FCFI Week 8 Review and Week 9 Preview
The College Sports Madness fantasy football team had their best outing in a while during our week eight victory over Fantasy College Blitz in the Fantasy College Football Invitational. Case Keenum and Chris Polk pretty much saved us as we cruised to a 154.15 to 129.60 victory. The win moves us up to 5-3 and right in the middle of the mess that is the Butch Davis Division.
The competition keeps getting tougher as we now face off against host site U-Sports. U-Sports is one of those teams that is 5-3 with us, but holds all the tie-breakers. We’ll put an end to that with a victory. Quarterbacks Case Keenum and Russell Wilson will again get the nod. We’ll hope for seven touchdowns from Keenum this week.
The running back situation is a little muddled. Rex Burkhead was a great start last week against Minnesota, but it will not be as easy against Michigan State. But we’ll start him anyway…he’s too good to put on the bench. Cierre Wood, on the other hand, is not too good for the bench. Wood only had five carries for five yards last week against USC. To make matters worse, Notre Dame plays Navy this week. That may not sound like a bad thing since this Navy squad is pretty bad, but I never like to play anybody against Navy. They just run out too much clock and the opposition has fewer opportunities to make plays. Instead, we will look to Air Force’s Asher Clark to have a good day against a questionable New Mexico defense. Rounding out our backs is, of course, Chris Polk. Coming off a great game against Stanford, Polk should carry the load against Arizona.
Jeremy Ebert is a good start against Indiana. The Hoosiers can score a few points, but they cannot stop anybody either. With any luck, the Northwestern defense will give up enough points so they will feel the need to keep throwing in the second half. With bye weeks for D.J. Woods and Marquis Maze, the only other choice we have for the second wide receiver is Jermaine Kearse. He’ll do. At tight end it is time to drop Nexon Dorvilus and see what we can find on waivers. What we found is Cooper Helfet of Duke. The Blue Devils tight end has two touchdowns in his last three games and caught four passes last week. He will not give us many points, but he has been a relatively consistent target and Duke will have to throw against Virginia Tech this week…and probably check down to the tight end quite a bit too.
Chandler Catanzaro has proven to be a nice kicker pickup. As long as Clemson keeps putting up oodles of points, we’ll stick with Catanzaro. Temple’s defense has been pretty good too, even if the offense is playing poorly. However, they do have a bye week, so it is off to find a good matchup. And Iowa looks like a winner. But we are not giving away Temple, since Iowa can only play Minnesota once. I’ve seen worse looking lineups.
U-Sports is sporting another quality lineup with quarterbacks Nick Foles and Dominique Davis leading the way. That Arizona at Washington game is going to be huge. Michael Dyer, Perry Jones and Silas Redd form a nice trio in the backfield. Redd scares me, and conflicts me since I have him in my Big Ten league. Ryan Swope should put up solid numbers against Missouri and hopefully the West Virginia defense steps up a little and at least contains Mohamed Sanu. The Houston defense is an interesting play. They have done pretty good with this particular scoring system, so we’ll see how Rice can do against them on Thursday night.
With only four of 18 teams making the playoffs (what is this, Europe?), we are getting very close to must win situations here. At 5-3, we may need to finish at 8-3 for a shot at the top four. The good news is we have opportunities to knock off of some other teams in the mess of 5-3 squads battling for playoff spots. A loss against U-Sports this week and College Sports Madness will be in some trouble. Go Keenum.
