No, but he's possibly the best fourth-best RB in the past 10-20 years.
ckl81 said:
He may be a jerk, but I'd rather have someone who cares about winning and shows some spirit rather than someone like lackadaisical (sp) Roy Williams. Someone on here said that the reason why Calvin isn't as high up as Fitz and AJ is because they show the fire and Calvin Johnson hasn't, thus far.
I was the person who made the post you're thinking about, but I wasn't saying what you thought I was saying. I don't have Fitz or AJ over Calvin because they're fiery, I have them over Calvin because those two guys have that killer instinct, that refusal to be covered or stopped no matter what the other team does, that I affectionately refer to as "Beast Mode". There are games where Fitz just looks like he's daring the other team to quintuple cover him, because he'll catch the ball anyway. There are plays where Andre Johnson looks like he's decided before the play how many yards he's going to get, and any defenders in his way aren't even enough of an inconvenience to be considered minor nuisances. Some weeks, those guys just hit Beast Mode and make it clear to everyone watching that the defense can do everything perfectly and it won't make a bit of difference.I've never seen Calvin hit Beast Mode. I've seen him make 30-year-old men look like 12-year-old boys because of his unbelievable physical advantages, but I've never seen that single-minded determination, that absolute refusal to be stopped, that I've seen from Fitz and Andre. Which is why I have him at dynasty WR3 when his measurables and production and age all say he should be the slam-dunk dynasty WR1.
Fear & Loathing said:
What's up with Marshawn Lynch? I've been hesitant to push him too far down the list because of his pedigree and SSOG's hardcore
for him (as well as EBF's last season).
But Fred Jackson continues to outproduce him, and Lynch is sitting at 3.1 YPC this season. The coaches tried to hand him the starting job over F-Jax a month ago, but now F-Jax is splitting evenly again. I'm thoroughly underwhelmed here.
I never had a hardcore
for Lynch, I was just shocked at how much everyone else hated him. In my league, he had back-to-back RB12 finishes despite missing time, and he was only 23 years old... but nobody would even look at him. Everyone was calling him junk. I was shocked at just how down everyone was on Lynch.In my mind, he's Kevin Smith. Not a special talent, but a quality talent who is young, plays for a terrible offense, and is likely to get some very nice workloads going forward. Nothing's changed. I still have the two RBs ranked essentially back-to-back. My point this offseason was that everyone was all over Kevin Smith as a possible future stud, but seemingly nobody liked Marshawn Lynch... which made no sense, since they're the same guy.
Edit: Here's what I had to say about Marshawn this past offseason-
"6) Marshawn. I'm coming around to him. He's younger than Adrian Peterson, younger than MJD, younger than Chris Johnson, younger than Matt Forte, younger than Steve Slaton... hell, he's even younger than Shonn Greene. He's also averaged 100 yards per game for his career. I don't think he's a special talent, but I could see him getting a lot better in a hurry if Buffalo ever put an offensive line in front of him- maybe consistently hitting the 4.5 yard per carry range. I'm still not sold on Fred Jackson as someone who brings Marshawn's value down (apparently you don't, either, since you have Jackson at #52). I believe I already posted in this thread that, historically, Jackson is a lot like LenDale in that he gets his after Lynch gets his first. I'm convinced that, at the very least, Marshawn has the talent of a starting RB in the NFL, and at 23 years old, I'd have Marshawn higher just because he's going to have a long time to figure things out."