2020 Dynasty/Fantasy Week 13 Game Analysis: 49ers 34, Bills 24
I take notes during the live watch. I re-watch the game on tape looking for hidden clues to report on. Here are my notes/takes on what I saw and how it related to FF 2020. I write anywhere from 1,000-3,000+ words on each game, and I must move fast to get to all of them through the week…so, please forgive any typos/grammar.
The 49ers got out to a quick 7-0 lead (off a Bills fumble to set up the 49ers with a nice 1st & goal), and then MY Buffalo Bills took over from there – 17-7 Bills at the half, 27-10 Bills late 3rd-quarter. 34-17 until a Nick Mullens garbage time TD with 0:43 left. Easy, efficient, dare I say dominant win by the Bills on national TV over a quality opponent playing for their playoff lives.
You watched two games Monday Night…you can’t tell me the Bills aren’t the better team than the Pittsburgh Steelers are. You’re about to find out this Sunday Night as the Steelers go to Buffalo (to get their heads handed to them).
The Chiefs are the best team in football. I’d argue the Buffalo Bills are now #2 and are the only team who could really stand up and punch the Chiefs in the mouth (them and the Raiders). The Bills are now (9-3)…they should be (10-2), if not for the ‘Hail Murray’ event a few weeks ago. The Bills two ‘real’ losses were to TEN and KC Weeks 6-7, when Buffalo was dealing with multiple, key defensive injuries. The Bills are now at as full strength as they’ve been all year and are starting to roll. Buffalo should finish with 12-13 wins and be the #2-3 seed…and they are the biggest threat to KC. They must beat the Steelers Week 14 first.
All this Bills love, let’s not forget about their opponent here…
The best team in the NFC is probably a fully healthy 49ers team – but they are nowhere near healthy. They are the team most ravaged with injury in the NFL in 2020. The best team in the NFC claim (at full health) and they might not even make the playoffs. The 49ers are (5-7), and still in it for the wild card…but with work to do. If they can beat WSH and DAL the next two weeks, then Week 16 at ARI (or a SF home game :) is probably the game to determine which of those two teams are in – it also may be a game Jimmy G. and George Kittle return by. We see the 49ers going (8-8) and finding a way into the wild card…where they might run the table and get back to the Super Bowl, oddly enough.
Fantasy Player Notes…
-- First off, I mean…Josh Allen (32-40 for 375 yards, 4 TDs/0 INT, 6-11-0)…come on! NOW do you believe me?
Here’s a great lesson of Fantasy Football, football scouting (and life):
I hated (as a prospect) and mocked Josh Allen coming into the NFL. I celebrated as he sucked in 2018. I excused away his improvements in 2019. I went after Devin Singletary for fantasy 2019 and 2020, because I thought the Bills would have to be a run game oriented/ball control and strong defense team to minimize Josh Allen’s issues.
So, to start 2020…I ‘bet’/was positive on Singletary, the Bills-DST, and that Stefon Diggs (or Brown or Beasley) wouldn’t matter because Josh Allen would hurt them all.
Every single thing that I bet on here was wrong early in the 2020 season. I wasted assets to acquire Singletary in Dynasty. I started the season with the Bills-DST in some places. I owned no Diggs-Brown-Beasley or Allen. I had the Bills offense as a favorable target for opposing DSTs to go after Allen’s turnovers.
All of it wrong.
Sorry, no refunds on CFM or FFM :)
But here’s the thing – it’s great to be ‘right’ early, to get in on the ground floor…to celebrate your visionary genius. We’ve all had plenty of that…it’s a great feeling/moment. We crave to be the first one to plant our flag on the moon on prospects…which is why all of FF-society worships and lusts after Dynasty Rookie Draft picks or rookies in redraft. We want the virginal ownership of these players and then ‘make them’ our own.
It’s great to be ‘right’ before anyone else. Not far behind that reality is ‘just being right’, eventually – and then acting upon it. That’s where my service comes in, my expertise. You want me watching all these games, live and then afterwards all week on tape. I see things you might not or confirm things you do see. I put in the work, so you can evaluate it and choose whether to act upon it or not. I’m a professional. It’s what I do for a living. I take my job VERY seriously.
By the end of Week 1 and for sure by the end of Week 2 this season, what happened to my (terrible) way-to-play-for-fantasy the Bills preseason plan? I realized something had radically changed with Josh Allen. I wasn’t the only one, but while others patted it in the head -- I blew up all my prior notions and went hard after the new realities – all while most people were still suspect of the Bills situation. I was buying Josh Allen from weak handed/non-believer owners everywhere I could (and still am). I bought positions in Stefon Diggs. I chased John Brown. I added Cole Beasley for free if it came my way. I ditched the Bills-DST. A few weeks in I ditched out on Singletary…I took an accounting write-down hard there. It happens.
The losses from the bad call on Singletary were made up by the bargain prices I was acquiring Allen and Diggs at. Not that Allen and Diggs were cheap, but I bought them reasonably for what returns I expected to get…and have been getting.
I can be remembered (by others, or by my own self) as the guy who was wrong on Josh Allen’s scouting initially, and will get beat up/dismissed with social media quips about it, and they would be deserved/actual (and because that’s what social media is for…destroying strangers for their perceived shortcomings with biting one liners)…
…or I can be remembered as the guy who saw the error/change of reality fast enough and reacted – and is the guy who now owns Josh Allen and paid a bargain price to do it in hindsight.
It’s easier to remember the negative, so that’s what will be the legacy…but it shouldn’t be…not fully.
I was wrong about Josh Allen from 2018 to about Sept 15-20th, 2020.
And I might have just beat your FF-ass with MY Josh Allen with this 375 yard/4 TD event this week.
So, am I an idiot…or a genius? Doesn’t matter…I own Josh Allen (in places) and (generic) you don’t.
Football analysis and scouting, it’s not easy. It’s time consuming, very much so. I wish I had 24 more hours in a day every day. I do the work THEY (the people paid highly to analyze football on TV/radio/in print) simply are inclined not to do because it’s not sexy holed up in an office for 10-12+ hours a day, watching tape, writing, inputting stats/data by hand and missing family events and parties and not going to the gym for a nice 2-hour workout and not being invited/able to go to an expensive restaurant with the tab charged to the network/the company. Being surrounded by empty McDonalds wrappers, empty Diet Dr. Pepper cans, seeing your family for a limited time Aug-Dec, getting less than 3,000 steps a day, gaining 10-15 pounds during the NFL season (to have to try and work it off all offseason…just to do it all again next season) – it’s not glamorous, it’s not easy. But that’s why I am great at what I do, and Michael Irvin and Steve Mariucci (among others) are not.
Your support of FFM and CFM…allows me to focus on football and find these things faster than THEY do. I cannot thank you enough, besides bringing you these FF gems as often as I can find them to earn my keep.
The best way to express all of this is: https://youtu.be/Bq0H1p2zejg
Oh, and…
Josh Allen should be top 3 for the MVP voting in the NFL…but he won’t be.
Only Patrick Mahomes is a better player in the NFL in 2020.
When I was saying to trade Kyler + ___ for Allen for weeks on end earlier in the season? I watch Kyler every week…I watch Josh every week. You know my history with Kyler (that one we were right on way ahead of the crowd). I am telling you, again, that Kyler isn’t in the same class as Josh as an NFL QB. Kyler is great, and sweet for FF…but Josh is the better football player.
-- Raheem Mostert (9-42-0, 1-1-0/1) hasn’t looked great since returning from injury, the past two weeks/games. I think he ‘looks’ fine/normal…but the FF-results kinda stink the last 2 weeks.
Playing the Rams then the Bills those two weeks back – that may have been more the problem. WSH-DAL-ARI the next three weeks offers more FF-hope. I’m disappointed but not dismayed with Mostert. I’m still believing.
Jeff Wilson (7-47-02-12-0/5) seems to be in a 50/50 split with Mostert…as the 49ers do. Kyle Shanahan would love to run the ball 40 times and get three RBs involved, but the teams they’ve faced/the game scripts hasn’t lent itself to that. The next three weeks they could.
Tevin Coleman (2 carries, -11 yards) is the one who looks ‘not ready’ returning from injury. He’s a weak Mostert handcuff hold right now. If Mostert went down, it would likely be a three-headed RBBC with the ghost of Jerick McKinnon (played 2 snaps).
-- Tugboat/Bennie Snell-alike Zack Moss (3-9-0, 1-5-0/1) tried to cost the Bills the game early, but he got benched after a fumble and that allowed Devin Singletary (18-61-0, 3-22-0/4) to get good touches and he played well, as always.
I wish this meant a shift to heavy Devin over Moss, but two things…
1) Sean McDermott will work to bring Moss back into the fold. McDermott is a good manager and isn’t going to doghouse a player eternally. Moss will be back to 50/50 share ASAP.
I love McDermott but Moss is his albatross RB like Conner/Snell for Tomlin and Akers for McVay.
2) Moss went right in near the goal line first drive…because McDermott likes/trusts him. Of course, Moss failed a la Snell/Snail on Monday night…but that’s besides the point. Point is…McDermott isn’t changing away from 50-50 RBBC unless a fumble/error forces him to…temporarily.
-- I love Kyle Shanahan but you can’t go an entire 1st-half with Deebo Samuel (6-73-0/9, 1-3-0) touching the ball once…on a handoff with no catches.
Did Shanahan not watch his own game from last week when Deebo single handedly carried the offense against the best defense in the NFL? I guess not. Hey, I’m not the one who got blown out by the Bills not getting Deebo the ball all the easy ways you have done…you did.
In 2021, whomever the QB is for the 49ers, and I don’t think it will be Jimmy G. (or Mullens) – working with Shanahan, Kittle, Deebo-Aiyuk-Hurd(?), behind a stellar O-Line – that QB is going to be sweet for FF 2021.
Shanahan wants Kirk Cousins so bad…but he is not going to get him. Not sure he really wants Matt Ryan either, but maybe. And ‘no’ to Carson Wentz or Sam Darnold.
-- Jordan Reed (3-32-1/4) looks so good, but Nick Mullens is so bad…it’s hard to get too excited for FF, but Reed is a current TE1 hopeful among all the riffraff TEs.
Not for long, perhaps.
George Kittle is already back working out. He could be back Week 15…and Jimmy G. with him. Kittle should be a for-sure Week 16 return candidate. Week 14 may not be totally out of the realm of possibility. But likely Week 15, or for the more important Week 16 v. ARI. And if SF loses Weeks 14 or 15…then Kittle might not return. No need to, if out of the playoffs.
-- ILB Matt Milano (2 tackles) is back for the Bills, and that’s a drag/IDP-killer for previously high-flying A.J. Klein (4 tackles, 1 PD). The split snaps here…69% Klein, 31% Milano. That will be flipped soon.
-- Getting beatdown by the Bills on national TV is perfect to keep the 49ers-DST off the radar/desired lists. No shame in getting beatdown by Josh Allen, it’s like getting beat by Mahomes – only the media/analysts and thus the fans don’t see it/feel it that way, so it’s painted as a 49ers letdown.
Facing Washington-Dallas the next two weeks, they will be a top 10 DST candidate and maybe Week 16 vs. dying4 Arizona will be fine/OK/plausible.
-- The other hidden defense from this game – the Bills-DST. I pray people drop them because they are facing the Steelers Week 14. I think you could use them against PIT if desperate, but I want them for Week 15 at DEN and Week 16 at NE.
The Bills are a top 5 NFL defense and gave up a garbage late TD here or they would have held the 49ers under 20 points.
The Bills defense is getting healthy and ‘shutdown-ish’…bad news for a Steelers WRs in Week 14.
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Snap Counts of Interest:
28 = Wilson
27 = Mostert
04 = Coleman
02 = McKinnon
62 = Singletary
11 = Moss
