Sorry for getting this up a little late. Posting this on a Thursday night, post a lackluster Thursday night game. (If Cam Newton couldn’t run, I’m not sure he’d be more than a backup.) The results of the game tonight had no influence on these rankings, as evidenced by Cam and Kelvin Benji’s rankings.

For newcomers, these rankings are based on regression analysis of team-level stats. For most stats, predictions are based on a fairly even split between the team’s average and the average allowed the opposing defense. These stats are divvied out amongst players within the team based on this season’s distribution with some recency bias and some modifications made based on injuries and situation (e.g. last week I had to take a guess at Percy Harvin’s role in NY). K and DEF totals are based entirely on team-level stats.

Each week I like to take a look back and see how these projections and rankings are performing, using FantasyPros ECR as a benchmark. Due to their deserved popularity, I’ve started to include VIRMD’s kicker rankings and Quickonthedrawl’s DEF rankings. Below you can see how the model has done so far. Last week was banner. I outperformed FantasyPros in at least one metric at RB, WR, K, and TE. I also had personal bests in QB. I thought I did well in DST too, but it turns out FP and QOTD were even better. This model is based solely on this year’s data, so it’s always encouraging to see improvement.

My rankings for this week can be found below. Most people probably have a bad case of the bye week blues, with 6 teams off. For the record, I made a few assumptions regarding play status for this week based on what I’ve gleaned from injury reports and analyst banter. Here are some big names that got injured that I’m assuming won’t be playing:

Giovani Bernard: All signs point to Bernard being out this week. Which gives Jeremy Hill significant value. I also gave some attempts to Cedric Peerman, who should play the Robin to Hill’s Batman.

Reggie Wayne: I have heard reports both ways on Wayne. One saying he’s sitting out practice, but could go. Another saying they’re expecting Wayne to be held out until after their bye next week. With Donte Moncrief’s performance last week, I think that sitting Wayne for another week makes the most sense to me, so I boosted Moncrief’s projections accordingly.

Jordan Cameron: Jim Dray is the main beneficiary, though he will only see a fraction of the targets a healthy Cameron normally gets.

Montee Ball: Hillman will continue his “normal role”.

Rashad Jennings: Andre Williams will continue his main role, with a heavy dose of Peyton Hillis. (~2:1 split, which it was for the last couple of weeks before their bye last week).

Ryan Matthews: Brandon Oliver will continue to be the main guy, with some Donald Brown who should be back this week.

Doug Martin (no one should even own him): This will benefit Bobby Rainey and I’m expecting Charles Sims to make a debut here in a supporting role.

Here are some important players that are listed as questionable, but I’m expecting to play:

RG3: Gruden’s already named Griffin the starter this week, so he should be good to go. McCoy goes back to being waiver fodder until the next RG3 injury.

Darren Sproles: Sproles was a full participant in Thursday’s practice. This brings down McCoy’s value slightly, since Sproles should see 5-7 rush attempts and could vulture a TD.

AJ Green: Green has been a limited participant in practice all week. Though he’s playing, I don’t expect him to be as dynamic as he is when healthy, so I kept his distribution where it is as the yearly average, with Sanu maintaining a larger piece of the pie than when Green was completely healthy. This will change next week if Green looks good and comes out of this game unscathed.

Justin Forsett: He got in a limited session on Thursday and all reports seem to indicate that his ankle injury is minor. A slight bump for Lorenzo Taliaferro in case they limit Forsett a bit, but otherwise it’s the status quo in BAL.

Tony Romo: It seems that Romo will be a true game time decision. He’s beat up, but it seems like more an issue of pain tolerance than a risk of further injury by having him play and they are playing the NFC west division leader, not Jacksonville. I’m expecting him to be out there with extra padding on his back and adrenaline shots coursing through his veins. That said, I don’t expect him to be as effective as 100% healthy Tony and he was marked accordingly. If Brandon Weedon starts in lieu of Romo, I consider Weedon a drop-in replacement for Romo in my rankings.

As always, let me know if you have any questions and best of luck this week!

EDIT: With Reggie Wayne likely playing this week, Moncrief will resume the WR3 role in IND his ranking tumbles to WR50. Wayne is WR60.