I think we all know what the theme of this week is! Has there ever been a week with so many high profile, season-ending injuries? I saw a post this morning from a 49ers blog listing 16 players that have injuries, 5 of them being MCL/ACL tears. The two best backs in the league in Barkley and McCaffrey will not be on our screens for a while, the best WR (Wait, what? - Ed) and the best TE in Adams and Kittle won’t be either. Depth has never been as important, so I’m thinking trades might start happening as teams trying and solidify their position.
After 2 weeks, the divisions all have a 2-0 team, and a 0-2 team. The pre-season favourite (always seems to be) Bandits start strong with wins over the Leopards and the Fireflies and the 2nd highest score in both weeks but that will be tested against another 2-0 team in week three which is my Eagles after I sneaked a win against the Spartans and Chargers. The Seahawks take an early lead in the South after wins against the Beavers and Otters, but they face a Chargers team in week 3 that is putting up almost as many points as they are, so it could be a close one.
The Wombats are taking the unlucky start award if there was one as they have faced 299 points so far which is over 50 points more than the next team and they’ve suffered some of the more significant injuries, and in the North, you need all the luck you can get.
The Buzzsaw: Chippenham Beavers
Now this is more like it! The highest score of the week feels like a true buzzsaw as the Beavers took their narrow week 1 defeat to the Seahawks very personally and put up a proper (say that in a Green Street accent) top score of 174.9 points. Almost half to the points came from just two players, Jones and Prescott who could have been worries for the Beavers. Jones looked like he could lose snaps to Dillon and Dak after he started miserably against the Falcons, but the very high scoring NFL week meant lots of fantasy points and only Allen Robinson failed to get double digits for Tom this week. Brown, Gage, Johnson are all behind number one receivers on their teams (Diggs, Jones and JuJu respectively) so each one getting a TD is how you win fantasy weeks.
Gateshead Spartans - 🏆
Chippenham Beavers - 🏆
Highest Point Scorer - Chippenham Beavers
If your QB put up 450 yards and threw a TD, you would be happy with that return but add three rushing TDs to it and you would be ecstatic, and that is exactly what Dak did for the Beavers. But even Dak was outshined by Aaron Jones who had a combined 236 yards and 3 TDs to get 43.6 points in week 2. They were the top two scorers for the week and Tom has them both.
Cam Newton was the third highest scorer and was on the Fireflies bench but Michael’s starter was Kyler Murray, and he was the 7th highest scorer, so it’s not a bad call. But once again the top ten for the week is dominated by QBs. 8 / 10 are QBs and only Kamara and Jones make it in and if you go down to the top twenty there are 12 QBs, 5 RBs, 2 WRs and 1 TE which feels very different to previous years which were WR and RB dominated.
Wigan Wombats – 🏆
Chippenham Beavers – 🏆
Unluckiest Loser - Gateshead Spartans
It feels like week two is a bit more normal than week one in terms of these awards as the unluckiest loser scored only 0.4 points less than last week and instead of being the highest scorer of the week, became the 4th highest and that is the difference between a win and loss for the Spartans as they faced my Eagles who put the 3rd highest score of the week thanks to Kamara’s Monday night performance. This is especially bitter for Chris as it could be the last time he scores this high for a while with the CMC and Mostert injuries leaving him even thinner at RB and without the star of the team. The Chargers scored the 8th highest this week but luckily faced the 11th highest team in the Pythons.
Chippenham Beavers - 🏆
Gateshead Spartans - 🏆
Closest Matchup - Coventry Eagles
I feel like I’m not spreading the awards around too much this week, so I apologise to those that are missing out but this is the second award of the week for the Spartans vs Eagles matchup.
It all hinged on the MNF game as the only player left for both of our teams was Alvin Kamara, with the Spartans holding a 23 point lead. Luckily for me, 174 yards and 2 TDs scored 33.9 points and I had a 10.3 point win.
The next closest matchup was between the Otters and the Seahawks with a winning margin of 14.8 points but all the other matchups were quite one sided with the biggest landslide between the Bandits (150.28) and the Fireflies (79.3) and that was 71 points.
Oxford Seahawks – 🏆
Coventry Eagles – 🏆
Most Impactful Injury - Gateshead Spartans
Sit comfortably, this could take a while to read.
Here are a list of the players that are done for the year: Barkley, Sutton, Tyrod (Herbert takes it now), Campbell
These players will miss a few weeks: Jimmy G, CMC, Lock, Adams, Mostert, Coleman, Fuller, Knox, Perriman, Hogan, Shepard
James White lost his Dad in a car crash (his mum is in intensive care I believe as well) so didn’t play week 2 and his status is unknown for week 3.
Undoubtably the biggest and worst injury of the year, not just the week is Saquon tearing his ACL. One of, if not the, best running backs in the league, he made the Giants a tiny bit interesting to watch and even as an Eagles fan I feel bad for him not being in the league this year as he reminds me of LaDainian Tomlinson and I had LT on every Madden team I played! But if you look at the Flyers, sorry Leopards, roster the blow is softened by having three other starting calibre players in Mixon, Sanders and Gordon. Dermy might not be as dominant without Barkley but I don’t think the chances of a repeat at completely lost.
The Chargers losing Jimmy G means that they are forced to play Haskins as the only fit QB but is there really much difference between them so far this season?
So then I’m left to choose between the injuries suffered by the Spartans and the Wombats. You could argue that the CMC injury has already affected the Spartans season in that if he had finished the game, then he would have likely got the 10 points needed to get the win this week. Going into next week Chris has to choose between Ingram, Thompson and maybe White and that could be the case until the middle of the fantasy season unless he can pull off a trade (as I write this, Olly is trying to fleece Chris with a Brown for Metcalf trade). The Wombats have a similar problem but at the receiver position as Sutton is done for the year and Adams / Shepard are suffering injuries that put them in question for next week at least. Losing three receivers in single week has to be some sort of record but Cephus and/or Davis could be called up from the taxi as cover for them and the Wombats need it after a 0-2 start.
The North has taken the brunt of the injuries this week and I think that the Spartans just edge it due to the lack of depth behind CMC.
Gateshead Spartans – 🏆🏆
Worst Decision - Gateshead Spartans
Firstly, my apologies to Shep for my subtle dig last week about his roster in this section, fantasy football is meant to be about having fun and not taking it too seriously (which I definitely do as it affects my mood if I’ve lost my matchup in this league, not to mention a certain Christmas that was ruined).
The worst decision that I could find this week did have an impact on a result and that was the Spartans starting Slayton over Edelman. Slayton is arguably the third wide receiver for the Giants and maybe the fifth catcher if you include Barkley and Engram whereas who the hell else is Cam going to throw to for the Patriots? If Chris had started Edelman instead of Slayton, he would have won our match up and would be joint top of the North.
The other decision(s) I could find was not as glaring but I’m putting it in here just to torture Scott (sorry Scott). If he would have had faith in his Jags and started Minshew over Watson and Cole over Hines and then also started Gesicki over the shell that is AJ Green then he too would have won his matchup against the Leopards and not be at the foot of the overall table.
Chippenham Beavers - 🏆
Gateshead Spartans - 🏆