receptions in 5 games so far this season). Opposing RBs are averaging 7.2 receptions per game against the Dallas Cowboys defense. They allowed 10.6 Dynasty Owner fantasy points (3 receptions, 16 receiving yards, 1 receiving TD) to Giants backup RB Devontae Booker on passes last week and 9.8 Dynasty Owner fantasy points (5 receptions, 48 receiving yards) to Panthers backup RB Rodney Smith the week before. With two Top 10 RBs (Cordarrelle Patterson and Alvin Kamara) plus Mike Davis (who is a Top 30 RB, so a solid FLEX option) out on bye, Bolden fits in as a bye week Starting lineup replacement.

Tim Patrick (WR – DEN): Patrick has been a solid, but fairly unspectacular fixture in the Broncos lineup so far this season. He was the team’s WR3 or WR4 in training camp, but with in-season injuries to fellow WRs Jerry Jeudy and KJ Hamler, he’s moved up to WR2 behind Courtland Sutton. His quiet consistency stands out as he’s scored more than 10.0 Dynasty Owner in 12 out of 20 games over the past two seasons. Out of those twenty games, he’s only scored fewer than 5.0 Dynasty Owner fantasy points three times. That includes the Week 12 debacle last season when Denver used WR Kendall Hinton as their starting QB. In a bye week with top WR options on bye like Deebo Samuel, Calvin Ridley and Corey Davis, Dynasty Owners could do a lot worse than plug Patrick into their Starting lineup and have him put up an average game of 4 receptions for 60 receiving yards (10.0 Dynasty Owner fantasy points). It may be “Just Ok”, but I’ll take that in a bye week with four teams off.

Ricky Seals-Jones (TE – WAS): This is the first time all season that I’ve stacked a QB and any receiver in my Starter recommendations. However, the Kansas City defense has been dreadful this season, allowing an average of 296.4 passing yards per game (tied for 29th) and a NFL-high 32.6 points per game. They have allowed opposing TEs to rack up 6.2 receptions for 93.2 receiving yards per game. Only two TEs on the Football Team have been even targeted with a pass this season (Logan Thomas and Seals-Jones). Since Thomas is on Injured Reserve and out for the game with a hamstring injury, Seals-Jones should have a very productive game as the main TE target for Washington QB Taylor Heinicke. In Seals-Jones’ first game without Thomas, he scored 9.1 Dynasty Owner fantasy points (5 receptions for 41 receiving yards) against a New Orleans’ Saints defense that is much better at defending TEs than the Chiefs. Seals-Jones was targeted nine times by Heinicke in that game and if he sees that many passes thrown his way this week, he’s well positioned to score double-digit fantasy points. If you need a replacement in your Starting lineup with Kyle Pitts (TE – ATL) on bye and are in one of the 33.1% of leagues in which Seals-Jones isn’t rostered, go grab him and his 1 year/$990,000 contract, and stick him in your Starting lineup.

These Guys Should Be on the Bench (or Practice Squad) This Week

Now it’s the time to look at how my Bench recommendations from Week 5 worked out (Good, Bad or Just Ok). After two poor weeks, I had two Good Bench recommendations and one Just Ok recommendation for Week 5.  George Kittle ended up not playing in Week 5, but wasn’t ruled out until after the article was completed so that pick doesn’t count.

QB: Daniel Jones – 5.8 (Good recommendation)

RB: James Conner – 10.7 (Just Ok recommendation)

WR: Brandin Cooks – 5.3 (Good recommendation)

TE: George Kittle – DNP (N/A recommendation)

Recommending that Dynasty Owners keep Daniel Jones and Brandin Cooks on their Bench last week was Good, while James Conner was Just Ok as he was a very low end FLEX Starter in Week 5. Conner had a TD and was Just Ok. I said that he was more likely to have zero than two TDs and under 10.0 Dynasty Owner fantasy points and wasn’t far off as he only had 10.7 points. Jones got injured and didn’t play the entire second half, but with only 5.8 Dynasty Owner fantasy points, he wasn’t on his way to a great performance anyway.

With bye weeks coming now, it’s going to get more difficult to recommend quality players who should be sitting on your Bench, but here goes for Week 6.

Derek Carr (QB – LV): Carr is the current QB12 in Dynasty Owner and the last QB who should be in your Starting lineup, but with two of the Top 12 having already played on Thursday night (Tom Brady and Jalen Hurts) and one injured (Russell Wilson), the pool of top QBs has shrunk. It’ll get tougher to find one in the next few weeks because of bye weeks even though none of the QBs on bye this week (Matt Ryan, Jameis Winston, Zach Wilson and Trey Lance/Jimmy Garoppolo) should really be in your Dynasty Owner Starting lineup on a week-to-week basis.  I’m sure that one of the top QBs will underperform this week, but none of them really stood out as having a tough opponent, except for Derek Carr who has to face the Denver Broncos just a few days after the resignation of Jon Gruden. With the controversy over Gruden raging last week, Carr had his worst game of the season with only 8.3 Dynasty Owner fantasy points (206 passing yards, 10 rushing yards, 1 INT). Last season against a less formidable Denver defense, Carr only had a combined 36.3 Dynasty Owner fantasy points with 8.7 points in Week 10 and 27.6 points in Week 17 when both teams were out of the playoff race. That’s just 18.15 Dynasty Owner fantasy points per game in a season in which Denver allowed 30.9 more passing yards and 8.7 more points per game than they are this season. Carr is nothing more than a Bench QB in Week 6.

Dalvin Cook (RB – MIN): A return to full practice on Thursday makes it likely that Dalvin Cook will be back in the Minnesota Vikings lineup for their Week 6 game against the Carolina Panthers. However, that doesn’t mean he should be in your Dynasty Owner Starting lineup. It’s true that he was likely your first round draft pick either last year (ADP 4.4) or this year (ADP 4.7), but the Carolina defense held another player with that same first round pedigree (Alvin Kamara) to only 7.0 Dynasty Owner fantasy points (5 rushing yards, 4 receptions, 25 receiving yards) back in Week 2. And Kamara wasn’t coming off missing two out of the previous three games due to injury like Cook is. Cook and Alexander Mattison were held to a combined 8.4 Dynasty Owner fantasy points in Week 4 by Cleveland and the Vikings only scored seven points in that game. Cleveland is the only other Top 10 defense that the Vikings have played so far this season and they aren’t as good statistically as Carolina. Cook probably shouldn’t be in your Starting lineup again until Week 8 as he needs to take a spot on your Bench this week, then the Vikings are on bye in Week 7.

Tyler Lockett (WR – SEA): After scoring 57.8 Dynasty Owner fantasy points (12 receptions, 278 receiving yards, 3 receiving TDs) in the first two weeks, it’s been three consecutive Bench worthy performances for Tyler Lockett. The best of the past three weeks was last week when he had 10.7 Dynasty Owner fantasy points (5 receptions for 57 yards). The fact that he improved after two games with less than 10.0 Dynasty Owner fantasy points is the good news. The bad news is that only 1.7 of those points (1 reception for 7 yards) came with Geno Smith at QB. Smith will be the Seattle QB this Sunday night on the road against Pittsburgh in his first NFL start since 2017. Lockett is all about the big scoring fantasy games. While Lockett was the WR8 last year, he still had seven games with less than 10.0 Dynasty Owner fantasy points. He finished as Dynasty Owner WR12 in 2019 with six of those games. He’s WR15 so far in 2021 with two games already with fewer than 10.0 Dynasty Owner fantasy points. I just don’t see Lockett having one of his big games this week. He’s more likely to finish with under 10.0 Dynasty Owner fantasy points, which makes him a Week 6 Bench option.

Dawson Knox (TE – BUF): In just five games this season, Dawson Knox has more than the 64.8 Dynasty Owner fantasy points he had for the entire 2020 season when he played in 12 games. He has only 5.6 fewer points than he did in his rookie season back in 2019 when he played in 15 games. To say that Knox has done better than expected this season is an understatement. However, to expect him to remain as the TE3 for the entire season is a bit unrealistic especially since he has scored a TD in each of the past four games (5 TDs overall). Only in Week 1 did Knox fail to score a TD and in that game, he had only 8.1 Dynasty Owner fantasy points. While that’s not a terrible game, it would likely keep him out of the Top 12 TE scorers for the week. It’s a likely scenario against a Tennessee defense that has averaged allowing TEs to catch fewer than 3 passes per game for less than 25 yards (2.6 receptions for 22.6 receiving yards) and only a single receiving TD. For the season, the Titans defense has only allowed TEs to score a total of 27.3 Dynasty Owner fantasy points. Last week against Jacksonville, they allowed most of those points (18.8) to a trio of Jaguars TEs (Dan Arnold, Jacob Hollister and Luke Farrell) with Arnold as the highest individual scorer (9.4 Dynasty Owner fantasy points). Seems safe to think that Knox won’t be the first TE this season to score over 10.0 Dynasty Owner fantasy points against the Titans, which is why he should be on your Dynasty Owner Bench this week.

Dynasty Owner Match-up of the Week – The Dropkick Joey Browners vs. LvMeSmMe

It’s time for the sixth Dynasty Owner Match-up of the Week of the 2021 season and the first one with bye weeks involved. There are actually two Dynasty Owner teams named “Bye Week”, but neither one of them had a particularly compelling match-up to analyze. One of those teams was 3-2 and facing another 3-2 team, while the other team was 2-3 and facing a 3-2 team. Maybe both of them will go on winning streaks during the nine consecutive weeks featuring at least two teams on bye and I can use them later on.

Instead, let’s look at a match-up of 5-0 teams. The Dropkick Joey Browners were in 21st place in the Chase for the Ring before Thursday Night Football, but only 13.9 Dynasty Owner fantasy points ahead of LvMeSmMe in the League #27464 standings. The Dropkick Joey Browners have a minor bye week issue with Hayden Hurst on bye for the Falcons, so they went out and picked up Ricky Seals-Jones to replace him on their Bench this week (Mark Andrews is their Starting TE). LvMeSmMe had more bye week issues with both Kyle Pitts and Deebo Samuel off on bye. Even before looking at projections, it seems like this is a pretty even match-up.

The current projections have The Dropkick Joey Browners winning by 8.78 Dynasty Owner fantasy points. Both of the players who played on Thursday Night for LvMeSmMe were on their Bench and did close to their projections, so the results from Thursday didn’t change things too much. Speaking of Bench points, it’s the Bench that gives The Dropkick Joey Browners nearly all of their advantage as their Bench was expected to outscore LvMeSmMe’s Bench by 26.3 points, which equals 6.6 Dynasty Owner fantasy points and a clear majority of their advantage. It’s all about the Bench RBs and WRs as The Dropkick Joey Browners have Nyheim Hines, James Robinson, A.J. Green and Rondale Moore on their Bench compared to Marlon Mack, James Conner, Greg Ward and Preston Williams. That’s a pretty solid Bench for The Dropkick Joey Browners, especially for a bye week. They will likely have bye week problems some other time, but not in Week 6.

The Dropkick Joey Browners will need to be ahead by a significant number of points after Sunday because LvMeSmMe has two of their best Starters (Josh Allen and Derrick Henry) along with Dawson Knox and Randy Bullock on their Bench. Anything less than a 50.0 Dynasty Owner fantasy point lead will leave The Dropkick Joey Browners sweating out the Monday Night Football game and unable to do anything about it. When it’s all over, one of these teams will definitely be unbeaten and possibly in the Top 25 of the Chase for the Ring.

Conclusion

It’s the first of nine consecutive weeks with at least two NFL teams on bye for Dynasty Owners. Every week from now until the end of the Dynasty Owner regular season, you’ll likely have less than a full roster. Your roster depth will be tested, while your salary cap management skills have to stay razor sharp. You may be faced with a decision on whether to try and win your weekly match-up versus holding on to a player who could be helpful for your team either later on this year, or in the 2022 season and beyond.

At some point during this nine weeks, your Dynasty Owner team may come to a crossroads. Make a push to compete for the Ring, or even just to make your league playoffs, or start selling off assets and rebuild. Right now, those decisions can probably be put on hold, but they could be coming soon.

Please read my weekly preview article each and every week to see who should be in your Dynasty Owner Starting lineup and who should be on your Bench. If you have one of the players mentioned, hopefully it will assist you with your lineup decisions. While some Dynasty Owners may heed my advice, others might disagree, or not have a better option for their Starting lineup and choose to ignore a Bench recommendation. Other Dynasty Owners may not need Starting lineup help as they have a stud player at a position who isn’t moving to the Bench unless he’s injured or on bye. Hopefully, the choices for your Starting lineup and Bench are solid, your team wins its game, and you stay in contention for the playoffs and even the Chase for the Ring.

In addition to this weekly preview article, Dynasty Owner has plenty of other great content to help you win your League Championship and maybe the Chase for the Ring. Our in-season publication schedule is as follows. On Monday, Jay Pounds will preview the Monday Night Football matchup from the Dynasty Owner perspective. Tuesday has a double shot of Dynasty Owner content with my Week 6 recap article and Jay’s Free Agent Auction targets article and video. Wednesdays is when Matt Morrison – The Jerk will dive into a topic of his choosing with an article and a video. Right now, he’s doing a series on Incredibly True Stats by position. The next day, he’ll have an article previewing the Thursday Night Football game to start Week 7.

Don’t forget about the Dynasty Owner livestream on Wednesday with myself, Tim Peffer and now featuring Cousin Justin (who is an injury expert and a real actual Doctor of Physical Therapy). There is also the free flowing fun that is Seth and Tim chatting together live on Thursdays at 1 PM. Set those timers on YouTube so you don’t miss either one of those broadcasts.

Please read all of our articles, watch our videos on YouTube or listen to them wherever you get your podcasts. Don’t forget follow all three of the Dynasty Owner team of writers plus Dynasty Owner on Twitter as well. Thanks, and have a great day!

Steven Van Tassell is the Head of Content for Dynasty Owner

Follow us on Twitter: @SteveVT33 and @Dynasty_Owner

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