Fantasy Football - Week 15 Studs & Duds + Illusionists, TD Controversy - Podcast for 12/15

to the fantasy footballers podcast with your host, Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright. Welcome in. Monday, December 15th, the fantasy footballers podcast, back with you. Oh, me, oh my. Fantasy playoffs are here. Week one nearly over, and okay. All right. Oh, man. What a week. Some good, some bad. Um, goodness. Well, when Kyle Pitts starts the week that way, you know you're going to get some insanity over the course of the weekend. Um, I think everything Jason wanted to happen happened to him. He had.

Travis E.T.N. and Josh Jacobs go crazy. He had his opponent score no points. Thank you, Jemir Gibbs. You, uh, you continued your streak of up down, up down, up down. Um, yeah, no, it's, uh, it was a good week for me. Not for everybody. No, this was not for the people that played Joe Burrow or the people that, uh, played Isaiah likely or holy crap. You know, I read something this morning with Isaiah likely by the way. What was that? I thought you were reacting to likely. Likely. No, no, like it just hold on before we move on. Speaking of Jason being the magic man. Uh, so league of record, you look very, very good. Yes. It's like Devon A chain has to go. He has to get 42 points. Uh, oh, he doesn't know this news in the dynasty. He's down by two points in. No, dynasty league. He's up by two points. Right. The other, the team he's facing has one player. Yes. He's toast. It's Jalen Warren. Yeah, Jalen Warren basically has to get injured. Jalen Warren is now questionable. What?

What? Well, I made a joke yesterday that like that's not a good joke get injured pregame to and that's my only chance. He needs like one point and I lose. Like I'm already out with an illness. So I mean, probably still plays, but just. Oh my goodness. Give me a little hope. If we want to, uh, yeah. So I wanted to circle back to likely. Yes. Oh. Isaiah likely, I read this morning, he ran more routes than Mark Andrews for the first time since week eight. So he was out there. Like this is, this is kind of like people need to come to terms with this. I think it's important for fantasy football. Like fantasy football is a game of skill and luck combined. Yes. Into a game of probability. Into an algorithm that we cannot until we can see the future, you know, you're just going to be in this boat where.

the best matchup and the best players can have a bad week. You know, we thought Baltimore, Cincinnati would be a competitive high-scoring game. The Bengals got shut out. That game was by far the biggest disappointment all the way around. I mean, Joe Burrow was bet. Lamar Jackson threw 12 passes. That, I mean, so 12 total passes. So likely ended up with no targets. Andrews had a bad game too. You. In that, in that Dynasty League where I need Jalen Warren to score one point, I chose to start likely. over Andrews, who I would have started over Kyle Pitts. So, I mean, I had two guys score 40 on my bench. Yeah, if you had 40, you'd be up by more. I would, yeah, I would be on. No, I mean, Kyle Pitts is another example that Kyle Pitts previous career high in fantasy points was like 25 points. And this was 45 in a lot of league formats, like in the same 20 more points in your career high. So all I'm saying is you got to come to terms with the fact that you're playing the game of probability.

You put people in the best position to play. They play the game. That was the most shocking results, honestly for me. This weekend was insane. The NFL weekends are usually insane. This one felt a little crazier with injuries. The injuries, which we will talk about. But the Bengals, I'm sorry, the Ravens tight ends doing nothing against the Bengals in a game that was. a 50-something point over under was the most shocking result and probably the most devastating. I mean, I guess it's actually Burrow on top of that too. Like Burrow, well, I loved Burrow. I would have played Burrow over almost every quarterback this weekend. And it was devastating. It now feels it feels a little scary with Burrow moving forward actually to me.

I got a little bit of the heby-gibs. Yeah, you're playing for nothing at this point, right? What, what? If you won this week, you had a small chance. Now you're playing for nothing, and the dude's not in the right headspace, I think right now with how tough the year has been. The comments, not just the press conference, but from Jamar Chase, this after the game. And, you know, it does make you wonder if this season is just, it's going to be tough to get up for the rest of the games for Cincinnati. You know, we always joke about this. Like one of my prize picks projections that I missed is that I took, I took Josh Allen over 20.5 completions. He had 20. And so we all sit back and we go, Vegas is unbelievable, right? The bookmakers. And then you see a game like Cincinnati and you see, and Baltimore, and we forget how wrong they are about that game. That game was completely wrong.

Half the points, less than half the points scored than they project. So the good news about all of the craziness that can happen and all the unpredictability is that if you are in the playoffs and you're an underdog, you're fine. You've got a shot. I mean, we've said this in the past and it is, it's not entirely true. Make it to the playoffs. But it is, you know, there's truth to this phrase that we have said many times. I don't think we've said it on the show much, but we've set it off air a lot, which is like, It's a lot of lead up to this. I really want to know what it is. It takes skill to make the playoff. Oh, yes. And it takes luck to win a championship. Like, you know what I mean? Long enough season, the skill's going to get you there. You got to get to the playoffs. But then you got to have some luck in the playoffs. You just have to. Did you mail a package to Jalen Warren? Oh, whoa. What you? What?

he's got an illness well sure i don't know i thought you were not a bomb yeah no you know some danger in the mail i meant like a petri dish yeah did you send him a petri dish i did not this is pure luck um you know he's wrapped in some smallpox blankets and that oh oh oh we do not condone bio orphan no never have never will No, not publicly. By the way, another crazy thing that happened this weekend for those that, and I was catching everybody up in the office about this last night, but there's a bunch of controversy going on on all platforms about Woody Marks's rushing touchdown. Because what happened on the play against Arizona, Arizona was well on their way to giving up their weekly 40. And they snapped the ball and went through the legs of C.J. Stroud. It touched the ground while Woody Marks picked up the ball.

kind of just torpedoed into the end zone. It's basically a wildcat run because the ball went to the ground and then he picked it up directly, rushed it in, probably about five yards out. And it was, it looked like when I watched it live, I didn't tell, I couldn't tell that the ball hit the ground. It looked like a direct snap to him that he caught low and then rushed it in Wildcat touchdown. Awesome play. So what ends up happening is no platforms are counting that as a rushing touchdown. Nonsense. CBS, Yahoo, NFL, ESPN, as far as I last knew, I don't know about Sleeper.

But those four, I've seen reports on this. And so what happens is in most leagues, like if we've, we've had Trameymy Bride score. Fumble recovery touchdowns are just on. They are on ours. On a lot of leagues they are. But I think what happens is on like the, and CBS on the commissioner leagues, some of the default league scoring formats just simply don't have that as something that counts. It's a rushing touchdown that you get points for. It's not any touchdown. at least to the point where there was a ground swell all over Twitter. It was wild. Over multiple leagues where this is the case. And so, you know, most leagues are probably when you're setting up your default league, you're really not thinking about changing that as a default format. If anything, it should be defaulted on and you have to choose to be like, that shouldn't count. But also, I think it's utter nonsense to count this as a as a.

Fumble recovery touchdown. Like what Trey McBride did, you know, last year. Diving on a football. Someone fumbled it into the end zone and he dove on it. That's a fumble recovery touchdown. Okay, whatever. He wasn't part of the play. He just recovered the touchdown. This was like, this was basically a wildcat snap where he rushed the ball in. And I was thinking about this. If, because we see this every game. A ball touches the ground for the quarterback on the snap. He picks it up. He throws it. He completes the pass. And the play happens. Are you telling me that that doesn't count? That's a fumble recovery pass. No, it's a freaking football play. It's utter nonsense. It all comes down to the official scoring. And I get that. Every platform should by hand auto correct that into a rushing touch. Are you telling that to the commissioners? I'm telling that to the platforms. But on a commissioner basis, that's tougher. It's got to come from the platform. It has to.

Because it probably affect- Make it right. A commissioner can't unless the- I wonder if there'll be an official scoring change. Yeah, it's nonsense. I give all commissioners the right to go and change that right now. As long as they're not involved in the matchup. Fair, yeah. If they're involved in the matchup, then it's- Unless it causes them a loss. I don't think so. I think that it's just everyone should go change it. You should. It's the right thing to do. Even if you're a commissioner and it gives you the win. So be it. It's the right. No, I don't think Al's on the same page here, and I'm not on the same page either. If you're the commissioner and this gives you a win, you can't just go do that. But you want to wait in? If your league scoring settings say that you don't get points for a fumble recovery touchdown and that snap hit the ground. Well, technically. If that snap hit the ground and fumbled, then. Yeah, I mean, you have to go with the official score. This is why I defaults at the same platforms need to override this.

I agree with you on that. If the platforms do it, then that's fine. It's out of the commissioner's hand. Mike, if you and Jason were in a battle and you're down by five, Jason will have a different opinion right now. No, I would have the, I promise you. Well, you would because you'd be getting the win. No, no, no. If I were going to lose from this, I would have the exact same opinion. Well, yes, you would. Because I think that's ridiculous to not change that and give a man. He scored a touchdown. He got the snap. Give him six points. He rushed for those yards and got the touchdown in.

He technically recovered a fumbled. Does he get rushing yards? I don't know. I'm pretty sure he gets. I'm sure you probably do. He gets yards of some kind. How would you not get a touchdown? We're not debating what it should be. It's just the official scoring report. Like I think it's just really odd if a commissioner would change it arbitrarily to give themselves a win. That's insane. At the very least, every league. I'm giving everyone permission to do it. Yeah. Thank you, Mike. I think at the very least, every league should like have a vote. And if majority says yes, of course, that should be a touchdown, then you change it in your league. Because it should be. That's, yeah, that is unfortunate. Did it swear in our league? Did we look at that? I'm just curious. I'm sure it did. Well, we allow touchdowns for recovered funnels. Oh, good. So we have Monday Punday reaction. I'm sure we're going to hear a lot about that debate in a minute in the Twitter sphere and on YouTube. But we have your reactions to the weekend on Monday Punday because, of course, we do.

Hmm, starting with a wonderful, amazing performance by Clever Lawrence. Oh, he was so good. How about T. Be my bride? He's going to break the record. Yeah. We got Travis E.T.N. Zone. Oh, Jason. So happy. Oh, M.G. St. Brown. Oh, to infinity. Yeah. And Trevion. Yeah. Oh, jolly old St. Nix. People had the courage? Yeah. People played him. Kyle. Trips. Nice. Tile trips. Jameson Mega Millions. He's still playing well. Now we're into the bad. We got the bad. We do have a comment from Andrew who says Jason owes me 200 bucks because he says Jason Jefferson. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We get that out on Twitter. Isaiah likely ended my season. Yeah. Namir Gibbs. Jamir Phibs. Thank you, my man. I really enjoy.

Ashton Shanty. Yeah, that's good. Or no burrow. I like this one. Quinshawn Buckins. Yeah. Tetero McVillan. Bad McConkey. And deck depressed Scott. Yeah. That is, I would have been really upset if everything else didn't go my way. Because these games that have happened for Dak Prescott, where he plays well. He has enough yards. He moves the ball. And then they just, every touchdown is a rushing touchdown. He played okay. Sure. I mean, it wasn't like he went. Well, it was crazy is I saw somebody had heads up last night, Brandon Aubrey versus Dak Prescott. They had Dak. They lost. Wow. You imagine you're going into the game, Dak versus kicker. And Aubrey, ironically, lost them the game. By missing two kicks? Yeah. Yeah, it's crazy. Crazy weekend. You can submit your Monday Pondays on Instagram at Fantasy Footballers on X at the FF ballers.

Every Sunday night you can post those to us and we'll talk some news. News and notes from around the league presented by progressive insurance. Yeah, that's a good point, Al. Just audit your league settings in the off season because I think Sleeper is the one that avoided this issue. I think Sleeper is the one that has defaulted on. It defaults, fumble recovery touchdowns is on. And so, you know, if those other platforms, I think they're in a bind. I think those other platforms are in an impossible position. Because I don't think you can make a scoring change that the NFL doesn't make. I don't think that Yahoo can just say, well, the NFL scores at this, but we're going to score it this for the sake of your playoffs. I think they're all in a pickle. So I think you can have a league vote. Yes. And the league vote says, hey, reasonableness is what's going to win out here in our league.

I think reasonableness is one of the tenets of fantasy football league that we all abide by. One of the tenets of humanity. Or should be. It should be. Yeah. And so, I mean, I think if, you know, if it's me, if I'm the commissioner, whether it benefits me or not, I would just say, hey, guys, let's not, let the season end. with something ridiculous where the guy's not rewarded for a play that was a football play where he went into the end zone and scored. Yeah, I mean, he got the snap, he rushed it forward, he scored a touchdown, got the points for the Texans. It's listed in the skate. You want to read that like? Yeah, so I went and looked pro football reference, which, I mean, shout it to them, great website, a lot of good stats and everything. It is, they have it listed as a C.J. Stroud aborted snap, recovered by Woody Marks at the Arizona. And returned one yard touchdown. Oh, it was only a yard out.

yep well that's where cj was yeah the run ended up being five six yards but um yeah i don't think we were counting on the aborted snap scenario i that's so it's crazy hey the jets fired steve wilkes whoa problem solved wait a minute he couldn't get Arizona Cardinals are you aware that you can no no no no like this oh wait no no they did real quick yeah yeah i'm just saying the cardinals should fire And I just want to make sure they... I thought you were making a joke because the Cardinals already fired Steve Wilkes before. They did do that once upon a time, but I just mean in season right now, you can do this. The Jets have zero interceptions on the season. And I guess they're disappointed that Steve Wilkes couldn't get enough out of Sauce Gardner and Quinn and Williams. He's the problem. They gave up 48 points and he's the problem. Okay. He seemed to do really well with nice personnel in Carolina before. I remember that. And Denver.

And anywhere he's had good personnel. It's just, yeah, okay. But Brady Cook couldn't get the win, so let's fire Steve Wilkes. I'll tell you what you suck, Jets. You suck, Jets, you suck. Raiders, you suck. I don't know if we need a you suck list with all caps, but those three teams are on it. I'll tell you what you should not do. If you are a high level cornerback coach, an awesome linebacker coach, the new hotness, you should not accept this job. to be the defensive coordinator for the Jets because you will not do well. Not to mention you may go out with the bathwater, right? If they fire their head coach after one year. That's, it's always tough, man. You had the, uh, you want to do this? Uh, no, I'm good where I'm at. We had the year of both Ben Johnson and Bobby Slowick. We're like, nope, we're not taking the jobs. We're going to stay where we are one more year. Work for one. Ben Johnson, it becomes a smashing success. He gets the job he wants.

The other guy is Kyle, is he in the league? Is he doing anything? I believe he's in the mailroom. I'll check in with Bobby. Yeah, you check in with Bobby. Devon H.N. off the injury report and good to go. If he scores over 41 points, Jason will be set. Which he did two weeks ago. Bobby Sloke is the senior passing game coordinator for the dolphins. Does that mean he's the old one? All right. That means that's called a demotion. Yeah, Devon A. Chan, off the injury report, ready to go. Patrick Mahomes. I mean, we are, it's endless news to talk about. They were on the cusp of being eliminated from the playoffs in which they ended up being eliminated. Goodness gracious, Gardner Minchu made sure of that. It's Minchu time. Patrick Mahomes out for the year with the torn ACL. The parallels to Brady's torn ACL are wild. I don't know if you've seen that. No. What? Same season.

after three titles. It wasn't Brady? Brady won? Yes. I know it was. It was game one. I traded everything for him and he ruined my season. Yeah, they're different people. It's not exactly the same. It's just the same exact season in the NFL. After the same amount of titles, after the same situation in the Super Bowl, it was just pretty interesting. It was the most insult to injury situation that I can remember where it's like as a Chiefs fan. Nobody wants Mahomes to miss time. No, no, nobody. Even anti-Chiefs people. NFL fans don't want Mahomes hurt. No, you want, like I was rooting for them to not make the playoffs only because, you know, watch the world burn. It wouldn't not root for this. And it's like, oh, dude, they already lost. They already were going to miss the playoffs. You didn't need to do this world. Brady Mahomes Manning has, have been in every single playoff since 98. Wow. Those three. So this will be the first time since 98. No Brady, no Manning.

Noma Holmes. AFC's wide open. Buffalo. Go do it. I am telling you to do it. This is your time. Yeah. What a crazy game that was. I was hiding under the bed after the first quarter. Oh, yeah. You called for the- Kill the Patriots. No, no, no. I'm not- They killed them in the second half. I'm not victory lapping that as a- because I said I thought they'd kill him. Yeah. But at 21-0, I thought I might not have a job anymore. I was like, what is going on this year? I can't see nothing. I'll tell you who else. And then what a comeback. It was over. All of Twitter. Oh, my gosh. Oh, yeah. Everybody. Duncan. Just victory lap and at 21-0. There's.

there's two halves of football everyone just hold your comments hold your comments for one more half oh yeah i was playing against josh allen and we knew oh yeah in the first quarter while he's getting shut down i'm like this isn't like i'm not gonna be happy about this yet we know it's gonna happen and we are all guilty of it but the human impulse to just post as soon as humanly possible like if there's something like a christmas season something i want to put if somebody's getting coal They're getting cold for the, when we get the first quarter, you guys are morons about this guy. We're like, okay, maybe, maybe we are, but please let the other three quarters go and then you can dunk on us. Also, the Patriots absolutely should have won that game. And I don't mean, they fell apart. No, no, no. Oh, I'm not blaming the Patriots. That was an interception that they caught. They let you talking about. The interception. The PI.

The defensive pass interference it was called. They don't count the interceptions after pass interference calls. He got his head around, looked at the ball, made a play on the ball, caught the ball, intercepted the ball, and got called for offensive pass interference. And what's crazy is... No, defensive. Earlier in the game, Trudevius White did almost the exact same play where you could have called a pass interference, but he intercepted the ball for the bills. Not called. I didn't have a horse in the race. I don't care who wins. I wasn't rooting for either. It is a brutal pass interference. It is an awesome interception. You are completely wrong. I disagree with you. You were totally. Correct. Biased against Josh Allen scoring in that situation. Well, that's true. Okay. I have a screenshot in front of me. He's staring directly at the receiver with both hands on. Have he already looked? Yes, he got. You don't get to look and then make contact. That's insane. If you look, yes, you do. You can make a play on the ball and intercept. It's illegal.

It's an illegal play. That one happens all the time. If you look for the ball and then you end up running into the player, you are often given the benefit of the doubt. You can't look at the ball turn and then push the guy. You can't do that. Go look up the statute for pass interference. It's crazy. I'm just saying watch both of those plays and there's a lot of similarities. One was called the pass interference. One was a given interception. The same game should call it same way. Also, they should have played better in the second half. Yeah, we'll take a break. We'll talk some more news. This episode is brought to you by

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Making the beginning of the game really interesting. Like this past week, I had Giovante Williams. I took the less on his, in his first five rushing attempts, will he have more or less than 18 and a half yards? Bryce Young, will he have more or less than seven completions? You know, things like that. It makes the beginning of the game truly an event, extra special, extra fun for your fantasy football weekend. Download the prize picks app today and use code footballers to get $50 in lineups after you play your first $5 lineup. That's code footballers to get $50 in lineups after you play that first $5 lineup. Prize picks. It's good to be right. Devante Adams, this sucks. Oh, man. Goodbye fantasy playoffs. Devante Adams will not be a part of it. He left early with a hamstring injury. He just, they already said it didn't look good. He was running in a straight line and then he went down. Yeah, the ball was thrown. And you're like, oh, this is good. I think he's going to get. Oh, he stopped running. He's hurt. He is. And then he was. He just laid there. Face down knowing.

Like when you have that reaction, he laid face down like he was deceased for 30 seconds, 60 seconds. He's bringing it back. Or he was blinking on no points. It's a weird time to do a meme, but. Yeah, it's going to be like, I think at this point Rams fans are very hopeful that he is there for the NFL playoffs. Yes. If you have him in your. It has to be. Our champ champ champ dino junior league, we've been riding on the back of a lot of Adams touchdowns. We will have to pivot. All right, what else do we have? Roman Dune's a three minutes before kickoff was ruled out of this game after they said he was going to play. All three of us tweeted it out as quick as we could. It was like three minutes before. Yeah. And I had some responses to my tweet that people saw it just a little bit late and that that made the difference between them making the playoffs and not or going to the next round. Yeah, it was that one's brutal. What a pump fake. That's terrible.

We had Christian Watson. This was scary, got better news about it. The Packers went through a run of injuries in this game that, I mean, you already have the terrible, horrible, awful news. Michael Parsons is torn ACL. Yeah. Was that confirmed? Yeah. Well, no, it hasn't been confirmed with an MRI, but I mean, usually. They know. It's been confirmed with MRIs. Oh, nice. Yeah, I mean, like every doctor under the sun. And my, and LaFleur's comments in the post game. Non-contact. I mean, we, yeah, you see a shin pop. That's a former. Christian Watson left with the shoulder injury, chest injury. There was some concern about clavicle. It's not clavicle. It's a sprained SC joint, similar to what Tyree Kill had a few years ago. So not a major injury was the quote we got. That is very good news for this team moving into the playoffs. It's not great for maybe next week. RJ Harvey, I didn't know this, left early with a rib injury.