The Judge's Verdict:
football 2020 Week 4

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.

The Judge started off by saying this was a fun week, and the divergence of opinion, having some amazing predictions and some misses is what makes this exciting. Dalvin Cook had a fantastic week as well, he was the #2 RB, 3 points better than Melvin Gordon, but analyzing his placement is meaningless and boring because every single site ranked him as a must-start RB1 at #6 or above (all but 3 at #4 or above). There was one exception but Cook wasn't our focus this week so that site gets a free pass. Checking out the large gaps in opinion on guys like Beckham or Mixon, having a feeling a breakout week is imminent and trying to time it correctly, is the enjoyment of fnatasy football and very happy that we had a week where some of our analysts made incredibly timely and gutsy calls that hit the jackpot for fantasy owners who followed their advice.