Love, Hate and the wisdom of Judge Matthew Berry

"Matthew?" the text read. "Matt Holliday gave me your number. I hope it's OK I reached out. But I have a quick request for you. Can we talk at some point soon?"

Matt Holliday, yes, the seven-time All-Star and 2011 World Series champion, is a longtime friend and hard-core fantasy player. Back in the day, Matt even gave me a blurb to help promote my book "Fantasy Life." So any friend of Matt's is a friend of mine. So I said sure, of course.

Turns out the text was from the assistant general manager of a Major League Baseball team, and he had a request.

"We want you to be our judge."

"Judge?"

He explained that this particular baseball team had a fantasy football league. (Every MLB team has a fantasy football league among its players, FYI.) The catch here was that they played for significant stakes and, well, over the years there had been some heated disputes. The guys in the league decided they wanted an impartial judge to help rule on league matters and it had to be someone not affiliated with the team. So, the guy wondered, would I be willing to do it?

I said yes, happy to help any friend of Matt's. Kinda fun to be a judge for a baseball team, especially because this is an area I know well. And I've dealt with some version of it since I started playing fantasy as a teenager.

Before I joined ESPN, I had my own website/blog called Talented Mr. Roto (dot com!). And on that site, which had a great community, we got so many disputes that we started a weekly column called "The Commish's Court," where my friend and the very first fantasy football commissioner I ever had, AJ Mass, would hear readers' disputes in their leagues and pass judgment. It carried on when I got to ESPN, where during the Fantasy Focus podcast, back when it was me and my old partner Nate Ravitz, we would do a weekly segment called "Hard Justice!" where we would rule with iron fists and way too much gavel-pounding.

We ended up stopping the segment after a number of years, as the same type of disputes kept coming up, but still, the disputes come my way. On Twitter, from emails and, yes, from at least one very popular Major League Baseball team. If I tried to answer every dispute, I would have time for nothing else. But I thought this week I would address a few that have been emailed to me recently because I think you'll see a consistent kind of logic in my responses that hopefully will guide you when disputes come up in your league. Note that I've edited all of these emails for length and clarity.

Dear Mr. Berry. I've been reading and enjoying your work for 20 years. Thanks for all you do. This is the first time I've ever written to you. We had a strong dispute blow up this week in an ESPN standard 10-team league. My eldest son Danny is the commissioner. During the week my youngest son Kyle suggested he could trade a QB to me since I lost Russell Wilson. He offered Aaron Rodgers from his deep QB bench and asked for one of my strong WRs. We settled on Aaron Rodgers for CeeDee Lamb. We agreed to this on Friday. Nobody objected as the trade seemed fair and beneficial to both teams.

On Saturday I asked Danny if he could go into his league manager tool and approve the trade before the 48-hour review window ended so we could set our lineups before Sunday. Danny pushed through the trade as he has done in the past. Late Saturday a member complained. He said the 48-hour review period is a mandatory waiting period and inferred the push through of the trade was only because of family ties. I disagreed strongly with Tom Z. and believe he was only complaining to try to disadvantage other teams. I sat Aaron Rodgers because of the complaint, but was not happy about it. Can you share your thoughts?

Thanks, David B.

Judge Berry: Yeah, that's sour grapes. I agree, seems like a very fair trade, and I have no issue with a commish reasonably pushing through a trade when the review period would push it past the kickoff. To me, the key here is that you say the commish has done this before, and I'll assume not always for family members.

If there's a veto process in place, then Danny could have allowed that to happen quickly. Note that I hate the veto and don't think it should exist, but putting that aside, if the 48-hour rule is to be enforced without exception, your league in essence stops all trading for the week on Friday at 1:01 p.m. ET. What fun is that?

You should have either played Rodgers (and your commish should go back and retroactively put Rodgers in your lineup for that week) or at the very least you should have gotten Lamb back. If the ruling was that it didn't make the trade review period in time, then the deal is null and void. You can't just have both players in escrow for their games. Once kickoff happens, those players lock for the week. Which means the trade didn't go through and you get Lamb back.

Matthew, had an interesting incident this weekend and would love to get your opinion. Private league, run for 20 years with the same group of guys. Waivers have always run the same way: dropped players take 48 hours to clear before they can be added to another team. This week, one team didn't have a QB: Justin Herbert on bye, Trey Lance hurt, he did not pick up a QB as of Saturday morning. So his opponent went in on Saturday afternoon and added/dropped all QBs, essentially freezing them so the other guys wouldn't have one and wound up losing by 1 point.

League is split over this maneuver: Half see it as a savvy use of defined rules to secure a win, taking advantage of an inattentive owner. Others call it the weaponization of waivers and an abuse of the rules.

What say you? Rob M.

Judge Berry: Well, first I want to clarify for those who play on ESPN only that this happens on some other sites, but you don't have to worry about it here. On ESPN, if you pick up a player and then waive that player the same day, the player is an immediate free agent to prevent this exact sort of thing from happening. And I think that's the right thing to do.

This is just a jerk move. I'd use a stronger word if I weren't on a family-friendly site. I get it. It's "allowed," and your rules are your rules. My guess is the guy hadn't picked up a QB yet because he assumed his friend wouldn't do a jerk move like that because, in 20 years of you guys playing together, this had never happened? Obviously if it had, you would have dealt with this before and not be writing me now.

Fantasy football is supposed to be fun. It's a hobby. A game. Yes, some people play for money and it's more fun when you win. I get all that and I definitely try to get every edge I can. I even wrote an article this year about legal ways to get an edge. But this feels like more than that. I mean, you guys have been playing together for 20 years, man. Two decades. Who wants to win like that?

I tend to rule in favor of common sense and what's the best for the competitive nature of the league. Making a guy play without a QB because of some waiver wire shenanigans by an opponent who had more free time on a Saturday doesn't feel fair or even. Also it's not clever or strategic. It's the online equivalent of locking the guy in a closet until kickoff so he can't get to a computer to change his lineup. It's a cheap and crappy way to get a win.

I would have ruled that the opposing team can keep as many of the quarterbacks as he wants on his roster, and if he has room for all of them, then OK. There's a cost in terms of the other players he'd have to give up to make room for them. But once he waives the extra quarterbacks, I would have allowed the guy with Herbert to pick one up.

And besides, players who tend to try to do cutesy things like picking up and waiving all available quarterbacks tend to have it come back and bite them. Fantasy karma is a real thing.

Hi Matthew, a quick note to thank you for all that you do in the fantasy community. I've been a weekly reader of L/H for many years and somehow it gets better every season (this week's piece on Leavy and Lee literally brought me to tears on my lunch break).

However, unlike L/H, my primary fantasy football league is on life support. For context, it's a 12 team half-PPR redraft league started in 2011 by a bunch of friends that grew up together and, as life goes, have since departed our hometown. Every year we look forward to the draft as our one chance to (virtually) get together, catch up, talk a little smack and just feel like kids again. But I've noticed some changes.

The Sunday texts have gone down in volume, as is to be expected with us focusing on our careers, getting married, having kids, etc. I get it. But recently I looked back through our league history (dating back to 2013) and I found that we have had 3 trades -- yes, three -- since we moved to ESPN. That's 8 years of data. I read your Definitive Guide to Fantasy Football Trades and feel like I've tried everything. I send texts/emails to kick off trade negotiations but I'm either ghosted entirely or met with "my team is already 'monster' so don't even look at starters."

Is this league dead? Is there a way to bring it back to life? How can we get trades going in a league that's so afraid of being wrong no one's even willing to make offers let alone counter? As the Bodhisattva of Fantasy Football, I humbly turn to you for any guidance. Thank you! Greg.

Judge Berry: Three trades in eight years is brutal. Understand you can lead a horse to water but you can't make it trade it. Or something like that. Point is, this only works if your leaguemates agree the league needs a spark back. But assuming they do, here is what I rule.

Before next year, you say to everyone in the league: Are you in or not? And before you answer, understand there is a new rule this year. Every team is required to make at least two trades. That is one of the requirements to make the playoffs. Even if you qualify, if you haven't made two trades during the year, the next-highest team in the standings that has made two trades goes in that team's place. Also, any team that hasn't made two trades owes an additional X dollars to the pot for each trade not made. That is added to the pot at the end of the year for the winning teams. Even if it's kickers-for-kickers trades, forcing people to trade will get folks communicating more, which is the whole point. Hopefully with that rule and more potential money at stake, that livens things up.

And that's the point, right? That's the key thread to all of my answers: This is all for fun. In general, for any league dispute you have, if you rule with the idea of common sense, not being a jerk and that this is a game we play among friends for fun, you'll come up with the right answer a lot more often than not.

I appreciate everyone who has written me and apologies if I haven't gotten to yours. I get way too many emails to respond to all of them. But I do read every email I get.

As always, Love/Hate is not a start/sit column but merely about player expectations. Thanks to The Fantasy Show's Damian Dabrowski for his help at various points in this column. Let's get to it.

Quarterbacks I love in Week 9

Matthew Stafford, Los Angeles Rams (vs. Titans)

I think we can all agree we're glad to not be in any fantasy leagues with Rams general manager Les Snead. That man is able to go out and acquire big-name talent like no other. Robert Woods, Jalen Ramsey, Matthew Stafford, Von Miller, all brought in to the best keeper league of all: the actual NFL. Impressive. Snead probably even pays his league dues on time. A true icon. Anyway, from a fake football standpoint, his Stafford acquisition is looking better all the time. Stafford has more games of 300-plus passing yards and three-plus passing touchdowns this season than any other QB in the NFL. He's also second among quarterbacks in fantasy points per pass attempt and has three straight games with at least 24 fantasy points. That fantasy points per pass attempt stat is specifically useful this week against a Titans team that, over the past four weeks, has faced an average of 45.5 pass attempts per game from opponents, the most in the league. No Derrick Henry this week means Tennessee can't slow the game down. I have Stafford as a top-two play this week. You know Snead is starting Stafford this week, and you should, too.

Joe Burrow, Cincinnati Bengals (vs. Browns)

After ranking 29th in pass attempts the first four weeks of the season, Burrow is seventh in pass attempts since Week 5. That increased volume has led to increased production. Burrow now has multiple touchdown passes in every game this season and three touchdown passes in each of his past three games. If my calculations are correct, at his current rate of improvement, Burrow will throw ... 179 touchdown passes in Weeks 16, 17 and 18. Wow! The math definitely checks out, so I'd be sure to start him in those weeks. But also play him this week against a Browns defense that, over the past four weeks, is allowing touchdown passes at the second-highest rate in the league. And over that same time period, the Browns are also allowing the second-most fantasy PPG to opposing quarterbacks (24.2). There you go, America: two bad Browns stats no one can blame on Baker Mayfield and Odell Beckham Jr.

Tua Tagovailoa, Miami Dolphins (vs. Texans)

In his three games since coming off of IR, Tagovailoa is averaging 42 pass attempts per game, is QB5 in fantasy overall and QB7 in PPG (21.0). I know. I had to run the numbers twice before believing it, too. Speaking of running, Tagovailoa has 20-plus rushing yards in two of those three games, which helps to keep his floor high. But almost nothing keeps a player's floor higher than the Houston Texans' defense. Over the past four weeks, the Texans are allowing a league-high 9.2 yards per pass attempt. For those looking to replace Tom Brady or Aaron Rodgers, or those who are just in need of a streamer this week, Week 9 is Tua Time, and I have him ranked inside my top 10.

Others receiving votes: If your league awards points for comical interceptions, Carson Wentz is a set-it-and-forget-it quarterback. But he's actually doing fairly well in leagues with standard scoring, too. Wentz now has five consecutive games with 17-plus fantasy points and multiple touchdown passes. He's a top-12 play this week against a Jets defense that has allowed a league-high 340.7 passing yards per game over the past four weeks. ... If Taysom Hill is cleared to play this week, he needs to be rostered in every league -- and started in many leagues, too. Don't forget, in his four starts last season, Hill averaged 21.1 PPG thanks to putting up 209 rushing yards and four touchdowns in those games. Considering Atlanta allows the second-most rushing yards to quarterbacks on the season, this couldn't be a better opponent for Hill's return to the lineup.

Quarterbacks I hate in Week 9

Ryan Tannehill, Tennessee Titans (at Rams)

Tannehill undoubtedly wants to show the world that he can keep the Titans' offense running smoothly without Derrick Henry in the lineup. And who am I to doubt he can ... some other week. Because this week, Tannehill is facing a Rams defense that leads the league in pressure rate, and that was before they added Von Miller to the lineup. Tannehill ranks 24th among quarterbacks this season in fantasy points per pass attempt when pressured. The Rams are also allowing touchdown passes at the second-lowest rate this season and have yielded the third-fewest air yards per pass attempt. It's been a really tough week for the Titans, and Sunday's matchup likely won't make it any better.

Matt Ryan, Atlanta Falcons (at Saints)

Ryan has finished as a top-10 quarterback just once this season and has just three touchdowns (along with four turnovers) in his past two games. He's also averaging a career-low 6.7 yards per pass attempt and will be without his best receiver for an indefinite amount of time. Two first names is usually a crowd pleaser, but not this week, not this quarterback. Sunday he faces a Saints defense allowing 15.2 PPG to opposing quarterbacks, sixth fewest in the NFL. I have Ryan just inside my top 20.

Running backs I love in Week 9

Ezekiel Elliott, Dallas Cowboys (vs. Broncos)

The calendar has turned to November, which means it's time to eat. As we prepare to start stuffing our faces, it's worth noting that Elliott has already started. Zeke is eating, my friends, getting fed with 20-plus touches in five straight games and 15 targets over his past two games. Like me in front of a Pop-Tart, Elliott shows no sign of slowing down this Sunday against a Broncos defense that has allowed the third-most fantasy points per game to opposing running backs over the past four weeks. Over that same stretch, the Broncos are allowing 124 rushing yards per game to opposing backs. And now they don't have Von Miller, either. I have him as a top-five play this week. Zeke will eat, I'm going to eat, we should all eat. It's almost winter. None of us need to show our beach bodies again for months.

Michael Carter, New York Jets (at Colts)

The Jets have a running back who is RB9 in fantasy PPG (18.5) since Week 4. A running back who has at least 13 touches and double-digit fantasy points in four straight games. A running back who has nine red zone and seven goal-to-go carries over that same stretch. A running back who has 23 targets over the past two weeks. I mean, if you had told the Jets that they'd be getting this kind of production from their starting running back three years into the four-year, $52.5 million contract they gave to Le'Veon Bell, they'd be ecstatic.

Elijah Mitchell, San Francisco 49ers (vs. Cardinals)

Quick, name a better duo than Jimmy Garoppolo and Elijah Mitchell. I'll wait. OK, fine. ... I said fine! I get it. You can stop now. Stop, already! Stop naming better duos! Enough! You obviously can think of a lot of better duos. You're very good at it. Who knew there were so many better duos? Yeesh. The important point here is that Mitchell is getting a lot of usage when Jimmy G is in the lineup. In fact, Mitchell has at least 18 touches in all four games he's played with Garoppolo as the starter. And usage equals fantasy production, especially for Mitchell. In three of his four games this season with 15-plus touches, he has at least 100 rushing yards and a touchdown. Mitchell has a great chance to put up those kind of numbers again this week against an Arizona defense that allows the fourth-most yards per carry (4.7) to opposing running backs this season. I have Mitchell as a top-15 play this week.

Others receiving votes: Over the past four weeks, the Chargers are allowing 34.8 PPG to opposing running backs, second most in the league. That sets up well for Boston Scott this week, as he got the bulk of the work last week with Miles Sanders on the shelf. Kenneth Gainwell didn't get his second touch last week until the Eagles were up 41-0. I expect Gainwell to get more work this week, but it's clear Scott will get the majority of runs. In his seven career games with at least 12 touches, Scott averages 18.6 PPG. ... I did not expect Jeremy McNichols to earn any Love list consideration this year, but I was also unaware that Derrick Henry is human. That's on me. So here we are. It's hard to run on the Rams, and when you have Aaron Donald and Von Miller bearing down on you, you quickly dump it off. More than 90% of McNichols' fantasy points this season have come as a receiver, and the Rams rank bottom 10 in receptions and receiving yards allowed to running backs. ... AJ Dillon has at least 11 touches and 55 scrimmage yards in four of his past five games. He also had a season-high four red zone carries last week, and his workload should increase this week. With Aaron Rodgers on the COVID list, I expect Green Bay to lean on the run even more than usual. The #FlexAJDillon campaign continues. ... "Saints running back Mark Ingram" sure sounds better than "Texans running back Mark Ingram." You see? Change one word and suddenly you have fantasy viability. Ingram had 52 yards on eight touches in his first game back with New Orleans, playing 29% of snaps. This week, the Saints face a Falcons team allowing the seventh-most fantasy points per game to running backs on the season, and with Taysom Hill expected to be under center, the Saints are likely to be even more run-heavy than they have been (and that's saying something).

Running backs I hate in Week 9

James Robinson, Jacksonville Jaguars (at Bills)