Weekly Hail Mary: Week 13 Recap
Each week of the fantasy football regular season, HMF will provide you with at least one “Hail Mary” at QB, RB, WR, and TE - a guy who is not generally regarded as a starter for the week, but who has the potential to pay off big. Think of it as a dart throw column. These are the guys you look to when you’re in dire straits and have nowhere else to turn. They are lottery tickets that are not necessarily likely to hit, but if they do, you’ll be thrilled, as you can likely grab them for free off your waiver wire. We only focus on players who are available in at least two-thirds of Yahoo! leagues. In other words, if you’re desperate, we’re giving you a prayer.
This season, we have been keeping track of our hits and misses. Remember, this is a dart throw column - we’re dealing with the dregs, here - so I’m happy if we can get a 33% success rate for the season. Despite a few brutal calls, the Week 13 results exceeded our expectations, as we hit on 5 of 9 (55%). Here’s a recap of our Week 13 calls:
Quarterback
Nick Mullens - HIT - 316 yards, 3 TD, 2 INT. It’s never pretty to watch, but Mullens gets the job done. Three hundred yards and three scores is exactly what we want out of a streamer.
Tua Tagovailoa - HIT - 296 yards passing, 1 TD. It’s a close call given only one TD, but I’m going to take the W here because Tagovailoa played turnover-free football and passed for nearly 300 yards.
Gardner Minshew - REMOVED - Minshew still did not return to the starting lineup, so he was not under consideration here.
Running Back
Cam Akers - HIT - 21 carries for 72 yards, TD; 1 catch for 22 yards. Finally. Finally Sean McVay is starting to understand that Akers is the best ball-carrier he has. But it may be short-lived; Akers was listed as a DNP to start Week 14.
Frank Gore - MISS - 1 carry for 2 yards. Not my fault that Gore got hurt in the first quarter. These things happen. His replacement, Ty Johnson, had 22 rushes for 104 yards, along with 2 carries for 13 yards. The process was good here given our evaluation of opponent, but it just didn’t pan out due to Gore’s injury. Clearly, the workload would have been there had he stayed healthy.
Wide Receiver
Jalen Reagor - HIT - 1 reception for 34 yards; 73 yard punt return TD. It took a punt return touchdown, but hey, I’ll take it! All the points count.
Marquez Valdes-Scantling - MISS - 0 for 0; 1 carry for -4 yards. Yeesh. This guy has such bad hands. You can’t trust him at all.
Breshad Perriman - MISS - 1 for 22. Just a bad call. Jamison Crowder, Denzel Mims, and Ty Johnson were much more involved here. I thought the Jets were gonna go deep to Perriman in this one to attack Vegas’ secondary, but it just didn’t come to fruition.
Tight End
Jordan Reed - HIT - 3 for 32; TD. Sure, the touchdown saves you, but that’s pretty much par for the course for tight ends this year.
Kyle Rudolph - MISS - 0 for 0. Woof. We set a new record for ineptitude with some of our calls this week, with multiple guys getting one or fewer catches. But hey, that’s why it’s a dart throw column!