Fantasy Football Podcast 2016 - Ameer Abdullah Interview, "Bland" Players, News & Notes

Well-spoken guy, committed to the team. You like a guy whose first thing he says about a team is the guys that are hardworking on that team that want to make you better. You like a guy that's going out and looking for that. That's why I like about Tyler Lockett, to be honest with you. Tyler Lockett is a hardworking guy. There's a reason we need to work. If the NFL draft that general managers and the teams have interviews at the NFL draft, we need to have invisible pretend interviews with these players sometimes and say, okay, a guy that wants to get better.

versus a guy that's dripping with talent, but you don't see it, you know, Austin Safarian Jenkins? Right, no, that's why I asked all the questions about work ethic because it matters. It matters big time for these guys. So, Abdullah, I've been arguing with Mike a lot about the fact that he is biased, in my opinion, towards Amir Abdullah, whereas if you really compare him and Melvin Gordon and their disappointment levels, they're on an equal playing field, they both are coming off an injury issue, they both fumbled a lot, they both.

Made you sad. Yes. They both had high upside. And this is what I was... And I like Gordon more than Abdullah going to this season. And I like Abdullah more than Gordon, because this is what I will say. Melvin Gordon had a nice baseline, a nice consistent level of disappointment. For Amir Abdullah, there was actually a glimmer of hope. We've talked about the Jim Bob Cooter effect before with Golden Tate. We saw a massive spike in his production. The same can also be said for Amir Abdullah.

Look, in his first nine games, he had 68 carries. He was rocking a three and a half yards per carry average. The final seven, Jim Bob Cooter comes into town. He kicks the offense in the butt. He says, let's go. Amir Abdullah gets 75 carries, and he's up to 4.8 yards per carry. Massive jump. Even more work, a 1.3 yard per carry jump. The first 54 carries, like we said, the fumble problem. Four fumbles.

in 54 carries. Final 89 carries only one. So there was a very... An improvement. There was a very visible improvement. And there's no joic bell. There's no old busted bell trying to eat into his workload. So I just, I think that Abdullah is being overlooked right now. And I would take him over Gordon. You know, I... It's all about the carries to me. It's just about, does he get enough? Sure. So you assume he's not going to get enough? Correct.

I just think that they're going to distribute some of those first and second down carries across different guys. I think they want to use Abdullah in ways. I think if you use Abdullah as a first and second down running back and you bring Theoretic in on third down, that's just not the skill set of Amir Abdullah.

He was the guy who had, I think he led the league in like average yards per all-purpose touch because, you know, he returns kicks and he takes swing passes. And I just think they're going to use him in the slot sometimes. I think they're going to use him in different ways. Sure. But not, you talk about a baseline of disappointment for Melvin Gordon. I think Gordon will give you a baseline of, uh, of continued disappointment. Consistency this season.

That is better than the consistency level of Abdullah. I think I would take Gordon in both PPR and standard formats. I leave the door open for Abdullah to impress me. And maybe if no one else is really back there and they're just, here you go, here are the keys to the castle. Okay, we're talking something different. There were a lot of things that changed in the second after the season, right? You saw Matthew Stafford become a much better quarterback. Does he maintain that to keep defenses honest to give Abdullah the chance to succeed?

Man, that team was a dumpster fire the first half of the year. Everything went wrong for the lions. I was surprised that Abdullah said he was, every part of his rookie year was good because of that. Really? Every part was good. So you think that Mike is a little biased that he, his love for Mirabula. And I will accept the bias. How do you view me on Amir Abdullah? I view you as perfectly.

unbiased. So if that's the case, unless you agree with Mike. Let me just say, researching into Abdullah today, researching into Abdullah today and trying to unbiasedly look and say, can he actually be the guy? Yes or no. I surprised myself. I surprised myself to come away.

that I do think he will have a good season. I really do. You know, looking at the numbers of all the rookie disappointments. I mean, look at this this year. You had Jay Ajay, Melvin, Gordon, Matt Jones, Jeremy Langford, and Amir Abdul. All high kind of draft picks that were touted and going to do good, and they all stunk. And they all were bad. Did you say Kevin Coleman, too?

I didn't even say Kevin Coleman, but I don't, I didn't think he got enough carries to qualify. But looking at those, I found a comparable situation, kind of like we talked about Eric Decker versus Emmanuel Sanders. Ryan Matthews, for his rookie year, he was so highly touted going into San Diego. And I realized they're, you know, different body style, but they actually were utilized in a very similar way. And in his rookie year, his numbers are...

are so close to Abdullah's, it's crazy. You're talking 158 carries versus 143, 4.3 yards per attempt, 4.2, 22 receptions, 25 receptions, very, very similar. And Ryan Matthews was a huge bust, a huge disappointment because he was... He was too hyped in fantasy. But then the next year, he came back out, and he finishes the number eight running back in fantasy. And so...

Amir Abdullah, I believe, has the skill set. He's got a crazy high spark score. And my big worry with him, I'm realizing my big worry with Amir Abdullah is Stephen Ridley and Zach Zinner. What? Like, I kind of like those guys. But that cannot be my big worry about Amir Abdullah. All right. It's a compelling argument. We got to move on to the last name here as we're running out of time on today's episode. That's Jonathan Stewart.

Somebody who's not getting probably the respect in drafts that is proportional to the value he provided fantasy owners during the season. He was somebody who had eight straight games with 20 plus carries. That is outrageous. You know, the concerns with him have always been injury related, not necessarily talent related. He's certainly a bruiser, right? He's a yards per game. Okay, he's fifth in the league in yards per game. He's fifth in yards after contact. He takes the ball. He doesn't do anything extremely special with it.

He's playing on an offense that, you know, gives it to him around the goal line, probably two-thirds of the time. He gets a shot to get in when they're down around the goal line if Cam's feeling like he doesn't want to Superman or dab. He has no fools to dab on. Yeah, so the attempts are there. He's a great running back to me. And you know, this is what I was digging into the Jonathan Stewart numbers. I fell guilty to one of the fantasy football sins footland. I'm willing to admit this. I let.

the beginning of his season taint how I feel about Jonathan Stewart because in the first four games he was bad. He was averaging six points a game. Zero touchdowns in that stretch. This was not good. They hit their by week. They hit their by week and we've seen this. We see this all the time. Teams make concerted adjustments during their by week and they change things. After that, from week 16 to 14, Jonathan Stewart averaged 13.6 points a game.

I mean, a monster, monster spike. Fifth and yards per game. Fifth and yards after contact. I mean, I cannot let the beginning destroy what he did for the meat.

of the season. So I need to go a look at my Jonathan Stewart numbers. I think I might need to bump him up. He had six touchdowns in the seven games after that by until he got injured. The real issue with Jonathan Stewart. You said it perfect, Andy. He is the best running back too. He's a guy that's going to be consistent, get the ball 20 times a game. Surprise you here and there with multi-touchdown potential. Exactly. Have a chance of touchdowns. I really love him. The-

The only worry with him to me is that health. You're not going to get Jonathan Stewart for 16. Oh, you're not getting it for 16. When you pull the book open, the dictionary, and you look up Jonathan Stewart, it's pretty much this blurb I have here.

Stewart has been limited throughout the team's offseason work with lingering problems. Right. In the Super Bowl. That's a current blur. Yeah. In the Super Bowl, he hurt his foot. He heard it well before the Super Bowl. Sure, but he re-injured in the Super Bowl. And he's been struggling with that for months now. You're never going to get a perfectly fully healthy Jonathan Stewart. But he took a massive workload and did well with it through the season. I would rather have a guy like that.

who I know when he plays is fine. You know, in every league I play in, I've got an IR spot. So I'm fine with the guy where it's like, okay, he's going to be out this week. I'll throw him on my R, pick someone up, and be fine. But I want to know if he's out there, he's going to get the work club. That's pre-planning for that IR spot. You know, Stewart, the nice thing to me is that I think the team probably should go find somebody else. But they didn't. They didn't because they went 15 and 1.

Okay, when you go 15 and 1, you kind of want the blueprint to stay similar and he was productive. I really believe their best interest is to have somebody else carry the load that isn't named Fossey Whitaker or a camera artist Payne. What? But, hey, it doesn't look like that's going to happen. So if Stewart gets healthy, he should give you the same type of high carry numbers and chances around the goal. You know who the Panthers should give a call to? Our boy, Aryan Foster. Oh, I thought you were going to say, Joy, Bell.

Gross. But seriously. Yeah. Give him a call. Give Aaron Foster a call. I just did your job, GM. Last thing I will say, we were going to get to Melvin Gordon. Don't have the time. We talked about Gordon. Well, sure. But I was going to say you can find a lot of information. Marcus Meaney just wrote a great article on our website.

Fantasyfootballers.com. It goes in depth about a lot of pros and cons for Gordon. So if you got questions, check out the articles. That's right. And look, next week, we're getting into it. Three shows a week, expect them to drop on Tuesday and Thursday, and I believe Saturday. So if you can't listen on the weekend, you can. That sounded really like the drop. Yeah, that was all live. Well done. Now you know who does all the drops. Sell tickets for that.

We'll have Brandon Marion Lee from Pro Football Focus and her fantasy football as well as Sirius XM on the show next week as well. We'll talk to her about Josh McCown and a bunch of different...

This or that type of questions. It's going to be a lot of fun. Check out Jointhefoot.com. Get involved in the giveaways that we got going on. And, you know, I'd be remiss if I didn't say thank you once again to everybody who made us the People's Choice Award winner and Best Sports and Recreation Award winner. I'm still riding it, man. From the podcast awards. They're all official. There's no more controversy. We're the winners. For one whole year. We are. Thank you. Goodbye.

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