CASE SUMMARY: Back in Week 3, the Judge's Verdict focused on Seattle WR Tyler Lockett and Jacksonville rookie RB James Robinson, who scored 32 and 28 points, respectively, that week (as always, 1/2-pt PPR). Both players outdid those performances this week, with Lockett catching 15 balls for 200 yards and 3 TDs in Sunday night's overtime loss to Arizona, for a massive 45.5 points, the best fantasy performance by any WR this year, a full 6 points ahead of Chase Claypool's 110 yds + 3 TDs in Week 5. Robinson ran for 119 yards and a TD, plus 18 yards receiving on 4 catches, including another TD, for a total of 27.7 points, in a losing effort against the Chargers. Despite his huge day, Robinson was only the #2 RB of the week, as San Francisco's Jeff Wilson Jr scored 31. This presents a bit of a dilemma for the Judge. Generally, he doesn't like to repeat a player, especially less than a month between verdicts. Then there's Wilson, who was listed as questionable after missing Week 6 with a calf injury. It was assumed, even if he did suit up, that he'd be 3rd of the Niners' depth chart, and had a season yards-per-carry average of just 2.4. Add up all these factors, and most analysts didn't have him in their top 50. There is a large gap between Wilson and Robinson and the #3 RB, Todd Gurley, with 21 points, on 82 total yards with 2 TDs. Ironically, Gurley was supposed to avoid scoring that 2nd TD and kneel instead, and the mistake was nice for fantasy owners but allowed Detroit to mount a comeback and ultimately beat the Falcons. A similar situation exists with TEs, where the top TE of the week was unheralded Harrison Bryant of the Browns, who scored 20 points via 4 catches for 56 yards and 2 TDs. Bryant replaced Austin Hooper who had an emergency appendectomy on Friday, and was a late decision to start over David Njoku, thus, he also was low on almost every analysts' rankings, generally between 19 and 25. The next best TE, Rob Gronkowski, had a 15-point game which was nice but isn't particularly noteworthy. So this week's verdict will focus on Lockett, who did have an epic week and whose past few weeks provided differing opinions from our analysts, and this week's top three quarterbacks, all of whom had their best fantasy performance of the season. Tops was Chargers QB Justin Herbert, who threw for 347 yards and 3 TDs, plus another 66 yards and a TD on the ground. Herbert's week was the 3rd best QB fantasy day of the season, just 1.5 points behind season leader Pat Mahomes. The Judge will also take a look at Kyler Murray (who he expects will have elite rankings by nearly everyone), who scored 37 points (vs 38.5 for Herbert) on 360 yards and 3 TDs + 67 rushing and a score. Just a quarter-point behind Murray was Tom Brady, responsible for 5 TDs (4 passing, one QB sneak) and 369 yards passing. This was Brady's second 5-TD game of the season.

CASE SUMMARY: This week's top 2 quartbacks are both guys who have had a shaky start to the season so far. Tops was Deshaun Watson of the 1-5 Houston Texans, who almost followed up their first win last week with an upset of the undefeated Titans, but gave up a TD with 4 seconds left in regulation and then gave up a TD in overtime. Watson had his best game of the season, however, throwing for 335 yards, 4 TDs, and no INTs, totalling 32 points. It was only Watson's 2nd game of the year without an INT, and first with 4 TDs since Week 5 of last year. Less than a half-point behind Watson was Matt Ryan, who led the Falcons to their first win of the year, over Minnesota. Ryan threw for 371 yards and 4 TDs without any INTs. Ryan had thrown for just 1 TD in his previous 3 games combined, with 2 INTs during that span and not reaching 300 yards in any of the three. Kenyan Drake was the #2 RB (behind Derrick Henry) of the week with 28.4 points, on 164 yards and 2 TDs as Arizona routed Dallas 38-10. Drake finished last season with 87 points in his final 3 games, but hadn't croken 100 yards so far this year until Sunday. At WR, the top performer by far was Minnesota rookie Justin Jefferson, who caught 9 balls for 166 yards and 2 TDs to rack up 35 points, although the Vikings fell to Atlanta. Jefferson's day was the 3rd best by any WR so far this season.

CASE SUMMARY: Carolina RB Mike Davis has shown to be a capable replacement while Christian McCaffrey's ankle heals. He scored in each of his games so far, and like McCaffrey, he's a threat to run and to catch passes. Carolina's Week 5 win over Atlanta was Davis's best game yet, collecting a combined 149 yards, 9 catches and a TD. His 25 points (half-PPR) led all running backs for the week. Ryan Fitzpatrick has been reasonably consistent, fantasy-wise, for the past few weeks, scoring between 21 and 25 points in each of weeks 2, 3 and 4, although the way he scored those points varied. This week against the 49er defense, however, he had everything going right, racking up 350 yards and 3 TDs. His Quarterback Rating of 154.5 for the game was the highest by any QB in the NFL this year, and his 27.6 fantasy points were 2nd in the league this week, behind only Patrick Mahomes. (Note this week's writeup was written Monday Oct 12 before the NO-LAC and BUF-TEN)

CASE SUMMARY: This was a really enjoyable week for The Judge. Some weeks, there aren't many huge days from mid-tier players, and worse, there are a lot of weeks where there isn't much separation between analysts. This week, however, we did had some breakout performances, and what is exciting is that some forecasters saw the big days coming while others missed out completely. Tom Brady moving to Tampa Bay has obviously been one of the biggest stories in the NFL this season. There's a great deal of interest in how the Buccaneers perform as a team, but also Brady's personal ability to put of points and big stat lines at age 43. After a 2-1 start with some decent statistical performances, Tom Brady had his breakout day in a 38-31 win over the LA Chargers. Brady threw for 369 yards and 5 touchdowns, all to different receivers. Brady threw a 78-yard pick-6 in the 1st quarter but didn't allow that to affect him negatively the rest of the way. Dak Prescott was the top fantasy QB with 502 yards, but Brady was #2 with 32.5 points. Cincinnati running back Joe Mixon hadn't been able to get into the end zone this year, and had only 164 yards rushing despite high-teens carries in every game. He's the Bengals "bell-cow" back, it's not like he is splitting carries with someone else, Gio Bernard has only 2 rushes. In Sunday's win against Jacksonville, however, he made up for lost time, with a huge 151 yards rushing + 2 TDs, and another 30 yards and a TD receiving. Mixon's 39 points was the second-best RB day of the season so far. Melvin Gordon has been a bit of a question mark since leaving the Chargers for Denver this year. He started the season with a TD in each of his first 2 games, and looked to be a big part of the offesnse with Phillip Lindsay out, but in Week 3 Gordon was held to just 38 total yards and no scores. However this week against the Jets, Gordon had his best fantasy game since 2018, rushing for 107 yards and scoring twice. Gordon's 25 point day was 3rd best among RBs, behind an absolute monster day seemingly out of nowhere from Joe Mixon (181 total yards, 3 TD) and Dalvin Cook (146 total yards, 2 TDs). Switching over to wide receivers, Odell Beckham Jr. put up the best fantasy performance by any WR this year with 36 points, it was also his best game as a Cleveland Brown by far, and his best fantasy day since 2016, with 5 catches for 81 yards and 2 TDs, plus 2 rushes for 73 yards and another score. According to RotoBaller, NFL's Next Gen Stats measured OBJ's max running speed higher this Sunday than any time in the past 3 seasons, so any questions about his health should be answered. On the same field as Beckham was Dallas's Amari Cooper, who placed 2nd among WRs, benefitting from Dak Prescott and the Cowboys' latest comeback attempt, this time against Cleveland. Cooper scooped up 12 catches for 134 yards and a TD. Cooper's production is way up, he has 37 receptions in the 4 games this year, the same as he had in 2019's final 8 games. This was his first TD of 2020 however.

CASE SUMMARY: This week's write-up will be brief. The Judge is going to focus on Seatlle WR Tyler Lockett, this week's top WR with 32.5 points (1/2 PPR) on 9-for-100 receiving with 3 TDs. Lockett has been an elite WR but recently the emergence of freak-of-nature D.K. Metcalf has led to a question of who's the top target for Russell Wilson. Fortunately for Seattle fans and owners of all 3 players, Wilson has been playing so well that all of them are racking up huge stats as Seattle has won all 3 of its games so far this season. Jacksonville's rookie RB James Robinson scored twice and collected 129 total yards against Miami, and now his 3 NFL fantasy games have been 9, 19 and now 28 points. Last week was his first 100-yard rushing game, and this week he displayed his receiving ability, catching all 6 of his targets for 83 yards. The Judge would like to acknowledge a blast from the past: Chicago TE Jimmy Graham had his best fantasy week since 2016, scoring 21 points off of 2 TDs and 60 yards from 6 catches. In Week 2, five different TEs had 20+ point days, but this week Graham's 21 was 4.5 points better than 2nd place (Tyler Kroft of Buffalo). Not too surprisingly, however, no analyst had Graham any higher than 22nd among TEs, and most had him bunched up in the mid- to high-20s.

CASE SUMMARY: Aaron Jones put up the best RB performance of 2019, against Dallas, where he scored 4 times on 19-for-107 rushing and 8-for-75 receiving. This 45.7 point day (1/2 PPR scoring) was one of only 3 40+ games by any RB last year (McCaffrey and Barkley had the others). And now early in 2020, Jones has set the bar high once again. Against Detroit on Sunday, Jones rewarded owners with a monster 43.6 points on 168 rushing yards, 8-68 receiving and 3 total touchdowns. Alvin Kamara had a fantastic night against the Raiders (the Las Vegas Raiders) but was still 10 points behind Jones. Now, Jones is certainly an elite RB, it's unlikely any analysts had him outside their Top 10, but the Judge will investigate where exactly he was ranked. More surprising was the ascendance of Kareem Hunt. Nobody doubts Hunt's talent but considering he's still the #2 back in Cleveland behind Nick Chubb, he's been mostly overlooked and often considered just a Flex or RB-3. But Hunt out-touched Chubb in Week 1 17 to 11. This Sunday, the Browns didn't push Chubb aside, he was the #3 RB this week with 2 TDs and 124 yards. Hunt, however, was not just watching from the sideline, he also scored twice, gained 86 yards on the ground and 15 receiving. Chubb was 22-for-124 for a 5.6 average, which is great, but Hunt was 10-for-86 for an 8.6 yards-per-carry average. Hunt will likely pose a dilemma for his owners going forward -- he hasn't replaced Chubb as the #1 back, so he is sure to have games with little or no production, but he's also talented enough to put up huge numbers even with limited opportunities as he did Sunday, by far his best performance as a Brown. The Judge will assume no analysts ranked Hunt as a Top 10, but some may have placed him in the teens. Dak Prescott had the top QB fantasy performance in Dallas's crazy comeback against Atlanta, but the biggest surprise performance this week had to be Cam Newton, who was brilliant Sunday Night against Seattle up until the game's final play. Newton, who nobody except New England wanted, put up 397 yards on 30-44 passing with 1 TD and 1 INT, and also ran 11-47 with 2 TDs. Newton gave us a preview of his ability in Week 1 when he also had 2 rushing touchdowns, and picked up 75 yards that day, starting to develop a pattern as a fantasy threat both with his arm and legs.

CASE SUMMARY: The Fantasy Judge is happy to be back for 2020. With the cancellation of so many sports leagues and events, the path to fantasy football seemed to be in jeopardy most of the summer. The Judge hopes you, your friends and family, are doing well through the crazy year that is 2020. Future Hall-of-Famer Aaron Rodgers is one of the most popular and well-known players in the NFL. For years he's been a complete fantasy stud, finishing as QB1 4 times (2009, 2011, 2014, 2016) and winning the NFL MVP twice. But after two years of mid-20s TDs (ignoring 2017 where he missed 9 games to injury), plenty of fantasy experts have demoted Rodgers to "middle-of-the-pack" status. As we all know, Green Bay picked another QB with their first-round draft pick rather than upgrade Rodgers's WR corps. It's certainly possible that Rodgers will prove these experts right, that he's more of an average QB these days. But for Week 1 at least, he showed himself to be as dynamic and effective as ever, with 364 yards and 4 TDs, racking up 30.8 fantasy points, in a 43-34 win over Minnesota. Rodgers performance landed him as QB-2, behind only Russell Wilson. Two big RB surprises were Malcolm Brown of the Rams and Nyheim Hines of the Colts. Hines stepped in after Marlon Mack tore his Achilles heel and will end up on IR. Hines ran the ball 7 times for 28 yards, and caught 8 passes for 45 more. But he had 2 TDs, one running and one receiving, that vaulted him to RB-5. Backmate Jonathan Taylor had 9 runs and 6 catches for 89 total yards, but did not score. Brown's big day was a bit more surprising, as it was not the result of an injury. Cam Akers was the Rams' starting tailback, however Brown was given a larger workload and proved much more effective. Akers ran the ball 14 times for just 39 yards, plus a 4-yard reception, while Brown was 18-for-79 on the ground with 2 TDs, plus 3-for-31 receiving. Adam Thielen had a pretty awful 2019, losing 6 games to injury and tallying only 418 yards, after 1373 and 1276 the two years prior. Had it not been for 7 TDs, his 2nd-best season total, the year would have been a total disaster. Thus it must have been quite nice for Thielen owners to get off to a terrific start, with 110 yards and 2 TDs, good enough for WR-3. Only Davante Adams and Calvin Ridley outscored Thielen.