Well Week 1 of the NFL season is in the books and here’s how we did with our picks. Schaumburg Stu got out to an early lead at 12-3 while Dan the Man finished a game behind him at 11-4. Mr. Fantasy and I tied at the back of the pack at 9-6. Let’s see how this coming week goes.
If you’re a fantasy football player and had the #1 pick in our draft there’s a very good chance that you took David Johnson the Arizona Cardinals running back. Johnson was the top choice in every league I’m in this season and now the Cardinals and fantasy owners are scrambling.
Johnson dislocated his catching a pass inside the 10-yard line in the Cardinals 35-23 loss to the Detroit Lions. Johnson is scheduled to have surgery on his wrist some time this week and was placed on injured reserve by Arizona. By being placed on injured reserve it means Johnson will miss a minimum of 8 weeks. The original prognosis had Johnson being out 8 to 12 weeks, but Arizona’s head coach Bruce Ariens said that’s it “possibly” for Johnson to be back in 11 to 15 weeks or right around the holidays.
So who is going to get the carries and catches with Johnson out? Kerwynn Williams looks to be the first guy in line, but Andre Ellington should also be in the mix. The Cardinals did re-sign Chris Johnson to fill out their 53 man roster, but I wouldn’t expect him to get a lot of playing time. Since Johnson is a true duel threat back in both the running game and the passing game I expect the Cardinals to have to use multiple players to fill his spot. I’d look for Williams to handle the bulk of the carries while Ellington will be the bigger factor in the passing game.
Before he left the game Johnson had 11 carries for 23 yards and caught 6 of the 9 targets thrown at him for 68 yards. After Johnson went out Williams carried the football 5 time for 10 yards and caught the only pass he was targeted on for 2 yards. Ellington didn’t have any rushing attempts in the game, but he was targeted 3 times in the passing game catching 2 of them for 35 yards.
Obviously Johnson is a huge loss more for Arizona than fantasy owners and there’s no way to truly replace him with one guy. I’m thinking that Ellington will be used as a 3rd down style back with Williams being the guy who’s on the field most of the time as the bigger running threat. Of course this will depending on how the game is going for the Cardinals at the time, but those look like their options as well as a couple of guys fantasy owners can use.
If you listened to last Sunday’s podcast you know that I was very excited to see Danny Woodhead get a shot at being the main running back for the Baltimore Ravens. I really thought that Woodhead would’ve been a big steal for not only the Ravens, but fantasy owners. Woodhead left Sunday’s game after getting 1 carry for 4 yards and 3 receptions for 33 yards. It was reported that he had a hamstring injury and now it’s come out that it appears he’ll miss 6 to 8 weeks and the Ravens may put him on injured reserve.
It appears as the Woodhead injury may hurt the Ravens more in the passing game than in the running game. Behind Woodhead Baltimore had two solid running backs in Terrance West and Javorius “Buck” Allen. West ran the football 19 times for 80 yards and scored a touchdown in Week 1 while Allen had 21 carries for 71 yards against the Cincinnati Bengals.
While it appears that the running game might be alright while Woodhead is out. Who’s going to be able to fill his shoes in the passing game. Woodhead first caught teams and fantasy owners attention as a receiver out of the backfield. Now it looks like the Ravens will give wide receiver Michael Campanaro a chance to fill that role. Campanaro wasn’t targeted in the passing game on Sunday, but he did end up with 1 carry for 2 yards. Could he be the guy in the backfield to try and cover for Baltimore while Woodhead is out?
Major League Baseball announced the schedule for the 2018 season yesterday and while there where a lot of interesting things on the schedule there was one very interesting thing on there.
Every team will open the season on March 29th, but on April 17th the Oakland A’s host the Chicago White Sox. It will be the 50th anniversary of the A’s first game played t the Oakland Coliseum. Now there are always anniversaries though a baseball season, but what caught my eye on this game is the fact that the A’s aren’t going to charge their fans to see this game. That’s right the game if FREE! Oakland believes that this is the first time in major league history that a stand alone game will be completely free for fans.
The A’s will release more information on this game early in 2018. I wonder if Dan the Man has booked his flight to Oakland yet.
It was reported yesterday that Danica Patrick will not be driving for Stewart-Haas racing next season do to lack of a title sponsor. The title sponsor or main sponsor is the name that you see on the hood of the drivers car. It’s the most expensive sponsorship a team looks for and there’s just not one for what would’ve been Patrick’s car next season.
So now that Patrick is out at Stewart-Haas will she be able to find a full time ride in NASCAR’s top series. Patrick has made 180 career starts in what is now called the Monster Energy NASCAR Cup Series. Patrick has just seven top 10’s in those 180 starts and quite possibly the biggest thing she did was winning the pole for the Daytona 500 in 2013. It’s not the best resumes when there are drivers like Matt Kenseth and Kurt Busch, who both have won a Cup looking for rides next season.
Patrick had her worse finish in the NASCAR standings at 28th.
I don’t think that Patrick is the draw she use to be and you have to wonder if a team would take a chance on her. She’s mentioned before that she is financially secure enough that she does not have to race and it wouldn’t be worthwhile doing if it made her miserable. That would make me question is she even wants to continue driving. What do you think?
Now Patrick was kind of thrust into the spotlight as the only full time female driver and she never really had a chance to develop. I think is she’s truly serious about being a driver she needs to take a step down and look for a full time ride in the Xfinity series and see if she can improve before trying to get back into the top NASCAR series. I’m not sure if she would be willing to do that, but if she has that love for racing that a lot of drivers have I think it would be the best move for her career. Would you like to see her as a full time Xfinity driver or maybe just a part time driver in the Monster Energy series?
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