Our fantasy football cavalry is out of ammunition. The fallen are trampled into the mud, with nary a bugler left to rise screaming through the mist with only the glint of a weathered bayonet. Six teams are on bye in Week 7, which wouldn’t warrant so much as a whimper if our numbers weren’t already sparse from injury attrition. This is the week that leans on our mettle as fantasy managers. Will we crumble or galvanize in a phalanx formation behind our shields? It is a make-or-break slate, whether you like it or not.
This isn’t “Bye-mageddon,” where the tornado sirens wailed on end and no roster was safe from a well-deserved rest period for the athletes to enjoy time away from the grind. Week 7 doesn’t have that metallic dystopian tinge to it. No nuclear fallout nor zombie hordes. What we are dealing with this week is uncertainty. Muddy position groups are muddier than ever. MRI results are state secrets in guarded underground bunkers with slow-drying red rubber stamp ink smattered on a tasseled manila envelope.
The season’s second trimester is also a barometer for coaching competency. Everything that can be gleaned from game tape is out there. Good coaches will take advantage and bad ones will be exposed. The tightrope of shaping a roster, whether real or fantasy, without needlessly meddling into oblivion is a struggle shared in common with both games. Let’s feather through the pages of this week’s fantasy football storylines.
Fantasy Football Storylines (Week 7)
Hold On… For One More Day
What was supposed to be a leisurely scroll through Thursday morning tweets turned into a grim, humorless joke. First-round WR Jahan Dotson was taking snaps as a holder on the field goal unit. Riverboat Ron? More like Reprehensible Ron. He did the same thing to Antonio Gibson last season instead of actually enacting changes to win more games.
Dotson is struggling this season and has drawn the ire of his most ardent supporters, myself included. Where most are putting him out to pasture (or on special teams), I will continue to bet on his immense talent where I have the space to keep him. Hence, the Wilson Phillips reference.
Of Chief Concern
Rumors of the Chiefs’ post-championship demise have been thoroughly overblown. They are 5-1 and winning with…defense? Okay, that’s weird. Kansas City only scored 19 points on the same defense that surrendered 70 a couple of weeks prior.
Patrick Mahomes is running for his life and the receivers not dating a pop culture icon cannot be trusted. Running the ball? Please. Isiah Pacheco looks like a backhoe operator out there, still crashing into his linemen and missing running lanes.
The good news is the Chargers are coming to town. Los Angeles sports a defense rich in name value and penniless in performance this season. Will the mighty Chiefs find a groove like they did en route to the Lombardi a year ago? This might be the slump-buster that does it for them.
Bottlenosed and Breathtaking
Tyreek Hill is every superlative for fantasy football. The Cheetah is uniquely special and as inevitable as daybreak. Once hyperbolic overtures are just canned adjectives next to his name. Hill is on pace for more than 2,300 receiving yards this season. We’re a third of the way through. The Dolphins offense as a whole is digging in to challenge every record in the book.
Those of us who recognized Mike McDaniel’s unparalleled brand of genius long before he was named Miami’s head coach know that more success is on the horizon. He has put a unique and explosive twist on the Shanahan system, one that does not require star power (but greatly benefits from it).
Hill and Jaylen Waddle form the narrowest passing funnel in the league, combining with a lethal rushing attack that puts electric speed in space. If you drop two safeties deep, the running game and dig routes are a death by 1,000 cuts. If you man up and load the box, Tua Tagovailoa just drops repeated streaking rainbows right into the glistening pot of gold. This is our generation’s Greatest Show on Turf. For fantasy, the dream feels all too real.
My Team Without CMC Looks…Oh…Bleak
Take my breath away, Christian McCaffrey. You were the apple of my eye in the first round this summer and I need you. I never thought you were injury prone and ardently protected your reputation in football circles.
Grant me the strength to fill every roster spot stripped bare to injured reserve and the dreaded gesture of “farewell for now.” I say this with mixed emotions because I certainly can’t afford to lose CMC in the long-term, but let’s hope our beloved RB1’s pain tolerance can bear his oblique injury enough to stay active and racking up more points in these trying times.
The 49ers were torn asunder by injuries in dreary Cleveland last week. Though I root for their demise on the scoreboard, a large part of me wishes for a result favorable to my fantasy scoreboard. Who to choose between Jordan Mason and Elijah Mitchell in the nebulous void left by a fallen star? I shudder to imagine a dilemma with more pain on both ends. It’s McCaffrey or bust, especially with the current state of the RB landscape available on waivers.
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