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Jan 30 '18
Shall we rename the Winners section the Newtons?Cam Newton seems to have a stranglehold on the fantasy leaderboard these days, but Sunday didnt present only good news for Week 1s members of the 20-point club, as Antonio Brown, A. Wholesale Clippers Jerseys .J. Green, Carlos Hyde and Alex Smith let their owners down.As we do each Sunday right here, we recap the weeks winners and losers from a fantasy perspective, complete with applicable game and historical data. Check back after the conclusion of the 1 and 4 p.m. ET (and, when applicable, Sunday Night Football) games for our picks of the weeks best and worst.WinnersCam Newton, QB, Carolina Panthers: Ho-hum. Another week, another spot atop the fantasy leaderboard, as Newtons 29 fantasy points were tops through the Sunday 4 p.m. ET games. If his lead holds, it would mark the fourth time in the past seven regular-season weeks that he has been the top scorer, as he also led in 2015 Weeks 13 (tied with Marcus Mariota), 15 and 17. Since the beginning of last season, the only other players to top the leaderboard multiple times have been Devonta Freeman (2015 Weeks 3-4), Matthew Stafford (2015 Weeks 6 and 12, though he was tied for the lead in Week 12) and Russell Wilson (2015 Weeks 12 and 14, tied with Stafford in Week 12).Fantasy owners who made Newton the No. 1 quarterback off the board -- many of them bold enough to spend as high an overall selection as the No. 13 indicated by his ESPN ADP -- have been pleasantly rewarded thus far.Travis Benjamin, WR, San Diego Chargers: No Keenan Allen, no problem. Benjamin, signed to a four-year, $24-million contract by the Chargers during the offseason, became the teams de facto No. 1 wide receiver in the wake of Allens season-ending injury. In Week 2, he made a statement in his first full game in the role, topping all wide receivers through the 4 p.m. ET games with 23 fantasy points. It sure seems that Benjamin has a thing for Week 2s, as his career-best score, and only one greater than his total on Sunday, came with the Cleveland Browns, 29 fantasy points in 2015 Week 2. He also made the most of his targets, catching all six for a 29-point PPR day. To put that into perspective -- and perhaps cast some light on the Chargers wide receiver pecking order going forward -- Benjamin saw at least six targets in eight of his 16 games for the Browns in 2015, and he matched teammate Tyrell Williams (12 fantasy points on six targets) for the team lead in the category.Kelvin Benjamin, WR, Panthers: Benjamin has played a big part in Newtons success these first two weeks, following up his 15 fantasy points in the NFL Kickoff game with 22 on Sunday, matching Corey Coleman for second among wide receivers through the 4 p.m. ET games. After whispers that Benjamin might be on a snap count to begin his first season since recovering from a torn ACL, he played 49 of 68 offensive snaps in Week 1. Well soon get a final snap count for his Week 2, but the 37 fantasy points he has in consecutive weeks shattered his previous best of 35, set in Weeks 10-11 of 2014. Its quite an encouraging comeback so far for the 2014 first-rounder.Corey Coleman, WR, Cleveland Browns: He certainly justified his No. 15 overall selection -- first among wide receivers -- in the 2016 NFL draft on Sunday, scoring 22 fantasy points to match Benjamin for the positions second-best score through the 4 p.m. ET games. To put Colemans effort into perspective, only six different Browns wide receivers (rookies or not) have scored more than that in a game since the team rejoined the NFL in 1999: Travis Benjamin, Antonio Bryant, Braylon Edwards (four times), Josh Gordon (four times), Quincy Morgan (twice) and Dennis Northcutt.Jimmy Garoppolo, QB, New England Patriots: One could make the claim that Garoppolos week warrants more of a negative spin, but he did score 21 fantasy points for his owners who were bold enough to start him in 9.6 percent of ESPN leagues, that all before getting injured roughly four minutes shy of halftime. In doing so, Garoppolo, still a free agent in 83.8 percent of leagues, exceeded the magic 20 threshold we demand from the position. Its the most scored by a quarterback in the first half of a game since three managed more in 2015 Week 15: Brock Osweiler (27, en route to 28), Cam Newton (24 of 41) and Kirk Cousins (22 of 35).Isaiah Crowell, RB, Browns: Through two games, its apparent that Crowell is the Browns starting/go-to running back, and he concluded Sundays 4 p.m. ET games with 20 fantasy points, second so far for the week and tops among Sunday players. More importantly, though, he had 18 carries and 19 touches to Duke Johnson Jr.s three and seven, after winning those battles in Week 1 by margins of 12-3 and 15-6. Three of Crowells best single-game fantasy-point totals have come in his past six regular-season games (26 in 2015 Week 14 was his best; this weeks 20 is now tied for his second-best; 14 during 2015 Week 16 was his fifth-highest total).Matt Ryan, QB, Atlanta Falcons: After dropping 24 fantasy points on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in Week 1, Ryan followed it up with another 27 in Week 2, giving him a league-leading 51 through two weeks. Scaling the 25 point fantasy plateau is a rarity for Ryan, as he had gone 20 games between performances of at least that many (2014 Week 14 was his last one). Perhaps more importantly for future-matchup evaluation, Ryans game came at the expense of the extremely disappointing Oakland Raiders defense, which has now afforded a league-leading 57 fantasy points to opposing quarterbacks (they allowed 30 to Drew Brees in Week 1).Melvin Gordon, RB, San Diego Chargers: For the second consecutive week, Gordon scored a touchdown -- remember that he didnt have a single score in 2015 -- and he managed exactly 17 fantasy points for the second straight game. That gives him 34 for the season, which is more than he had in any six-game span in 2015. He might also be in line for a more prominent role in the coming weeks following Danny Woodheads early departure due to a knee injury.LosersFantasy owners of Doug Martin, Thomas Rawls, Arian Foster, Danny Woodhead and Ameer Abdullah: All five running backs made early exits from Sundays games due to injury, with none reaching 10 carries and only Rawls totaling 10 touches before his departure. For suggestions on who to pick up and/or how to deal with this rash of running-back injuries, check out Eric Karabells blog later this evening.Rawls stat line was the one that stood out: He ran seven times for minus-7 yards, finishing with one fantasy point merely thanks to his three catches for 15 yards. Thats the worst rushing yard total by a running back who had at least five attempts in a game since LaRod Stephens-Howling had minus-14 yards on eight carries in 2012 Week 3, and Rawls three stuffs (held to a loss) matched his 2015 Week 4 career high.Todd Gurley, RB, Los Angeles Rams: Well, at least he wasnt one of the many running backs injured in Week 2, but Gurleys six fantasy points on Sunday were only three more than Abdullah (the leader from the previous group), and they gave him back-to-back games in single digits for only the second time in his career (2015 Weeks 12-13). Queue the panic amongst Gurleys owners, and while its seemingly outrageous to remind them that this was a wretched matchup for him on paper and that they should remain patient, there are some who might have their doubts about him.To give you a sense of how special a talent Gurley is, consider that even with these two stinkers, he now has 186 fantasy points through his first 15 career games, comparing favorably to the running backs in the chart to the right.Antonio Brown, WR, Pittsburgh Steelers: Queue panic among Browns fantasy owners who made him the No. 1 consensus pick during the preseason. OK, OK, thats exaggerating -- no one should be that reactionary -- but after he was started in 99.9 percent of ESPN leagues, Browns mere three fantasy points (seven in PPR) mightve sunk a lot of his teams. He managed 11 targets in this one, and only one other time in his career did he score so few or fewer fantasy points in a game where he was targeted at least that much: two (six in PPR) on 11 targets in 2012 Week 6.A.J. Green, WR, Cincinnati Bengals: Browns counterpart across the field didnt fare much better, converting his eight targets into three fantasy points (and just five in PPR). Such a low score is even more unusual for Green than it is for Brown, as this was only the 10th time in Greens 78 career games (12.8 percent) than he scored three or fewer fantasy points; Browns was his 18th in 88 career games scoring three or fewer (20.5 percent).Carlos Hyde, RB, San Francisco 49ers: One of five running backs to reach the 20-point fantasy threshold during Week 1 -- he had exactly 20 -- Hyde was promptly started by owners in 58.4 percent of ESPN leagues on Sunday, but provided his teams one-tenth of that, or two points. Hyde takes a lot of flak for playing on a losing team, a point more strongly made in 2015, but bear in mind that in only one of his eight games played last season was he held to as few as two fantasy points (Week 4).Alex Smith, QB, Kansas City Chiefs: Only a handful of fantasy owners -- he was started in 7.6 percent of ESPN leagues -- absorbed Smiths three-point fantasy disaster on Sunday, but those who did probably play in deeper or two-quarterback leagues, where the impact was more severely felt. It was an unusually poor performance for the game-managing, typically-low-risk Smith, as he hadnt had a game with that few fantasy points since 2012 Week 6 (two) when he was a member of the 49ers.Golden Tate, WR, Detroit Lions: Known more for his PPR-scoring prowess rather than in standard, Tate let owners down in both formats on Sunday, scoring only one fantasy point (and three in PPR) for the owners who started him in 52.8 percent of ESPN leagues. Through two games, Tate has just five fantasy points on 16 targets; he had scored more than five points in 18 of his 32 career Lions games entering the 2016 season.Jameis Winston, QB, Tampa Bay Buccaneers: Though Andrew Lucks Weeks 1-2 drop-off ended up being the greater of the two (a 24-point decline), Winstons fantasy point total dropped from 25 in Week 1 to a mere three this week, fueled by four interceptions and a lost fumble. It was by far a career-worst for the sophomore, who never scored fewer than 12 fantasy points in a game in 2015 (Weeks 3, 4 and 10). Authentic Clippers Jerseys . Hey!" The lower tier of the School End of Queens Park Rangers Loftus Road was packed solid with a very festive-sounding Chelsea choral section in this particular part of South Africa Road London, W12. Youth Clippers Jerseys . Their 38th instalment is arguably their biggest fight card to date, including three-title fights and a main event which was selected by the fans. The promotion boasts 14-straight years of business and is operated by MFC president Mark Pavelich, who is often overlooked in this country for the foundation hes established for MMA in Canada. http://www.cheapclippersjerseyschina.com/ . This should be celebrated because it will not always be this way. With the amount of money given to players by their clubs these days, it is a wonder that so many of those teams allow the sport to continue to take away many of their assets so they can play for a different team in the middle of their season. This story appears in ESPN The Magazines August 22 College Football Preview Issue. Subscribe today!ON THE FIRST day of spring practice at Clemson University, just seven weeks after the Tigers fell to Alabama in the College Football Playoff National Championship, wide receiver Kanyon Tuttle opened his locker and saw the jersey waiting for him.Hey, are practice jerseys the same as our real jersey numbers? he asked defensive end Jaquarius Brice.Most likely, Brice replied.Tuttle is new to the Tigers, a walk-on transfer entering as a redshirt freshman. But hes also a Clemson legacy. His father, Perry -- Clemsons first Sports Illustrated cover subject -- made one of the Tigers most iconic catches, a leaping touchdown grab in the Orange Bowl victory that gave Clemson the 1981 national title. Tuttle wanted to be sure about the number.Come fall, hed be wearing 81.Tuttle hadnt requested the jersey. In fact, while at South Carolina State, where he spent one season, hed flatly asked not to wear 22, his fathers number. But Dabo Swinney is not one to scoff at symbolic gestures. Before last seasons title game, Clemson players fortuitously voted No. 19 Charone Peake and No. 81 Stanton Seckinger as two of the captains. They stood side by side at midfield for the coin toss, just as Swinney had instructed. By the ?end of the game, Deshaun Watson had almost single-handedly upended Alabama, gaining 478 total yards in the most prolific offensive performance in national championship game history, but failed to deliver the win.Later that first week of spring practice, when Tuttle sat down to team dinner, Clemsons coach offered him an explanation.You know why I gave you No. 81, right? Swinney asked.Im not sure, Tuttle fibbed.I want you to have that jersey for 81, Swinney said. We can win a national championship this year, and it will be special for you to wear that number if we do.Nearly 35 years have come and gone since Perry Tuttle caught that 13-yard touchdown pass from Homer Jordan to help take home the 1981 title, and the Tigers are still looking for their second championship. The icons of that era -- Perry Tuttle and coach Danny Ford and captain Jeff Davis -- remain frozen in time. Tuttles trips to the Esso Club, Clemsons longtime meat-and-three joint, escalate into full-blown fan events. So it is in the upstate town of Clemson, South Carolina: Its the summer of 2016 and forever 1981.Nostalgia permeates this years roster. There is Kanyon Tuttle, but there are also Judah and J.D. Davis, and Cannon Smith and Jarvis Magwood. Their fathers, Jeff Davis, Bill Smith and Frank Magwood, were part of the pulse of the 1981 team. Even one of the current student trainers, Wyatt Craig, followed in his fathers 1981 footsteps.Other connections feel just as vital. Davis now serves as an assistant athletic director of football player relations; hes an everyday mentor and de facto counselor for the teams student-athletes. Reggie Pleasant, who was Davis teammate on defense, is the teams life coach.Man, the fiber of 1981 is interwoven into whats happening right now, Jeff Davis says.Still, that connection is lost on some of todays players. On the wall in the receivers position room hang photos of the 14 Clemson wideouts drafted by the NFL, Perry Tuttle included. During a meeting in the last week of spring practice, more than a month after Kanyon learned hed be wearing 81, teammate Mike Williams turned to him: Hold up, is that your dad? Williams asked.Theres a lot of history here these players didnt witness. But theres also a chance for them to make some of their own. This year, with its Heisman-favorite quarterback, 10 preseason All-ACC players and top-five hype, Clemson looks primed to finally cut that 1981 cord. Theres just one last hurdle.We have to win it, J.D. Davis says.DESHAUN WATSON FEELS deep-in-his-bones certain that he can lead the Tigers to 15 wins in 2016, a belief he relays with all the gusto of a librarian. This notion of a perfect season is not hyperbole for him. Its simply another box to check before his time in Clemson is up.Leaning against a railing in the cobwebbed bowels of Memorial Stadium, with Howards Rock and that vaunted hill visible in the distance, Watson feels far removed from the frenzy that envelops Death Valley on autumn Saturdays. Hes in Clemson orange, a paw print on his right chest, as he considers his upcoming junior season.Not winning all of the games? he says. That would be short for what we can do as a team.He smiles, almost reluctantly. It is a modest concession that 15 -- 0, more wins than any other team in college footballs modern era, is borderline absurd. But Watson is a rare talent -- his 86.7 Total QBR ranked fifth in the nation last year -- and he has plenty of toys in running back Wayne Gallman and receivers Mike Williams and Artavis Scott. The ACC, save for one (albeit mammoth) stumbling block in Tallahassee, is mostly forgiving. Other than Nick Saban, no coach in college football boasts a hotter hand than Swinney.If Clemson is to emerge from the haze of its 1981 legacy, Watson -- whom Saban called the best player since Cam Newton -- will light the way. He threw six touchdowns in his collegiate debut as a starter two years ago, defeating North Carolina 50-35 at home. He traveled to New York City last year as a Heisman Trophy finalist -- Clemsons first -- en route to becoming the first player in FBS history to pass for 4,000 yards and rush for 1,000 in a season. (Hed end the night in third place, behind Alabamas Derrick Henry and Stanfords Christian McCaffrey.) He doesnt so much run as he glides -- a graceful, loping stride. Few can catch him in the pocket; hes an escape artist with a deadly deep touch.Watson is also deeply visual. He committed to Clemson early in 2012, on national signing day of his sophomore year in high school. When he went back to his home in Gainesville, Georgia, that February night, he sat in his bedroom with a spiral notebook and wrote down what he wanted to achieve by the end of his tenure at Clemson.Start as a freshman.Two Heismans.Undefeated season.National championship.Watson tore out the page and put it by his mirror. Every time he looked at himself, he also looked at the road ahead.He put his past in ink too. Before his sophommore season at Clemson, Watson tattooed 815 on both arms as an homage to the government housing, 815 Harrison Square, that he called home until he was 11. Cheap Clippers Jerseys. His family moved out in 2006 with help from Habitat for Humanity, but that first home -- the grind, he calls it -- stays with him.Hes forging ahead with an eye on the past, which makes him right at home in Clemson.NOW THAT SWINNEY brings his own guts and Watson wears orange, it can be tough to remember that for nearly two full decades after Danny Ford stepped down in 1990, Clemson toiled in college footballs wasteland: irrelevance.Ford was 33 when he led the Tigers to their national title (he remains the youngest coach to ever reach that mark), and he spent the next eight years basking in a blissful union with the programs fan base. Hoo boy, did they love him. They loved that they saw themselves in the country-boy-turned-big-time. They loved the way he chewed his tobacco and visited his farm between practices. And they loved him because he won: After the national championship would come three more 10-win seasons, four more ACC titles and four more bowl victories. Ford transformed a small school from a small town in the ACC -- that basketball conference -- into a football heavyweight.His winning set the standard, and his personality set the standard too, says Tommy Bowden, who coached at Clemson from 1999 to 2008. Thats why Im not there.Fords departure was darkened by accusations of NCAA infractions (the second such charge of his era -- Clemson played on probation from 1982 to 84 for recruiting violations) and bad blood with the administration. But no one matched his heights. After 1991, the Tigers yielded no 10-win seasons and no ACC titles, let alone a national one. And if you were a coach of Clemson football and your name was not Danny Ford? Well, Godspeed, because you were following a man whose resignation was met with a 6,000-strong candlelight vigil.For years, I thought he was God, says a middle-aged man at Dyars Diner, a local institution just 4 miles from the Clemson campus. Ford, whos just joined the after-church crowd lining up for lunch, playfully waves him off.Oh, just a real live person with all bad habits, he jokes.Ford comes to Dyars nearly every day, usually around noon. Its about a five-minute drive from his farm, the land he secured as part of his second coaching contract in the early 1980s. He calls the waitresses honey, they call him Danny, and his regular table is located just beneath a 36-by-20 photograph of his younger self crouched on the Clemson sideline more than 30 years ago.That enduring adoration is why Perry Tuttle loves Clemson too, calls it the best thing ever to happen to him, other than his wife, his children and his faith. But its complicated when youre still seen as the 22-year-old in a tear-away jersey catching touchdown passes. Its why he stopped wearing orange on his return trips to Pickens County. Its why he signs every Jan. 11, 1982, issue of Sports Illustrated handed to him but wont display one in his own home. Tuttle is writing a book hes calling My Next Season, a self-help manifesto on how to get unstuck, he says.My lead title is Perry the Catch, or Perry Sports Illustrated ... and Im OK with that, he says. It just takes people a while to really hear you when you have something else to say.And thats the real catch: There is no outrunning history for Tuttle, or for Ford, or for their team, until a new generation shows them the door.HOLDING COURT IN the space between 1981 and now is Dabo Swinney.We need to enjoy this moment, he says before the start of his annual media golf outing in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. The heat index is creeping toward triple digits, and hes still a long-running pregame speech come to life. This journey, this practice, this game, this bus ride, this meal ... This is the best of times.The best of times at Clemson has always meant one coach and one team and one era. But he has a point. In 2015, Clemson claimed a No. 1 ranking for the first time since finishing there in 1981.Theres always been this longing for the 80s, you know? Everything was, Well, we havent done this since the 80s. We havent done this since 1991. We havent done this ... Swinneys arms flail a little, punctuating each objection. [But] when it gets to 2020, were gonna look back and were gonna see this was the best decade in Clemson football history.For now, the two eras circle each other but tread lightly around each other. Ford attends nearly every home game but keeps his distance from the football offices. He doesnt want to get in the way. Watson admits he would get a 50 if pop-quizzed on the 1981 team. Jeff Davis needles Watson that Homer Jordan won his and lets loose a belly laugh. But in Davis day-to-day work with Watson, and with the team, hes here, in 2016, and expects them to be too. I dont want that when they see me coming, they see 81.Swinney nods to the past with abandon but repeats his mantra that these are the good old days. He doesnt want to recapture 1981; he wants to reimagine it. For all its nostalgic glow, that era reached the mountaintop, then dived headfirst off the other side. Swinney is after uncommon consistency, what he says distinguishes the Alabamas and Ohio States, so that when a down year inevitably comes, the question is not if Clemson will regain its footing but when.Five straight seasons with 10-plus wins, two ACC titles and a national championship appearance make Swinney a believer that the Tigers have reached that point. There are signs hes not alone.I dont get nearly as many calls wanting to know why I dont coach no more as I used to, Ford says with a laugh, then winks. They have semi-dribbled down to nothing.Ford will be back in Death Valley this season to watch the Tigers attempt another run at a title. Perry Tuttle will too. Maybe hell raise his arms in celebration for Kanyon and his teammates. Clemson honored the 1981 teams 10th anniversary, its 20th, 25th and 30th, but there are no formal plans this season to commemorate the 35th.The 2016 Tigers are focused on a celebration all their own. Cheap NFL Jerseys Cheap NFL Jerseys China Cheap Jerseys From ChinaCheap NFL Jerseys Authentic Wholesale Jerseys China Cheap NFL Jerseys China NFL Cheap Jerseys ' ' '
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