The Sportsballers

We did it!! We finally won!! Well, sort of. I finally broke out of that three-week slump I’d been in where not a single one of my entries finished in the money. Half of my entries won this week, though unfortunately my two-unit entry did not and so I still wound up with a net loss on the week. Still, I’ve slowed the bleeding and hopefully this week I’ll finish in the black for the first time in a month.   My defense was a bust this week, but so were just about all of the value defenses, and I did say I wouldn’t likely be using my value defense. I didn’t, and I’m glad of that. Hopefully you all read my column and don’t just look at who I’ve suggested. There’s more nuance to my writing than just the headlines.   Chase Claypool was also a bust, finishing with one catch for -2 yards. He actually had negative points in my season-long .5-PPR league because we penalize a point for a fumble and another for losing it. He put that ball on the ground before picking it back up. Regardless...

We recorded this week’s episode of our podcast on Wednesday. You can find that episode and the rest of our show’s library on Apple Podcasts , Amazon Podcasts , Spotify , and Google Podcasts .   Evan finally got his first points win of the season in Week 7, but he still has a lot of ground to make up. Including our three fan participants, the is the only person under 600 points on the season to date.   Cory has been trying to make up some ground on Eric. It didn’t quite work out for him last week as his three lone wolf games netted him a 2-point deficit to Eric on the week. But he’s back at it again with three more lone wolf games this week.   Fan Leaderboard through Week 7   1.       Sean Kennedy – 613 points (72-33) [86 points; 12-2 in Week 7] 2.     Andrew Perez – 613 points (70-35) [74 points; 10-4 in Week 7] 3.       James Dailey – 598 points (64-41) [86 points; 9-5 in Week 7]   On to our Week 8 pic...

Based on win probability, only one game had a different outcome than expected entering Sunday Night Football this week. For the first time since Week 2 of last season, and just the fourth time since 2016, the two lowest scorers in the AFL were matched up against each other.   Entering Sunday night, Fleaflicker gave Andrew Perez a 59 percent chance of beating Evan Ash. Andrew had Arizona’s defense, facing Seattle, and Evan had Tyler Higbee, the Rams tight end who was questionable for Monday night with a hand injury.   Arizona’s defense scored just shy of four points, recording three picks, a couple of sacks, and some other miscellaneous stats, but also giving up 11 more points and 224 more yards than we permit before a defense starts losing points. Still, Andrew held a lead of more than eight points heading to Monday night.   Tyler Higbee was ruled out sometime around 7pm on Monday, less than two hours before the Rams would kick off against the Bears. Fortunately for Evan,...