Playing Fantasy Football The George Costanza Way, Week 9

After this weekend, every team in the NFL will have played at least eight games, and thus found themselves at or beyond the halfway point of the 2015-16 season. Many teams will still, if they squint hard enough, be technically alive for playoff consideration; many more will have to mentally flush the past four to five months of unpleasant and difficult work down the toilet, and snuff out the hope that until this weekend flickered dimly in their hearts. Their reward is getting to spend the rest of the NFL season as the Tennessee Titans.

While the Costanza Method hadn't yet kicked into high gear by Week 1, we are here now, so let's reflect. We've had some bumps in the road to be sure, so maybe our burgeoning theory hasn't been an unmitigated success. I sure haven't won anywhere close to a million dollars yet—please tell me if you have!—but we soldier on, un-millionaires that we are, looking for our big break. Apologies for the word choice to Le'Veon Bell and Steve Smith. No apologies to Aaron Rodgers, who basically stole a million dollars from us last week.

After Week 8's once-in-a-lifetime triumph, a certain amount of regression was inevitable—the only question was how embarrassing it would be. In the end, though, the Costanza Method held its own, hamstrung by a few misfires as always, but more than balancing the scales with some diamonds in the rough. No, we didn't come out guns blazing, and we didn't set a new record for triple plusses, but the drop-off was more like going from Die Hard to Die Hard 2 than from Gene Wilder to Johnny Depp, thank goodness. What a travesty. Dude played Willy Wonka as end-stage Michael Jackson and no one even told him to stop.

Plus, as I famously quipped last week, failure is more or less a validation of the Costanza Method philosophy. Too much success would, curiously, make me look like I didn't know what I was talking about. That was the reasoning behind the Stevie Johnson pick, anyway, and you will never hear me admit otherwise.

Last Week's Fistpumps and Faceplants

Aaron Rodgers, QB, Packers - 22nd QB, 6.18pts, --

Darren McFadden, RB, Cowboys 14.30pts, 7th RB ++

C.J. Anderson, RB, Broncos - 17.10pts, 4th RB +++

Tavon Austin, WR, Rams - 23.90pts, 3rd WR +++

Stevie Johnson, WR, Chargers - 3.8pts, 42nd WR ---

Steve Smith, Sr., WR, Ravens - 13.2pts, 20th WR -

There's a small discrepancy between the scoring database I use for this column and the official DraftKings Millionaire Maker recap page, and so the numbers you see above may not be totally accurate. It wouldn't be a huge deal, since the difference between sources seems to be proportional and minimal up and down the results. Indeed, in light of recent regulatory initiatives, it only serves to underscore the extent to which we're still in the Wild, Wild West of Daily Fantasy Sports.

Point is, there's no easy way to find out which players scored how much, because there's no incentive to put that out there; why would DraftKings or Fanduel or any of the other 150-odd sites you've never heard of increase transparency all on their own? For yuks?

While (I'm pretty sure) we had some nice results, Tavon Austin and C.J. Anderson most prominent among them, there was really nothing to be done if you didn't have Drew Brees or Eli Manning on your team last week. Those two, and all the guys they were tossing at, steamrolled the competition on their way to four spots on the Millionaire Maker winning roster. We nailed Austin and Darren McFadden, though, and so to big winner "Gvalstyle" I say: you are welcome for your one million dollars, and also please buy me a PS4.

Marcus Mariota, QB, Titans - $5,300

Jameis Winston, QB, Buccaneers - $5,200

These two star-crossed rookie gunslingers have certainly had their ups and downs this season—mostly downs when I've recommended them, actually, to the point where it's almost like they read the column and have a beef with me…

Still, the bar for success is so low this week that surely one of these rookies will be able to clear it. Lining up against the Saints and the Giants, respectively, they could fail to do half as well as those teams' Week 8 opponents and still be a bargain at $5,000 and change. Please, God, let them be half as good as Eli Manning.

Tom Brady, QB, Patriots - $8,500

Look, I know, and I promise not to count him as a Fistpump next week should he do exactly what he's going to do and drop a sixtyburger on the D.C. Washingtons. He's priced at about two PS4s and an anniversary dinner over and above Aaron Rodgers, but he's been so, so vicious that it's not even unreasonable. The idea here, though, is that with six teams on a bye, an $8,500 debit for a QB is really going to put the squeeze on people to find suitable plays elsewhere on the roster. Tournament players might just find themselves less appalled by "downgrading" to Brees or Luck than to, say, Packers WR Jeff Janis. That's the angle we're playing. No one ever said it was pretty.

LeSean McCoy, RB, Bills - $5,500

I'm truly not convinced the Bills OL is worth a damn and, ideally, everyone (including the Dolphins defense) agrees with me. It wasn't all that long ago, though, that McCoy was extremely good, and I'm betting that most people see the $500 premium over Lamar "If He Isn't Absolutely God Awful Then He's Terrifyingly Great" Miller as one they'd prefer to avoid. We live in that space.

C.J. Spiller, RB, Saints - $3,100

Darren McFadden, RB, Cowboys - $4,300

Antonio Andrews, RB, Titans - $3,600

Say, it's pretty grim out here for running backs in Week 9, isn't it?

Anquan Boldin, WR, 49ers - $4,200

Boldin is the quintessential Costanza play: an older player in an unspectacular season on a terrible team, coming off an injury that kept him out of last week's game, with a bad matchup, and ostensibly downgrading quarterbacks to the former backup. Yikes. Not sure what I'm thinking here, so let's just move on. Blaine Gabbert's the former backup in question, by the way. Anyway.

Sammy Watkins, WR, Bills - $5,000

The realization that you have recommended more than one injured Buffalo Bill is pretty damn sobering, which, as it happens, is the exact opposite effect of attending a Buffalo Bills game. Rex Ryan says Watkins will play on Sunday, and if Rex Ryan says something, well, you can pretty much take that shit right to the bank and deposit it with interest! Savings and loan, baby, oh hell yes!

Austin Seferian-Jenkins - $2,800

Based on that one game or whatever it was, it seems like if the Infamous ASJ ever got on the field, he might need Mothra to cover him (original joke, copyright Jesse Farrar Industries, 2015). Luckily, it looks like he'll play this weekend. An ancient creature awakens off the coast of Tokyo…

Six teams—Arizona, Baltimore, Detroit, Houston, KC, and Seattle—have their byes this week, and if there's a stronger indictment of the NFL's scheduling staff, then I don't know what it is. As right as the NFL is getting the London situation, they're coming close to undoing all that good will with the ongoing late afternoon two-game pupu platter and now this bye week catastrophe in Week 9. What is the point of this, honestly, beyond making fantasy football a big stinky garbage can for all of us and also giving the people who play this incredibly, inexcusably grueling sport a rest for just one week?

Fantasy football is a garbage can now, by the way, and I don't have any compunction writing about it professionally while simultaneously being frustrated with the entire enterprise. How could you not be? Who is excited about all the clicking and shit we have to do now? And reading? You need a personal secretary to be any good at fantasy football, really, or Ashton Kutcher's dedicated staff of sad people, and until Daily Fantasy is officially illegal, our organizational budget has been diverted, uh, elsewhere.

Here are this week's call-ups: the players who you should really think about subbing into your lineup, if you can somehow remember to do it in time.

Blake Bortles, QB, Jaguars

I don't understand what this guy has to do to get respect from ESPN's rankers. His team is junk, and they probably will continue to be until the oceans swallow us whole, but so what? Are Tyrod Taylor's (9th) Bills any good? Are we supposed to think Eli Manning's (8th) Giants aren't worse off than those dogs we shot into space in the 1970s? Those teams friggin' stink and they still have playable QBs! Bort Simpson, as I'm calling him from this point forward, is no different.

Ryan Fitzpatrick, QB, Jets

Went to Harvard. Apparently his badly injured thumb doesn't hurt that much. 'Nuff said.

C.J. Anderson, RB, Broncos

Last week, we predicted that Anderson had to have a big game in order to save his season and, possibly, his career. He went out and completely stepped on the Packers' collective neck to the tune of 14 carries, 101 yards, and a score. Those ain't exactly Hall of Fame numbers, but up to that point in the year, Anderson's YPA was somewhere south of total bullshit. I don't know if he necessarily got his groove all the way back overnight, but he's definitely shaking his ass a little bit now. Get it, C.J. Keep on not being awful.

Shane Vereen, RB, Giants

You'd think that any and every player with a Giants or Saints uniform (bonus points to Jeremy Shockey) would have inflated their value beyond reason after both defenses fell asleep at the wheel in Week 8, but Vereen is a non-traditional player, and those guys tend to fall through the cracks. He draws the Bucs defense on Sunday afternoon, who play very well against the run and against pass-catching backs but, curiously, are among the worst teams in the league at defending short passes. If Vereen doesn't catch about 10 of those, he's not worth much, but the Giants got a taste of actually scoring points last week and they might want to keep it going.

Latavius Murray, RB, Raiders

Inexplicably ranked right behind one "Jeremy Langford" this week. Cool, cool. That makes sense. Sorry for not having faith in a guy who sounds like a regional theater understudy right out of the gate.

Ryan Mathews, RB, Eagles

Rishard Matthews, WR, Dolphins

Rishard Matthews and teammate Jarvis Landry have a kind of Allen Hurns-Allen Robinson thing going on: their QBs have nice arms but just haven't (yet) put it all together, it's hard to tell which of them is the true "No. 1" receiver, and they kind of drag each other down when it comes to fantasy. Dammit! This is like Friends! We've got a real LeBlanc-Perry situation here: Who's the leader, Joey or Chandler? It damn sure ain't Ross (Marqise Lee, or maybe Kenny Stills) but that really doesn't help us much. Let's hope Week 9 is a Joey-centric episode for the Dolphins.

Danny Amendola, WR, Patriots

Amendola has seemingly crawled right back under the rock he calls home for the weeks when a Patriots receiver isn't hurt or getting cut, and as such he has barely even qualified to be ranked by ESPN's experts. We're throwing the dirt on Dan the Man a little early for my tastes, though, in part because it depends on Brandon LaFell being good (he is emphatically not) and Belichick being predictable (ditto). Amendola was still good for 30-plus snaps last week, and given that Washington has one of the biggest drop-offs in quality of coverage from primary to secondary receivers, I'll take my chances here.

Vernon Davis, TE, Broncos

Just taking a stab here: this feels like Peyton forcing a TD to the new guy on a third-and-goal, sparking a wave of goodwill that lasts approximately one week, by which time Davis will be forgotten and on his way out of the league. We'll miss ya, big fella! Good luck with your career modeling compression shorts and energy drinks, which will probably actually be very successful!