Week 7 Studs & Duds + Arthur the Goldfish, Monday Punday - Fantasy Football Podcast for 10/24

But at that time, it was, no, Kenyon Drake is still going to be the starter. Gus Edwards is just back off of his injury. We don't, at this, with the information I have right now, I guess I'm playing Kenyon Drake. And then the moment Sunday Live is over, a tweet comes out from Baltimore from a beat reporter saying, Gus Edwards is running with the ones during warmups. And it was, okay, abandon the Kenyon Drake plan. You got to get Gus Edwards in. And it's some steel underpants. But. He's going to be the guy. And now moving forward, like Gus Edwards looked great. This was his first game back from his injury, which I was talking to Betts earlier, our injury guy. It turned out Gus Edwards' injury was far more like J.K. Dobbins than a simple, clean ACL tear. But Edwards was given the proper amount of time to heal up. Like remember, J.K. Dobbins with the catastrophic injury, was forcing his way back onto the field and training camp.

Meanwhile, Gus Edwards here were in week seven, and he took all the time to heal up, but he is going to be good to go. And touchdowns will either go to Lamar or they will go to Gus Edwards. Nobody wants to use Kenyon Drake. Yeah, it's correct. You do it because you're forced to. Yeah. Gus Edwards, 16 carries only played 23 snaps. He was on the field 36% of the snaps. So there is room to go north here. When he was on the field, it was to give him the ball. This was a weird game. Yeah. Most Raven games are this year. Yeah. Mark Andrews was not involved at all in this game. And Lamar, it's been a bad run for Lamar. It was a weird one. Yes. It has been very tough. The Andrews thing, you have to hope it was just, he was on the injury report, missing practices, wasn't as healthy as they would hope, and that next week should be more healed up.

Travis E.T.N. Jr. 14 for 1, 14. Five targets. And they kept using him after the fumble. Right. He had a really cool run where it looked like he was going to break towards the end zone. And then whoops, another fumble, which he's had several of this year. Zero touches for James Robinson. Yeah. If you were part of the faithful for Travis E.T.N. Congratulations. It's about to pay off. Like, ETN, this is now, I don't know how many weeks in a row. He just has the huge. He has a huge play. He has a huge play every week. And he may have retired James Robinson last week. I am old enough to remember when we thought that players had overcome the Achilles. Yeah. I remember, we thought, oh, they've done it. This is the year. Is it all of them now? It's all of them. Cam Acres, James Robinson, Sterling Shepherd. Yep.

There's one man out there dominating with his recovered Achilles. Deontiform. Deontiform. But that's because it's been three, four, five years since the injury. I just want to give credit. Yeah. Somebody's holding the candle for defeating the Achilles. Zeke, Jason's start of the week, two touchdowns. The battle plan, baby. I mean, 15 for 57. Tony Pollard is really good. And they kept him in around the goal line. He couldn't get in, though. And Zeke did. He almost got three of them. Yeah, they ran as, look, as the person who wrote at the battle plan, I was very invested in Elliott getting goal line carries. And they have this formation that they ran and they ran. Each time they got to the goal line, the look was exactly the same. But the third one, they did.

the play action and had the wide open. I don't remember who caught the touchdown. Was it a turd Ferguson back there? It was. It was turd Ferguson. Not, not, uh, Dalton Schultz was giving him dat, but it was another, uh, white tight end hinder shot. Hander shot. Okay, that's what is. Yeah, we call them smite. Uh, wide receiver studs. Jamar Chase did it again, eight for one, 30, and two. He had an injury in the first, into the first half that I thought for sure we wouldn't see him again. Totally fine. Went back out there. Tyler Boyd, eight for 155 and one. Tyler Boyd picks about four weeks a year to do this. This was one. And if you had T. Higgins along with me, you were shouting at the television as there was a play where T. Higgins had a huge catch, dove to the end zone, looked very clearly like. Jason and I were talking about that. It looked to me like he got in. Yeah, Jason thought so. But he also then kind of fumbled the ball afterwards. So I get.

Maybe the team was too scared of the fumble and they just, they ran to the goal line and then got immediately stuffed and it turned into a Joe Burrow rushing touchdown. But it was like, dude, just, no, he's in. He's in. What are you're, you're going to, you're going to fail. Just challenged this. It's a free touchdown. I had the exact 100% say, we weren't together watching this game, but I, I saw the exact same thing you did. And. He made the same comment about being afraid of the fumble. And then it was one of those. They ran the play so quick. And I'm like, why are you? Oh, I know why. They're afraid that on review, they're going to find out that he fumbled and they lose the ball through the end zone or something. So they just ran in the play. But he probably did have a touch. Yes. This next player, you guys are going to laugh because I don't know if you noticed this. But, you know, I had to play him in listener league.

in McCall Hardman. Oh, did you really three touchdowns for he was my Brandon Ayuk of last week. I played McCall Hardman because of bye weeks in listener league and he led me to victory with three touchdowns. I made a statement, you know, last week, we were talking about the Kansas City wide receivers and I said, well, it turns out the answer was none of them. It turns out the answer was all of them because all three of them. Had excellent weeks. Juju, two straight 100-yard games. MBS was over 100. Was he? Yes. We talked about it. Mahomes is really good. Earlier this week we talked about it. We said how many touchdowns is Mahomes going to throw? We said probably three.

It's got to go somewhere. So you can always play these guys. It's nice. I should have let people know that I was playing against Juju Smith-Schuster so that they would have had the confidence to put them in their lineup. You were facing Juju? Oh, yeah. Yeah. The Juju Mahomes stack. It was a pleasure. Oh, man. This guy is dead. Last week it was the burrow stack. Yeah. It's just whatever. I'll let you know who I'm playing this coming home. Oh, man. Man. Man. Markey's Goodwin scored twice. Yep. Looked pretty good. And Mike Williams did go seven for 86 and a touchdown before the injury. Oh, and Mike, you get credit here. You get credit because Andy and I were aghast at the thought of playing the awful tower, Paris Campbell. Wee, we. And.

Goodness gracious. The whole time we're watching this game, it's like everything was going to Paris Campbell. It was a disaster for the team itself. The team is a disaster. The offensive line is. And if Matt Ryan has to get rid of the ball immediately, that's Paris Campbell's specialty. I mean, this is, he's heating up. I don't know if we're going to, we'll see if he gets on fire NBA jam rules, but 12 targets. That is a delight. Yeah, PPR. Tim for 70 and a touchdown. There was a play where Jason and I were watching it. I wanted Taylor to get the ball. He wanted Michael Pittman to get the ball on the goal line. And we're sitting there just like, we're playing it all out. And who gets it? Yeah, baby. Freaking Paris Campbell. Yeah. I mean, you're right, though, because if he had 12 targets and Jonathan Taylor had his highest reception day of the year, that offensive line has given him no time. Yes, they have gone to the, the Steelers Big Ben model.

which is snap, throw the ball. DJ Moore. Hey, what? All right. Yeah. 10 targets, seven for 69 and a touchdown. Look, I hope if you ran into a situation where you tied, then great news that DJ Moore was on your bench because that's some good bench points. Terry, I almost played him in DFS last week because his price was going down and it seemed interesting. Without Christian McCaffrey, you knew that, you know, the targets should be higher for him. I mean, you're taking a massive amount of weekly targets away. They've got to go to someone, so DJ Moore, maybe you keep looking his way. Maybe. Probably not, though. Terry McLaurian, five for 73 in a touchdown. It was nice to see. He still was not the, I feel like the, the plays that were scripted are still going to Curtis Samuel.

A lot of manufactured touches, manufactured reads. Terry McLaren just caught some of the deep targets. Which is something he does get chances to do with Heineke. Yep. Who do you like more then, McLaurin or DJ Moore as a weekly start? DJ Moore plays the Falcons. Yeah. Oh, man, that's gross. I think I lean DJ Moore now without Christian McCaffrey. DeAndre Hopkins, 14 targets. George Pickens looked good. Yep. Six for 61 in a touchdown. Mike had tweeted they want to trade Claypool, but they want like Chris McCaffrey Hall for him. Yeah. They want multiple second day picks. I mean, they're just, look, we've all done that. We've all asked for a trade. You're like, well, like, we've got this player. Why don't you give me all your picks? But it's, it's, I mean, it's the most ridiculous thing that I've heard in a long time because.

You're saying, oh, well, this player got all that. Yeah, that player's one of the best in the NFL. There's a reason. Look at his contract. You're like not even giving this player a contract extension. I want what he got. Yeah, they're not going to trade him if that's the asking price. That'd be like Taylor Heineke being in a contract negotiation and saying, well, did you see what Deshaun Watson got? Yeah, what are you talking about? You're Taylor Heineke. Travis Kelsey's still great. George Kittle. Six for 98 in a touchdown. Did Deontay Johnson get injured? Yeah, he did, and he came back in. Okay, okay. Yeah. Deante Johnson hurt his arm. They took him off the field, came back into the game. But Kenny Pickett loves Pickens and he loves the Muth. Yeah, I mean, he tried his best. That's how I felt about Kenny Pickett last night. He was, it was close. It's amazing because the difference between being a good quarterback and a bad one is like,

the ends of those dries for Kenny Pickett. Like he did lead him down the field, made a few good throws, escapeability, bad interceptions. The mute did go 8 for 75. Injoku was good. Everett was 5 for 63. Evan Ingram was 4 for 67. Yeah, there it is. If you need four catches for 50 to 60 yards, Evan Engram's your dude. I mean, guys, I need to be talked to. Okay. We're here. I need you to convince me to like just. Get rid of Kyle Pitts. Oh, that's easy. Because let me, let me read you Kyle Pitts as stat lines in five of six games, okay? Two for 19, two for 19, one for 25, three for 19, three for nine. Kate Otten has the same amount of receptions as Kyle Pitts this year. Will Disley has 15 more fantasy points than Kyle Pitts on the season. So you would think that that would be persuasive enough. But like, are you at the point?

Because, like, would you play Evan Ingram every week over Kyle Pitts? You should. I, yeah, no, I wouldn't. And yes, you should for the baseline. But the, the high end outcome. Is there any high end outcome with 13 pass attempts anymore? Well, I mean, he was five for 87 in week three, Kyle Pitts. So 87 yards is something. Who did he play that week? That was the Seattle Seahawks who are the worst of the worst. He did score this week and they just didn't count it. That's true. That is true. But that was also a- Did you see that play? No, apparently. No, he scored and they just didn't count it. It was a one-yard reception. No, I know. I know. They basically threw it to him. He caught it across the goal line. There wasn't a good enough camera angle. And so they said he was short, like half an inch short. It's so depressing. Do you?

like 26 yards. Do you want 26 yards? No. Because that number, remember when I said he had 87 yards once? Yeah. That's the only time he's been at 26 yards or higher the whole season. That's pretty compelling. Yeah. He's, he might be the most hurtful pick this last year of fantasy. Yeah. Because that was a third round pick that you have. Not just was a bus and you can move on, but that you keep playing every week because you have to. You shouldn't. You don't have to do this anymore. Thanks, guys. You're welcome. This is a good transition. Poopped in his big boy pants. But, but Jason. Oh, Jason. Yes, voice of public opinion. Mark Andrews was worse than him this week. That's true. That's just look at only this week and close your eyes. You should offer.

Kyle Pitts for Mark Andrews. See, he was better. Well, we've got that manager in the building here. Kyle Pitts is just 22, Al, and his future is very bright. Mark Andrews, zero for zero this past week. Could be very hurt. Thoughts? Straight up. I'm going to stick with Andrews. All right. That's bold. I do have Pitts and Dynasty, and I'll stick with him too. All right. Zach Hertz, Robert Tunyon, T. J. Hawkinson, Mike Gisicki, disappointments. at the tight-in position beyond Kyle Pitts. Moving into the quarterback duds, the last four weeks for Lamar Jackson, you know, you talk about being kind of, not that you'd ever really want to sit Lamar Jackson, but you had back-to-back number one weeks in weeks two and three, but the last four weeks, 19, 15, 11, 21. Is this panic button time for Lamar? I have Lamar, and I'm not.

hitting the panic button, no. But he's cost you. Yes. Yeah, it's, he's certainly underperforming. What if, what if Andrews did have an injury that was, let's say Andrews missed a few games. Would you, would you be worried at that point not having Mark Andrews? Yes. When Andrews missed the second day of practice, I thought, oh, crap. Lamar, Lamar needs Mark Andrews to perform, clearly. 21st, he scored 10.7 fantasy points this week. Tampa Bay, New Orleans, and a bye week the next three weeks for Lamar. Joining him in the Duds, Thomas Brady. Man. 49 pass attempts that resulted in zero touchdowns. Woof. In 290 yards, this is not too bad. That's not too bad. Yeah, I mean, something is... He should have had a touchdown. Mike Evans, goodness gracious.

I worry about, so we had the question posed because after last week we talked about how down NFL points were and how down fantasy points were from the last several years. And then one of the big reasons that we gave was there's been, you know, some like Aaron Rogers, Tom Brady, Russell Wilson, the quarterbacks who are supposed to be running high-powered offenses, Kyler. They have not been performing. And after that week, it was like, well, I'm still betting on a back-to-back MVP, Aaron Rogers to figure it out, the all-time greatest Tom Brady to figure it out. And it's like, it's only one week, but I am now scared because both teams look shell-shocked. They look like they don't know what to do to fix it. Tom Brady's been startable in two of seven weeks.

It's rough. I mean, my actionable advice for Tom Brady, though, is, if you want to bench him, I would not drop him personally. It's been atrocious, but 49 attempts, 40, 52, 52, 42. Like, if you don't have a guy that's running all the time, I mean, you need to have huge volume for your quarterback to be throwing the ball. So I would. maybe look for a different option for the next couple weeks and see if Tom Brady can get it figured out, but I would not drop him. They were 13 point favorites, and they got smashed. Carolina got the trade bump. They rallied. Unbelievable. And you have to wonder, now Todd Bowles is struggling again as the head coach. And you thought he had everything in place. Let's see, what they've beaten Atlanta?

The Saints and the Cowboys. They beat the Cowboys Week 1. Let's just heat check this or ice check this. I don't know. You streaming Daniel Jones at Seattle or Tom Brady against Baltimore. I probably wouldn't have the guts to go. I'd probably play Brady. I would put Brady in my lineup and. Coach Todd Bulls. Rick Stroud tweeted, Coach Todd Bowles said the Bucks are in a quote, dark place. Yeah, that's what it seems like. Yeah. No. And that's what I'm saying about the Packers and the Buccaneers. I know this is, you know, it's not measurable. It's a really, you know, narrative-y thing, but they look shell-shocked and lost. Like you could see it on the faces of all the players. They are in a bad place. It seems like for the Packers, the Buccaneers, and the Broncos, if the game starts trending like the previous game,

It almost ends it. It's like they don't have a lot of room for error to start those games before that dark place starts to settle in. And I feel like the Cardinals were like that a little bit too on the offensive side until the bright light of Hopkins showed up. All right, running back duds, it came along with Tom Brady. This was the first really bad week for Leonard Fournette, eight for 19. He had been their offense. It was because he only had three targets. He hasn't been good. you know, on the ground all year, but he's been making up for it by being one of the target leaders of the team. What good is a dump truck just driving around if it's got nothing to don't? Yeah. No, there was, uh, it's not trash day. Need those dump offs. Rashad White, six for 24, two targets. So they split the work pretty much and yeah for no value.

Kenyon Drake was 11 for five. Yeah, baby. That's the Kenyon Drake we know and love. I got to be honest. That feels good. I just, I was jealous of the people. Like I was not in on him. Then I was super jealous once that IR news of Dobbins. And then Kenyon Drake, he just disappeared. Like if you need someone to hang out with, AJ Dylan, James Robinson, like Kenyon Drake is free. Look, if you are still jealous, Canyon Drake, I can, I can tell you he's going to hit the waiver wire. in our league of records so you can scoop them up yeah you can get that experience if you want um Isaiah Pacheco was named the starter wink the mad dash on the waiver wire I had mentioned I had a big bid in for him and I moved it down after thinking about it a little bit more and I went so what like is he's the starter but he's not going it's still going to be a full blown committee he might get first dibs

And so that will be better for him, you know, more opportunity. But it's no one here is getting the Kareem Hunt treatment of you're the dude in this office. I feel like the entire Chief's offense, there's only be two players with names on the back of the jerseys. It should be Mahomes and Kelsey. Everybody else, that's not an insult. That's a compliment to the team. It's a horrible insult for the fantasy world. But they don't treat this team with Tyreek gone. You know, they've had more big plays this year than when they had Tyreek, like big plays down the field. It's just, you just swap in wide receivers, swap in running backs, score a million points. It's actually really impressive. It is. Wide receiver duds. Debo, seven targets, five for 42, one rushing attempt. You know, with the CMC news, I don't know, did we talk about Debo?

We didn't really talk about the effects that it would have on any of the other 49er non-running back players. So what do we expect that? I mean, the rushing attempts for Debo Samuel have to be not happening as often. Yeah, I would assume that they're going to use him more as a traditional wide receiver. When Debo has really gone heavily up in the run game, it's usually been... due to injury. And we saw it last year when Elijah Mitchell went down. Debo was more involved. We saw it this year. Now with Christian McCaffrey there, they'll still hand the ball to Debo a couple times a game. But he's not getting eight carries again. But for fantasy purposes, you can make a really strong argument that it should be better for him to be catching the ball out wide as opposed to taking handoffs. If he was going to touch the ball 10 times a game, you would want 10 receptions over 10 handoffs.

Easily. Hard part for me is that McCaffrey will be really involved in the passing game. True. You're hoping that the offense is better. But the last month, it's trended this way. Before this past week where Samuel had the one carry, it was two for three straight weeks. They've kind of phased them out of that. But it's been kind of like when you talk about draft picks, Debo has been disappointing, no? I mean, this is, I mean, he's had two weeks inside the top 21. Yes. I mean, I guess on the year he's still inside the top 12, but it's just not been as explosive.

Keenan, two targets, two catches. Didn't play in the second half and now says goodbye for a week. The other long-suffering target in Atlanta. Yeah. Drake London won catch on one target. Drake London. A hundred percent catch rate. That's pretty good. 75, 59, 49, 78. That's the ranking of Drake London. I saw a lot of people on Twitter. They want to know if you can just drop him in a redraft. I mean. I suppose. I mean, I'd rather have Mooney. Yeah. I'd rather have Mooney than Drake London right now. It's so baffling for this, like the people who are in charge of the Falcons, right? They weren't in charge at the draft. And if you knew what your plan was for your offense and for your team, why are you spending a top 10 pick on a wide receiver that you're not going to throw the ball to?

It is. Yeah, AJ Green can do this. Anybody could do this. Drake London, I think we know from the first few games of the season where he actually got targets, he is a good player. He can be an ascending superstar in this league. But why draft that player? Like fix a different position. You know, get an edge rusher. I don't get a cornerback. Why spend a top 10 pick? This is. It's an egregious use of your draft picks if this is your true plan. Cortland Sutton has been rough. Yeah. Three straight weeks. He went three for 23. He's been the wide receiver 30, 70, and 65. Nine targets. The trust is, it's fading a little bit with Cortland Sutton. Sure. The depreciation of the offense as a whole. There have been rumors about Jerry Judy being traded.

Oh my gosh. A lot of rumors. That would be. I think he's in my top three most likely players to get traded. Teams are calling them about trading for Jerry Judy. I don't know that the Broncos are really entertaining that or not. Okay. That's throwing in the towel. It would be. What's his contract situation? Kyle, do you know? He has one more year left. Okay. And they can pick up his fifth year. See, that's the part where I wasn't sure if there's a financial incentive to not have to negotiate a longer-term deal with him, if they're not believers. Yet he out-targeted Sutton. Now, one thing for this offense to note is that Sutton had the same amount of targets as Greg Dulcich this week. Sure. So his, his, him coming back to the offense is going to be interesting on the target distribution. You just need better targets.

If you're a good wide receiver and you're getting nine targets, you would hope for more than three for 23. Did you say they put in an offer on CMC that Broncos did? Yeah, they were one of the teams that put in, it was a low ball offer, but they did. The compensation, it was massive. And they came out and talked about San Francisco was like they were legit afraid of the Rams in division. Like that was the perfect situation for Carolina. You know, what's funny is that... To get them onto the winning path. The last two teams that Carolina played were those two teams. The teams that were going the hardest after CMC had just played them. And been like, oh, man, I like that guy. That guy's really good. Let's put him on our team. Breaking news. I don't know what this is, but... It's not good. It's not good. No, it actually is good. Yay! Pete Carroll says they got a really good report on D.K. McCaffee does not need surgery. Okay. It's a Pateller tendon injury.

That may have been an older injury. Unclear on timeline. But Metcalf is determined to practice Wednesday, but not sure it will happen. So if he wants to practice, that's a good place to be in terms of how you feel. Okay. So it is good news. Look, on this particular Monday, we will take that. Oh, yeah. I mean, a breaking news drop. I am terrified of breaking news drops. Do we need to add a little bit of like nuance to the different drops? Like. Do we need like a, some of good breaking news? I like the mystery. I like the suspense. Bad games for Brandon Cooks, Deontay Johnson. Robert Woods hasn't been the guy at all since the injury to Traylen Berks. And then Alec Pierce is three for 37 this week. You know, he's the downfield guy. And if you're dumping the ball off, 16, 18 times. Troubling. Yep.