Starts of the Week + Week 5 Breakdown, BOGO - Fantasy Football Podcast for 10/8

This episode is brought to you by State Farm. Every football fan is different. Some won't wash their lucky mustard-stained jersey until the season's over. Some insist they can't sit down on third downs and some pick their favorite team because, I don't know, just like football fandom, nobody's life is exactly the same. And that's why State Farm gets to know you, not as a policy number, but as an actual person.

so they can help personalize a coverage plan that's just for you. Whether it's game day or just another Tuesday, State Farm has you covered. This is the story of the one. As a shipping manager, he's running the dock, stocking supplies, and making sure every order goes out on time. And Granger helps him stay prepared. From shipping supplies to PPE to hand tools, he counts on Granger to keep products moving and trucks rolling. So his operation runs smoothly.

no matter the shift. Call 1-800-Grangeer, click granger.com or just stop by, Granger, for the ones who get it done. Footclam, we have a message from our friends at NHTSA. If you are ever stopped at a railway crossing, the signals are flashing, maybe you don't see the train, maybe it looks like it's moving slow, and you think, I'm going to get across these tracks before the train comes. Think about this. If the engineer sees you and applies the emergency breaks right away, it can take a train over a mile.

to stop over a mile. By that time, it's too late. The resulting crash will be deadly. Stop. Trains can't. Hey, this is Al Robinson, and you're listening to the Fantasy Footballers podcast. To the Fantasy Footballers podcast with your host, Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright. Oh, welcome in. It's football time. Hey, hey. Thursday, October 8th.

The whole gang is here. Annie Mike and Jason, Al Borland, Judge Giamatti. I like to think of us more as like a posse. Okay. I'm in. You know me in the Wild West. Come on. Yeah, but I feel like a posse belongs to one. It's Wyatt Earp's posse. Yeah. So is this, are we Brooks's posse? Yes. He is certainly the judge.

Yeah, he's the judge, he's the sheriff. Well, I mean, we're just the jury over here, you know? That's true. If anything, it would be like the whole movie is going along and we, like, Andy's the leader. And then at the very end, there's the big reveal that Brooks is actually been pulling the strain. He's the criminal mastermind and he slips off unscathed as we're all arrested with a big train robbery. If there's a man that can play that role, it's Paul Giamati.

Yeah, that's right. We have a jam pack show. We've got taking it to 100 players on the show, news and notes, the fantasy forecast. So we're getting into the week five matchups, starts of the week on the show, boom, boom kicker. We opened the show. I heard the Alan Robinson intro, right? So I... Did you just say, you heard the Alan Robinson intro that you chose and you played? Well, hold on. Let me just get to the end of the sentence, Mike. I heard it, and I thought to myself,

Look, Alan Robinson is very disrespected as a talent. So is Keenan Allen. Who's more disrespected? The talent of Keenan Allen or the talent of Alan Robinson in your mind over the course of their career? Over the course of the career would absolutely be Alan Robinson because he always just has the stench of his quarterbacks rubbing off on him. Maybe he has to rub shoulders with these guys. He has to catch passes from these guys. Keenan Allen had Philip Rivers who has like, he didn't win a Super Bowl.

But if you look at his production, he has Hall of Fame production. I don't know. Pea River's pretty smelly, too, Mike. Keenan Allen still got it done. I get it. I take issue with saying that either guy is, like, these guys aren't overlooked as their talent. We talk all the time about how talented. Don't talk to them about it. Well, sure. I mean, Kenan Allen, I think yesterday with Lefko, fighting for that Madden rating to go up. Yeah, I just feel like it's one of those things where when I talk to people.

Everyone I know recognizes that both those wide receivers are great. And if we don't like them, it's because of their situation. It's fantasy football, though. I think what we're talking about, like, the disrespect is the people who don't pay attention to football, they know who O'Dell Beckham Jr. is because the catch happened, the couple big years. And people who aren't in the trenches of football, we all respect Alan Robinson. Make a big catch. Go, go get on prime time. This is his chance. Yeah, yeah.

I just thought it was interesting. Since that whole intro surprised me. YouTube.com slash the fantasy footballer subscribe. Click the bell over there. We've got a Thursday night football game this evening. Very excited about that. Twitter at the FF Ballers if you want to follow us on Twitter. Join thefoot.com's the community. Get the bonus weekly episode, the premium perks. We just upgraded the player profiles on the website. We got some premier stats on all of the player profile pages. You can check that out.

So let's get going. Taking it up to 100. Presented by Head and Shoulders, available at Walmart. All right. Last week, I evened it up over the course of the year. I think we're all two and two. Went with Melvin Gordon. Mike just missed. Hunter Info was so close. And then MBS, well, he, M-I-S-S. He was supposed to have someone else taking the main defense away.

Yeah, I mean, if you can take it to 100, sometimes you've got to just take responsibility. That's right. That's fair. That's fair. All right. So we're picking, taking it up to 100 players for this week five. Jason, I'll let you kick it off. Sure thing. Well, oh, yeah, Jay. Here is the thing is when you want to take it to 100, you want to play against them cowboys who gave up 39 points to the Falcons a couple weeks ago. And then 31 points, I'm sorry, 38 points to the Seahawks.

And then 49 points to the Browns. They will get to 100 soon. Yes. So I'm going with Darius Slayton, a wide receiver who came out hot week one and has completely disappeared. You haven't been able to play him. You know, a lot of teams aren't even rostering this player. You can grab them off of waivers in a number of your leagues. And if you want to take the shot of a scorching hot, like here's the thing with Darius Slayton.

he's either taking it to 100 and winning you a week this week or he's going to just stink out right. That's what he does. He has, you know. I think four two touchdown games in his career and those are the only touchdowns he has or something like that. Every time he gets a touchdown. It's a bogo for him. He's more like a take it a 200. It's a bogo. It's a buy one, get one situation where he always does his touchdowns of two and if I've got to pick a two touchdown game.

It's them cowboys. I like it. And this fits the taking it to 100 perfectly. Somebody that has let you down in recent weeks or is not ranked, you know, at the 100 level. So I like that pick. Mike, who do you got? I'm going with a tight-end streamer who maybe you're looking at your situation at the tight-end position. You're not very happy with it. Eric Ebron from the Pittsburgh Steelers. He gets to take on the Philadelphia Eagles. Ebron is more than likely available on your waiver wire.

And look, he's been okay. He's been, we've seen some things here from Eric Ebron. And Philadelphia has given up top 12 fantasy points to the tight end position in three of four weeks. I'm looking for Ebron to put up really more just, I'm chasing the touchdown here. 50 in a touchdown? Yeah, I think he can get to 50 in a touchdown. All right. I'm going to stick with this guy. I put him in here earlier in the week. Leviska Chanel last week. He did.

deal with a hamstring issue. He was limited yesterday in practice. I think he's going to be okay. And I was really impressed with what I saw in the field from him last week. Five for 86. He is a player that gets involved in the running game. And I think he's just going to have a bigger and bigger chunk of this offense. It's going to be DJ Chark, Leviska-Chanolt, James Robinson. That's their best chance to win. So I think this week against Houston, who has been very vulnerable all year long. It's a great matchup.

And so I'm going to go with Chanel taking it to 100. You can take your hair up to 100 with head and shoulders available at Walmart. Pick yours up today and check out next Tuesday's episode to hear how our up to 100 players fared. Maybe I'll take the lead. Let's go 3 and O here, fellas. Let's do it. All right. I guess I'm fine with that too. News and notes from around the league. I like the Levisca pick. And it was just reminding me, though, of.

Jalen Rager doing absolutely nothing this season. I know he's hurt. Yeah. But the rookie wide receivers, they're all making splash plays. I mean, all the guys in the first round.

I can't think of... Rugs. Rugs is not. Okay, that's... That is a hurt. Oh, that makes me feel better, Jason. Yeah, there you go. But your point is T. Higgins is looking good. Justin Jefferson is looking great. LaVisca Chanel is coming through. Brandon Huk. Chase Claypool has already made splash plays. This was supposed to be a great wide receiver draft class. It's coming true. Come on, Rager. CD-Land. Yeah. Oh, yeah, that guy. But Michael Pittman's hurt, too. So we have some hurt, and we have some... The two options. Get hurt or dominate?

Oh, man, come on. All right. Yesterday, the Titans placed Corey Davis on the reserve COVID list. Boo. More positive tests today. Yeah, the feeling about the Titans is not a very positive one throughout the NFL through the social medias. Well, it feels very, their outbreak seems to be an isolated team protocol issue, which is impacting the rest of the league and the schedule.

You talk about the impact that it had on the Steelers schedule, how it had to move their games around. Big Ben talking about getting the short end of the stick. Obviously, all players accept that this is not a normal season. But for practical purposes, our job is to prepare you to win this weekend. We don't know if this Bill's Titans game is going to take place. The latest rumors this morning, and, you know, the league's going to push as far back as they can until they have to do what they did with the Steelers Titans game.

I've heard because the bills are the Thursday game next week, that game could get moved to Saturday, allowing the Bills and Titans to take place on Monday or Tuesday. We're living this Monday, Tuesday, rumored life every week. It worked out for the Chiefs game with the Cam Newton, no outbreak. You need multiple days of negative tests to open the facility. I think we're running out of time. If tomorrow morning, we're not getting negative tests in Tennessee.

I would almost certainly expect this game to be missed. So here's what you do from a fantasy football perspective, both from a league commission and from a fantasy manager perspective. First things first, you look for your pivot options from players in that game. Make sure you've got places to go. Get those players for now at least into your flex so that, you know, if you've got A.J. Brown in there, you can pivot to a running back if needed. From a commissioner standpoint, I know what we've done in our leagues. It hasn't.

come to fruition yet, but we basically put these players in our lineups if the expectation is that they'll play Monday or Tuesday after the week is over. And before the Sunday games, you name who your replacement on your roster would be. That way, if the game doesn't happen, then the commissioner will just go back and say, okay, you get this player from your bench, but it's because you named them ahead of time and you were prepared. We'll see how it continues to go, but that's the advice that at least we are currently using.

Patriots, Chiefs, Raiders, no new positive test. This is good news. Yes. Again, seems very isolated right now. And hopefully they can get things taken care of in the league and clean it up in Tennessee. And we're moving forward full steam. Full steam ahead. All right. Lamar Jackson held out of Wednesday's practice for precautionary reasons. Any concern? I don't have concerns that he's going to miss. You have concern that your...

Mobile quarterback has a knee injury, but as of right now, no, nothing has changed except for now you need to keep an eye on it. Philip Lindsay practiced in full. He'll be back against the Patriots. Jimmy Garoppel, Rahim Moster, both limited in practice on Wednesday. That's a good sign for both players potentially returning. It is. If Rahim Moster is back, Jason, are you still confident with Derek McKinnon this week? I am still very confident with Derek McKinnon. As long as Kevin Coleman isn't there, it's going to be a two-headed monster. It'll either be, my name is Jeff.

Wilson or Rahim Moster. All right. Drew Locke returned to limited practice on Wednesday. There's a chance he plays this week against the Patriots. I doubt it. I would skip it. But hearing Vic Fangio talking about, I listened to him, he had the Thursday night game last week and he was talking about the long recovery time and whether or not he's going to get players back. His immediate answer was like, no, we're not going to have any players back next week that we missed today. So.

based on what he said, and I would guess they hold him out another week. All right, Thursday night football updates. Godwin is out. Justin Watson is out. LaShawn McCoy is out. Fournette is doubtful. Evans is questionable, but he'll play. And Scotty Miller's supposed to be in there as well. Now, are you, we had this discussion yesterday about Mike Evans and the ankle. Are you fully confidence that if he's active, you are playing him?