Fantasy Football – Week 1 Recap
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Larry Fitzgerald – WR: Sorry Larry. After seeing Fitzgerald struggle to catch wounded ducks from the awful Skelton /Lindley / Hoyer trio, I forgot how good this guy can be when he was a competent QB throwing him the ball. Fitzgerald had a solid fantasy game (8/80/2) against a tough secondary. You wont be seeing Larry as my bust pick again any time soon. I am a little concerned with AZ’s O-line being able to protect Palmer long term though and if you share those concerns you might look into selling high on Fitz right now.
Jared Cook – TE: I almost drafted Cook a few different times, but I kept thinking back to last year when he was the talk of Titans camp and then went 16 weeks without producing a valuable fantasy line, so I went with other upside options like Cameron or Bennett. No offense to either of those guys and their respectable week 1 debuts, but Cook had the best fantasy line of any TD in week 1 (7/141/2). The scary part is he was robbed of another long TD by Tyrann Mathieu and was Bradford’s #1 option in the passing game (10 targets). The Rams moved him all over the field to exploit lopsided matchups with slow LBs and small corners. If they keep doing that, Cook will be hard to stop.
Mike Vick – QB: I feel pretty dumb for dropping Vick in a short bench league (4) for Rueben Randle. I admit that I underestimated Chip Kelly’s ability to run his speed offense against NFL caliber athletes and I was skeptical about Vick’s ability to make the right decision consistently. Vick slowed down after a blistering 1st half, but still finished with 27.5 fantasy points in standard Yahoo leagues. The Eagles offense is going to run more plays than any other offense in the league so on a pure volume basis, Vick will get more chances to put up fantasy points. Barring injury I think Vick will average 20+ this year with a couple of monster games against defenses who can’t adjust to the Eagles’ lightning pace.