Week 9 QB Rankings: Don't Quit on Philip Rivers

The narrative of Week 9 quarterback and wide receiver rankings has to be dominated by studs with great matchups at home.

Notes:

• A rare week when there are over ten truly great looking starts at QB for us. It was fairly easy to demote Andrew Luck with his erratic recent play and the worst matchup in football.
  
  
• Jay Cutler is probably the worst QB we can reasonably start in DFS this week and I rarely see more than four or five. Cam Newton and Aaron Rodgers are the only top-10 QBs we should definitely fade in DFS.
  
  
• Not sure if Philip Rivers as QB2 is a #hottake or conventional, despite Keenan Allen being placed on IR and Antonio Gates' health in question.This is a combined trust in Rivers' ability along with the trust that they will throw a ton because their defense cannot hold a lead and their line cannot run block.
  
  Rivers is a difficult DFS stack, so fading him is reasonable because of his price. But Danny Woodhead and Malcom Floyd are cheap enough that the total cost of the stack is pretty cheap. A whole hell of a lot cheaper than stacking Tom Brady or Ben Roethlisberger with their best passing options.
  
  
• Derek Carr and Jameis Winston head my list of streamers. Their ownership is low, so if you only need one week, you can do worse than Winston in a home shootout.
  
  
• If you are a Carson Palmer owner who was stashing Ryan Fitzpatrick for this matchup against the Jaguars, dodge the bullet. There is obvious upside in the matchup, but there is a lot of risk that he is limited by the thumb injury. Would rather stream those above him like Carr or Winston.
  
  
• QB5 through QB12 were all difficult to rank. Marcus Mariota and Josh McCown were the toughest to rank. On one hand, they should both be on the wrong sides of blowouts and should get some garbage time love.
  
  On the other, Mariota has not proven he is healthy and no one knows what this offense will look like under Mike Mularkey. Rookie QB on a bad team with an interim head coach's first game can be shiny new car awesome or some of the most horrid waste we can toss in a lineup.
  
  If McCown's game were on Sunday, I would like it more. But Thursday Night Football blowouts tend to die out when it is clear the game is over. I don't know if it is the lack of preparation leading into the game or risk aversion, but I cannot give love to the garbage time in this game if Cincy is just controlling the clock to kill the game.
  
  
• In de facto 2QB leagues, Kirk Cousins is probably the cutoff to where we should probably be looking to another offensive player than a QB to flex. He's usually at the bottom, but the Patriots are 14-point favorites at home, so the Jordan Reed Garbage Time Show should give us more points than whatever RB or WR we would otherwise use.
  
  
• Andy Dalton had a really, really bad Week 8 and TNF would be a terrible time to expect a conservative head coach like Marvin Jones use a short week to get his mojo moving with gunslinging in a game where risk is unnecessary. On a Sunday, I would love this as a get-right game where Dalton is top-8, but would much rather start so many other QBs with equivalent matchups who are not on short weeks.
  
  
• If there are any questions, feel free to comment or discuss with me on Twitter. My handle is @AlexSontySBN.