Live Head-to-Head MOCK Draft + HOF Game Takeaways

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Hi, this is Eric Dickinson, NFL Hall of Famer, and you're listening to the Fantasy Footballers Podcast. To the Fantasy Footballers Podcast, coming to you from Draft.com Studios, with your host, Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright. Ah, welcome, man. Mock, Mock, Mock, Mock, Mock, Mock, Mock, Mock. Yeah. Friday, August 3rd. Whoa.

Did you say August 3rd? Yes, sir. Well, then happy birthday, Tom Brady, 41 years young. 41 today? Yes. So. Spring chicken. Did you actually know, like, do you have Tom Brady's date of birth memorized? Okay. Oh, come on his date book? It's going to say, man, you, this is, this is creepy. Creeping me out over here. Here's a question for you. Is there anything you can get Tom Brady?

For his birthday. Is there anything that anybody can get Tom Brady? Does he have everything that anybody could ever get or want? No, I know what he needs. He needs a chia pet. He needs an Abraham Lincoln chia pet. That's the only thing. He would like that a lot. Guarantee the plant man does not have one of those. Hmm. Yeah, no, I think that would mean a lot to him, Mike. I'm Amazoning it to him right now because I have his address. We have a great show for you today. We have a mock draft.

Half Point PPR mock draft live on the show, bringing you all of our thoughts and strategy. And dreams live. And we're going head to head to head so you'll get a chance to vote on which team you like the most. We'll catch you up on the latest fantasy football news and information. We've got a good quick question. Everybody's excited with a Hall of Fame game. You guys watch it? I did. Did you guys hold your eyes open and watch it? I saw some of it.

I've got a couple takeaways. My first, I really have one takeaway. Sure. And it just, it was exciting to watch Robert Griffin play football game. When I saw him out there, I went, holy crap, number one, I totally forgot he was on the Ravens. Number two, I mean, he was such a sensation for the league. Rookie of the year. And the injuries and everything that happened was really unfortunate. So it was, it was just great to see him.

back out there slinging it and brashad perryman causing interceptions right away he's doing what he does whenever you are the starting white out for the hall of fame game you're on the roster bubble that's brashad perimen's situation uh yeah it was strange seeing robert griffin the third on the ravens without the dreads hanging out of the back of the helmet uh thankfully he did not get hurt and he played well actually lamar jackson's getting some heat for that performance last night

I think there was some good, some bad. You saw the kind of agility in the pocket. It's going to take some time. The actual takeaway for me and now was Hayden Hurst specifically because they lined him up frequently outside. He showed some good hands. You know, it wasn't like an impressive stat line, but you're not looking. We've said this before. In the preseason, it's the eye test more than the stat line, right? If you're out there, you're new to fantasy football and you want to know what you can take away from the preseason.

I think you need to learn, you know, especially at the tight-in position, you get to see evidence of a player's athleticism. Julius Thomas years ago, preseason evidence showed us that he was going to be Peyton Manning's number one guy. I think Hayden Hurst showed well to me last night. I will say this, and if you're going to give the eye test, make sure you watch an entirety because, like I said, I saw very little of the game. What I saw of Hayden Hurst was him lined up, I think he was in the slot, super easy pass and just dropped it. Yeah.

So that was my high test. So if you are doing that, make sure you take in more than one play before you're making all of your judgments. Which is difficult when you have a Hall of Fame game and you have all those backups. It is so hard to watch the Hall of Fame game in its entirety. It is very difficult because that is some bad football. Obviously, a lot of the news centered around the flags on the helmet rule. Yeah, let's talk about that briefly. Here's the deal.

I mean, my take on that is 100% that we've seen this every time they institute a new rule that everyone's worried about. Preseason, especially like the first week of the preseason, you're going to get flags to send a message saying look how much we're going to call this. And then when the regular season rolls around, it's like the rule exists. Be careful. But they're not calling it like that. There's a lot of paranoia out there right now, especially based on that in zone call where.

You know, the receiver basically lead-ish with their head, but, you know. The safety? Yeah, the safety hit it, you know, hit the receiver with his shoulder in the middle of the stomach. It turns out his head was actually in front of his shoulders in this situation. It was above it. Well, that's the key. You got to, as a defender, you've got to figure out how to get your head. You've got to remove your head.

You just don't have one. You want to be able to tackle. You've got to dip your head way back. Turtle. You've got to go turtle. There you go. Pull it in. Turtle shirt. Turtle shirt. But, no, I'm more on Jason's side. I don't think it's going to be as big of a problem during the season. But you are going to have the head scratching calls because when you have humans wearing the zebra stripes, you're going to have errors. And you're not going to really go back and review those. So you're going to have some plays that you're going to be like, oh, my gosh.

And in the defense, I believe, of the referees and the league, they have to make the game safer. And it's going to be a very painful process of getting it there. I believe they just hit $500 million in settlement payments regarding concussions since that news item kind of took off. So it's going to be rough and there's going to be people upset saying this isn't football.

A lot of people complained about getting those hard tackles out and they're like, this isn't football. We're used to it and the game sped up and is awesome. And if you want football to, in my opinion, if you want football to survive long into our aged years, when I'm on ARP, I'm on football around, and these are things that are going to have to happen to keep the game alive. All right, let's talk fantasy news. News and notes from around the league.

If you want to go beyond the podcast to the latest news and information, not only about this show, but about everything going on in the NFL that affect your fantasy team. Follow us on Twitter at the FF Ballers. You can subscribe to this show, not only on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, but you can also subscribe and watch it on YouTube. And if you subscribe and you click the little bell, you'll get notified if we do a surprise live stream, a Q&A.

Jason is glaring into the camera with... You're just giving the YouTube some love. Peacocking over there? Yeah, he was grinning. So news and notes, hey, the Patriots, they signed Eric Decker. Formerly of the Titans to a one-year contract? Well...

We shall see. He's got a chance. You brought up a good point, I think, on yesterday's show, Andy, when it was, you know, Marcus Marietta had a very... You mean when I predicted this exactly right the day before? The news was that he was there. So it was an amazing. If you had called Eric Decker signing to the Patriots before we had heard Eric Decker is visiting the Patriots, then I would be, holy crap, Andy is Nostradamus. I did say they will sign him.

Sure. Sure. That's a low risk opportunity. Here's the credit I was trying to give you was that you brought up the fact that Marcus Mario had a bad year last year. Their passing volume was way down. And so were the problems with Decker all Decker's fault or perhaps we just didn't, you know, we just didn't see him utilize the right way and maybe he's still got it. To be fair.

to you, Andy. You're usually the one that I think predicts the end of careers. You often see when the wheels fall off. And how do you feel about Decker? I have no fantasy interest in Eric Decker whatsoever. I talked to Jake Sealy yesterday on another podcast. I would still, if I'm in a league, I would still sign Kenny Bread over Eric Decker today. There's no part of me that's interested in trying to start Eric Decker for two of four weeks without Julian Edelman.

In regards to practical help for the Patriots, sure, I think it helps the Patriots. In regards to fantasy, you can do a, what did I say before, a three-sided coin and a side between Philip Dorset, Kenny Britt, and Eric Decker on who not to want. I mean, it's just not practical. They're not going to ask Eric Decker to be the old Eric Decker either when he comes in and fills the depth chart. Well, on Eric Decker, he's a touchdown monster. This is what Eric Decker.

does. However, he has some competition at that because he has, this is the first time the monster is competing with a larger monster on his team in Grankowski. So we'll see. I'm with you. You're the monster till you're not the monster? Exactly. He was a monster in a small pond. Yes. If you're in a dynasty league and Decker's on the wave wire, of course, scoop him up, see what happens. But when it comes to redraft, I at least at this point, have.

No interest in Eric Decker. Yeah, Quincy and Noonwa, we heard about an injury to him yesterday. He's going to be signlighted one to two weeks with a thumb injury. Yeah, that's better than what it could have been. Than a back or a neck injury. He's going to miss some camp, though, trying to come back from the neck injury last year. Brandon Marshall, toe, ankle, hamstring. He's been cleared to participate in team drills at Seahawks camp. Percentage chance that Brandon Marshall has relevance this year, Mike.

I'm going to go 35%. That's pretty high. I think that's a really solid percent because I think it's like 50% that he makes the team. Yeah. And then if he makes a team, you know, 60% of being somewhat relevant. What's between 50 and 60? Oh. I don't, I, you guys have a higher expectation of him than I do. I guess the Doug Baldwin news is pretty big. That weighs into my decision on making the team.

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