Fantasy Football 2017 - Starts of the Week, Week 2 Matchups, Players to Watch

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Before we start today's show, I want to remind you about another tool you need to add to the tool belt, and that is the Sleeper Bot app. If you want breaking news faster than anybody else, if you want all the injury news, if you want sleepers, you want hype coming out of these different team organizations, the Sleeper Bot app, it's free, you download it, you've got it on your phone, and it's always letting you know the latest breaking news. So you do not miss out on anything. If you've got the news first,

You've got an advantage. So check it out the Sleeperbot app at sleeperbot.com. The Fantasy Footballers podcast. Coming to you from the Playdraft Studios with your host, Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright. Welcome into the show. The show you know. Joe. Andy Mike and Jason back once more. Thursday.

September 14th, 2017, the Fantasy Footballers podcast. Today we have a great show for you. Good quick question. We'll break down a little bit of news. We've got our starts of the week, and we've got some of the week-two matchups to get you ready for your fantasy football battles. Oh, R. R. Oh. Wow. We win. Jay Griz, apparently also with us here today. It'll be very vicious.

Vicious battles. You guys, how are you doing today? Doing pretty well. I'm excited for Thursday night football tonight and to get, you know, once you get that second week of football under your belt, things start to normalize. You can actually try to put together a trend, a little, little baby trend. Are you excited for this matchup? For this matchup tonight? Texans Bengals. It's the, it's sponsored by Ambien.

No, they could surprise us. With John Ross is going to make his debut tonight. Okay. Please fix Andy Dalton. It could be a lot worse. It could be a lot worse, Brooks. Okay. You have a couple elite superstars out there. You got AJ Green playing. Yeah. All right. DeAndre Hopkins. There you go. Miller drafted high. No, it actually will be fun to watch.

I like the positivity, Brooks. Brooks bringing the positivity. It'll be fun to see. He's like, the Jets aren't playing, so we're okay. Deshawn Watson. You get to see him start a game. Mike was not a big fan in reviewing the film. It's going to be bad. I just say it's, you're telling me you're not streaming to Sean Watson. I am not. Oh, man. Oh, man. There's probably someone out there that wants to do that. Please don't. Big, big Clemson fans. Please don't.

All right. Hey. For the sake of your fantasy football team, don't do that. Well, I don't know. The other side of the ball, Andy Dalton, negative points last week. That's, yeah, Deshawn Watson could put up positive points. That's a fair point. All right. On Twitter, you can find us at the FFFallers. The website's the Fantasyfootballers.com. And the community is join the foot.com. Quick question of the day, guys. Speaking of week two, doing really well here.

What player are you most interested to watch? So Jason just spoke of trends and the ability to see if a player is, I don't know, we always talk about leveling up. Are there players that leveled up? Alex Smith, did you level up? I'll hop in then and say who I want to see if this is normal for them. It's Dalvin Cook. So Dalvin Cook, obviously, he went ham, he was a complete workhorse and.

delivered production on that. But that was at home. That was against the Saints. That game script was perfect for him. So what happens when he goes on the road? Goes and plays a better defense in Pittsburgh and when your own defense probably isn't able to control the Steelers as well as they were able to control the Saints minus Willie Sneed at home. And the game script won't be perfect. If Dalman Cook explodes this week,

Then, you know, I'm fully bought in. But I'm a little hesitant. You know, look, I think he's going to be great. He's going to be a workhorse. He'll be valuable for fantasy. But I am not over the moon like some people are on Dalvin Cook yet. Like the man to your left? Yes. I think he's unreal. I'm all in. Yeah. And I hope to be. But I'm just not over. I don't want to overdo an at-home performance against the Saints.

It could be some of that as to why he had such a good game one. Future Super Bowl champion, Saints. That didn't work out well in week one. All right. Or two or three. Your reasoning is the same reasoning that I have to watch Tariq Cohen because I want to know how involved he really is. This was a plan in week one. This was intentional by the Bears. They hid him at the end of preseason.

And then they broke him out as the secret weapon against the Falcons and almost pulled off the upset. 12 targets out of the running back spot. Kevin White goes down. He's out for the year. The beneficiary is it, Tarike Cohen every single week. How much do we see of him? How much does it matter if you went out and spent 50, 60% of your fab budget like many people did to pick up Torek Cohen? So I want to see what we got in him. Very impressive week one.

Yeah, and just a memo here because our initial rankings came out yesterday, and I actually have Cohen the lowest of the three of us, and people are like, what's going on, Mike? I mean, because I was championing Tariq, and look, I fully believe in him, but I also want to see another week of usage. I think that he was absolutely worth the fab, but before I start giving him, well, this guys are running back two every single week.

I just want to see the production again like Andy. The guy I want to see Kirk Cousins in Washington's offense, it was pretty shaky, been pretty shaky through the preseason was shaky week one. Now, Kurt Cousins has generally gotten off to a bit of a slow start, especially for fantasy purposes. Now he's got to take on the Rams who decimated a really bad Colts team. Granted the matchup was very favorable.

But can Kurt Cousins get things corrected? They have so many capable pass catchers and just should be a really explosive high-powered offense. So I want to see can Kurt Cousins get it going now instead of having to have the slow ramp up and then a mid-season dominance by Washington. I want to see it happen right now, Kirk. All right. As Mike said, the rankings are up on the website. The fantasy footballers.com, I guess. I don't know what's going on.

imagining the amazing performances I'm going to watch tonight on Thursday night football. All right. We're going to wrap some of the news into the actual forecast for week number two, so I think we're going to kick it off with these matchups. Fantasy forecast. One quick bit of Thursday night football updates for you. Gary Barnage is scheduled to meet with the Texans. He's a free agent. The Texans lost CJ Fedorowitz for the season, so they need him.

That's pretty interesting. I mean, if you've got just a burner spot and you've got open waivers, you might want to grab him before the game. If he signs, he will be used. I mean, they use the tight end there and they don't have one. That's pretty much the case. One other little tease for you. We talked about Taree Cohen and that offense in Chicago, the limited pass catching options. I'm going to talk about one of those past catching options in...

the starts of the week. So stay tuned for that. All right, first matchup. Let's talk about the Browns and the Ravens. Ravens are eight point favorites at home. The game is only a 39 point over under. And the expectation here for me is a very difficult time for Deshaun Kaiser in this game. So where do you see the storylines for fantasy coming out of this game? Danny Woodhead. He is out for at least four weeks.

Isaiah Crowell had a ton of work in week one, but wasn't very efficient with that work, and the breakdown with West and Allen. Yeah, I mean, I've talked about for the last couple weeks, the Ravens defense and their cornerbacks, they are fully legit. That's why I pumped the brakes on Cory Coleman in this game. I don't expect, you know, I think he'll be the number one Browns receiver at the end of the game. Well, actually,

That might not be true. I think the number one wide receiver at the end of the game might be Duke Johnson if you consider him as such. But what you have with the Baltimore Ravens is you've got a team that's going to be able to shut down the opposition. They want to run the ball. And I think they're going to be in a game script world. They will be able to. So I don't expect too much from the passing game. That being said, Joe Flacco plays much better at home.

His home road splits, we don't talk about him a lot because Blacko's not fantasy relevant, but his home road splits are up there with the Drew Breeze and Ben Rafflesberger that get all the play. He plays much better for fantasy at home than he does on the road. That's why I'm buying into Jeremy Macklin this week. I think the matchup is fine. I don't expect there to be a ton of passing volume, but against the Browns at home with Flacko, I think he'll be safe.

This week we'll talk about him a little later. In week one, the Ravens threw the ball under 29% of the time. That's unheard of in today's NFL. I also don't expect five turnovers from Deshaun Kaiser the way that Andy Dalton. You don't? I'm shooting for six. I mean, it's very possible. I'd still take the under. I mean, Kaiser was looking for for huge plays. He was second last week in deep passes in deep pass percentage.

And he holds onto the ball. The Ravens are going to get sacks, which sacks will lead to turnovers. I mean, this is... Yeah, Terrell Suggs, three sacks. Right. The question for me is really, Terence West, the Cleveland Browns pretty much shut down Levion Bell. Now, that was a Levon Bell who had no preseason, no training camp, probably rusty. But was that just...

Was that more on Levi-on-Bel not being ready to play an NFL game? Or was that the Browns, do they have a decent run defense? And that's what you start to learn right now, because obviously in week one, they were the best in the league. And does that continue? Is that an outlier? Is that a trend? That's exactly what we're talking about here. Where the Ravens last year, Mike brought it up. I mean...

Last year they passed the ball 65% of the time. In week one, they didn't even have to pass the 30% of the time. You had two running backs with what? More than 19 carries each. I think Wes had 19. I think Givorius Allen had 21. So that's not the norm. But we'll start to learn the norm in this game. As far as fantasy starts, you're starting Isaiah Crowell. Yes. The commitment to the run is what matters to me.

Take it from a guy who lost David Johnson, and you scan the league, and you look around for total carry count, and you look around for all these RBCs. And every opportunity that I have to pick up a running back, they all look the exact same. It's like, gross. Do you want Blal Powell part of an RBBC backfield? Do you want Adrian Peterson part of an RBBC? Do you want, you know, Thomas Rawls part of an RBBC? It doesn't matter who you pick. If you don't have one of those main guys, you know, I was looking at trading for Marshaun Lynch just because 18 carries looked okay.