Fantasy Football - Unsolved Mysteries + Dangerous Picks - Podcast for 7/29

Welcome to the fantasy footballers podcast with your host, Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright. Welcome in. Tuesday, July 29th, Mike Wright, Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, the fantasy footballers. Was that enough days, Mike? Was that enough days off to recover from what happened on the last episode? I, as I said on that show. I went into, like I wasn't there. Yeah, you closed your eyes. Uh-huh. And that made that you weren't in the room. I fully disassociated. Are you guys talking about new, new nickname meet Higgins? That's, is that what we are talking about. Yeah, baby. That was an all timer. Yeah. I, uh, I don't know if that, did that happen as a byproduct of kind of like Saturday mode?

Yeah, a little bit. A little bit. Yeah. It's a little more loose. It was at the end of the episode. Some might say too loose, you know? Some. Not me. So we're back Tuesday. I mean, T. Higgins needed a rebrand anyways. That's not the one I would have chose. But that's okay. Like if it is rare for a veteran like that far in to their career to get a nickname. Yeah. Meet Higgins is here, baby. Okay. He's going to play. Oh, man, man. What have we got going on today? We got Unsolved Mysteries on the episode today. Going to look into a handful of topics that we think is they haven't really been discussed extensively on the show and they are big question marks for fantasy football players. So do I need to worry about?

There's a little breaking news, but we'll talk about it in the news section. Yeah, we did get breaking news to update some breaking news that'll be in the news section moment. It's some broken news. It is. It is broken news. Yeah. Okay. Jason got a dynasty roster spot back. Yes, I did. I do want to remind you the ultimate draft kits available right now. It's the number one tool to help you dominate your fantasy football draft. It helps you prepare yourself to make all the right decisions during the draft. And one of the cool things is, We are adding a brand new feature called Value Scout. And this is going to give you the ability to optimize and find values based on the platform you play in. So we've wanted to do this for a long time. Basically, a lot of league mates that you're in leagues with, they draft based on the average draft position of the platform you play on. So Yahoo, Sleeper, ESPN, NFL, wherever they play, that's kind of the default view that they have when you're in the middle of a draft is, hey, this is where players are going.

We have rankings that determine what we're calling our true value of those players. And we're going to give you the chance for the first time with this new Value Scout tool to compare that. To be able to see what players we have ranked much higher than your platform's ADP, predict where your opponents are going to take players and give you a chance to kind of optimize for your league. It's a chance to find values in your draft. Yeah, you can also use it for the reverse and see where guys are being severely overvalued in their average draft price. You can use it to either be like, okay, this guy's basically two rounds ahead of ADP according to his true value. So maybe I'd just take him one round ahead of ADP. I'm still getting a value, but I'm not overdoing it. There's a lot of ways to use the tool. I used it this morning for a draft. It was great. So that should, it's final. You can't use it yet. No, it's in testing right now. But I can. Final testing phase. And it should be out to the app.

sometime I'm thinking within a week. I see Al Borland over there. He's going like, when? When is this coming? I was curious what you were going to say. Have you done any testing with the app yet? Very little. I have done some. All right. Well, it'll be there soon. Ultimate draft kit.com if you want to check that out. Let's get into that. Jeremy, you could just be like, yeah, that's it's awesome. I've been using it. It's really great. He's only need up. You could have done that. Pump it up. It's awesome. It's really great, guys. Thank you. You're going to love it. Thank you. I mean, I barely used it, but it's, but it's awesome. All right. Let's talk about that news. News and notes from around the league. Well, we have a lot of injury news to catch you up on, but we'll start there and then I'll circle back to contract news. We got word that Trayland Berks. This was the new one. Well, that just popped out. Well, we got word that the Titans wide receiver this weekend on Saturday fractured his collarbone.

which is so impressive whilst coming back from an injury. He's coming back from a knee injury, not all the way ready to go, and somehow still finds a way to break his collarbone. It's been a horrible run for Traylenberg. It's between lack of production. He was the, for those that don't remember, the Titans traded their first round pick. I believe it was picked 19. 18, I think. 18 to they traded A.J. Brown away. to receive pick 18 and they used it on Traylen Berks. Yeah, it was basically a one for one. It was like, you know what? We're going to draft the next AJ Brown. He was the comp. Because they didn't want to pay AJ Brown the market price. No, how do you win a Super Bowl if you've got A.J. Brown making big money. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, it hasn't worked out for Traylon Berks. Shoot. And we found out moments ago that after the injury, he was waived. He is no longer a member of the Titans. Yep.

So... So that Cam Ward talk about. They still have a really confusing depth chart at wide receiver to me. They have Calvin Ridley, who if you listen to Calvin Ridley talk about Cam Ward, he is glowing with just the differential and kind of what I would say he calls wide receiver-friendly passes. And then you've got the journeyman now, you know, last leg Tyler Lockett and a pile of rookies. So, D.K. is there. I. A. Manor. Restrepo. And don't forget about Van Jefferson. Van Jefferson. And Chiga Concqua at tight end and Gunner helmet tight end. Basically. This is why I like Calvin Riddle is looking like a, look, it's going to be, it's probably going to be pretty gross because you have a rookie quarterback throwing him in the ball. But how is his target share not 27 plus percent? It does seem that way.

I said it before, but like when I originally stat it out for the UDK and I, I statted everybody out, I went, oh, I do not like how I have Calvin Ridley. I had to lower that target share a little bit just to make sure we're not getting too crazy here. Might I suggest Calvin Ridley could be your my guy this year? Oh, no, thank you. Oh, yeah. No, I would never do that. I said it's going to be kind of gross. Ah, uh-huh. We got word. I mean, where there's smoke, there's a busted toe. Joe Mixen expected to miss multiple weeks of training camp because of a, what has been described as kind of a frustrating foot injury. He was in a walking boot. We got reports that he was doing well back then. Now he's probably going to miss the preseason. You have a pretty standoffish head coach that doesn't want to give details about what's going on.

I have seen multiple reports. I looked into this right before the show again. And it's like, I don't like the vibes, right? Like we're all making some adjustments. I don't like the vibes. But I'm seeing multiple people say, oh, it's being overblown. He'll be back. He's doing fine. I don't know the truth. We don't know the truth. And that's enough to raise the risk factor of Joe Mixon and to allow you to start to consider, you know, what's the backfield going to look like if he's unavailable? Because Nick Chub, people need to remember. Like Nick Chubb was the offseason acquisition.

It's not a big deal in Houston financially. He averaged 3.3 yards per carry in Cleveland. He was not ready to be bad. He did not look good. And then the season ended with another injury. So they did not help the progression of returning to form or anything that you want to say. They have Woody Marks. They have Damien Pierce. But this is like kind of a yellow alert at a minimum for Joe Mixon. Yeah. I mean, the truth that we know, you're like, oh, I don't know. Is he okay? Will he be fine? What we know is that he's not fine right now.

He can't play football right now. He's frustrated with his foot injury. And, you know, last year, I remember a pretty important running back. He was injured. He wasn't able to play in camp, but he's going to be fine. He'll be fine for week one. And then everybody drafted him 101 in CMC. And it's like the lesson learned is like you can't necessarily know what the truth is from reports and from expectations and hopes. But you can know what the truth is for current. today's availability and he is currently injured. And the other factors of what we do know, Joe Mixett is 29 years old. That is two years older than like the generalized running back age cliff. And he has seen a lot of opportunities in his career. He's been hit a lot. He's taken a lot of carries. Until we get a much better report, you should be.

hesitant about drafting him at his ADP. Earlier we had Joe Mixen in the UDK as a value. This injury is enough to say this, he's not necessarily a value. He's very, very risky. Brought me so much joy. I know, Mike. Your hatred for Joe Mixon knows no bounds. What about Matthew Stafford? He's not practicing this week. He's supposed to begin practicing. This does remind me of previous camps where managing this back for Stafford has been a kind of a, five, six year thing. Yeah, I mean, he's had surgeries on his spine, a lot of back problems over time, but this is also a team that really, really, really rests their guys. They won't play any preseason if they're healthy or not. They, you know, McVeigh talked about that. He's like, well, of course, it's great to have your player out there. But when you've been a veteran for 17 years, it's like, you kind of know what you're going to do. For sure. Yeah, Justin Fields, good news. Return to Team Drills. Oh, man.

He had left practice, then he came back out. What was that all about? Came back out, didn't play. And then now he returned to team drills on Monday. Not just team drills. He was in full 11 on 11. Yeah, he's, we love that. Full go. It must have been one of the lesser important toes. Yeah, that's got to be ring finger. Ring toe. It's not ring finger on the foot. Why is that? Because it's not a finger. Oh. That's, it can't be. Mike was walking you through like a teacher in second grade. Justin Jefferson. I don't know, can you? Mild hamstring strain for Jefferson. Held out of practice this week. You don't like that news. Any soft tissue issues? Revaluation is next week. Hopefully he's all right. Yeah. Darnel Mooney's shoulder injury looks like most likely an AC joint sprain, likely to miss the rest of camp. Yeah, I mean, we were talking about this before the show, just the depth chart. One of the reasons that.

I've liked, here we go. I've really liked Darnel Mooney as, you know, a late round, you know, flex option at wide receiver because there's really no one else to throw the ball to here. I mean, you've got, first of all, Drake London's going to have a massive target share. Yeah. This is somewhat good news for Drake London. But behind them, you're talking Ray Ray Ray McLeod. Okay, that's irrelevant for fantasy, but he will go up and. DJ Chark, they just added. Sure. And. And Kyle Pitts. And Kyle Pitts. We are still back. And Kyle Pitts. 24 year old Kyle Pitts. See, I don't want to say anything positive about Kyle Pitts because I felt like I had measured comments on the last time he came up and I received way too many DMs about how he's going to be a my guy or something. I am rooting for him. That's not going to happen. I'm rooting for him so hard. Well, look, I looked at it. He should.

You have 600 yards again. Yeah. Oh, for sure. He should have six. I mean, he did it last year and he stunk. So the 49ers have more injuries at wide receiver. Kyle Shanahan told reporters that Juan Jennings left practice. After suffering a calf injury on Sunday, he missed part of the OTAs in mini camp with the calf injury this spring. He is pining for a new contract. Are we sure it's a calf? Yeah, that's a hundred percent. You can never be sure. I feel like his bank accounts little. under the weather. It could be. The fact he left middle of practice and dealt with it in OTA as a minicamp, I don't know. I'm just reporting what Shanahan said. What you do is. Rishon Slater got better, by the way. You make an awesome. You make an awesome play in camp. You're out there. You make a one-handed grab, go over there, spike the ball, and then go, oh, no. My calf kind of, you know, I think I'm going to sit out till you pay me. Ricky Pearsall activated off of the pup.

So that's good news. He's like, Ricky, sit down. Ricky, I'm doing a thing here. I'm trying to do something. I'm doing something. Luther Burton return to practice. Luther Burton, the third for the Bears, finally. This is great. This isn't even returning to practice. This is practicing for the first time. Like he didn't do, he didn't do that. This is the first time he's been out there. Colston Loveland video too. Nice. Yep. Get them. There was some slow-mo Colston Loveland videos. We're going to be talking a little bit about. about the bears receiving here in a bit on this unsolved mysteries episode. Dalton Kincaid did not practice dealing with knee soreness and Kenny Pickett dealing with the hamstring, Noah Fant visiting the Dolphins. Man, the Kenny Pickett with the hamstring injuries, like how is this not Joe Flacco's team for Cleveland? And Dalton Kincaid is just, oh my gosh, that guy. The way things have worked in Cleveland so far is.

Shoulder Sanders is the only of the four that hasn't been receiving any first team reps. So it's been Dylan Gabriel and Flacco and Pickett. Pickett's going to miss some time. What were you going to add, Jay? My first reaction was identical to Mike's, which is how is this not Joe Flacco's team? And then I worked through that process and thought, oh, no, they're going to see a lot of Joe Flacco at camp with this great defense. I mean, he can play himself into like, I want the other guy I'm not seeing. So I don't think it's a guarantee that it's Flacco right now. But you're right. It has been, you know, they said Flacco is going to take the vast majority of first reps. There's going to be some drills where they might have Dylan Gabriel involved. But Shador Sanders is very, very, very quiet. Cortland Sutton has agreed on a four-year, $92 million extension with $41 million guaranteed for the Denver Broncos. I love Cortland Sutton. The clarity to me.

in that wide receiver room with Sutton at the tippy top just gets more secured with this deal. He was the wide receiver 13 last year. If you like Bo Nex, if you like Sean Payton, if you like the offense, if you like their prospects to be an above 500 playoff contention team, I don't see how they do it without Cortland Sutton. And the hope is that this guy can go out and give you close to double-digit touchdowns again. It's so much fun. And he's a fifth round pick. He was, yeah, he looks like a pretty decent value right now. And like, Cortland Sutton was just, if you think about your dynasty leagues, what the value of Sutton was. If you were trying to shop him last year, it was like, even when he was having a good year, people are like, nope, I'm not interested. This is fantastic. Yeah, unrelated to Cortland Sutton's 29.8 years old contract he's receiving. Terry McLaurin has a calf injury, not really, ankle.

He's placed on the pup for an ankle injury. He is not injured. His wallet is injured, and he's saying, pay me. Yeah. Terry McLaren, the fans chanting at camp for him to be signed, but it's been reported there. He wants like D.K. Metcalf, 33 million a year guaranteed money. It's being reported. But like, who's doing that reporting? Is that the team? Look, if they don't sign Tara McLaren. That'd be the team or the agent. Look, he wants that level of money. Yeah, but did you go about that? Or I feel like the agent would be like, we want to get something done here. What do you feel like the team would be like old greedy Terry over here wants to be a top five paid wide receiver. I said this in the office. I think he is he has paid the dues in Washington for such a long period of time. He has never lacked for talent. He's like for stats because they've never had a quarterback. His talent's always been there. He deserves to get paid. Yes, he's he's older.

It's like a team tax. But there's a tax. Yeah, this is called like, he will be 30. When you enter the category of fan favorite hometown legend, you know, when you get to a certain point and you haven't been paid and you probably would have been, he would have been long gone or paid way more money had he had any competent quarterback giving him opportunities. I just, I'll be shocked if they don't get him into camp. He's not there now. I mean, he is, but he isn't. Baker Mayfield, they adjusted his contract, which does expire in 2026. The 2026 season had no guaranteed money, now has 30 million guaranteed, and they're still trying to talk about a long-term deal for Baker, but now he's not really that lame duck final season situation. So he's got financial security, and that's a lot of news. It is the season. Do you guys have anything else you want to add? Anything else you're finding out over there? No, sir. Trayland Berks have a new team yet?

Not yet. We found out Bijon Robinson wants to be called Bajon. Oh, yeah. Bajon Robinson. I don't know that he wants to be called that. I think he was just saying that's what his name is. He's like, this is how you say my name. It was funny because. Well, that thing needs to go in the garbage. We got to replace that. It's the Bajon minute. When he said Bajon, I was like, oh, it's like Dijon mustard. Except for Dijon mustard. Except for you also say Dijon. Yeah. So I don't know if I'm going to change. We'll find out. We'll see what the commentators do, you know. We'll see what happened. If they're still saying Bijan, it's going to be weird on this show to be like. See, we did this once with A chain. Uh-huh. I mean, now A-chain sounds broken. Yeah, because it is. But that name was way cooler. Yeah, Devon A-chain. That was awesome. And then it was A-chan. Because of, that's what my name is. Yeah. And it's great because every now and then this, this is, you know, peel the curtain backs a little bit. Hallaway. Every now and then.

there is we we get told that we get a report of like oh we are saying someone's name wrong and they are not important for us to adjust their care well but it's like this is it's jean man we gotta yeah this one we're gonna work on are you worth us getting your name right oh that was like nojoku because it for a long time it was in joku yeah But then we found us Najoku. And he played well enough eventually. And so we're like, okay. Wait, it's performance based name. Absolutely. Absolutely. All right. We're going to take a break. Then we're going to jump into some unsolved mysteries. Unsolved mysteries. Well, I'm not going to make the claim that these will be solved mysteries at the end of this segment. That is not really the basis of what we're doing here. But we're going to do our best to speculate on some answers for these unsolved mysteries situations that we.

don't currently have definitive answers on. And, you know, we project the UDK. We look at play calling tendencies, you know, obviously offensive changes and head coaching changes and league-wide trends, market shares. These are all things that factor into the way we predict and project players. But there are teams and situations and questions that are very, very difficult to forecast. And we have about five of them we picked out today. And so I think one of the more. interesting ones is where we'll begin and it's in the Buffalo Bills locker room which is basically like do the bills either have a wide receiver that you can count on in fantasy or will any of them step up or will they even need to step up because you're coming off a year where Josh Allen not only won the MVP but was quarterback two in total fantasy points fancy points per game great productive

amazing season for fantasy purposes. So then Dalton Kincaid was awesome. No, right? No, he wasn't. Oh, it was like the Keon Coleman breakout? Yeah, yeah. Nope, no, and that didn't happen. Steal of the draft. Khalil Shakir. Didn't even finish in the top 30. So this is the great unsolved mystery of the Buffalo offense, which this is the only time in the last eight years a top five quarterback didn't have a top 30 wide receiver or top 10 tight end. Wild. And frankly, when I look at the depth chart now, I only feel like my first gut reaction is that it gets muddier because I think Dalton Kincaid will be involved. I think Kalis Shakir is the most reliable. But Keon Coleman, year two, he was injured part of last year. They had a very, I mean, if you want to look at a wide receiver that you just say, that's a solid wide receiver, Josh Palmer fits that.

He's just a solid two, three in the NFL. And then Curtis Samuels involved as well, and you got three. He was that once. Yeah, and there's three running backs, you know, a pass catching running back as well. And so you just, you look at this situation and you want to have the, you know, predetermined answer that, hey, there's two or three, four big time producers in this offense. But what I think happened last year is you ended up. starting players that really never produced for you in a way that mattered, but you kept believing that you would get it. Keown Coleman got starts, always after like a breakout or a touchdown, right? That's how you chase points on a team like this, is you end up starting them right after a good game, and then you get three or four duds, and then you're like, oh, I'm going to sit them down, and then you get a good game from that guy. The issue, I believe, personally, is talent. I don't think they have a star offensive player.

They just don't have one. When they had one, when they had Stefan Diggs, he was awesome. And he got targets. You know, you're talking about Josh Allen going, yeah, 166 targets for Stefan Diggs, 164 targets, 160 targets, 154 targets. He doesn't have an alpha. There isn't one on this roster. I don't believe that anyone of the massive depth chart is good enough alone to be the go-to guy. The go-to guy is Josh Allen. The go-to guy maybe is James Cook. And so that's the issue is you need a consolidation for fantasy goodness. So when I look at this, my default inclination is no. It's going to be spread around to everyone. There's not going to be a perfect fantasy star. But the second level, second layer question is if anyone is going to be a star and like have a their breakout season, who would that be? I am really.

Look, do you still believe Donald Kincaid can do that? I don't know. He needs to get on the field. I don't think in this off and he's hurt again. I don't think in this offense. Because like you said, you have to have a consolidation of targets and you have to have a trust of the quarterback. And who could possibly earn it? I think the highest odds of kind of a slight level up is Khalil Shakir. Hmm. And I would love to say Keon Coleman, but I don't think Keon Coleman can go from what he is now to a target share volume and go to like,

I want to believe it. Like from a physical talent standpoint, that's what I would pick in a lineup. I'd pick Keon Coleman. But I just don't see. I think the gap is so far away. My personal opinion is that no one here is truly going to level up. But if I had to make my pick, it would certainly be Keon Coleman. First of all, he doesn't cost as much as Khalil Shakir. I think he's like a 10th rounder right now. So it's a cheap. It's a cheap bet. You know, sometimes when you make that little parlay, you want to throw a dollar on it and you just hope it's a lotto ticket.

But he's, you know, he's younger. He's more athletic. He's got some of the traits and tools and the lack of experience where I can see the path. For me, Khalil Shakir breaking out is like, this is year four he's going into. Well, but he just got the money. Just got paid. And let me give you his breakout then, okay? Because last year it was 100 targets and 76. I mean, if he went to, you know, 120. and got to 85 or 90 receptions? Then he might get 1,000 yards. Right. Because last year he was 821, so. In the back of the 7th or in the early 8th round, 1,000 yards? I don't know. It's like 55 yards a game. Yeah, he doesn't, he's not a threat. He's not a threat for a bunch of touchdowns. He's not a threat to really have a 1,1,3,900 yard season. But I don't think Coleman is either. I just don't.

Yeah, so then, okay, then the next question is, could it still be Dalton Kincaid who was supposed to have the breakout last year but dealt with injuries? It's a lot easier for him to have a meaningful breakout because he's a tight end. So for him... He doesn't have to do as much. He doesn't have to do as much. Like if Dalton Kincaid went out and I mean, you got to remember his rookie season was very promising. Yes, it was. And he's done a little bit of the Kyle Pitts story. And if he was really banged up and there is this...