"What If?" Scenarios for 2020 + Fournette Fallout - Fantasy Football Podcast for 8/31

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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. This is the story of the one. As a shipping manager, he's running the dock, stocking supplies, and making sure every order goes out on time. And Granger helps him stay prepared.

From shipping supplies to PPE to hand tools, he counts on Granger to keep products moving and trucks rolling. So his operation runs smoothly no matter the shift. Call 1-800 Granger. Click Granger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done. It has been cut. Well, good news. Half of you still have your drafts left. Better news for anybody who's already drafted using the ultimate draft kit. You saw Leonard Fournet was in there as a bust.

Well, stay away. Stay far, far away from this situation. No, thank you, Leonard. They didn't like him and tried to trade him for a bag of potato chips. Here's the point. If you still have your draft left to go, get the ultimate draft kit, get our tiered-based rankings, get these blurb write-ups, get our risk grading, which was very high on Leonard Fournet. Dominate your draft this week, and it is not too late at ultimate draft kit.com. To the fantasy footballers podcast with your host, Andy Holloway.

Jason Moore and Mike Wright. Oh, welcome in Monday, August 31st. The fantasy footballers back with you, Jason Moore, Mike, the fantasy hitman, Wright. I'm Andy Holloway. Busy morning.

Not surprised. The NFL is quickly approaching. The regular season is 10 days away. Oh, that's fun to say. I know. I know. We're only 10 days away from Deshawn Jackson scoring twice in week one. Can you believe that? It's looking more likely by the day. Well, let me ask you this, Andy. Do you think the Eagles will score twice in week one? I do. Well, then there's a pretty good chance it's Deshaun Jackson.

Yeah, or Zach hurts. We will talk about some more Eagles injury news. We'll get into the big story of the morning. Leonard Fournett has been released by the Jacksonville Jaguars. And this was a bombshell that hit very early this morning. I got up and I said, oh, I need to get a 32 bold prediction article out again this year. And then as I started to think about that,

Leonard Fournett is cut in the 11th hour after they apparently tried to trade him. This was punishment, it feels like. They really did him dirty to at this point, to have not let him test any sort of free agent market. The quote was coming out saying, well, we just couldn't get anything for him. So move on. If you don't want him on your team, let the player go and try and find a better situation.

I don't, you know, we don't, we don't know, but it just feels personal. Yeah. It's, it's crazy how you hold on to someone until you're 10 days away from the league and then you cut him where they can't do anything. It's a bad situation for Leonard Fortnet. He will be signed by someone. I don't think he'll, I think he'll clear waivers and then be a free agent. You guys think he's got a good chance of being picked up, but pretty decent chance of being grabbed. But it's not good. And the situation can only get worse for Leonard Fournet.

We will press pause. We'll come right back to it in the news. Talk about Chris Thompson. Talk about the rest of the backfield where we think Fournet could end up. I want to remind you, you can find us on Twitter at theFFBallers. YouTube.com slash the Fantasy Footballers. If you missed the Sleeper Bowl draft. We did that on Saturday. You can watch it right now. Drafted against Juju Smith-Schuster, Ninja, Tim the Tapman, Zach Efron, and a bunch of other great folks in that celebrity draft. I think it went pretty well. I think it was a good time.

And so you can check that out on YouTube. Here's the quick question of the day. Give a what if scenario for the 2020 season and the fantasy football implications as such. So Jason, give us an example. Sure. I had fun last night really digging deep into this questioning and challenging myself. What if?

AJ Green is 100% healthy, and he is the player he has always been on the field. He's the same age as Julio Jones, who's a first round value. You're saying, what if AJ Green is just the dominant AJ Green he's always been? Because I am not a believer in that. That's not how I projected, but I need to be wise and say, what would that be? So here's what I did. I took a look at his last two full seasons, which are admittedly 2015 and 2017. It's been a while, but I wanted to really look at

If he has a full healthy season, how good is he? I looked at the average target market share, the average yardage market share, the average touchdown market share. Put all that together and extrapolated it out to current year rookie projections for Joe Burrow. And I said, if he gets what he got in the past, these monstrous numbers, what would Joe Burrough support if he stays identical? Well, here was my results. A.J. Green would have.

93 receptions, 1,341 yards, and 8 touchdowns, which would make him my wide receiver 5, which is outstanding. Now, I don't think that, you know, in the past, with those other teams in 2015 and 2017, when he was younger and the backups were Brandon LaFelle and, you know, Tyler Croft and change, I don't think he's going to have that. I think a realistic, if he's healthy and dominant still, would be...

more like a 25% market share, which put him still as my wide receiver, 10. I have moved him up because of this exercise in my rankings. Now, I'm not projecting him to be fully healthy. Was it tough to do exercise, Jason? Oh, man. Only mental squats, okay? And my mental workout was pretty good. I still... And some shimmies. You caught me. I like to work up a mental sweat. Exactly. In a book.

So I did move him up. He was my wide receiver 38, which shows I, you know, I look. That is disrespectful to the man. It was a little bit disrespectful in the sense that I was projecting him to be done. Be, you know, this is, you know, the beginning of the Swan song. I moved him up to wide receiver 26. So he's still not someone that I'm projecting to be who he was. But he has a great wide receiver. He's currently healthy, I guess.

Yeah, for him. He definitely is. In the rearview mirror, but sometimes objects appear closer than they are. I will say this. I'm going to throw one more thing in there, and I've loved everything about this morning so far now. If A.J. Green does go down. I encourage every fantasy football player to run out and get Tyler Boyd. If he's not drafted, pick him up. The volume will be there for him if A.J. Green's down again.

But hopefully he's not. Hopefully we get to see some vintage AJ Green. The stat line that you put together there is like AJ Green's stat line every year of his entire career. Projected if it was just short season or full season. So I hope that's what we get. There's a lot of questions. Joe Burrow, we don't know. And I've got him projected for a great season. In fact, this moved Joe Burrow up this little exercise to my quarterback 15.

But if you look back at those years where A.J. Green dominated, and, you know, Dalton and company was 4,100 yards, 3,320 yards in 2017. And A.J. Green still dominated. Mike, what about you? What's your what if scenario for 2019? So my what if scenario here is, and I've kind of... Is this the same as a wishful thinking scenario? A little bit. Okay. A little bit. Can you just say for 2019, Andy?

We are very accurate on what ifs in 2019 at this point. What if James Winston throws 30 interceptions last year. He'll probably get released from the team. Apologies, Brooks. I try not to mention 2020, but thanks. I have alluded to this a little bit of kind of just going down the dream path. What if Teddy Bridgewater actually goes deep?

with frequency for the Carolina Panthers. He was, I mean, he was paid in or paid a lot of money to become their guy. He's surrounded by talent. You're surrounded by three wide receivers who can get it done in the vertical game with DJ Moore, Curtis Samuel, and free agent Robbie Anderson. And then, of course, you know, Christian McCaffrey is there. But last year, if you look at guys who threw the ball over 150 times, he has the second best.

adjusted deep completion percentage. He's good at throwing the ball deep. He just chooses not to, or at least historically, we haven't seen him really do that. We have seen a little bit of a hype coming out of camp that this is going to be worked in more from Teddy Bridgewater. We've seen one of those famous training camp video highlight clips of him going deep, and it just brought it up again to me of...

What could this offense actually become if you have an accurate passer going down the field to Curtis Samuel, who last year, I mean, he was, his air yards were through the roof. His completion on those passes was really bad because his quarterback play was so bad. But what happens to the Carolina Panthers if head coach Matt Jaw Rule?

Turns Teddy Bridgewater into a deep passer. Then that's what would happen. Yeah, they'll murder these fools. It reminds me of Alex Smith. He was always good at throwing deep. And that just didn't. It wasn't his tendency. He didn't like to do it. That is a great comp of, how many years did we see Alex Smith being a great quarterback, a very accurate quarterback, and just, okay, we know who he is. We've written it off. He has never, ever.

going to be a guy who just airs it out, and then Andy Reid finally unlocked their door. Derek Carr's in that category, too. Sure, and maybe... Pretty good deep pass. It doesn't do it a lot. And that's why I bring up the coaching change. What if? What, yeah, Matt Rule. Maybe he unlocks the door, and Teddy Bridgewater starts chucking it down the field. It has to feel good for Teddy to have the job to himself, too. He's not coming in after Drew Bray's and just making sure...

that they don't lose. And they draft a quarterback where he's coming in as the starter, don't lose the job. But eventually someday they'll switch. He's the guy for now. It's a good point. And as we transition into news, my what if scenario for 2020 is what if Jacksonville really is the worst team in the NFL? What does that mean for the prospects of Gardner Minshu? It's a bit of a chicken or egg, right? If Gardner succeeds, they probably won't have the last pick in the draft.

But I'm saying what if because there is no team. This is the Vegas favorite to get the number one pick. Their win total in Vegas before cutting Leonard Fournett, before the trade this weekend with the Vikings, dismantling that defense in its entirety. They were projected with the number one pick. So I wanted to look back at the last 10 years. What's the fantasy finish of the team that finishes last?

At the quarterback position. Right. Which oftentimes is more than one quarterback because the season has gone poorly. So I looked at total points at the quarterback position, not just one. Here's the fantasy finishes. The last 10 years. 31st, 32nd, 29th, 32nd, 24th, 21st, 32nd, 25th, 18th. All right. 32nd, 24th. Wow. So you just told me that they're not getting the last pick. Yeah.

I like where you're at. See, my big what if is, what if they're actually better now that they don't have to give the ball to Leonard Fournett 200 times. Now, that's good data, Andy. It is. 27th is the average fantasy finish for the team that finishes last. Now, again, I said it's chicken or the egg. You can believe that Gardner will usurp the odds. But right now, this team looks like a train wreck. And they've been a train wreck for 10 years. You should start talking about Jacksonville and their management and their coaching and their...

hierarchy in the organization in the same breath that you do the Cleveland Browns. That's the level of futility. And I'm sorry, if you're a Jacksonville fan or a Cleveland fan, you do know I'm telling the truth. Oh, they know. Honestly, I feel like for the first time ever, you know, that was disrespectful to the Browns. Like, that's, you know, Jacksonville is. It's just going to be tough. It's going to be tough. I wanted people to know the risks. It doesn't mean that Gardner can't.