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By Steven Van Tassell (@SteveVT33)
This week was a little out of the ordinary. The first NFL game was played in Germany on Sunday. The NFL International Series started in 2007 and all games were played at various stadiums in London until 2016 when the series expanded to Estadio Azteca in Mexico City. There were no international games in 2020 due to COVID and now in 2022, they have expanded to Germany. The crowd in Munich got a pretty good game as the Seahawks and Buccaneers battled with Tampa Bay ahead 21-3 early in the fourth quarter. Two fourth quarter TDs by Seattle pulled them to within one score, but the Buccaneers sealed their victory by running out the clock with a game-ending drive. I watched a bunch of the game and I’m not sure that there were many surprises. The rest of the Sunday slate made up for it though.
Eight out of the remaining 11 Sunday games were one-score games. Technically, the Giants 24-16 victory over the Texans counts even though the Texans only pulled within eight points after a FG with seven seconds left. Still the score was 7-3 at halftime so the Giants didn’t blow the Texans out. We had two overtime games, including the ridiculous ending to the Bills-Vikings game. After the Vikings were stopped for the second time on the one-yard line by the Bills late in the fourth quarter, I pretty much declared the Vikings had blown their chance to win the game. The next play was a fumble in the end zone by the Bills with 41 seconds left that the Vikings recovered to go ahead by three points. However, the Vikings let the Bills drive into field goal range and Tyler Bass ($869,804) kicked a 29-yard FG to send the game to overtime. The Vikings prevailed by intercepting Josh Allen ($43,005,667) after they had gone ahead on a 33-yard FG by Greg Joseph ($2,433,000). It was a wild game. Probably the wildest one of the season so far. The fact that the Vikings pulled out the victory after failing on two attempts to score on fourth and one with less than one minute left was pretty surprising.
The results of the late Sunday games were surprising with the Colts and Packers pulling out victories and halting losing streaks (3 games for the Colts and 5 games for the Packers). The result of the Cardinals-Rams game may or may not have been a surprise, but the starting QBs sure were. Dynasty Owners apparently thought Matthew Stafford ($27,000,000) was going to play as his backup John Wolford ($895,000) was only rostered in 16.17% of Dynasty Owner leagues despite that low salary. With four QBs on bye and probably more than a few Dynasty Owners getting zero points from their Bench QB, I would have thought more Dynasty Owners, especially those with Stafford (84.68% rostered) would have grabbed Wolford as insurance. Same thing with Colt McCoy ($3,750,000) as his Dynasty Owner roster percentage is only 10.64%. He’s more difficult to roster with his salary and he also has an extra year on his deal compared to Wolford. Still, I would have thought more Dynasty Owners with Kyler Murray ($8,914,504) on their roster would have grabbed McCoy just in case. I was expecting to see more bids for both players in my Dynasty Owner leagues in the Sunday 5 AM (Eastern) Free Agent Auction run.
Overall, it was quite a week of surprises, and I haven’t even got to the Surprise of the Week yet. One of them has sort of been mentioned already and might have been the reason for the lack of Free Agent Auction bidding on one of the eventual Rams-Cardinals starting QBs. Between the title and that last sentence, you probably already figured out that there’s more than one surprise this week.
For the purposes of this article, ADP and Dynasty Owner rostered percentage statistics were current as of the afternoon of November 14th.
Surprise of the Week – Too Many Surprises
This section is where I highlight one fantasy football surprise of the week. It’ll be something that nobody really saw coming. It could be a good or bad surprise depending on the week.
Usually it’s one surprise, but there were a lot of surprises this week so I’m not going to choose just one, but mention a few of them. There’s an order, but it’s more like the order that I thought of them rather than a ranking of how surprised I am about each one.
First up is the fact that both Matthew Stafford and Ezekiel Elliott ($15,000,000) were out with injuries this week. Stafford has been in the NFL for 14 seasons and played every game in 10 of those seasons, including a stretch of eight in a row from 2011 to 2018. His fantasy value was capped by being on the Lions for all of his career until last year, but he was durable. If you drafted him in your fantasy football league, you knew you could play him every week if you wanted except his bye week. Only the G.O.A.T. Tom Brady ($15,000,000) has been more durable as he’s only missed games in two seasons since becoming a starting QB in 2001 (15 games in 2008 due to injury and 4 games in 2016 due to a suspension for possibly, maybe hearing something about the potential deflation of footballs that also occurs naturally during the course of the game). Russell Wilson ($35,000,000) has also been extremely durable until the past two seasons. He didn’t miss a game in his first nine NFL seasons.
While I’m critical of Elliott, I can’t deny his durability as he played in over 90% of the games in his first six seasons (88 out of 97) before missing the past two games with a knee injury. Two of those missed games were the last game of a season when the Cowboys had clinched a playoff berth, so they probably shouldn’t count. Bottom line is that if the Cowboys are playing, Zeke is almost always in the lineup. I do think Tony Pollard ($796,945) is better and won’t roster Zeke in Dynasty Owner due to his contract size ($15 million) and length (5 years left including this year), but he’s a tough dude to play that many games at running back for this long. It’s not Frank Gore durability and longevity, but still impressive.
The second surprise was the Colts winning in Jeff Saturday’s head coaching debut and doing it with Matt Ryan ($30,000,000) at QB. I read that the Vegas line started at the Raiders giving 6.5 points and moved down to 4.5 points because the smart money was on the Colts. Regardless, I was still surprised that the Colts won. The Raiders had a chance to win at the end, but the Colts defense rose to the occasion and denied them a TD to go ahead with under a minute left in the game. Ryan is probably the Colts’ best option to win at QB and Saturday was clearly brought in to win games, but the fact that Ryan started, and the Colts won the game were both surprising to me.
Finally, there were six Miami Dolphins players besides Tua Tagovailoa ($7,568,859) who had double-digit Dynasty Owner fantasy points (DOFPs) in Week 10. In addition, Tyreek Hill ($18,000,000) had the fourth most Dynasty Owner fantasy points with 15.4 points and Jaylen Waddle ($6,771,498) led the team in receiving yards (66) and only had the sixth most Dynasty Owner fantasy points (10.6). Both Jeff Wilson ($1,085,000) and Raheem Mostert ($2,125,000) did have more total yards. The following non-QBs had double-digit Dynasty Owner fantasy points for the Dolphins this week.
| Player, Position | Salary | Roster % | Receptions | Total Yards | TDs | DOFPs |
| Jeff Wilson, RB | $1,085,000 | 100% | 2 | 143 | 1 | 24.3 |
| Raheem Mostert, RB | $2,125,000 | 100% | 8 | 87 | 1 | 20.2 |
| Trent Sherfield, WR | $1,187,500 | 3.83% | 4 | 63 | 1 | 16.3 |
| Tyreek Hill, WR | $18,000,000 | 100% | 5 | 44 | 1 | 15.4 |
| Alec Ingold, RB | $3,250,000 | 0% | 4 | 45 | 1 | 14.5 |
| Jaylen Waddle, WR | $6,771,498 | 100% | 4 | 66 | 0 | 10.6 |
That’s quite the list of solid performances. Trent Sherfield is barely rostered (3.83%) in Dynasty Owner despite having a low salary. He’s the clear WR3 in Miami and would probably be the top player on the Free Agent Auction targets list if the Dolphins weren’t on bye in Week 11. Alec Ingold is rostered in no Dynasty Owner leagues because of his salary and lack of usage as a fullback. He’s a valuable part of the Dolphins’ team, much like he was for the Raiders and Kyle Juszczyk ($5,400,000) is for the 49ers, but not worth a Dynasty Owner roster spot.
Totally Predictable Event of the Week – Let Me Think About This for a Minute
This section is where I highlight one totally predictable thing that might be surprising to other people, but might be something that I’ve been believing and saying for a while, but nobody’s been listening or agreeing with me on it.
I spent quite a bit of time thinking about my selection for this section and in the end came up with nothing. It’s the first time as there has been something every week and sometimes more than one event that was totally predictable. I’ve mentioned things more than once (the performances by rookie TEs), but couldn’t even use that one this week as no rookie TE had a TD or more than the 6.5 Dynasty Owner fantasy points from Cade Otton ($1,123,486).
This week, I’ve really got nothing. I’d like to say that I had Justin Fields ($4,717,989) topping 100 yards rushing and 40.0 Dynasty Owner fantasy points for the second straight week. He had 45.0 Dynasty Owner fantasy points (167 passing yards, 147 rushing yards, 4 TDs, 1 INT, 1 fumble) and is the current frontrunner for Dynasty Owner Player of the Week. However, I thought that he’d play well this week against Detroit, but not as well as he did so I’m not going to claim that one.
The other predictable event that comes to mind is Green Bay playing better and winning by running the ball more than passing (39 rushing and 20 passing attempts). I can’t use that as it wasn’t predictable at all that the Packers would actually do it. They have done better all season when they run more than pass, yet don’t do it consistently. The Packers record is 4-1 when they run the ball more than 40% of the time and 0-5 when they run 39.9% or less. They haven’t trailed so much in any game that they needed to abandon the run. They just do it at times to their detriment.
This was a fairly long way of saying that while I thought about it, I don’t really have anything for this section for the first time all season. Maybe it’s just what happens as we get further into the NFL season. Read the article next week to see if that’s true and if this happens again.
Conclusion
Thanks for reading even though there were too many surprises and no totally predictable events this week. If there was something that I missed in either section, let me know on Twitter (@SteveVT33). Hopefully next week, I’ll find one thing to really dig into for both.
Until next week, please check out the other great content that Dynasty Owner has that might help you win that League Championship and maybe be our 2022 Chase for the Ring Champion. Our current 2022 in-season publication schedule is as follows:
- Mondays: This new stand-alone weekly Surprise and Totally Predictable Event article will appear on Mondays, usually in the morning. Jay Pounds will also preview the Monday Night Football matchup from the Dynasty Owner perspective.
- Tuesdays: I’ll recap the Dynasty Owner week with the winners of Player of the Week, Value Player of the Week and our Dynasty Owner Match-up of the Week. I’ll also give you a player per position who played well and should have been in your Starting lineup as well as one per position who didn’t do well and should have been on your Bench. Jay Pounds also has his weekly Free Agent Auction targets article to help you figure out what players to bid on before the first Free Agent Auction run of the week is processed on Wednesday at 5 AM (Eastern).
- Wednesday: Matt Morrison – The Jerk writes about a topic of his choosing and his weekly rankings will also pop up on Wednesdays as well. He’ll have the second in his Opportunity Is (Almost) Everything series this Wednesday.
- Thursday: Matt Morrison – The Jerk will preview the Thursday Night Football game, which will include his selection for “Value of the Game”. I’ll also have an article that will preview the upcoming NFL games and present a Dynasty Owner Match-up of the Week.
- Friday: Listen to the Dynasty Owner podcast with me and Jay or watch it on YouTube on Friday morning. In the afternoon, I’ll have the weekly preview article with my Starting lineup and Bench recommendations plus a look back at the previous week’s recommendations.
Don’t forget that also have the Champions podcast featuring our three Dynasty Owner Chase for the Ring Champions. You can find it wherever you get your podcasts. Watch the Dynasty Owner Livestream on the Dynasty Owner YouTube channel as it happens on Wednesdays as we answer trade questions and talk about Dynasty Owner and fantasy football in general. You can also catch it afterwards if you can’t watch us live. Finally, don’t forget to follow 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