Frigga's Fantasy Football Fridays: Week 2

Optimism.  Are you a glass half full, or glass half empty kind of person?  Me personally, I go back and forth depending on the situation and my frame of mind.  If we're talking about my overall viewpoint on life in general, I'm usually a glass half full kind of guy.  When things start to go south, I try to remind myself that no matter how bad things are at the moment...they could almost always be worse.  In other words, be thankful for the good things that you have and enjoy it!

As positive as I try to be in my daily life, it's not always possible.  I like to call myself an optimistic realist.  Sometimes, you just can't be optimistic about a situation.  And you know what I don't have optimism about?  One of my fantasy teams; QB Matt Ryan and K Matt Bryant combined to score 49 points and it still wasn't enough to pull off a victory.  Thanks for nothing Jamaal Charles, Jordan Reed, Vincent Jackson, Maurice Jones-Drew and Toby Gerhart, all of whom scored 5 or less fantasy points this week and rounded out the rest of my roster.  And to add insult to injury (or maybe it's the other way around in this scenario), I now have four starters with a "questionable" tag after only one week of football.  Yeah, this season doesn't bode well for me in that league.  But this is why I'm in eight leagues, because things are looking great in a few other leagues!  See, optimism!

This week the Vikings take on the New England Patriots for their 2014 Season home opener, the first game in their temporary new digs in TCF Bank Stadium.  I actually am pretty optimistic about this game.  If you had asked me to predict how this matchup might play out 2-3 weeks ago, I would have said "a loss is the most likely scenario, but I still have hope for a win."  But after both the Vikings and Patriots performances last week, I now have optimism that not only can the Vikings be competitive against the unholy dynasty that is the Belichik/Brady Patriots, the Vikings could actually win this game.  Without further ado, let's take a look at the Fantasypros projections, which take into account 6 different sources, including ESPN, CBS, and Pro Football Focus (among others) in their consensus:

No surprise, Peterson leads the pack in projections once again with 18.4 points.  Curiously he's projected for 2 points more than last week, despite only scoring 8 points and only meeting about 50% of his projection.  After speaking with the media on Thursday, Peterson called his performance last Sunday "mediocre", and it was certainly that for fantasy purposes.  That said, we can forgive him for a number of reasons: it was his first game action after sitting out the entire preseason, and he was up against an elite Rams d-line.  Since the Patriots were just gashed on the ground last week by the Dolphins for over 190 yards on the ground, I think Peterson should end up with a nice bounce back game.  It probably doesn't matter though, if you have Peterson on your roster, you're starting him.

Matt Cassel has a pretty underwhelming projection once again, although technically he out-performed his projection last week by 2 points.  His 22 attempts were disappointing and I can't help but think if the Vikings hadn't gotten up to such a huge lead we might have seen a few more passes and he might have done even better.  Still, Cassel should be on your bench or waiver wire for now.  Even though Tannehill put up an almost identical stat line to Cassel last week (albeit with 10 more attempts), I wouldn't expect Cassel to outdo his consensus projection by much this week.

For as bad as the Patriots were against Miami's running game, they held the Dolphin's passing game largely in check.  Mike Wallace got free for over 80 yards and a score, but otherwise the Patriots held the other wide receivers to only about 30 additional yards.  Greg Jennings and company could find it difficult to find open space against the Patriots secondary which now has Darrelle Revis, Devin McCourty and Logan Ryan in coverage.  Still, I think Cordarrelle Patterson is worth a FLEX start to see if he can repeat his outstanding performance last week where he broke loose on a jet sweep run for 76 yards and a touchdown.  It was disappointing to see Patterson only haul in 3 catches for 26 yards as a receiver, so he will likely have some down weeks if his rushing yards come back down to earth.  But with his break-away speed and athleticism, he's worth taking a chance on in the FLEX.  I wouldn't feel real comfortable relying on Patterson as a #2 WR in fantasy just yet, but if he can keep this up over the next couple weeks, I'll be changing my tune.  Jennings was quietly the #1 receiver last week, and scored a touchdown!  But his 11 fantasy points were overshadowed by Patterson's electrifying run.  Jennings had the most targets of any Vikings receiver, so if that trend continues this week against the Patriots, he'll be entering the conversation for a start.  But I would keep Jennings on the bench in a kind of "wait and see" mode.

Kyle Rudolph caught a touchdown to save what was otherwise an underwhelming 2 catch, 16 yard effort.  For all the hype of being a focal point of the offense, and go-to-guy in Norv Turner's offense, it certainly didn't play out that way against the Rams.  It was concerning that he was only targeted 4 times (only 3^rd most on the team), but like Jennings and others, this was also a by-product of being way ahead in a blow-out game, and Cassel only throwing 22 passes.  With his notoriety as a red-zone threat, Rudolph is worth a start just on the sheer chance of scoring a touchdown alone.  And of all the pass catching options for the Vikings this week, his consensus projection for a TD is the highest.

I don't normally include much about the Vikings D/ST or K Blair Walsh, but both are worth a start this week.  The Vikings D/ST under Zimmer appear committed to aggressively getting after the quarterback and it resulted in 5 sacks and 2 interceptions against the lowly Rams.  Believe it or not, but in ESPN Standard leagues, they were the 2^nd highest scoring D/ST last week.  Who knew?  They will likely see a bit of a downgrade as they now face Tom Brady instead of the likes of Shaun Hill and Austin Davis.  But with the Patriots offensive line struggling, I expect several sacks of Brady this Sunday.  Walsh was no Matt Bryant last week, but he was a top 10 kicker scoring double digit fantasy points.  Start both with confidence (as if you Vikings fans weren't already going to).

As I mentioned last week I'm participating in 8 fantasy leagues this year, and after week 1, I'm 5-3 overall in those eight leagues.  One of those leagues happens to be a Daily Norseman Writers Only 6-team league, so I have decided to post the updated standings for you the readers to enjoy, mock and ridicule to your hearts content (sorry other writers...better step up your game!). So, here are the standings for the Daily Norseman Writer's Only league after week 1 (which uses some crazy custom scoring rules):

Yep, that's me sitting in first place.  Suck it other DN writers!  Lastly, if Fantasy advice is what you seek, look no further.  Last week, despite the crap-shoot nature of it all, Frigga offered 10 bits of sit/start advice and was merely 50% accurate.  Never-the-less, post your questions below in the comments section and Frigga's wisdom shall be yours.