Blake Bortles’ first postseason victory came with a hefty dose of criticism
Authentic Christian Kirk Jersey , maybe even more than ever before.
The Jacksonville Jaguars quarterback handled it as well as he did Buffalo’s pass rush.
”It’ll probably never stop,” Bortles said Wednesday. ”There’s people that think LeBron James sucks, so if that happens, I’m sure there will be a lot of people that always think I suck.”
The latest insults came from Tennessee Titans safety Kevin Byard and retired NFL quarterback Chris Simms.
Byard told the Tennessean this week he wants to make New England’s Tom Brady looks like Bortles. Byard intercepted two of Bortles’ passes in the regular-season finale in Nashville.
”This is a playoff game, so I don’t really care if it was Joe Montana,” Byard said. ”You know what I’m saying? I’m trying to go out there and win the game. I want to make him look like Blake Bortles if I can and try to catch a couple picks. Tom Brady is a great quarterback, but it’s a playoff game.”
Simms told The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz on Tuesday that Bortles is 70th in his NFL quarterback rankings, below backups Chad Henne (Jacksonville), T.J. Yates (Houston) and Nathan Peterman (Buffalo).
Former Jaguars left tackle Tony Boselli called into the show to defend Bortles, saying it’s ”the most ignorant, asinine statement I’ve ever heard.”
None of it seemed to bother Bortles, who has been sullied all season .
Titans defensive end Jurrell Casey told a Nashville radio station last week that ”as long as Bortles is back there, if the ballgame is in his hands, he’s going to choke.”
Bortles also has been publicly ripped by Houston defensive end Jadeveon Clowney, Seattle safety Earl Thomas and Cincinnati linebacker Vontaze Burfict in the past two months.
”Players or peers talking about you is a little new,” Bortles said last week.
Bortles’ performance against the Bills was far from his best.
He completed 12 of 23 passes for 87 yards and a touchdown. He never settled into a rhythm, and with the game tied in the second half, he stopped throwing and starting scrambling. He finished with 88 yards on the ground, becoming the first quarterback since Atlanta’s Michael Vick in 2004 to win a playoff game with more rushing yards than passing.
”There’s two different ways to look at it,” Bortles said. ”You kind of look at the numbers and look at the game and say, `You played terrible.’ Or you look at it and say, `Things weren’t going right here and you found a way to win and be efficient and move the ball and do different things.’ I think that’s how I feel about it. We didn’t have our A-game. I missed a couple throws. Things weren’t going well.
”But you know scrambling around and doing some different things, and guys making some plays, we found a way to score one more time than they did. That’s all you’ve got to do.”
The Jaguars (11-6) won the wild-card game 10-3, with the lone touchdown coming on Bortles’ 1-yard pass on a fourth-and-goal play, and advanced to play at second-seeded Pittsburgh (13-3) on Sunday.
Jacksonville beat the Steelers 30-9 in Pittsburgh earlier this season. Bortles threw just one pass in the second half as the Jags dominated thanks to five interceptions, including two returned for touchdowns, and a season-high 231 yards rushing.
Bortles completed 8 of 14 passes for 95 yards, with an interception.
”Hopefully we can throw less,” Bortles said. ”That would be awesome. Leonard goes off again and those guys up front play as well they did last time and we can run the ball up there and not have to throw at all. That was something that happened last time, but you never know. … It could be another one of those games or it could be you go up there and throw it 50 times.”
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It’s important to consider the opposing bullpen when selecting hitters in daily fantasy leagues
Authentic Mason Cole Jersey , both the quality of the team’s bullpen as a whole and the differences in quality between its individual pitchers.
The best bullpens in the league, like the Astros, have very little drop off in quality from their best relievers to their worst. That means whether a game is competitive or not, Houston’s opponents are facing high-end relief pitching. The Astros have five relievers with expected fielding independent pitching (xFIP) below 3.00, a measurement similar to ERA that strips away defense and some luck.
This isn’t the case with the bullpens in the middle of the league’s rankings. Some are top heavy while others are balanced. In daily fantasy baseball, top-heavy bullpens are the ones to take advantage of when they are large underdogs. The hope is that if your offense plays from ahead, you will avoid the elite relievers in a top-heavy bullpen. A balanced opposing bullpen won’t have as much of a difference in quality of reliever based on the game situation.
Take for example the Reds bullpen, which diminishes quickly. The Reds bullpen xFIP is 4.16 but when they play from ahead opponents will often see some combination of Amir Garrett (3.10 xFIP), Jared Hughes (3.41 xFIP), and Raisel Iglesias (3.30 xFIP). However, if they get behind the bottom of the bullpen contains Wandy Peralta (5.83 xFIP) and Michael Lorenzen (4.34 xFIP).
On the other hand, the Angels have a team bullpen xFIP of 4.15 but maintain a much more balanced bullpen. Their top six relievers all have xFIPs between 3.42 and 4.22. That makes it less important to identify game situations against the Angels.
Let that difference play to your advantage when top-heavy bullpens are underdogs – that improves your odds of facing the weakest relievers.
GOLF
TPC Potomac at Avenel Farm is this year’s host for the Quicken Loans Invitational, hosted by Tiger Woods. TPC Potomac also hosted the 2017 version of this event, while previous years it was held at the nearby Congressional Country Club in Bethesda, Maryland. Because of the limited sample size, fantasy players shouldn’t put much weight in course history this week.
Last year, the Quicken Loans Invitational played as the fourth most difficult event on tour and played harder than the U.S. Open and Players Championship, so birdies will be hard to come by. When courses feature few birdies, the finishing position makes up more of the fantasy scoring and paying up for the tournament favorites can be a profitable strategy. Last year, strokes gained tee-to-green was the biggest differentiator between players as 22.5 percent of strokes were gained off the tee and 36.6 percent of strokes were gained on approach compared to tour baselines of 15 percent and 34.8 percent, respectively.
While Woods headlines the field for public rooting interest, Rickie Fowler is the class of the field with a 42 percent chance to finish inside of the top 10 this week. Fowler is ranked first in the field in strokes gained total, 10th in strokes gained tee-to-green and first in DraftKings scoring. On a week where capturing the top end of the leaderboard will prove critical, Fowler will anchor many winning DraftKings lineups.
In order to have the salary cap space to pay for Fowler, finding a cheap complementary player is required. Adam Hadwin is our favorite value selection this week on DraftKings and his $7,300 price lets you comfortably roster Fowler. There are 40 golfers priced more expensive than Hadwin, whose 75 percent odds to make the cut are inside of the top 20 made cut probabilities. While Hadwin is ranked outside of the top 50 in strokes gained off the tee, he rates inside of the top 20 in strokes gained approach and 10th in total strokes gained over the last 50 rounds.
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This column was provided to The Associated Press by DailyRoto,
