WEEK 16: START OF THE WEEK

START ‘EM

Russell Gage, WR

Atlanta Falcons vs. Detroit Lions

Last week worked out pretty well seeing as the gamble of saying to sit the New England defense paid off with the Colts getting a walk-off touchdown to leave Patriots with less than 5 fantasy points. Moving on to this week, I hope you're all filled with holiday cheer and looking to advance in your fantasy playoffs. Hopefully, I can help you with that by giving you a great start player for the semifinals of the playoffs, but before I get into that I must give the obligatory update on Maurice's cross-country journey. He's made his way up north and although I think he wanted to go to the North Pole, he ended up in the Motor City, AKA Detroit, Michigan. Upon asking some random strangers where the North Pole was, they sadistically sent him to 8 Mile, where he proceeded to get the pants rapped off of him in a vicious one-on-one freestyle battle. I'm not going to say they took a lot of cheap shots, but there were some things that went a little bit too far, in my opinion. Maurice didn’t take to kindly to this, naturally, so don’t be surprised when some of his competitors end up getting found on the assembly line of a Ford factory, if you catch my drift. That being said, Maurice is quite upset with anyone from the “fake” North Pole, as he calls it, so in order to spite all Michigan based teams, he will give fortuitous luck to anyone facing them on this particular holiday weekend, specifically at 10 a.m. Pacific Standard Time on Sunday. Therefore, the start player for week 16 of the 2021 Fantasy Football season is Russell Gage, wide receiver for the Atlanta Falcons.

Here's a few more reasons why Russell Gage is a good start for the semi-finals of the playoffs. The Detroit defense has allowed 190 or more yards to the position three out of the four past weeks and 6 times total this season. Gage has been targeted 12 times in two of the last three games and has gone over 90 yards twice in that same span. That means Atlanta is throwing him the ball, and he is clearly their number one wide receiver going up against not that great of a defense. Granted, I will say the Atlanta offense isn't that great, but he is the best player on that offense by far, right now. Neither team is going to get too far ahead of the other, so they're going to have to keep passing the ball to be involved, which really benefits Gage. That's why Russell Gage is the fantasy semi-finals start player of the week!