15th Annual FALAFEL Draft Location Madness - Sweet Sixteen

 

Upset Special!

Without doing any research, I have to think that 6 upsets is the most we've ever had in a single round. And given that there were three byes, nearly half of our matchups saw the underdog win.

That said, three of the upsets were 4-5, and the biggest shocker was maybe Salt Lake City beating Kansas City? The favorites are all still alive.

Special call out to Key West putting up the worst performance we've ever seen by a 1 seed. I think an  8 seed has won before, but Key West only got more votes than two other locations despite being the top seed in it's region. Well done Bennett.

Reading the tea leaves, a Poconos/Minny/Montreal/Jersey final four seems somewhat imminent. All good options, but maybe there's an underdog out there somewhere.

15th Annual FALAFEL Draft Location Madness - The Bracket

 

Here we go!

Interesting bracket for a few reasons:

1. We have our first set of Byes, for top seeds Poconos, Las Vegas, and the Jersey Shore. Key West is the unlucky 1 seed who has to compete in Round 1, and it gets a formidable opponent in Smashville.

2. The Poconos region has to be the most eclectic set of locations we've ever had, even including the fact that there are only 7 in there. We have rural Pennsylvania, a lake in NY that is somehow inconvenient for everyone other than Barnard (and maybe Frank, who I assume lives in a cave nearby), the theme park capital of central Wisconsin, a German city known for Oktoberfest and Hitler (and it's not Oktoberfest), an absolute monolith in DFW, classic NOLA, and generic Charlotte. 

3. Love seeing in the NFC North battle in Jersey Shore's region.

4. Ithaca vs. Kansas City, KS might be a new low for us in terms of excitement. 

5. I can't wait to hear Levine bitch about how unfair this process is when he didn't even submit votes.

Trade Grade 9 (and Trade Deadline Preview)

 As much as I like this post every year, I'm not going to provide my usual detail this year and will be taking the easy way out in general. Shocking, I know. The Trade Deadline is essentially next week after TNF (3am ET), giving us most of 3 NFL weeks to decide who makes the playoffs outside of Nick, Ajay, and Alan.

But to start, and to make my life easier, I'll grade a real trade instead of providing a mock trade:

Trade 9
Esco receives RJ Harvey, Chimere Dike, and Darren Waller
Gutman receives Zach Charbonnet, Jordan Addison, and Ricky Pearsall

Despite the number of players involved here, I'm honestly not sure who the headliner is. I guess Harvey? Esco is certainly treating him like that. To be fair, I had something like this in the works for mock trades, as Esco trading Charbs/Addy/Pearsall for an Harvey was the most obvious move on the board for the whole league. I wasn't really sure what that package could get beyond Harvey, but this seems about right. Dike replaces some deep bench depth and Waller is most comfortable on the IR or in rehab, so it was basically a 1-for-3 trade. Harvey doesn't seem worth that on his own, but I think both teams made the most of what they could, and if both teams are at full strength, none of these guys probably starts (other than maybe Waller!).

Grades:
Esco: B-
Gutman: B

With a week to go, we damn sure better hit double digit trades. The league is pretty wide open, and some of the sleeping giants (Esco, Levine, Billy) are set to make moves to challenge or replace the early-season pretenders (Gutman, Weissbard, Zacherman). 

Mock Trade 1
Nick receives Marcus Mariota, Troy Franklin, and Tyler Warren
Zacherman receives Matt Stafford, Stefon Diggs, and Dallas Goedert

Mock Trade 2
Ajay receives Chris Olave
Bennett receives D'Andre Swift

Mock Trade 3
Alan receives Josh Jacobs, Emanuel Wilson, and A.J. Brown
Levine receives Breece Hall, Devin Singletary, and Justin Jefferson

Mock Trade 4
AGD receives Alvin Kamara and Quentin Johnston
Billy receives George Kittle

Mock Trade 5
Barnard receives Caleb Williams, Jacory Croskey-Merritt, and Rome Odunze
Weissbard receives Lamar Jackson and Xavier Worthy

Mock Trade 6
Kumpf receives Brian Thomas Jr. and Trey McBride
Marco receives Emeka Egbuka and Travis Kelce

Most of these aren't as fun as usual, but a couple of them (2 and 4) seem like win-wins to me. Let's start trading!

Trade Grades 5 and 7

 (Editor's Note: Esco was extremely delinquent in sending these and he combined them into one overall trade. I can respect the laziness, and the lack of AI this time, but if anyone else is interested in grading my trades I wouldn't say no.)

Trade 5
Kumpf Receives Brian Robinson Jr. and Ladd McConkey

Weissbard Receives Jared Goff and Rachaad White

Trade 6
AGD Receives Ladd McConkey, Calvin Ridley, Jauan Jennings, and DJ Moore
Kumpf Receives Antonio Gibson, Emeka Egbuka, Marvin Mims Jr., and Malik Washington

All-In-One Kumpf Transaction
Trades away
• DJ Moore, Chi WR
• Calvin Ridley, Ten WR
• Jauan Jennings, SF WR
• Jared Goff, Det QB
• Rachaad White, TB RB
• Ladd McConkey, LAC WR (from Weissbard)
For
• Brian Robinson Jr., SF RB
• Malik Washington, Mia WR
• Emeka Egbuka, TB WR
• Antonio Gibson, NE RB
• Marvin Mims Jr., Den WR 

Ok very delayed here but after losing four straight weeks on MNF, I lost my appetite to do any fantasy football analysis. But 2 game win streak and we are back baby!

Reviewing the full trade for Kumpf is a little strange to see with two weeks of hindsight, but I’ll try to take the position of what made the most sense at the time for each time.

Weissbard: Coming into Week 5, the logjam at Wide Receiver (BTJ, Ladd, Rome Odunze, Tet McMillian) makes a trade compelling, especially with Bijan and Caleb going on bye and limited depth. Ladd was definitely a sell low compared to his draft value when you trade him for QB15 and a short term RB rental. However, I think best case hes an WR2 for the rest of the year so I don’t see you giving up a lot of upside here. Goff is a borderline QB1 in a 14 team league who allows you to play the matchups with Caleb and with Bucky Irving questionable for Week 5, Rachaad becomes an immediate RB2 for as many weeks as Bucky is out (turns out its at least 3!).

Weissbard Trade Grade: A-
Updated Zacherman Trade Grade for Trading for Bucky without getting (Editor's note: or even ASKING FOR) Rachaad: D-

AGD: An 8 player WR swap on a Sunday (with your opponent that week!) is strange execution and bizarre strategy, and that about sums up the AGD season. Emeka Egbuka has become a top 5 WR and was by far the most valuable player on the AGD roster so he’s the most obvious chip to trade to give you desperately needed depth. I’ll also give AGD credit for finding Malik, Antonio and Mims on the waiver wire, not only have they been active but they have had a few nice pickups. It’s hard to imagine any of them as a every week starter so if you want to package your scraps and your star, now is the time before the shine stars to fade on either of them.

Getting a WR2 (Ladd) and 3 WR Flex Options (Moore, Ridley, Jennings) is certainly an improvement over being forced to start Christian Kirk and Malik Washington on a weekly basis. I would say losing your only 20+ scoring option (Emeka) would be a big negative but when you have the chance of 0s in your WR2 and Flex on a regular basis, you need some form of consistency. This is a bit like moving around the deck chairs on the Titanic and I still can’t believe you have now completed a second trade without getting value for Kittle, but I don’t hate it.
AGD Trade Grade: B

Kumpf: Looking at the combined trades, it feels like giving up a lot for Emeka and some question marks. To be fair though, in my last trade review, I complained how your WR flex nightmare would make it impossible to pick the right starters week by week and you very effectively solved it by landing a WR1 and a very clear starting lineup. So if you follow my advice, I can’t really give you a bad grade…

If you wanted handcuff fliers like BRob and Antonio in the hopes of injury, why didn’t you just keep Rachaad when you knew Bucky was questionable to play Week 5? Did you give up too much by flipping Ladd at his lowest value and trading all these components for Egbuka when RB2 remains your biggest question mark? It would be really really nice to have Rachaad back right now!
A lot of questions with the process, but I keep looking at your starting roster and its compelling. You are now extremely thin with no more trade chips on your bench so this trade will really come down to if your starting lineup can stay healthy
Kumpf Trade Grade: B-

Trade Grades 6 and 8

 Still waiting on Esco to provide the grade for my trades (now up to 3 on the season!), but here are the other two.

Trade 6
Nick receives Brian Thomas Jr.
Weissbard receives Woody Marks

As always, these grades are based on what we knew at the time, which was that BTJ was struggling to find the heights of his rookie season, while Woody seemed to be taking a firm hold of the Texans RB1 role. If he hadn't traded away one of his excess WRs earlier in the day, I would say this is great business for Dan. RBs are worth their weight in gold, and getting 10-15 touches per game is never available on the waiver wire. The only thing you can't do is trade a WR1 for the lesser of an RB by committee. This wasn't exactly that, as BTJ is more of a high end WR2 and Woody seemed to be the high end of a committee, but the Texans OL looks like trash. Given that Weiss was basically deciding between 1) which of these guys to start in a given week and 2) who would perform better over the rest of the season, I feel like he came on the short side here.

As for our defending champ, he made the stereotypical move of trading for a player who led him to the championship. We've all been there (Barnard hasn't), though his next move was surprising. Regardless, at the time Woody was his clear RB3, and BTJ immediately challenged for his WR1. Obvious move here.

Grades:
Nick: A-
Weissbard: C-

Trade 8
Marco receives Ray Davis and Brian Thomas Jr.
Nick receives Omarion Hampton and Hassan Haskins

These two trades were a master class by our defending champ. Turning the lesser half of the Texans running game into the best part of the Chargers running game is sorcery in a league that protects their RBs like they're gold. Nick is doing exactly what a 4-1 team should be doing, focusing on building the best team possible for the playoffs, because even if he goes .500 the rest of the regular season he's likely still in the playoffs.

Marco also did pretty well here. He dodged a Diggs bullet IMO and made lemonade after his roster lost his two most valuable assets in back to back weeks. It's still going to be a slog to get to the playoffs from 2-3 without your two best players, but there's at least a path, where there wasn't before.

Grades:
Nick: A-
Marco: B