Fantasy Football 2017 - Week 3 Matchups, In-or-Out, Gurley Delivers

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to the fantasy footballers podcast. Coming to you from the Playdraft Studios with your host, Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright. Hey, everybody. How are you feeling today, Andy? You know, when the sun is shining, you got to walk outside, my friends. I don't know why. No, it's a good, it's a wonderful day. I don't know why it's a wonderful day. Do you guys know why it's a wonderful day? I think.

If the amount of Todd Gurley decorations that have mysteriously shown up in our set today, I have a feeling Andy got here a little bit before us, Mike. I think so as well. I did not notice the corner over there. You didn't see that? I did not even realize we had this many different, you know, figurines. I've had to hide them around the office where you guys didn't know they existed.

for so long that I brought them all out. We've got the girly jersey on the wall. We have the girly painting. We have multiple variations of the girly McFarlane. We have a bobblehead. Look, it's not been the greatest road for us girly truthers over the last year and a half. It's true. And it was a good day. Yeah, it was a real good day. He could have had five touchdowns. He could have had five. He got stuffed on the goal line. And then they threw it at the end. I mean, that is.

Look, this is not your grandfather's Rams. And by grandfather, I mean Jeff Fisher. This is not your grandfather's Rams. This is, look at what Whitworth does for that offensive line. Are you kidding me? One player. I love that Sean McVeigh, this is the head coach of the team. And I mean, a lot has been said about how young Sean McVeigh is. But I mean, he brings a lot here. But what I love is.

When his team is on defense, he's like, eh. I don't need to pay attention to that. Hey, Wade. Grandpa Wade, handle that. I'm going to be sitting back here scheming up plays for my offense. He's like the head coach from Waterboy. He's like got his green folder out. He's like, I got my secret place. He's playing Techmo ball and he hands the controller off. Yeah. When his team's playing defense. So I mean, that's for a head coach to, especially like so young to say, yeah.

I'm not going to do the defense. I'm going to work on the offense and succeeded in a big way. They did not do the defense. His defense did not succeed yesterday. So maybe he needs to get a bigger out of that. I got a lot of bum's son of a bum tweets. More like a son of a bum last night or like there was some bum defense. You know, credit to you, Andy. You said that and not only did you say, but you did drop the Rams defense. Very contrarian. You thought this would be a higher scoring game.

And, you know, you said if the over under were 78, you would take the over, right? Not quite. No, that's how ridiculous this game was. You would have won money had you taken the over if the overrunner was 78 points. Wow. So very exciting Thursday night game, redeeming Thursday night right before our eyes. Maybe lost in the girly shuffle is another player that deserves a legitimate apology. And that is Jared Gough.

Jared Goff is currently... Does he deserve an apology? Yes. Let me tell you why. Okay. He is currently on pace to make the largest single passer rating jump for a sophomore QB from his rookie season since 1970. Because he just had to go up 10 points to do that. No, the largest gap. Yeah, but zero to a number is an infinite growth. He absolutely deserves an apology because he was on this show.

And in every media environment under the sun, he was spat upon. And the reaches of Jeff Fisher apparently extended to Jared Gough. I mean, the originality in the offense now, this is not a Super Bowl or playoff team. I don't think. But this is a fun team. This is an exciting team. This is a capable team. This is a team that has put up 40 points. Two times.

So I just pulled up pro football reference because I wanted to, you know, see what, just really get a snapshot here of what he has done for the season. That's not what stands out. What stands out is apparently at some time in his life, his nickname has been Mr. Perfect. Yeah. You're talking about Jared Goff? Yeah. You grow up in northern California.

Star quarterback. Yeah. Just say it. When your nickname is Mr. Perfect, unless you're Kurt Henning for the WWF, that's not going to make people really like you. All right. Let's circle back to Gurley. Now, there are, the Twitter groundswell asked for an apology from Mike. I am in a position where I have some defense of you that I want to make.

However, do you feel like you owe Todd Gurley an apology? Are you talking about my number four ranks running back on the week? Well, see, I was going to bring that up. My point was going to be, look, Mike is not an unreasonable soul if he sees the volume and he sees the opportunity. Absolutely. Mike had Todd Gurley ranked higher than Jason or myself, the Gurley truther, this week. And so Mike, whatever he said about Gurley's skills or talents before, you had him higher.

The volume is there. And San Francisco is not a good defense. And I came in today, you know, like I don't want to rain on the Todd Gurley parade because, I mean, that was absolute dominance. I have, unfortunately for me, my, uh, this was not the unfortunate part, but my son had a football game last night, which she dominated by the way. Oh, how do you do? Uh, almost had a pick, kind of extra point, had like an 80 yard run. I mean,

He's a monster. Getting off of that. Getting off of that. That's nickname. So I haven't, I've gotten to seen about half the game. So I know the stat lines, but I need to go back and watch. I'm very excited. Sure. Because I saw Todd Gurley in the first half. He looked good. He looked good. I think he looked better in the second half. Okay. I mean, I'm very excited to break down the film. But my concern with Todd Gurley is, I mean, everyone is super pumped now.

And next week he gets Dallas. That's a good match. It's another good matchup. But after that. Seattle, Arizona. It goes Seahawks, Jaguars, Cardinals, Giants, Texans, Vikings. That is six of the top ten defenses right in a row. So while I'm, I've been on board for Todd Gurley in these matchups. But here the, that's the big.

Like stamp. The rub? Yeah. Where the rubber meets the road. I was trying to avoid a cliche. But when he starts playing those defenses and everyone's like, yeah, you should have apologized for Gurley. If he crushes in those games, that's when I will issue the apology. The quick question of the day was, do you sell Todd Gurley high? Everyone that asked me, everyone had asked me last night, I said no, I wouldn't sell them. But here's the deal with selling a player and selling a player high.

If you get, like, look, trade responsibly. Trade responsibly. That's step one. If you get top three running back value for Todd Gurley today and he continues to perform as a top three running back because he does, you're still, you still made a fair trade. You still traded Todd. Someone told me last night they traded Todd Gurley and.

They emailed, actually. They said, make me feel better. I traded Todd Gurley. I got Carlos Hyde and T.Y. Hilton. T.Y. Hight had a pretty good game, too. I said lost in the shuffle. Carlos Hyde, he missed a few snaps, still had two touchdowns, had a great game, been running wonderfully all year. T.Y. Hilton, when luck gets back, you got fine value. You'll be okay. Now, as to the schedule, as per son of bum here in the Rams defense and what they look like.

I'm not going to read too far into it because of the usage. What you're going to see in the second half is you're going to see Gurley littered all over the passing game. I mean, targets down the middle of the field, catching the ball, making plays after the catch, his volume is what doesn't concern me. So if I were the owner of Todd Gurley right now and I had people in my league freaking out and I could go get two great players, if I could get A.J. Green and Dalvin Cook.

For Todd Gurley? That's a perfect trade. I would go do it. That's a perfect trade. But that applies to every player, right? If you can get better value back, you do it. If not, you don't. Now, Jason, I want to hear, how do you weigh in on the schedule that's difficult? The performance is unmatchable, right? You're not going to have, he already matched last year's touchdown total. He's obviously on his pace for a Melvin-Gordon-esque year in the touchdown area. But do you think that the numbers are going to dip, or do you think that he'll be all right?

I think both. I think they will absolutely dip and he'll be all right. He's not a player where because of this terrible matchup stretch that you have to sell because he's going to crap your team. He's too involved in the passing game to completely crap your team right now. That's what I love about him. That's why people will be really wanting to trade for him, but his numbers are going to dip. He's not going to be playing the 49ers every week. In fact, you know, even though it's in division.

The next time he plays the 49ers is week 17, so that probably doesn't count for your league. You know, I would probably be looking to capitalize on this. Let me throw out a couple names here. Okay. Because we're going to get these questions on Twitter. Oh, this is the number one question. Would you trade Todd Gurley for Zeke? Yes. Would you trade Todd Gurley for Kareem Hunt? No. Would you trade Todd Gurley for Jhajee? No.

Yes, because I skip up. I get a buy week out of that. You're not worried about the injury concerns for Ajai that keep cropping up compared to Gurley's production? I would not. Not practicing this week. What would you do, Mike? Would you trade Gurley for Ajai? I probably would. Okay. I would not. And then the last name, Devante Freeman. No, I would not. The volume difference there is significant. Yeah, I would want Devonthe Freeman plus something. Okay.

Yeah, I'm just talking one for one because people are going to ask. Look, we haven't even talked about when a game goes off like this and you got 80 points scored, there are a number of players. I mean, Robert Woods lost in the background had over 100 yards. Sammy Watkins needs to be talked about. He's now in the concussion protocol along with Tavon Austin, but Watkins had an absolute monster game, a Willie Mays catch over his shoulders. I did get to see that one. That was amazing. So what is Sammy Watkins moving forward? Is this San Francisco?

Is that what you saw? Did you see San Francisco's defense as the reason why Sammy had, you know, this team performed so well? They've been back and forth now. Yeah, I mean, they put up 41 points. They're not putting up 41 points on the reg. This is an outlier game. This is where. How cool are you right now? Yeah. This is where, you know, every single player, Markey's good one.