Week 8 Studs & Duds, Rising Stars, HUE-ge News!

And one of them said, I'm so glad that you guys are in it, right? Like, that's what this show is. Like, we're not, we're not above it. We're in it. Yeah, we are you. Yeah, you're sitting at the table with us. I don't think you can give great contextual fantasy advice from, you know. From the ivory tower? Yeah, from the bird's nest, you know, looking down at everybody else. You got to be, that's one of the reasons why we intentionally restrict the quantity of leagues that we plan.

because we get invited to play in tons of them. But if I'm not invested in my team the way you are, I'm not going to give you contextual advice the right way. So that being said, Mike needs eight points. I need 18 points. Yes, I do. Before we jump in the stun muffins, just a couple of quick pieces of news. A quipple. As the trade deadline approaches, Demarius Thomas himself believes there's about a 50-50 chance that he has traded.

and teams are looking into Pierre Garsohn, who was out. It seemed like he missed for injury, but this could have been a, we're protecting Pierre Garsohn because we're going to trade him. Yeah, it's true. Trade deadline is Tuesday at 4 Eastern. In other words, Levy on Bellwatch is Wednesday. Well, and here's the thing is we're going to release our show. It's going to hit, and then the trade deadline will come, and there'll be things that maybe stuff will happen during the show. Maybe.

It'll be a long show, eight-hour show. All right, let's get into the stud muffins. This week's fantasy stud muffins. Jason. Yo. Cam Newton. He's booty scooting. Boom. Booty scooting his way up to the number two quarterback, Jason. How do you feel about that? Look, I feel like he's been on fire. I think Norv Turner has done.

An excellent job with the offense because Baltimore Ravens had been shutting just about everybody down. And Booty Scootin said, not me. And the Carolina Panthers, they as a team, I think, need more respect. They have, I mean, we were talking about the game line from Vegas was surprising. Look, the Panthers just beat the Eagles and the Ravens and back to back weeks. Their offense looks great. Their defense is tough. Five and two. They're great. Cam Newton tried his best.

tried his best to throw an interception in the end zone. And that still magically turned into a Christian McCaffrey touchdown. There was a point in that game where I watched Cam Newton do a fake handoff bootleg to the left on like 38 consecutive plays. And they never want, every time the defense was surprised. It was like, what? What happened? But you can't stop him. Oh. All right. So Cam Newton 21 for 29, 21, 21, 21, 27, and 2.

10 for 52 in a touchdown on the ground, Tampa, Pittsburgh, Detroit, you start Cam Newton. Yes. We talked about Deshaun Watson, the Thursday reaction, the hyper-efficiency. But let's talk about another player right at the top of the fantasy producers this week. Derek Carr, you take away Amari Cooper, and Derek Carr becomes a he was holding them back. He was actually also in consideration for my rising star. It's fun to.

disparaged Derek Carr and to feel like, oh, to just pile on the, this guy's no good anymore, talk. You know, it's a favorite pastime for some. But the reality is he actually looked good. His schedule coming up is not scary. I mean, you've got the charges in there, but two of the next three games are San Francisco and the Arizona Cardinals. And it might, it sounds crazy, but I don't think anybody here will be that surprised if we say, what if?

What if this is addition by subtraction? What if not having Amari Cooper out there needing to get the 10 and 12 targets a game and not producing with them half the games? What if this just kind of opens it up for Derek Carr where he's just, you know, reading the? I mean, Amari Cooper wasn't getting the 10 targets. Every other game. Well, twice this year he did. What happened was Jason, it opened things up for your guy.

Their new number one wide receiver, Brandon LaFelle, who played on 92% of the snaps, which is more than Jordy Nelson. Yeah, Jordy, neat. Neat story. We'll talk about him. Jared could. But look, Derek Carr is San Francisco, Chargers, Arizona. It's interesting. Jared Goff, 19 for 35, 295, and 3. What's amazing is you have this contrast. Two studs. Jared Goff, Russell Wilson. Goff, 35 passes.

Russell Wilson had 17 passes. 14 for 17, 248 and 3. I think, you know, when you pass the ball 17 times and you have a great fantasy day, fantasy owners should consider themselves quite lucky. Yes. Because this team wants to run, run, run. And it makes Wilson hit and miss. It makes him difficult to predict. I do agree that it hurts the 15 yards. That it hurts the consistency in the baseline.

Whenever you've got the low, volume, high touchdowns, you can't really, you know, we've done this with Deshaun Watson, right, who only threw 20 passes. But when you're throwing bomb touchdowns, the drive is over. You don't get to throw any more passes. And I think that efficiency shouldn't always be looked at as, you know, a negative that's going to flip back the other way. When you've got Tyler Lockett, when you've got superstars like Ed Dixon, you know, the drives are going to be over quick.

All right, 18 minutes. Who took the, what was the over, under for when Jason would bring up Ed Dixon and take a victory lap? Yeah, I'm surprised it took this long. Oh, this is just one of 12. I took the under, so. Yeah, Carson Wentz, nice game against Jacksonville, three touchdowns. Andrew Luck. Oh, he's great. Always doing it. 22 for 31, started the game 10 for 10.

Not a lot of questions about these guys, other than the ones we brought up. So let's talk running backs. Hey, James Connor. Hey. How about 200 plus total yards from James Connor? 24 for 146 and 2, 5 for 66 through the air. And, well, first player in Steelers history with 100 rushing yards and multiple rushing touchdowns in three straight games. James Connor on pace from Adam Levanton.

tweeted this morning on pace for 2,100 total yards and 20 touchdowns. They don't need that Lev Bell guy. No, they don't need him. That's for sure. This is why they didn't give him the long-term contract. I mean, they've always been able to have the next man up be successful. Tuesday is the trade deadline, so people are thinking LeBel might come back Wednesday. Again, I still believe that we have one more full workload week for James Connor. And after that,

We don't know how the workload is going to split up, but this has been one of the most interesting and terrible storylines of the season is the Lev Bell Watch. Todd Gurley made a very interesting decision at the end of that game. Oh, man. 25 for 114 on the ground, 6 for 81 through the air, and a touchdown, and then he took a little knee. It was Westbrook who kind of made that in vogue. Am I remembering that right? Brian Westbrook? Yeah.

I think you're correct. I think so because I think it was against Dallas. Yeah, there was a very particular play where, I mean, the football player did the right football thing. Sacrifice his stats went down because you guarantee the victory and then people realize, oh, that's analytically a good thing to do. Don't even bother giving the ball back. So people were tilting, but Todd Gurley did the right thing for his team. If he had score.

It would have been another touchdown for Gurley, which would have, he would have been beyond the pace of Ledany and Tomlinson. He would have been on pace to break the record. The over under would have changed with the score. Yep. And the game line would have changed with the score. And he came out this morning and said screw fantasy, screw Vegas. Yeah, good win. Yeah. Good for you, Gurley. So let's talk about Marlon Mac. Marlon Mac, 25 for 132 and 2. Oh, those are my two starts of the week right there.

Yeah, you're Gurley and Mac. I saw a stat that said that the RBBC, right, we knew it was going to be good for Indianapolis going up against Oakland. But the RBBC and Indianapolis over the last two weeks has like 450 rushing yards. And if you think about that, like Sequin has like 519 on the year. So this running back by committee has been boss. And I wanted to make more than that. Also the Colts offensive line has been extremely, extremely strong.

No doubt. I wanted to make Marlon Mac kind of a rising star candidate today, but... I already rose them up last week. Well, sure, sure, but there's buy week this week. Jacksonville, Tennessee, Miami, Jacksonville, Houston. So take that for what you will. We knew Buffalo and Oakland were going to be good. Naeem Hines was hyper-efficient in this game. Jordan Wilkins was good.

Put things into perspective for us on Marlon Mac. Because the last two weeks, he was a 30-point score. So this is two great performances. None of us are disillusioned to think 30 points a week is what you're going to get from Mac. But they are running the ball. Well, they were up in both games, 25 carries. What do you think? Yeah, I mean, I've said from early in the off-season, I think he's the best back on this team. He has proven that. And this is a team that has a...

poorest defense with a great quarterback. So there will be enough points scored where he'll be valuable. But he is still a matchup play when it comes to not necessarily the ability to start, but what you're going to get out of them. You're not going to see crazy 150 yards on the ground, multi-touch downs when you're playing against the Jacksonville Jaguars. Now,

I would worry, you know, a little bit more about them being down to a great offense and flipping the script to name Heinz more than playing against someone like Jacksonville. Because someone like Jacksonville, I doubt, is going to jump out to this monstrous lead and take away that first and second down roll from Marlon Mack. So the schedule coming up to me says you can start him through all of those games, but you have to temper your expectations. Except the by week. Don't start them then. Yeah, and neither Heinz nor Mack really.

made any of their fantasy points in the passing game. There was only four receptions between the two of them, two each. Joe Mixing, monstrous game from Joe Mixen, 21 for 123 and 2. Alvin Camara doing his thing. If you had told me that, like, Drew Brees could throw for, what did he throw for? Yeah, it was really, really low. 120 yards? Yeah. I mean, and they blew him out. So, well, didn't blow him out. I think they won by, what?

Final score versus actual game. Sure. They blew them out. Oh, yeah. I was going to say, even, I mean, it was like 30 to 20 to end the game, but they were, they were three scores ahead for quite a while. Once the feel and fumble happened, that changed the whole game. The game really did change right there. Adrian Peterson. That is the most, if 26 for 149 and 1.

If there was a quick question of who on the year has surprised you the most, it has to be Adrian Peterson for me at this point. I did not think he was going to be able to keep up. I expect that a couple big games and then him to go away. I mean, 26 for 150 and a touchdown. Four point six to carry this year. 127 rushes for 587 yards. The last three, basically the last four games he's played, okay?

120 yards rushing, 97, 99, 149. And now his next two weeks, the schedule's great for him. He has, what, Atlanta and Tampa Bay. Correct. I mean, P. Ryan is out. There's nobody else there taking the ball. Chris Thompson was active in this game. Yeah. And, yeah, I mean, it's the AP show here. Both of those teams are averaging, they're giving up 112 on 115 yards of game rushing on average.

So Adrian Peterson has been a steal for fantasy owners. Philip Lindsay in the sole running back roll, 18 for 95 and a touchdown. Real quick, just because I looked it up. How many yards do you think AP is on pace for right now? Oh, on pace. So I took a quick look. I mean, he's basically... 1,000 yards in five of seven games. 1,342. Yeah, yeah.

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