Fantasy Football Podcast 2015 - First Round Runnings Backs, Fantasy Face-off, Mailbag

I went on this morning because I started thinking just intellectually, not in the numbers, and thinking, okay, he's getting to 30. He was out last season, so you could see that as a plus or as a con. So I started looking at his numbers and really digging deep to see if I needed to move him down in my rankings. And the deeper that I looked and the more that I really remembered Adrian Peterson, I moved him up. So, yes. Yeah. No, honestly. Where is he on your list now? Because he was six.

He was six when I last looked at it. Right now, he has five on my list. Okay, so he went from six to five. I have him the lowest of us three. Where at? I have him at eight. Yeah. I think that, I think, you know, any of these spots is good. Like we kind of talked about last week, there are so many. I need to see your list. There are so many different guys. Mine?

that are in this kind of after those top two, at least to Mike and I, that are all near the same. And did you see the, I guess this is also news and notes from around the league? Did you see the new offensive linemen that the Vikings signed? The Vikings signed a giant. Hodor is playing offensive line. That is exactly who they signed. They signed. They should have got the mountain. Instead, they got Hodor. They signed a gigantic Polish...

Offensive tackle. He's the first Polish-born player in the NFL that is not a kicker. Congratulations. Yeah, he is 6'9, 351 pounds. Oh, come on. That's humongous. He is. He's his photo. Oh, my goodness. I don't know if he's any good, but I do know he's large. So Peterson can jump on his back and just. Yeah, just be carrying the same way. You didn't talk about a Peterson backpack tour here. Yes.

Yeah. Also, another, my last piece of breaking news on the Adrian Peterson, because obviously his value is tied to where he plays football. Which we're all assuming right now is Minnesota. Yeah, it looks like it. I think it's a done deal, and here's why I think it's a done deal. I know it's sad because as fans of the Arizona Cardinals, we want him to come here. This is why I know it's a done deal, because Larry Fitzgerald's father tweeted Adrian Peterson going nowhere, exclamation point.

I believe Larry Fitzgerald father also said Larry would not re-sign with the card. That's very correct. I love how in the offseason, I've never seen so much news and notes from fathers of players in my life. Adrian Peterson's father and Larry Fitzgerald's father have more publicity than half the players in the league. Hey, if my kid's in the NFL, I'm going to be tweeting all the time. I'm going to have like 50,000 followers. You're going to be attaching yourself to your boy, vicariously living through him. Absolutely.

So here's the only reason I have Peterson not as high as you guys. In 2013, he only had 5-100-yard games. He only had 29 receptions that year. And he also only had- Which year? Sorry. 2013. The last year he played a complete season. How many total yards did he have? I think it was about 1,200. Yeah, 1,250 plus. Yeah, yeah. I'm not doubting. He's in my top 10. I'm saying this is why I'm tempered. And he only had Toby Gerhard behind him that year, as opposed to now having a guy. I mean, I feel like it's kind of.

awkward for Minnesota to say, okay, we're going to run him to the bone like you said, but we want to get rid of him, but we want Jerich McKinnon to be our future, but Jerry McKinnon doesn't get carries, but... You don't want to get rid of him, though. No. Only everyone else, besides the Vikings want Adrian Peterson to move. Here's a tidbit I forgot to add. Double-digit touchdowns every year of his career. If he's playing, absolutely. That's unbelievable. Even 2011, the down year where he had...

where he played 12 games, still double-digit touchdowns. Here's his touchdowns, 12, 10, 18, 12, 12, 10. Cabo! Don't consider me a doubter of Adrian Peterson. I don't want to be in that camp, because that's a foolish camp. But with McKinnon and Aziata, behind them, Oziata re-signed, McKinnon is there, and we'll have a role. He's not catching, not a lot of passes to be caught by Peterson, I don't think, this year. And I just, I just have him a little lower than you guys. It's okay. No, it's...

I would say the fire for me is really projected outward. I apologize that you're taking the brunt of it. No, man, it's all right. There's just a decent amount of Adrian Peterson doubt out there, which is... It normally works in the favor of Adrian Peterson to doubt him. That is correct. So we'll go through this next guy pretty quick. So number five is Adrian Peterson. Number six, we talked about him last week. He's my guy this year. Aryan Foster.

I have him at number three, so he's where Adrian Peterson is for you. Mike. Wait, three. I thought you had him at two. I'm sorry. Was it two? Yeah, you had them. Okay, I have him at two. You're right. You're right. I haven't met two, and I'll just go through the bullet points of what I said last week real quick.

He was the number five overall back last year. He had 20 or more rushes nine different times. He had 100 plus yards in seven of those games, and I think the two he didn't. It was like 99 and 96. He was up again two years in a row on his yards per carry. He was at 4.8 last year. He's got no competition in that backfield, and he's still heavily involved in the passing game. So what is the problem with Aaron Foster? Injuries. Concern. Yeah, concern about his health. But if he's healthy, he is a workhorse back who gets more...

overall touches than just about anybody in the league. And that's why I like him. That's why I'm at number two because I am betting on his health.

Per touch, I think he puts up the second most fantasy points per touch. So I do love Arian Foster on the field. I am absolutely scared of the injury. I don't think we can just brush it off. He missed 11 games in the last two years. And he left the last, I think the way he left the last game of the season. Granted, you know, it doesn't impact us now, but it just shows the wear and tear as the season goes on is what scares me. So you're entering fantasy playoffs and he's going to be more likely to be injured. He left the last game of the season with both a knee injury and hamstrings.

than he didn't play in the Pro Bowl. He's had so much work on him. And so he's only 29, but that's, you know, with his workload and his injury history, I do not see him playing more than 13 games. I love him when he's on the field, but I definitely move him down in my rankings from his injury history. I too have him penciled in for about 13 games. A question for you, too, guys. Where do you think he's going to get drafted? Great question. I think he goes.

Does he still stay in the first round? No. Yeah, yeah, back 9, 10, maybe. I would think. Only because he finished so high last year. And I think when push comes to shove and we start looking at the rankings, I mean, you're going to, this next guy on our list is a guy that people are going to be deciding between, right? Jeremy Hill is our number seven on our consensus rankings. And you're going to be staring down the...

tried and true Aryan Foster in the up-and-coming Jeremy Hill. Different backfield situations, and you're going to have to make that decision. You know, we're not saying go draft. I'm not saying you have to go draft Aryan Foster over Jeremy Hill. I'm saying this is how I parse all the information I have about these guys. And depending on your team and the risk-reward factor of, you know, how you like to play fantasy football, those are two guys that are on different ends of the spectrum to me. I say in 13 games of Aaron Foster,

is still fantastic. You're still probably, I say probably, you're still going to get that first round value, the back half of the first round value. So I'm not avoiding him by any means, just tempering that I really don't see him playing a full season. Yeah, and one thing to consider with that, and I totally agree with you guys, that is the bet, right? His handcuff will be cheap in the draft. Unless they get a good running back. If they get it.

I don't know that he'll be cheap because people know that Foster gets injured. Well, but from a production standpoint, I don't think he's a, I mean, he's not a top-tier productive guy when he's been in there. That's Carrie's, though. It's just volume of getting a guy who in week six or seven all of a sudden, hey, I have a running back two that I can plug in. Yeah, and I think maybe that's him coming off a 13-game year. Maybe it's not as...

Scary. To support what you're saying, if they draft a rookie, say in the fourth or fifth round, a later rookie, not one of the big names, then your handcuff is going to be very, very late because nobody's going to know who to grab. Yeah, it's going to be difficult to know if it's blue or the new guy. And that could be a good thing, or it could end up getting you to draft the wrong handcuffs. So.

Do your research. We will give you that research. We will give you the answer for that once we know who they draft and when we get closer to the season. We're a show about fantasy football information. And your answer was, make sure you do your research people. That means listen to the show. That's the exact thing I'm saying. Listen to your show. Our show. Yeah. No, it's yours today because I can't. If you have a show, you should listen to it.

All right. Let's go to your tattoo boy. Let's move on to, so we had Peterson at five. Did I get the number right? Aryan Foster at six. Jeremy Hill. Jeremy Hill. Oh, man, Jeremy Hill. Let me, let me, I'll hand it off because I know you've got him tattooed across your chest. Yes. However, I want to say, I wanted to be the guy that tempered some expectations for him. So I went and looked at some stats last year. And here's what I thought was interesting.

For the last four games of the year, here's his snap counts, okay? 47 out of 75, 41 out of 65, 42 out of 71, and 21 out of 62. Wow. And so I looked at those snap counts, and I went, uh, that's a problem. And then I went and looked at his carries in those games, 25, 22, 23, and in the game in which he only had 21 snaps, he had 13 carries. Mm-hmm.

That's why I said, wow, was because I knew how much work he had those last games. Which just means if he gets on the field more, goodness gracious. Anyways, Mike, tell us about a lot of hype around him. All right, so here's the deal with Jeremy Hill. His games with 15 plus carries, he averaged 5.6 yards per carry.

He had 20 plus carries five times. Each game, he had over 100 yards. He had 622 yards after contact. The guy can, not only can he grind it out, he can hit the home run, as we saw when he burst on the scene with the Jaguar game, where he gave the safety, the okie-doke leg move and jukeed him out of his pants, took it all the way. There was the sensational...

Fantasy Championship Week, which I believe had myself against Andy Holloway. And Andy was clinging on to a... He was clinging onto the fabric of hope until Jeremy Hill busted off an 80-yard touchdown run. I was on a car ride home with my family, and I had that Monday night game on, and I was going, you know, if Jeremy Hill just lays an egg here, I've got a real chance. And the announcer comes on, and he's just like, broke a whatever it was, 75-yard, 80-yard touchdown, and I'm just like...

All right, no, I don't have to listen anymore. You're not talking about a guy who just gets the four yards, four yards. He can take it to the house every single play. The opposition to Jeremy Hill is Gio Bernard. The Gio Bernard experiment, I believe, should now be settled in the minds of the Bengals and Hugh Jackson. They tried desperately at the beginning of the year to see if Gio Bernard could be the inside-the-tackles guy.

Geo Bernard had, let's see, there was two games where Geo had 15 plus runs and averaged over 4 yards of carry. One of those games happened to be against the Panthers and he had an 89-yard run. You take the 89-yard run out, he stunk. Joe Bernard just does not have, doesn't have the body to hold up and he can't.

He can't do what Jeremy Hill can do. It just doesn't matter that he's still there. It doesn't matter to Jeremy Hill's production. And I still have Gio being a great gadget player, getting the catches and taking the dumps, if you will. Thanks, Mike. Thanks. And after that, with the amount of carries, I think Jeremy Hill is going to get him, what he can do with the ball, he's a sensational player, and he's going to finish in the top five.

So, Jason, you have him the lowest of us three right now. You have him at nine. I'm at six. I moved him up this morning. That's where I have him is six. So you're on board as well. I am fully on board. In fact, the more that I think about him, the excitement, because the floor, the floor. Do you think about him a lot? Do you sit around? My tattoo artist has an opening this weekend if you want to match you with me. I do. Well, in front of my toilet at home, I've got a poster. But moving along. So.