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

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Welcome, welcome to the fantasy footballers. I'm Andy Holloway, joined as always by Jason Moore. Yeah, yeah. And the fantasy hitman Mike Wright. Good morning, party people. Party people. It is March 31st. We're almost in April. Draft. I think the first preseason games next week. Is that right? No? Yeah. No. Still got draft. Draft. Yeah, things are coming. Things are coming up soon. Thank you for listening to the show.

We're going to have a great show for you this morning. Last week we talked a little bit of running backs. We're going to keep that discussion going today. We're going to go through the rest of our consensus top 10. I'm going to talk some news and notes as well. Later in the show, you'll want to stay tuned and listen to Jason and myself take each other on in a fantasy face-off. That was almost terrible. What was? Going to take each other on a date. Oh, it'll be far different than a date. This will be a...

If you... Confrontation. If you love C.J. Anderson, or if you are down on C.J. Anderson, stay tuned. Or if you love or hate myself or Andy Holloway, because one of us will be eviscerated. And I think when we do that, we need to have our listeners tweet who they think the victor is. Let's do it. Although, are you going to be able to handle that? I mean, I just, I know you got thin skin. That's an ego blow. I will say this. I feel like it's less me versus you and more me versus the world.

Based on where I'm seeing, C.J. Anderson being drafted. But stay tuned for that. You don't want to miss it. We're also going to hit the mailbag later. If you have a question that you'd like to ask us, you can email us, mail at the fantasy footballers.com, and we'll be happy to answer it. We've got a couple mailbag questions we're going to take today. See if we can help you out. Mostly keep her questions still. You can also reach us on the web at the fantasy footballers.com. You can follow us on Twitter at theFF ballers. You can tweet us your questions.

I think we need a hashtag for specific questions so that they come through for us. So let's go hashtag TFFB question. No? Mailbag. TFFB mailbag. Let's do that. Okay. TFFB mailbag. If you tweet at that hashtag, we'll answer it on the show. Be sure to subscribe to us on iTunes. We're also on Stitcher. If you like listening to podcasts on Stitcher. Who doesn't? Who doesn't?

Let's be honest. Stitcher's actually pretty cool. I like Stitcher. I mean, I like to get stitchers when I have a... A wound? A gaping wound. A wound. So, uh, let's go ahead and get into it today. News and notes from around the league. For the third consecutive week, an elite wide receiver has signed a contract. Oh, you should probably hit the breaking news button for that one. Are you sure? Yes. I don't feel very good about that. You got to do it. News. This just in.

Yesterday, Miles Austin has signed with the Philadelphia Eagles. Jason, knowing your propensity to misranked players, where do you have Miles Austin on your, is that top 10? He's outside the top 10. He's 11. No, I'm sorry. I'm looking at 2011. Oh, wait. These are the wrong. Yeah, pull up 2015. I found 2015. He's not on them.

He will be. I think this is a good move for him going there. He'll be on my, you know, top 100 rankings now. You know, this move strikes me as incredibly prideful. Like, I look at Chip Kelly and it's like he is not going to sign a guy.

who does not have injury problems so he can tout his health program or something. It's the power smoothies, man. We were talking about him last week. What happens this year if these injury prone players are injured? What would you do as a fan? You'd be like, stop. Like, what did you expect to happen? You thought you could do. That's the point, though. If they're injured, it's, while they're injured, if they're not injured and they succeed, then Chip Kelly is a health guru.

Yeah, well, he's got plenty of opportunities. What, Sam Bradford, Kiko Alonzo, you got Ryan Matthews, DeMarco Murray, Miles Austin, all these guys who are pretty much dead physically. It'll be interesting to see. Miles Austin, I was reading he had a, what they called a career resurgence with about 500 yards receiving last year in Cleveland. But I honestly don't know if he'll make the team. I don't even know if he'll be on the team. I think his contracts said that he's going to make the team.

a decent. Well, it was 2.3 million, but I didn't think it was guaranteed. But I did think when I saw the contract, I was like, good for you, Miles. How old is Miles Austin? You still get paid a little bit. How old is Miles Austin? 31, I believe. Is he older than that? I think he's 31. I thought he was, like 52. But that's, that's his hammies. This surprised me when I, when I looked it up. He's 30.

I just, I see him as like, 32, 33. You know, he's obviously got so much wearing there. 30 going on 40. Right, but he's 30 years old. So if Chip Kelly could restore him. He's a good four for them. Yeah. Three or four. Right now he's the three. Wow. That I guess you're right. But they'll drop somebody for sure. Demarius Thomas. Jinks blackout. Demarius Thomas, one of my favorite fantasy football players, mostly because he's always on my team. Says he will not.

create problems with his one-year contract that he currently is. He's franchised, right? Of course he won't, because he's going to play out this year, $13 million guaranteed with Peyton Manning, and then next year when Peyton Manning's not on the team, either they franchise him again for an insane amount of money, or he gets to sign an insane contract with whichever team he chooses. Yeah. So he's probably pretty happy about it. And he'll probably play pretty well. Yes.

Now, would you say, because at the same time that this came out, it also came out saying that he's not going to participate in any off-season programs or any of the... No, why would you? No, I know, but it's just ironic that those things come out at the same time. I'm not going to cause any problems, because I'm not going to be there. Well, that's the best way to know that those problems. Don't show up. It's very selfless of him. Manning in the off-season or anything. What do you guys think? Stephen Ridley, who we haven't heard of for a while, had a torn ACL and MCL last year.

Came out this week, he's going to start making free agent visits, and then it came out this morning that he's actually visiting with the dolphins. Yeah, I didn't like that so much because I'm pretty high on Lamar Miller this year. And I would say, of the three of us, I'm probably the biggest Stephen Ridley believer. I like him. I think he's a terrific powerback. Yes, he has some fumbling problems. But I think if you put him in the tender, caring hands,

of a coach who's not going to freak out at every minor little turnover. Not that they're minor. But if you put him in the right situation, I think Stephen Ridley could thrive and have a decent year and a decent fantasy year. And we saw No Sean Moreno succeed in that offense. I know they don't want to give the rock to Lamar Miller all the time. Not all the time. We've seen that for years. We've seen that from the beginning when he was hyped up two years ago and it became Daniel Thomas got the rock a little more,

is a sad reality for that team. But Ridley, if he went there, I think it's a good landing spot for him. I think he has the potential to produce if he did go there and was healthy. But that's all I have to say about that. Yeah, it wouldn't be a bad landing spot in Miami. I bet you Hakeem Nix signs next week. So we have a fourth receiver to talk because we had, what was it, Dwayne Boe signed. That was our news from...

two weeks ago. And then we had Darius Hayward Bay and now Miles Austin. So next week, Hakeem Nix seems like a perfect fit. He's visiting the 49ers, which seems like a perfect fit. So, yeah. I mean, I don't think anybody's a, I don't think Nick's is a perfect fit for anybody. I think he's kind of done. Ron, and he's another young guy, too, that you're just kind of like, you don't understand, but you can see it on the field. The leg injuries have just taken him out.

Ron Rivera came out and said that he's targeting 15 carries a game for Jonathan Stewart. Jonathan Stewart was Mike the fantasy hitman's guy last week when you were talking running backs. Does this temper any of your expectations for him? Mike, are you happy with that? No, I actually find that encouraging the fact that he's already saying I want to get him 15 a game because that number will inflate. Unless they take another guy who's actually talented to get carries.

than Jonathan Stewart, that number is going to, I would be really, really happy with 17 to 18 carries a game for Jonathan Stewart. That's where he's going to get drafted, that you're going to get a fantastic return. I think the leg cast will also inflate around his wounded legs next year, but we'll see. He has so much potential in that offense, which we brought up last week, but he just needs to stay healthy. Any other news and notes that you guys want to share with our...

Listeners? No. Nothing much going on? We've given them enough. Let's move on. All right. Let's get into the running backs. Last week we went through and we talked. We only got through our top four in the consensus rankings. That's right. That's right. Yeah, we got through Levion Bell. He's our consensus number one. Eddie Lacey was our two. Jamal Charles is at three and Marshawn Lynch at number four.

Those are four staples of those offenses. Those are four guys you can count on weekend and week out. And today we're going to try to get through six through ten. We can do it. Yeah. We can do it, team. I wanted to talk. Five through ten. I wanted to talk briefly about. We could do that too. What did I say? Six through ten, because you thought we're going to our top. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we're just skipping them. No, we'll go six through ten today. We'll have our fantasy face off in the middle of that. Five through ten. Did I say it again?

Just dang it. All right, take over. All right, so our consensus number five guy, Adrian Peterson, who I have at number three. Very high. Do you want to know why I am so high on Adrian Peterson? We need to know. Here's the deal with Adrian Peterson. 5.0 lifetime average. One season.

below 1,250 plus yards. And that was in 2011 when he played 12 games. I will admit there was the last year he did not have the yardage either, but that was a little different circumstances. What last year? Last year? Yeah. You mean when he didn't play? When he played one year. His yardage was down when he didn't play? Yes. He didn't have over 1,250 plus yards. I believe they're going to, if they really want him back, they're going to run him into the ground, DeMarco Murray style.

They want someone to take the pressure off Teddy to improve his game. Norv Turner is known for having spectacular fantasy running backs. The Minnesota does have a decent run-blocking line. Their star left tackle, Matt Kulul, had a very down year after a sensational rookie year. It came out later that he had hurt his back in some fashion. So I have to assume that his poor play was a factor of the back injury.

So you get that line healed up, you get Adrian Peterson coming off a year where all he had to do was stay in shape. He had to work out, keep his freak body going. He didn't have to absorb the hits. Just because he's a generational body. And when I say that, what I mean is a guy, his body is literally built to play the running back position. It can handle the abuse. He's still got it. He's going to be fantastic.