AFC North Breakdown + Hot Takes

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it's that time of year fantasy football is back everything is ramping up your leagues are getting ready you're talking trash with your friends you need to make sure you get this year's 2019 ultimate draft kit so that you can dominate those fools make them look stupid this year we've added a new mobile app it's awesome if you want all of our projected stat lines every sleeper breakout bust

All the information, Dynasty, Auction. It's all in there. We're updating it all season long. It is the most proven tool for Fantasy Football. Go to Ultimate DraftKit.com. Hello, my name is the Mighty Steve, and I'm from Newcastle in England. My team is ABC Easies RG3, and you're listening to the Fantasy Footballers. To the Fantasy Footballers podcast. Coming to you from pristineauction.com studios with your host, Andy Holloway.

Jason Moore and Mike Wright. Ah, welcome in. Top of the morning. Bonjour. It's good to be back, guys. How are you feeling, Jason? I feel fantastic. I got some sun in the California beaches. The California sun. It's a lot different than your son. So here's the thing that I actually figured out.

Like, it's 70 degrees in San Diego. Obviously, it's 128,000 degrees in Arizona. It's so, like, it's much cooler there just by the temperature. But here's what I found out. When you go outside and you stand there without shade, it's the same sun that is here in Arizona. They don't actually have a different sun, and it's so hot. And it bakes your skin and that is terrible. Sun is hot, accurate. Yes. More hot takes on the way.

Welcome in Tuesday, July 23rd. Guys, we're almost to five shows a week territory. I can't wait. We're almost two. Because that means it's time for real actual fantasy football. Camp, not real actual football. Real actual fantasy football. That's right. I've heard there's, there is some football starting. They base the fantasy football off of the real game. Did you not know? Look, they.

can thank us for their contracts. That's for sure. Fantasy football camps are opening up soon. Fantasy football season. They are. Draft kits are open right now. That's right. We have a great show. We're in the AFC North today. Steelers. Oh, there's going to be some ravens. Heated discussions on the Steelers. The Bengals are there too. Yeah, we'll cover the Bengals at least a little bit. I think you, well, we're going to talk about all of them.

Front to back, this is one of the most interesting, compelling divisions for fantasy football. Because even though prior to recording, you know, I was kind of talking about how I'm a little bit more down on the Bengals this year, including their fantasy options. They're the worst team in the division, and they have great, highly drafted fantasy options there. So, I mean, you know, it feels like we've done a lot of these divisional shows where once you get to the last team, you're kind of like, yeah, you don't want anybody. Pass. All right, you can find us on YouTube.

YouTube.com slash the fantasy footballers. Make sure you subscribe. Click the bell so you're notified of brand new shows and segments and highlights and everything you need to know for fantasy. You can find us on Instagram, Instagram.com slash fantasy footballers. We're on Twitter at the FF Ballers. And Jason mentioned it at the top of the show, but the ultimate draft kit is available now.

$1 of every UDK sold goes directly to our good partners at St. Jude Children's Research Hospital. This year they've been incredible partners for the live tour where we'll be in L.A. here in a couple weeks and back in Phoenix for that. So shout out to St. Jude and all the work they're doing. We're happy to be a part of it. And here's your quick question for the day. So it comes in from Eric. Eric. Yeah, that would be it. That meant so to you. No, don't worry. There's people out there that know what I mean.

It's a league change voting question, and this is something that comes up a lot. How many votes do I need to make a change to the league? Some of us want to replace kicker with a second quarterback. What do you think? Well, you need one vote for that. That's...

If you're wanting to get rid of kicker. Do you need a vote or you just need like an idea? You need an idea, a thought, a whisper in the wind to say get rid of kickers from fantasy football. I know Andy you disagree with me on that. But in reality. In your case, you need someone from a neighboring league to just cast one vote. Right. And that's fine. And that's good enough. Change it now. I knew a guy who had a roommate and he was dating someone and they got rid of kickers. You're listening to this podcast right now. This, what we are telling you, is enough. Get rid of kickers.

But no, in reality, for a league, you need a majority. Now, for something like this, the question is, do you need a super majority? Do you need unanimous? Or do you just need seven out of 12 if you're in a 12th person? There's plenty of leagues that don't need any votes at all. The commissioner ends up just making the decision. So that's step one is, you know. Not in America. Yes. Not in my American leagues or democracy. Well, the thing is, it should be a vote. Something as fundamental as a second quarterback position.

I would say you need a super majority. You would need something like 70, you know, a 10 man league, seven of 10 owners. I'm not doing the math on the other leagues, but you can apply the 70% rule. The super. The super majority. That's where I, you know, and there are things, you mean, unanimous decisions. If you're going to expand the roster or like to keepers, if you're going to move to keepers, that's something that I would like to say needs to be a unanimous decision.

Or at least that rule has to get put in place with plenty of lead time for people to make adjustments. You can't just have a majority vote midseason that now we're doing keepers. Oh. And no, but the other half of the league hasn't planned for it. Changing to a money. Because I'll vote for it if I have good keepers and I won't if I don't. Right. Changing to a money league. That needs to be something that's unanimous. Can't be like, well, we've been in this look for 10 years. Now we want, you know, money. And, you know, that needs everybody. If you're doing any crazy.

Punishment. Say, loser gets a tattoo. Oh. We're going to go ahead and say that one's going to need to be unanimous. We had someone who wrote in, remember this? Yes, I do. Where it was like a 12-man league and 11 of the 12 owners voted for it to be a tattoo league. He didn't want it. He was the only one and he finished last. You are not stuck to get that tattoo. No.

Jason, I'm going to suggest something. I know you want to get rid of kickers. Yes. Have you thought about just belittling them? Like changing their... I have done it my entire professional life. Fundamentally in fantasy, change their points to like 0.1 points for a 50-yarder. I am 100% fine with that. See what I mean? Then they start to get, feel bad. They may leave the leagues on their own.

is what I'm saying. That would be delightful. I see. I see where you're going. I prefer if you are going to listen to this and say, hey, I'm going to go back to my league and make it better. We're going to get rid of kickers and get rid of the unknown that people don't really put a lot of work and effort into. I would replace it with an extra flex as opposed to an extra quarterback. We can go super flex. Sure, if you want two quarterbacks. Yeah, that was the point. You were just saying it's a profound change to go to a super flex league. Yeah, that changes the dynamic of.

the league in very large ways, which is, I mean, Super Flex League is great. Yeah, all right, fair enough. News and notes from around the league, presented by Sleeper. All right, there's a few pieces of news. Brooks wanted me to mention this. I see a little note pop up in there, but we are, we did start something new, something to help fantasy owners in general, and it fits in with the news thing. And if you are interested, we've started a newsletter called the Blue.

called the Blitz. It's so cool. And it's, it's kind of a reimagined way of, like, you've all gotten newsletters, you've gotten piles and piles of information and links and solicitations. That's not the point of the Blitz. The Blitz is you get the five biggest stories in fantasy football delivered to your inbox once a week. We curate the stories. We add in a little bit of a spin and some snark and we make it fun. And that's it. That's what the Blitz is. First one goes out Thursday. Yeah. You don't want to miss it.

So you can, if you want to sign up for that, it's free. You just go to the fancy footballers.com slash blitz. And a little insight here, peel back the curtain. This has been like a six-month pet project from Andy that he's wanted forever to have. Like he really has been the driver behind this. He's excited. I just want something useful for people to get when they open it up and you can read it. I don't know. It's going to be like, you can probably read it in what I've been saying is half a poop.

Half of them. Oh, nice. You don't need a full. Half a poop, you can read it. Okay. It's just quick, easy to consume information. It's the, look, the thoughts already there, I can't move away from it. Oh, great. Let it out. Just half of it. The turn of phrase. Peel back the curtain. When have you ever peeled a curtain? Hmm. I think it's just the expression of you peel things and that same motion is what you use to pull a curtain back. It's really not that hard. You, that's how you peel an orange.

Well, no. Now you get a nice grip. But I mean, just turn a banana sideways and then peel it. And that will be very similar to the motion of opening a curtain, Mike. I'm just saying. I think you could do it. Look, we say a lot of things and we don't ever actually think about what we're saying. That's one of those. That's very interesting. Well, you can noodle on it for a while. Think about it. I'm doing it right now. And so is everyone listening to this show. All right. A bunch of active PUP list news coming out. The Texans placed.

DeAndre Hopkins. This one was a little bit surprising. Yeah, they said that the issue is presumably his shoulder because he revealed that he had, quote, torn some of the ligaments off the bone in the playoff loss of the Colts.

And so the thing about this pup news is I don't overreact, fantasy owners. That's my opinion. Not yet. Some of them are surprising. But the thing is that you can come off the PUP at any moment in time. There's two types of PUP. There's the active and the reserve. If you hear someone is being put on the reserve PUP, they're going to miss some time guaranteed. If they're on the active PUP at any moment, they can come back off. It's just basically saying, hey, we can use roster spots for other players right now while we're waiting on him.

But it can bring to light some injuries you don't know exist, and that's what happened with Hopkins. And the quick counterpoint to this was Will Fuller avoided the pop list, which is, that's great news for the Texans offense and for Fuller. Yep. The Patriots put Sony Michelle on the active PUP. Yep. So he won't be on the field. More Damien Harris snaps, more James White snaps as of right now. This was surprising. It was discovered that Julian Edelman, former.

or last year's Super Bowl MVP, spotted at his youth camp with a brace on his thumb, going to be sidelined for at least three weeks due to the injury. That's according to league sources and Field Yates reported that as well. And Schifty. So Edelman missing some time. This is the problem. It is the problem with Julian Edelman. I mean, this, did I adjust him yet? No. I don't think he's going to miss any time. Here's what it brought to mind. Yes, I might.

Not because of the thumb specifically bleeding into the season, but because that Edelman chose to remind me of the state of Edelman. The state of Edelman is very often this state. And am I factoring that enough into my lofty projections of Julian Edelman for this season? Because he's the greatest player to prognosticate over 16 games. He's not the easiest player to get through 16 games. So yes, it's bringing to mind some of the...