Hopkins Bombshell + Free Agent Madness - Fantasy Football Podcast

I think this is an at least and an at most situation. I don't think they'll go with James Winston and have to pay him enough where he's coming in. They want someone to come in and be a competent backup to fight and claw and compete with Trubisky because their hope is still that Trubisky steps up and becomes the guy. They don't want to, I know there was some rumors today that Teddy Bridgewater, they were in contract talks that would

insinuate that he would come in as the starter. I would be so proud of the Bears if they did that, but I just don't believe for a second that's going to happen. So for fantasy context, what this means is they probably will bring in a backup and Tribusky is risky. Risky. As per usual, Kansas City, they did exercise the option for Damian Williams. So where we stand right now, Damien Williams is the starting running back for Kansas City.

whether or not he makes it through the draft again without a high draft capital running back selected by Kansas City. That remains to be seen. Jason, let's check in with your gut. Is Damian Williams the starting running back next year for Kansas City? My gut says yes. I think he will be. I think they will draft a non-first three-round running back, bring in depth. Interesting. And have, you know, but. Because he's good?

Because they just won a Super Bowl. And I think that they're off of the back of a snubbed Super Bowl MVP Damian Williams. Who's good? I think who performed well. That's what I believe. I think he performed well and he deserves that shot. And like I've always said, if he is the starter for Kansas City, regardless of my belief in his talent, he will perform great for fantasy. His is good talent. He is good for fantasy.

That is what I will say. Oh, okay. We're going with that distinction. He is absolutely. I'll say he's great for fantasy if he's the starter. He's great. So you want me to say, you want me to say Damien Williams is great? Damien Williams is great for fantasy football. I know. I just want to hear you say he's good. I didn't bump it up to great. Real quick. Can we go back to the Andre Hopkins for a second? Because it's been a little bit. Oh, yeah. Hey, everybody. Did you hear?

We got the Andre Hopkins. Oh, we also got rid of David Johnson. It was the same move. So the reason I want to come back is because while we have celebrated and I'm going to be celebrating for months. Yes. While we are celebrating, we should cover the fantasy implications as well of DeAndre Hopkins, of David Johnson. Those are fair things.

of these guys. That got lost. It did. But it, well, it got, it got delayed. Yeah, postponed. But it didn't get lost because here we are. We found it. So let's talk through some of these guys. DeAndre Hopkins. My initial reaction was this take, this is a hit. This is a downgrade for him. He's going from Deshaun Watson, who has proven.

what he can do with Hopkins. The target market share for DeAndre Hopkins has always been. It's over 30%. He's the league leader or he's like top three every year. It's just unbelievable to the tune where years ago you said, well, it has to come down historically speaking. No, it doesn't. And no, it has it. Now, I'm saying it has to come down again. And maybe it doesn't. Maybe it's, no, there's a reason he gets so many targets because he's so stinking good. However, there's still Larry Fitzgerald.

There's still Christian Kirk. Right. There are better options to throw the ball to in this system aside from DeAndre Hopkins. And you have more of a variable at quarterback, the unknown of Kyler Murray, that I think this is a slight downgrade at first. However, I do expect that the Arizona Cardinals as a team to have a significant increase in passing volume in total.

Kyler threw the ball 542 times. As a rookie. As a rookie. And so that number will almost certainly go up. And, you know, if he's up at 600 passing attempts, then maybe if the target market share drops for DeAndre Hopkins, but the total... That would be a lot if he was at 600. Yeah. I mean, it would be in the top 10 for sure in the league. But I think that that's not...

That's not out of the realm of possibility, but the point is if it raises and his market share goes down, well, if you're getting a smaller slice of a bigger pie, it can end up the same. I still think that you're clearly talking about a guy that will be in the top six wide receivers. Yeah, I would still be comfortable with him as top five. Yeah, I'm not going to, I'm not going to drop him out. He,

He is super talented. And the one thing we can say is we've seen Hopkins with several different quarterbacks. Sure. Before Deshaun Watson. Remember when Tom Savage was starting. Yeah. Over Deshaun Watson. Yeah. Good one, Bill O'Brien. Yeah, he's, Bill O'Brien's got plenty of great moves in his history. But Hopkins has always done fairly well. He did have one poor down year when the quarterback play was too bad. But Kyler is not a...

someone you'd put into the category of poor quarterback play. So what about David Johnson? This is, David Johnson goes from, if he was coming into this year, he stayed on the Cardinals and the Cardinals did resign Kenyon Drake. I would see it the same way that I saw it the second half of last season, which is Kenyon Drake's the starter, and David Johnson is a break glass in case of emergency player for this roster who's basically not used. So he goes from irrelevance to giant relevance.

Right? Because you had, you know, you look at what Duke Johnson and Carlos Hyde did. Right. You put them together. They were phenomenal in fantasy last year. So, you know, obviously David Johnson is not going to come in here and be out there for 100% of snaps like Christian McCaffrey and just take over. But there is a lot to like here in this system. I mean, they did trade DeAndre Hopkins to.

get David Johnson. Yeah, so the investment of saying this is a core large. It is. I will say this as an Arizona Cardinal fan, uh, as a fantasy analyst, as a professional in this industry that watches all the film and does all the analyzing of metrics, David Johnson looked poor to me last year as a running back, not in the passing game.

He still runs great routes, has great hands. If you put him on a linebacker, he's good enough. But when it comes to getting to the hole, hitting it with burst, getting to the edge, he seemed like he lost two steps to me. And I don't know that the change of system is the only thing that's going to matter. I'm worried. It might. I mean, he looked like he was analyzing things slowly, where he just, he really didn't fit the scheme. I agree that. I mean, that.

It ended up making it look like he was just a poor runner. His past catching skills are still there. Duke Johnson will still be there. Duke Johnson only had 44 receptions last year, which for a past catching specialist, 44 receptions at the running back position, that's fine. But I would have just off of the top of the head, I would still feel comfortable with David Johnson as a top 15 guy.

He's going to get the volume, like you said, the investment. And the investment into acquiring him equals opportunity. So he's going to be on the field. Deshaun Watson is great. The Houston Texans are going to score a lot of points. So I still believe that David Johnson will have fantasy relevance. The three downs, though, even if David Johnson's playing on three downs, Duke Johnson, 44 reception, that's not the area that.

David Johnson would need to propel himself back into being a top 10 running back. Well, that being said, we have seen that vacated targets historically, when the team has a bunch of vacated targets, it usually benefits passing to the running back more than any other position. Obviously, DeAndre Hopkins leaving vacates a whole lot of targets. So I could definitely see them utilizing Deshaun Watson.

utilizing David Johnson in the passing game more than he's ever utilized a running back. I just worry. He's going to be risky for me because he's probably going to be around 10 to 14 as far as running back placement in the draft. And he's got some red flags that say if there's another guy that I like about the same in his tier, I'm probably going the other way. He feels like one of those fourth round running backs.

where every year you in your draft, you get into the fourth round, you're looking at the running backs going, uh, uh, fourth round sounds pretty, pretty okay to me. Like I'd be fine, but I'm saying, but the running backs who end up in the fourth round, it is just, it's a nebulous, shapeless pit. Yeah, I, I think he'll end up higher, but hopefully, hopefully you're right so that I can maybe try to have David Johnson on a couple rosters, see if he can fill that.

old Arian Foster role that Andy loved so much. And so did every fantasy owner of Arian Foster because he's phenomenal. All right, Jason, let's, we'll get into the CBA just quickly. Okay. Sounds good. We don't have a lot of time left, but we want at least one touch on it. News and notes from around the league. As we said, the CBA has been extended. Early.

It's like 51.5%. It's like 60 votes. It made it. But it made it. That's all the matters. It made it. Also, and before we start talking about this, the NFL draft is scheduled to go on. April 23rd through the 25th, all the public events are canceled due to our health situation. But the NFL draft is going to, at least at this point.

still happen on schedule. Oh, I don't think there's a point. It will change because they're removing the... Are they going to zoom people in? They're just going to video conference. The official word is that they are still working on the format of the show. It is to be still broadcast. So the event will happen, but the people won't be there. Sure. All right. On to the CBA. Here are the big things for football. Playoff expansion.

That happens. Now, this is a hot topic. Yes. People are heated one way or the other on Twitter. I'm heated on Twitter. I'm heated on. Excellent. I have my opinions. I am super pro this. I am too. Fantastic. High five. Let's clinky. Because, and like people are like, well, the NFL system, it's, it's perfect. I don't want to, I don't want to change anything. It was perfect. But you know what?

I get another playoff game. Selfishly, I love it. I understand that the number two team, it takes away thereby. I don't care about that. I love that it takes away by it. You know what I say to that? Get first. Yes. Here's a deal. This is not, people are, people are overreacted me and like, no, it was perfect. Now we're going to. The NBA is terrible. The NBA, everybody makes playoffs. That's how it feels, unless you're a son's fan. You never make the playoffs. Right. You're at the bottom. Of course. But otherwise.

You know, I remember when I was a giant NBA fan, it just felt like, man, it was too watered down. This is not that watered down. This is one more team makes it in, and one more team loses the buy. What that says is that late season competition, and specifically for fantasy football, it's going to matter more. You can't rest your players anymore. No, it's going to be much more difficult to rest your players. Now, it's not impossible. Obviously, this last year, the, the, uh,

the Ravens locked up the number one seed a little early. So that situation was locked in. That wouldn't have changed. But the two seed means so much more, you know, the difference between a one and two. And also that means it's not just that one more team makes it in. That means through the course of the season, several weeks out, there are five, six, seven more teams that are still in the running for that last spot. Right. So it's good for that.

fantasy players being involved, and it's good for the other big deal in this new CBA, which is the 17 game season. People are worried from a fantasy perspective of how much longer are players going to be sat when things are locked up. Do we extend it a week in the beginning for fantasy? Do we keep week 16 championships or week 17 championships? Well, these new playoff rules are going to make it to where

People are playing all the way through till the end, which I think is smart. What we would say is that if you are currently in a week 17 championship league where you play the final week, you should wait. You should see how it goes and not extend. You keep it that week 17. But it's not a 17 game season this year. I know.