Fake Teams fantasy football mailbag: Start Deshaun Watson or Mitchell Trubisky?

Welcome to the Fake Teams fantasy football mailbag! If you want to send in your questions for next week’s mailbag, here are the ways to join:

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Onto the mailbag:

Q: Dion Lewis or peyton Barber in standard league for week 9 and ROS? Keke Coutee or Geronimo Allison or Trequan Smith or Frank Gore for week 9? Need to pick 2 flux in PPR

— @RK_Colorado

I just picked Dion Lewis as one of my Week 9 must starts so I gotta stay on #brand. But even if I hadn’t, I’d pick him. Lewis had his best game of the season in Week 7 before the Titans’ bye and you’re hoping he’ll continue to build upon that moving forward. More than just hope, Ryan Fitzpatrick is back at the helm in Tampa Bay and last time he was leading this team, Peyton Barber got all of 148 yards in those four games. Total. I’d fully expect him to return to being an afterthought in Tampa.

As for your second question, no Frank Gore right off the bat. Kenyan Drake has been starting to show signs of life the last two weeks and my guess would be the Dolphins continue to ride the hot hand this weekend. Even if Gore is involved, Drake has been the one scoring touchdowns recently and making plays in the passing game. I like Geronimo Allison even coming back from injury because I’m assuming the Packers’ offense will be able to score a fair amount and move the ball on the Patriots’ defense and Tre’Quan Smith has a low floor but I like his matchup against a Rams’ defense that’s below average against WR2s.

(I do like Keke Coutee but I kinda feel Demaryius Thomas is going to be heavily involved in the game plan since he is facing his old team.)

UPDATE:

Scratch Allison, Keke Coutee all the way!

Q: PPR: I need a WR2 and a FLEX out of: J Brown, C Sutton, D Baldwin, & DJ Moore.

— @AndeTheEngineer

You’re killing me. This is like picking which of my make believe children I pretend to have to explain why I go to bed at 10:30 on a Friday night I love the most. John Brown I have been riding all season, I ranked D.J. Moore as my number one fantasy rookie receiver after the draft and I literally just bought property on Courtland Sutton Hill. This is how I die. Oh well, it’s been fun people.

You obviously start John Brown (if you need more reasoning than that, I politely direct your attention again to my must starts for this week) and I think highest upside goes to D.J. Moore of that bunch. I agree with Clark’s statement on Thursday’s podcast that Russell Wilson is in for a vintage Wilson game and as such Doug Baldwin could feature heavily in that but I also think given Moore’s increased usage and facing a terrible Bucs’ defense, he’s the way to go. I love Sutton, but I think he’s solid for 60 yards and a touch which is great for standard but not ideal for PPR, whereas Moore could see 10 touches for 110 yards and touch.

Q: Standard league: Watson or Trubisky? PPR: I have Big Ben but wondering if there’s QB’s I should target in a trade for the rest of the season?

— Mike M

It’s tough because both the Broncos and Bills’ defenses have been great this year against opposing quarterbacks, but I would ride the hot hand and start Deshaun Watson. The Broncos are giving up roughly 2.5 more points per game to opposing QBs and I trust Watson more to rise to the occasion, even if it’s done mostly with his legs.

Big Ben isn’t the worst quarterback to have rest of the season as the Steelers’ schedule is decently easy rest of the way (in terms of fantasy defenses)—their final four games are against the Raiders, Patriots, Saints and Bengals. Two names I could think of trading for would be Dak Prescott (hopefully Amari Cooper helps and he currently has the 3rd best strength of schedule) and Russell Wilson. But honestly, I would be confident in Roethlisberger moving forward.

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