Fantasy Football Podcast 2017 - Early TE Rankings

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We'll get a $75-sponsored job credit to help get your job the premium status it deserves at indeed.com slash podcast. That's indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now, then this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. Hi, this is Eric Dickinson, NFL Hall of Famer, and you listen to the Fantasy Footballers Podcast. To the Fantasy Footballers Podcast.

Coming to you from the fantasy jocks.com studios with your host, Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright. Welcome into the show. It is Thursday, April 13th, 2017, and I'm going to tell you right now, you guys are both very lucky that I am here today. We are? There is a swarm of bees that has nested itself in my front yard.

There's something going on. And I thought about just staying home. The scientists are talking about, you know, the bees are disappearing. Hogwash. We have found them America. They're in Arizona. They're all in Arizona right now. People are fleeing for their lives. Did you see this at a baseball at one of the spring training games? A swarm came through and everybody laid down on the ground like it was a nuclear drill. Yeah, because there's bees. Yeah, it's basically the same thing. They were swarming my house two days ago. Yeah.

Is this the same? Did you send them to my? I bagged them up. I took them to your place. You put them in the tree? Yeah. That's not nice. If you asked me, which I guess you could do that right now, what do I fear more? A nuclear bomb or bees is the answer. The answer is firmly bees. That's strange. But I'm not going out like that, man. Not going out. You'll go out the nuclear route, whatever.

Yeah, that's fine. But the B's slow, painful thing. If one of those things had to kill me, I'm definitely choosing the nuke. That's true. I'm dying one way or the other. Go ahead. Yeah. This has gone down quickly. As you say, I normally do a lot of fantasy research, but I've done a lot of bee research over the last 24 hours. And apparently all of them are Africanized in Arizona. This is what I've learned. That's what the papers will tell you. The papers? The Papes? When I go out and get my Sunday newspaper from the driveway, see.

The papers. We have a great show that is not be related today. We have our early tight-in rankings. So I'm very excited. We're going to try to get through about 15 tight-ins. To be honest with you, like the research on the tight-in position was more interesting than just about everything we've done so far because you have so many of these guys that are some are injury prone. Some have had these big years and then down years. And projecting them forward, you know, that's a position where if you pick the right guy.

that advantage is huge week to week over your opponent. And it's not just the Grankowski story, right? Like, yes, when Rob Grankowski's healthy, he's great. And hint, hint, he'll probably be at the top of our rankings. But outside of that, there are guys to identify and kind of say, you know, maybe I draft this guy in the seventh, eighth round, and he's a difference maker for me all season long. So I'm really excited to talk about that. Quick question of the day, guys. We talk about streaming the quarterback position all of the time. Can we compare, this is the question that came in.

Can you compare streaming the quarterback position to streaming the tight-in position? Is there, you know, do you view it the exact same? You know, we talk about these positions where you only start one guy like the tight-in in the quarterback position versus the wide receivers and the running backs. So can you compare those two for our listeners? Yeah, I would say certainly. In fact, when I was looking up and researching this question, it almost appeared to me like it's more important or at least more valuable.

to stream tight ends than quarterbacks in the sense that, you know, quarterbacks, if you had a quarterback won last year, they averaged in six point per touchdown leagues, 25 points. That's the format we play in. And a tight end one in a half point format averaged nine points. But when you look at the defense and, you know, a good defense, what do they give up versus a bad defense? Usually like the top five in both quarterbacks and tight ends.

it's basically about a three-point swing in both directions. So a six-point total swing. Well, a six-point swing, when your average is nine, is gigantic. When your average is 25, not so much. And even when you look at, so like last year's number one tied in, Travis Kelsey had a great season, and it wasn't even touchdown dependent, right? He was just a monster and had, you know, lead, did he lead in targets?

No, not targets, but he was close to the top there. You know, I want nine points at least from my tight-in and a half point for me. Sure. Want that 10, but a nine I will accept. There were seven times last year that he didn't even have nine points. And Jason Whitten, Mr. like, you know, All-American, dependable, give me that nine. Guess how many times, Andy, would you say he had nine fantasy points or more last year? And I don't know that answer. He finished as the Titan 12. Whitten did?

Yes. Nine fantasy points or more. I'm going to guess three times. You nailed it. Really? Three? 13 times he let you down. Yeah. I mean, that's kind of the story of the tight-in position. But when you talk about streaming, we're going to go through 15 guys today. And then we all have a sleeper pick outside the top 15 that could be a guy that ends up in that range. It's all about touchdowns. I mean, right there, that's 18 guys that we're going to talk about. And you're right, it is. It's all about touchdowns. Finding defenses who are susceptible to the tight end is.

often former, far more advantageous than just rolling with a middle of the pack. You're saying when you pick a streaming tight end, that's the way to do it. Yeah, like you have the guy while he's given me tied in seven numbers. I would rather grab a guy who I know is going against the third worst defense against tight ends and hope for a touchdown from that guy. Certainly. I mean, Jason Witten, right, I talked about him just second ago. Only three times was he over. And yet he finished as a tight end one.

One of the reasons is because when he played Cleveland, one of the worst teams in the league. That was a great strategy last year. Right, play against Cleveland, and he was eight for 134 in a touchdown. All right, we have a new article up on the website. What's on tape about Michael Thomas by Kyle Borgiani? You can check it out at the fantasy footballers.com. Our Twitter is at the FFBallers. If you want to follow the hitman himself, you can do so at FFHitman. Jason is at Jason FFL. I'm at Andy Holloway. And check out.

Join thefoot.com or fantasy football community. Lots of premium resources and perks for supporting the show. We appreciate everything you guys do out there to subscribe and review and listen to this show and support this independent podcast. Let's go ahead and jump into the news. News and notes from around the league. Jason's, the look on Jason's face is he's somehow, he's very tired of talking about Marshaun Lynch. Oh, man, it's just like the news won't die. I wish we got like a drop and made a drop.

Two months ago, like the Marshawn Lynch watch. I was in my car this morning going through a drive-thru, picking up a little breakfast smoothie. And I had some 90s music on, right? There's a CNN documentary that's coming out about the 90s, which somehow we can do a documentary about the 90s. I don't really understand. Because it was 40 years ago. I know. I know. It was 400 years ago. But a song came on that really summarized my feelings on Marcheon Lynch. What do we got here? What do we got?

Hmm. Just got me right in the fields. Got you right in the junior high dance fields. Separated on the sides. Big space in the middle. Fellas on the left. Ladies on the right. No one dancing. No, Moses comes right through. Saving the best for last. The news report this morning, Marshaun Lynch has begun the reinstatement process. Shortly after that report from ESPNZ Warder, you had Ian Rappaport hopping on and saying that, uh,

He's going to be traded to the Raiders. So I guess that's what we expected. There were some weird reports last week about the Patriots as a potential destination. Well, there was also another weird report this morning. About Richard Sherman. Wherever Sherman goes. Apparently they're, what are they tight? I guess. I mean, they're buddies. All right. So saving the best for last. I'm optimistic about Lynch when you have two top 13 seasons out of Latavius Murray in Oakland. I think Lynch can be in that.

RB2 with RB1 upside range. So they're expected to work out a trade very soon. And so we'll see if that happens in finality. But another step forward for Marshall Lynch returning. Any reason this isn't happening, Mike, at this point? No, at this point, I was wrong about Marshall Lynch coming back. I still stand by that he'll be overdrafted. I have never been more. Now I hope he doesn't come back now that you flip-flop.

Now I'm actually rooting against it. According to, who is this, Tony Pauline, the 49ers are ready to give up on Carlos Hyde due to his struggles with injuries. What do you make of this report? Because nobody knows more about injuries than you, Mike. This is very true. I love guys who are injured often. I love Carlos Hyde. But this is what I will say about this. Just embraced it. You got to follow the trail because before this news was.

The, the news, the smoke in the bushes that came out, the San Francisco 49ers are possibly going to draft a running back at number two. Sometimes there's smoke in the bushes. Sometimes there's rumors in the bushes. The bushes are doing a lot of things. The other day the bushes were talking back to Mike. I don't know what the, the bushes are where rumors happen. We're back to Moses, man. But they were leaking rumors that.

Maybe they want to draft a certain running back. Yeah. Number two. And people are like, no way. Like, oh, you know what? We don't like our running back. So maybe we will. And now there's more news today like of John Lynch saying we're open for business with the number two overall pick. April news. Now, if it's coming from me in Rappaport about, you know, things like the Marchion, I at least pay attention to that. April news coming out from teams.

I listen, but I'm mostly just in one ear and out the other and kind of barely keep in mind. I mean, the truth is Carlos Hyde is very injury prone. They could deal with having another running back. This is not, we didn't need any news to, you know, announce that to us. Like breaking news, Carlos Hyde gets injured a lot. Yeah. Yeah, I think this is a, this is a memo. Me, he's saying all this while he's staring directly at Jacksonville.

Yeah. You know, you're right. You guys, do you remember draft misdirection, seeing what kind of packages people can put together. And for the people who are like, well, this is a conspiracy theory. Just think back to the Trent Richardson year where the Minnesota Vikings had, I think was the third pick and the Browns were fourth. And they had Adrian Peterson on the team. And they stared at the Cleveland Browns and said, we're going to draft Trent Richardson unless you move up.

And they did. And they got free picks out of it so the Cleveland Browns could move up one spot for Trent Richardson. Jay Cutler, contemplating retirement. I believe you read that backwards. The NFL contemplating retirement for Jay Cutler. Yeah, nobody's shown any interest in Jay Cutler. And Jay Cutler's lack of interest in playing, or so it seems, for years. For years. It's certainly encouraging teams to do nothing about it. So a couple other quick.

pieces. Mike Gillisley and Damian Williams visiting the Patriots. They're restricted free agents, both of them, so it would cost the Patriots fifth round pick for Gillisley. Look, Gillisley is talented. So I don't know why you need 17 running backs in New England, but apparently they're willing to kick the tires on just about everybody. Are they just trying to rack up frequent flyer miles? You know, this to me. They're just flying people out. Yeah, they're bringing everyone in, just building up those miles. I heard they, I think they heard us talk about how sad it is for.

free agent running backs and they're just trying to make them all feel better. I feel like this is actually indicative news, right? I mean, this isn't speculative. They brought these guys in. So it says to me that at the very least, they're considering another running back. And the Rex Burkhead signing, everyone said, oh, Garrett's not on the team anymore. And so Rex Burkhead is in. Look at all the touchdown opportunities, which always was weird to me because he's not that type of a back.