The great thing about fantasy football is that in the short time span of just three weeks your best laid plans can get totally fucked!  Like having to start a rookie quarterback, making his first ever start, on the road against a perennial playoff contender fucked.  Pardon my french.

With stud Russell Wilson on bye, and not wasting a second roster spot on a back up quarterback, I’m rolling with Mr. Bortles this week.  It sounds crazy, but this what the No. 3 overall pick has going for him:

• In relief of the dreadfully inefficient (and that’s the nice way of putting it) Chad Henne, Bortles went 14/24, 223 yards, 2 TD, 2 Int.  Impressive numbers for a half of football; granted it was against soft coverage schemes from Indy’s defense (they aren’t exactly world-beaters).  But what I like the most is the 2 rushes for 30 yards.  The rushing totals help eliminate the mistakes and give him a reasonable secure scoring floor.
• Bortles showed well in training camp, the preseason, and practices this year.  By all accounts he’s outpracticed Henne (doens’t that go without saying) however the Jaguars were so gun-shy to start a rookie QB (we call that the Blaine Gabbert effect) that they all but committed to “red-shirting” Bortles this year.  Remember what I said three weeks of football could do to your fantasy team?  Yeah, now just multiply that but $100 million, add in media scrutiny, a fan base to contend with, an owner that can shitcan you whenever he wants and you get a sense of the pressure that forced the Jags hand to play Bortles this week.  No pressure kid.

Not Blaine Gabbert…trust me!

• In deeper leagues, Bortles (17% owned) offers more upside than the likes of Joe Flacco (38%), Josh McCown (16% – who appears to have lost his job to Glennon), Ryan Fitzpatrick (15%), Geno Smith (13%) and fellow rookies Teddy Bridgewater (12%) and Derek Carr (7%).

My one reservation in starting Bortles is San Diego’s, ball-control, clock-chewing offense which ranks second in the league (while the Jags rank….dead last.  What’s new!).  Regardless, Bortles will have opportunities, and I think (fingers crossed) he comes through.  If Bortles football game is anything like his mack-daddy game, then hell, we’ve got nothing to worry about………….

Good Knight!

 This might be so crazy that it actually works! Only one way to find out…

And with the last two picks of your draft….(if Ray Guy had it his way we’d have to draft punter’s too)

Just Win Baby!

The two most popular taglines regarding the tight-end position this year are: “top-heavy” and “weak”.  The first notion I’ll totally buy.  I won’t be surprised if a good number of championship squads feature either Jimmy Graham (ADP8, TE1) or Rob Gronkowski (ADP27 – and trending up, TE2) or BOTH!  Factoring league settings, roster construction and draft slot, a potentially dominate strategy is to grab both of these guys with your first two picks.  Not only do you give yourself a weekly top tight-end performance, you get elite production from your flex position too.

After the “Big Two”, there are only two other tight-ends with top 50 ADP’s: Julius Thomas (ADP27) and Jordan Cameron (ADP50).  After these guys come of the board the tight-end position gets a bit murky.  This is where average fantasy football players (and even mainstream ‘experts’) buy the lazily constructed “weak depth” storyline.  However, there are a good number of young players, whom admittedly have their flaws, that could pay nice dividends at their going cost.  Jordan Reed (ADP76), Greg Olsen (ADP86), Kyle Rudolph (ADP94) and Charles Clay (ADP117) should all finishes in the top-3 for targets in their respective teams.  In Olsen’s case, he is far-and-away Cam Newton’s most reliable pass-catching option.

There are also some potential difference makers to be had late (after the 10^th round):  Travis Kelce (ADP174) – flashed some big time wheels on a long catch and run TD in the team’s first pre-season game; Coby Fleener (ADP183) – has been running with the first-team offense all camp (also just happens to be Andrew Luck’s Stanford homeboy); Joesph Fauria (ADP213) – all he does is catch touchdowns.

League-Winner