Fantasy Football Podcast 2015 - Week 15 Fantasy Forecast, Starts of the Week, News

Yeah, not looking good for that situation, but if Moncrief's out, do you just de facto start Hilton and expect the volume to be there? Because he's been all right with Hasselbeck. Yeah, I would start him either way, but if Moncrief is out, maybe he gets a little target bump. All right, a couple more quick bits of news. Matt Schaub's expected to start against the Chiefs. Really? Yes, yes. So that is... That helps Buck Nasty. It might help Buck Allen.

It might also help the Chief's defense more than Jimmy Cawson because two pick sixes, four interceptions in his last two starts. Andre Ellington not expected to play, so David Johnson. And Alshon Jeffrey limited at Wednesday's practice. With Alshan Jeffrey. I couldn't let it go. Sorry. That's fine. I respect that. Thanks.

With Alshan Jeffrey, though, you cannot ignore a report about his calf in practice. No way can you ignore that. This calf has been a lingering problem all year long. It has affected whether or not he's able to play. It's affected how he plays in the game. And so this is concerning news if you're an Alshan Jeffrey owner. It might make my difficult decision between Mike Evans and Randall Cobb very easy this week. If...

If he misses... The answer may be both? The answer may be both. Except for you have to choose one tonight. If you're going to play Mike Evans, you have to start him today. Thursday night. No! No! Well, that... Wow. I guess Mike Evans is in your lineup. That means Mike Evans is definitely in my lineup, and I will not put him in my flex. Just another weekly public service announcement. Put him in your wide receiver. Would you handcuff Allison Jeffrey with Eddie Royal in the event that he's out? No. You would not.

I would not. I don't think Eddie Royal is going to... No Marcus Wilson. Right. I just don't see Eddie Royal right now, how he's been this year. I don't see him being a replacement for Alshan Jeffrey. I would hope that playoff teams have a better option on their bench than that replacement. Fair enough. That makes a lot of sense. Eddie Royale with cheese is just not getting targets. No. But he just came back from injury. So I still think he has a lot of potential.

Yeah, he's been injured all year. It hasn't been good for him. So before we get to the fantasy forecast, we want to take a second. Thank today's sponsor, which is PokerStars.net, one of the most fun...

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Fantasy Forecast. That's a lot of news. I know. I'm exhausted. I didn't feel, and there's more news I had to leave out smaller stuff that we'll get to later in the week, but it just is hard to leave something off where people are making decisions, and I just didn't want to do it. So, Thursday night game, as we alluded to, Buccaneers facing the Rams, and, well, I really like the Buccaneers defense. That is very fair.

Very fair. They're still fighting for the potential of a playoff. They're not limited, right? Because they're six and seven, I believe. Mathematically, I don't believe so. No, they wouldn't be. Because the eight and five Minnesota Vikings, six and seven, you've got the potential mathematical chance there. So you're saying there's a chance. Yeah. Well, what I'm trying to do is come up with an angle as to why they're going to play hard tonight. Well, I'll tell you who's trying to come up with an angle is the NFL network.

As they're stuck again, they're like... I know the angle. Bucks versus Rams. No way, man. What is it? You've seen those color jerseys? I love the color jersey. They're coming out again tonight. Oh, yeah. Oh, we got a... The Rams are like Highletter Yellow. Really? Yeah. That's awesome. That is that... Now I'm going to watch. Highlighter, but that's Seattle. Seattle has that neon green. No, that's like highlighter green. Yeah. This is yellow.

Green and yellow. Those are actually different colors, Mike. Oh, I, but just as a highlighter, but the Rams, highlight are yellow? Where on their, what? The Rams are yellow. The Rams are yellow. They're not highlighter yellow. Yeah, I know, but the color rush, you know, that's the whole deal. You pick a color from your team.

Yes. And then you run it through the highlighter machine? And then you run it through the extreme machine is what you do, Mike. You take one of your colors and you say, that's extreme. Highlighters probably wrong. So, bright yellow. So they grab the uniforms and they just dump Mountain Dew all over it. Yes. Dude, they're going to be hopped up. No, they're extreme. And after the radiation dies down, they put them on. I've got them right in front of me, by the way. And apparently I've also got an advertisement playing in the background. You can't go on the Internet anymore.

Auto play ads. Public service announcement. Get rid of those. All right. Winston, Keenham. Keenham has averaged, he's been held under 140 passing yards in both of his starts. Oh, brutal. So you're not...

contemplating Case Keenham in any fantasy context, but you are thinking about him with the Tampa Bay defense, which has been the eighth best run defense. They could keep Gurley in check and make Keenham try to do something because he doesn't have anybody to throw to, and he doesn't have the playbook to throw the ball and be productive. So I don't mind the Tampa D in a streaming start here at all. Sure. I'm starting Todd Gurley. Yep. We had a bit of a scare there with Todd Gurley after a couple weeks of...

of really bad production. He came through big last week. It's tougher, though. It's tougher, though, when you have a guy like Gurley on an offense that's just so bad against a great run defense where you're counting on one of those. One big play, a 45, 50-yard run. I don't have...

any problem at all against a good run defense. The thing that I have a problem starting Gurley with is against a good offense. Because the only thing that's going to hamper Gurley, I don't think it's a great run defense. I mean, you saw him, you know, he was able to destroy Arizona early in the year when we weren't scoring and the game was where they were still in the game. And so that's what I care about with Gurley is, are they going to be able to just keep handing the ball off? And I don't expect Tampa Bay to go up by two or three scores quick.

I mean, it's possible. But I think that that, to me, says Gurley's going to be able to continue getting the ball. And if he gets the ball, he's going to wear down a defense. Okay. So are you, I guess we've already talked a little bit about Mike Evans of we're pretty comfortable with him. With Vincent Jackson being out, we've seen when Jackson was out, Evans just getting a gigantic whale size of targets. The problem is just what we saw last week. The Rams, they're at home again. They.

held Calvin Johnson down. That offense didn't do much. The over-under in this game's 40. It's not that I don't, I'm not saying, I'm not saying, I don't know if I'm going to get, you know, a monster game out of it. Evans is very scary for me. I'm an owner this week, and again, I just mentioned, I was deciding between Randall Cobb and Mike Evans. And to me, it was very, very, very close. In my rankings, when I statted guys out,

I actually had Randall Cobb with a better game than Mike Evans. But Mike Evans has that high ceiling. He has that game that you can have in a playoffs that you need in week 15. You need a guy that can go out there and dump 30.

and have that opportunity. He's got a much higher probability of that than Randall Cobb. And you've seen, you know, the Rams, they had such a great defense for the first half of the year, especially against the wide receiver position. But in the last four weeks, they've given up a touchdown every single week, two touchdowns, half of those weeks, over 100 yards in three of the four, and over 300, two weeks ago. So they're a beatable team. I think you start Mike Evans in most situations. All right.

Doug Martin and Austin Safarian Jenkins. Now, Martin is in. He's locked and loaded. What about ASJ? Where does he fall into your tied-in rankings for this week? He is, to me, a back-end one this week with some upside. Yeah, I can absolutely agree with that. I mean, you, at this point, for a guy who's had one great game in his career, you can't expect it. But he...

You've seen it, so you at least know that the unicorn exists, and it could happen. Vincent Jackson is out like we were talking about. So he's not a terrible play. Where do we? I have him. You've got him lowest. You've got him 18th. And both Andy and myself have him 13th. I think in a playoff matchup, there's probably guys that are better either on your roster or, you know, I would rather start Richard Rogers personally against Oakland. I'd rather start.

probably Heath Miller or Zach Miller over those guys over Safarian Jenkins. I completely agree. There's guys who I'd rather play. Yeah, a lot of the stock that you're putting into guys nowadays has a lot to do with the quarterback throwing to them. You know, that's how I'm thinking about a lot of these matchups. You know, you mentioned Richard Rogers. I don't know. I might start ASJ over Rogers, but when I think about Rogers, I think about the Rogers throwing to him as opposed to Winston and getting locked up in a matchup where I'm depending on Winston right now.

Jets Face the Cowboys, this game is Saturday, people. Do not get caught off guard. This is a Saturday night game that is called Thursday Night Football. Yes. It is Thursday Night Football. That's what they call it. Wow. When you watch the game on Saturday, it will be introed as Thursday Night Football. Is that real? Yeah, because Thursday Night Football is the brand. It's a, yeah, exactly. Come on. I never watched TJIF on Saturday. Come on.

Well, I didn't ever watch SNCC on Friday. The point is, is you're going to be really confused about what day it is, even more so when you hear the introduction to the show. The Jets take on the Cowboys. I want to talk, you know, Brandon Marshall and Eric Decker are locked and loaded. Correct. In fact, something interesting I saw last week about Brandon Marshall. He was the third fastest speed measured last week. Ooh.

Marshall still got it. Now, the top two is the same guy. Who? On two plays. And his name is Tedgin Jr. Yeah, he's pretty fast. But Marshall, on that broken play, actually hit the third fastest miles per hour in those next-gen stats, which was kind of interesting because he still got it, is my point. All right, so Ryan Fitzpatrick, we all like him as a start this week. I love him this week. It goes beyond like for Mike. It goes to love. Yes. I've got a healthy like.

for him this week. You know, the, the question mark for me in this game is which cowboys are going to show up. The cowboys that have been playing. Does lose by 30 or lose by 4? No. No, I mean, the Cowboys have been in most games all year because of their defense. Yep. And their defense has been very good. Now, they're out of the running. All their dreams and hopes of, hey, if we win, we're just one game back, that's crushed. That's gone. And we saw last week they didn't really show up.

And so if that's the new cowboys that come out and say, look, this year's over, you know, we're not excited. We're not playing with all of our energy. We're not trying to save our team with our defense to get Tony Romo back. Then the Jets are going to go hog wild because they have to win out to get in, assuming, you know, they're going against the Steelers and they don't have the tiebreaker.

So I'm very interested to see which defense is going to show up for the Cowboys tonight. If I had to pick, I'm picking the one that phones it in, and I expect big things. What about the game on Saturday, though? On Saturday. Let's confuse them even more. Some interesting stuff here for Darren McFadden, who, Darren McFadden, for me for weeks, has been an auto start because of volume. And you look back at what happened last week. Very interesting. Darren McFadden got...