Bold Predictions for 2021 + Cam Cut, The Pirate Life - Fantasy Football Podcast for 8/31

Dear friends, yes, after that draft. Put a Trager wood pellet grill in your starting lineup and make every game day more delicious. You can head to Trager.com slash footballers to discover how simple wood fire cooking can be. News and notes from around the league. Presented my sleeper. The Patriots released Cam Newton this morning. Mack Jones will start week one against Miami. Goodness gracious.

I think this was an outstanding decision by the team just due to watching Mac Jones play football. I think it was an outstanding decision to release Cam Newton. Now, I don't know if this was, like Belichick has a ton of respect for Cam. So I don't know if this was as simple as we're doing this as a courtesy or what I think is the actual genius move is getting the big personality out of the locker room, handing, giving Mac Jones the opportunity to become.

a leader in the locker room that wasn't going to happen in my opinion with a player favorite cam newton waiting in the wings agreed hand the team to mac what do you guys think about this move and then the uh fallout for the receivers and the running man there are there are so many pieces that this affects obviously um cam as the potential to sign somewhere i don't think that anywhere uh

We'll take him as a starter right now. Only Houston is really the option. But they're carrying a non-playing quarterback already on the roster. Mack being the starter is a big deal to me. We've talked about this a lot over the last couple of weeks, Damien Harris. Damien Harris's pathway to fantasy success was always touchdowns. We knew the yardage would be there. Between the 20s, he's going to be fantastic. He's the guy. He's looked good. He's been efficient.

The offensive lines good, like everything lines up. The question was because he's not involved in the passing game, will he get the goal line work? He won't with Cam, and he will with Mack Jones. So I have him with eight rushing touchdowns now, and that moved him up considerably. And I think that's, this is the type of player, and I wouldn't project this. But this is the type of player that you could see 12, 13, 14 touchdowns if the offense can move.

I can't project that with a rookie quarterback. This isn't Tom Brady running the show. This is still a, you know, a first time NFL quarterback. Damien Harris's name may or may not come up in our bold predictions. Oh. I still just knowing Bill, like you're going to see. You know, I called Bill up. Yeah. I mean, you got to remember Ramandre is six foot 227. Like there's a, there's the opportunity for him to have goal line carries. That still scares me a little bit.

And then James White's going to be out there. And James White's going to be a better player now that Mack is the quarterback as well. Third downs, Mac is not going to be the read optioned rush for the first down. I think James White has a better season. I think Jacoby Myers has a higher ceiling. I think Nelson Aguilar has a higher ceiling. I was just going to say, what does it say that literally every other player on the team has a better season?

with Mac Jones. Like Jono Smith, Hunter Henry. Cam doesn't. Who do you think they do better with Mac or Cam? Like Mac, it's going to be a more prolific passing attack with Mac. And that means that there will be some fantasy relevant players here, especially considering that all their value in average draft price is debt. Nobody's been drafting Patriots because.

It's just not in a volume to make it work. Mike, people want to talk about Mack himself. He was very low for me in terms of the total. He is for me as well. He's 28 or something like that for my quarterbacks. So efficiency is going to be there, but the offense is still going to be, you know, the running game, efficient passing game. Yeah, they're a run first team. And at least he's going to be behind a good offensive line where for the New York Jets and Zach Wilson, the other rookie who I've.

I've got, you know, very low in my fantasy rankings. You're hoping that the Jets offensive line puts it together. Meanwhile, the pats are pretty solid up there. So Mack Jones, I think, has a, his opportunity will be easier to, to develop into that franchise quarterback sooner than Zach Wilson. Trey Lance will miss a week with what's being called a chip in his finger. They chipped him.

He hit his right hand on a defender's helmet in the final preseason game. There was some real Matt Nagy magic going on here from Kyle Shanahan. I don't know if you saw this. He wouldn't even tell the reporters what finger. He said, I'm not going to tell you which finger it is. It's a secret. That means it's the middle finger. Hit his right hand, chipped it. No real concerns, according to our injury expert, Matthew Betts.

However, I mean, missing a week is missing a week, you're probably not winning the starting job at this point. That's what it really affects the most is the potential for him to have been named the week one starter has had never seemed higher than a couple of days ago after the preseason game. It just seemed like they could make that call. But now your first week leading up to the game, he's not able to participate. You're not having him the starter. Go reach out and grab Kirk Cousins, Matt Ryan.

If you drafted Trey Lansing, you were hoping he'd become the starter. Go find out your week one, week two situation. I got a cheap quarterback on today's episode. You can grab? Yes, you do. Okay. Carson Wince placed on the COVID reserve list. The Colts, I think, are the least vaccinated team and they have something going on because Wins, Pascal, Ryan Kelly. They're all on the close contact. Yeah, they're all in the close contact list, just delaying some practice time. I guess with it.

injury for a couple of those players. I mean, we didn't. The time off isn't the end of the world. You didn't bad vibes, the Colts yesterday, but I mean, I mean, if you're going off of just the vibrations in the air, like Indianapolis, like guys getting hurt, your, your, your, the mid of chlorians. Yeah, well, I'm just saying like, there's nothing actual tangible about this. It's just feeling and emotions of guys getting hurt. Your quarterback. I guess with Hilton. He might be out.

for half the season. Oh, he kind of comes back. Now T.Y. Hilton is out. Now Carson Wentz is on the COVID list. You're losing linemen. The vibrations there. Not great. They're not great. I've got some news that might frighten a man that I know has drafted. Irv Smith in many places. We're still waiting to hear about the meniscus surgery, but Matthew Betts, our injury expert said if they just remove the torn portion of the.

portion of the meniscus, he'll be out four to six weeks. Yes. If they repair it, he could be six months, which would force him to miss most of the year, which would be disappointing for a breakout potential. Super disappointing. What Andy's referring to is in our league of record, I fully punted the tight end position, just the way that my draft was working out. I waited until the very end. And because we have two IR spots, I drafted Irv Smith.

and he moved him immediately to the IR. So now week one, I will be streaming the tight end position. But I had to, because I punted, you're hoping that Irv Smith, who I had projected as a top 10 tight end is back sooner than later. Interesting news here with Hurricane Ida and New Orleans.

They might not play a home game until week eight. Wow. It's likely that the first game of the season, which would have been a home game, is going to be moved. Then they're on the road for three of the next four. So if they move the Saints week four game against the Giants, they won't play at home until after the buy in week eight. Man. So you have some, I mean, tough road matchups there where you're at New England, at Washington, at Seattle.

That's not great for a team without Michael Thomas and change a quarterback. Yeah, not a good start, but I would presume the opposite would be true for the playoff weeks. You get Michael Thomas back and you've got to stretch at home for the second half of the season. But who's the quarterback? It's James Winston. Okay. There's no way he could lose the job. What's he going to do? Throw some interceptions.

Peyton Barber was released by the Washington football team. I'm not surprised. I'm not either. Jared Patterson's looked great in that role. So it'll be Gibson, McKissick, and Patterson. And then the Packers news broke this morning. Their left tackle. This is bad. David Bactiari on the Pupp list to start the year. He's going to miss six weeks. How are you feeling, Al? Not great. Okay. Well, and they lost their center and free agency. So this is something we haven't really talked about a lot, but this offensive line.

um certainly downgraded from last year's super efficient offense so something to monitor all right that was today's news and notes presented as always by sleeper they are the platform that listens to the people 21 new things for 2021 um it's almost comedic how little changes on other platforms and how much changes on sleeper not going to name names uh so definitely check that out and before we jump into the bold

Prediction. Spicy. Jason's got his gas X ready. I've seen your first awful pick. I've got all the gas X. I know. If you want to step out of the room for it, that's fine. I probably will. But we want to thank our partners that support this podcast. Keep it going five days a week. Six if we give you a bonus episode like we did last week. We want to thank Indochino.

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I guess Mike would be a great pirate, too. Yeah, that's true. I think... You would both be great pirates. Did you ever want to... Was pirate part of your imaginary play as a kid? No, not really. Pirate was not my wheelhouse. Pirate life wasn't for you? And then I grew up and I found out pirates are like, they're really bad. Well, it's not a really glorifying character here. Yeah. What if you pirate for good?