Johny The Greek's Cornerbacks Corner Week Two (2)

Cowboys Anthony Brown was one of many cheap and available massive hit CB streams in week one

Welcome to Johny the Greek’s Cornerbacks Corner Week Two. Last week we streamed corner and did it well. I recommended precisely 59 different corner streams over 16 different week one matchups and the vast majority of them worked out extremely well. We sit at 75% accuracy after week one based on those calls last week matching or beating their projections (Yahoo) and will continue to track accuracy all season long just like last year. Transparency is something we take seriously here at IDPGuys.

If you’re new to this article series the idea behind it is that in the IDP world cornerbacks are the red headed step child, often neglected or scoffed at. Not here. We love streaming corners and have for some time now, it’s a key component of playing big boy IDP. This is not an article for the Sleeper IDP players of the world, the “DB” people, baby IDP if you will, although in deep enough leagues a CB stream at DB is still a decent option. This is more for your true degenerate, CB and DT required, a few points a week is going to make a difference, type of player. And while I do enjoy my Sleeper leagues and those kinds of leagues as well (variety is the spice of life), the vast majority of what I play in these days is those advanced, individual position, best possible competition, need every edge you can get type leagues. That’s the audience here. If that’s not you or you’re not a fan of my approach the exit button is top right on PC, it looks like an X, close window on mobile.

I’ve been doing this long enough that I have my audience, I know my readers, we talk in and out of the season and I live a perfectly happy and fulfilling life beyond fantasy football, this is just a hobby for me and I am so far from interested in arguing about any of this that if that stuff were a star it would take the light from that star billions of years to reach me, save yourself the time on Twitter I’ll just block and move on. Apologies to those of you that don’t need this disclaimer but this is the world we live in these days, just making things clear up front.

We’re going to be looking at things like expected game script, opposing offensive tendencies, snap counts, teams that are more or less likely to target wide receivers and historical production to inform our weekly decisions on what corners are an “ideal” streaming option. By giving this entire thing more than two seconds thought we will have a distinct advantage over our opponents who are not doing this over the course of the season. We are going to put ourselves in the best position possible every week to score the most IDP points humanly possible from our cornerback slots.

Just a little background, I’ve been playing IDP for 18 years now and streaming corners for well over a decade of that time. In that time I have won clear of 25 titles in both redraft and dynasty traditional IDP leagues and many many more in best ball, DFS and college fantasy football. I am a true degenerate. Add an additional 50 plus second and third place finishes also in traditional IDP leagues, most of them with money prizes attached, and you’ll start to envision how deep my degenerate tendencies go. I am absolutely NOT an analyst, I’m just a guy who loves playing IDP fantasy football and has been pretty decent at it for a long time.

Personally I like to stream not only whatever the current week is but if my bench is big enough I’ll load up two more ideal streamers for the following week and by doing so I’ve already taken my pick of the litter a week before anyone else also streaming is even thinking about their corners for that week. Corner is a naturally spotty position but by looking at all the factors I listed above we will have better outcomes than the majority of IDP owners who simply put in a “known” corner with a big name (Richard Sherman for example) into their corner slots and ride out the production whether or not that matchup makes sense each week. Richard Sherman against last years Falcons or Chiefs makes sense, Richard Sherman against last years Jets or Patriots does not.

It looks like we’ll have some pretty solid matchups this week and we’ll continue to target those for our ideal matchups but in today’s NFL, where passing is the name of the game, I’m sure we’ll find solid streaming options in just about every matchup so even those of us in the deepest of leagues have some options. I always give last weeks results as well as an overall season long accuracy because it’s important to be honest and up front with stuff like this, if I’m in a slump and making bad decisions you’ll know it and can decide if you want to follow these streaming suggestions or not.

Last week I made 59 recommendations, of those 6 were declared inactive or injured, 40 were correct (met or exceeded projection) and 13 were incorrect (below projection). We don’t count acts of God here (injuries) and I specifically ask people to check for inactives before each game so discounting those I was 75% correct last week, 75% accurate for the season overall. Of those 40 correct calls last week 10 of them were “massive hits” (doubled or tripled projection) for a 25% massive hit rate.

Disclaimer Time! I’m not going to get all of these correct. Cornerback especially is a wildly inconsistent position for production in IDP fantasy football. That’s why most people hate it with a passion. My whole thing is to put yourself in the best position to succeed by looking at all the variables and making the absolute best streaming call possible. After that you pray. Your team is your responsibility and yours alone, you set the lineup not me.

Take ownership if things go south, these are only suggestions. I will do my absolute best to make sure that these recommendations are the best possible and will base these on factual information and statistics from places like NFLGsis.com, PFF and other fantasy and NFL data and statistics sites. I will also use the force, sometimes a gut feeling is all I have to go on in an unknown situation but if it comes down to that just know this isn’t my first rodeo.

I don’t work for the NFL, I don’t get to sit in on defensive team meetings for all 32 teams, I don’t get inside information. If a player has been producing all season and has been playing a ton of snaps and they get yanked right before a game obviously I had nothing to do with it and since I don’t work for said team no one told me. (See Vernon Hargreaves 2019). If someone goes down with an ACL it’s not because I made a voodoo doll of them and stuck it with pins. These decisions are the same ones I’m making for my teams so if things go bad for you they go bad for me as well. I’m just here to help, don’t kill the messenger.

Article Key:

Outlook: This will be a brief overview of the two offenses and how that will effect the outlook for each teams cornerbacks corps. We’ll look at offensive ranks for passing, expected game scripts, time of possession, competency of the quarterbacks and their WR corps and this will help us guess how the game should go. This will help us identify if this is a matchup we want to target for streaming corners or not. Also after last season’s issues with weather causing problems with passing in some games we’ll try and look at that as well (Raiders/Browns 2020 ring a bell?). First we identify the matchups we want to stream from then we identify the best options in those matchups.

Ideal Matchup: This is the best possible matchup for this teams cornerbacks, streaming corners from this team, especially guys that are talented and play all the snaps gives you the best chances at excellent production from those corners.

Solid Matchup: This isn’t a perfect matchup to stream corner but it’s still pretty good, if you’re in a deeper league and have fewer options to stream from this matchup is still a better option than most.

Avoid: This matchup will likely be terrible to stream corner from, due to anything from a god awful opposing quarterback who can’t complete passes to a banged up wide receiver corps or even a run first offense like the 2019 Ravens were there’s something that makes this a bad matchup to stream corners from, avoid if possible. However there may be specific corners who get a “solid” in an otherwise “avoid” matchup simply due to their talent and ability to make plays in all aspects of the defense (see Marlon Humphrey, he always starts, doesn’t matter who’s in town).

Perfect Stream: This is one of the best matchups this week. I will be streaming from these matchups in my own leagues almost exclusively.

Poop stream: This is one of the worst matchups this week. I will very likely have zero corners from this matchup streaming anywhere.

***There will be games where I don’t recommend streaming from one team or another but still have someone listed as solid despite that, in those situations it’s talent over matchup. Tre’Davious White (CB) might be up against the leagues worst passing attack but at the end of the day he’s still Tre’Davious White (CB) so I’d start him if I didn’t have any better options***

***We’ll be taking the offensive and defensive pass rankings with a grain of salt this week and probably for the first month of the season, not a big enough sample size for accuracy, I’ll be throwing out defensive pass ranking completely this week unless it’s a team with an obviously excellent passing defense. These factors will be relevant soon, just not yet, or rather they aren’t accurate enough yet to be beneficial.***

About The Author

Johny The Greek (@Orangeman3142)