RADIO
Fantasy owners of John Brown went from worried, to relieved, to flabbergasted when it came to his status on Sunday. For a large part of Sunday morning, Brown was listed as questionable, the worst spot for fantasy owners. About an hour from game time it was announced he would be active. About three Arizona drives into the game it became evident that Brown would not be playing, causing many fantasy teams to get a goose egg in the wide receiver slot.
Brown not playing, despite getting the “active” title is pretty rare in the NFL, due to their strict policies regarding the handling of injury situations. The reason the Cardinals named him active while not playing him could be seen as gamesmanship by some, but the reasoning they will provide is they would have used them had they needed to. The Cardinals have a bye this coming week and defeated the Browns 34-20 in Week 8. So, in this case, “they did not need him.” That explanation does very little to make fantasy owners feel better. What it does do is make fantasy owners wonder if these kinds of situations will arise in the future. The answer to that would seem to be no, as it doesn’t appear to be a move the NFL rules committee would allow a team to take advantage of more than once.
While owners can no longer do anything about the zero points Brown put up this week they can hope he can make up for it – not that it was his fault in the first place – down the fantasy season stretch. Looking ahead it appears things won’t get much easier when Brown actually does play. Following the bye week, the Cardinals travel to Seattle and then come home the following week to play the Bengals. While Seattle is down a little bit against the pass this year (eighth in the league) it’s no secret that many wide receivers have left with zero points after a visit to Seattle. Things get a little easier when they face the Bengals' 13th rated defense against the pass the next week at home.
It’s not until November 29 when the Cardinals travel to San Francisco to face the league's worst team against the pass that Brown owners could finally start to feel better about how things went down in Week 8. For most leagues, this is the last week of the regular season. If Brown shows up in a big way – as should be expected against the worst defense in the league – his owners should be able to forget all about what happened in Week 8.
