Fantasy Football Podcast 2015 - Week 16 Review, Studs and Duds, MNF Preview, Playoff News

You ask us if we're having a good year. We haven't beat the Packers. We haven't won the division. I think the situation that will most likely happen is that the winner of that game is going to the next week host that game again. So, I mean, you're talking about an incredibly important Sunday night football. Exactly. So we will listen to the reports, listen to the coaches, relay that information to you, so you're prepared for your fantasy championship game if you're playing in week 17.

A little bit of news on the injury front, Matt Hasselbeck, forcefully retired by the opponent. I tried to warn him. I tried. I listened to that part of the show, and you pleaded for the human being of Matt Hasselbeck to be given a break. He seems like a good guy. You know he's playing next week.

My news is this, that Charlie Whitehurst will likely start. But you know Matt Hasselbeck will somehow start that game because they're still in it. Not like this. Not like this. And there was a point of the game where Charlie Whitehurst got knocked out. So you're talking about three quarterbacks who got knocked out. I got a phone call. A phone call to see if you're ready. Yeah, I got a phone call from Indianapolis. But here my point was, when you're drafting.

Philip Dorset in the first round. Maybe, just maybe, there's a problem with your offensive line in Indianapolis where all of your quarterbacks are dying. Just saying, that's an issue. General manager. Well, they don't have like a really important quarterback to protect. Well, no, they have about four that they can't protect. All right.

Matt Forte was seen stretching out on the sidelines by trainers, didn't come back into the game. We don't know if he's significantly injured or not, but we'll see what happens next week. It couldn't mean bigger things for Langford in terms of carry totals. And more importantly... More touchdowns for Khadim Karee. Yeah, I mean, he's just... Let the hate mail begin for Khadim Kare. Let's just be honest. It needs to be filtered straight to John Fox.

But if you're a Matt Forte owner, that was trouble for you. And then Ted Ginn had a very disappointing game. He went off the field, grabbed his leg briefly. He did come back into the game, but he didn't make an impact. We don't know how much that impacted his performance on the field yesterday, but obviously that team struggled mightily.

in what was Cam Newton's worst performance of the season, and they lost, and now they are fighting for that home field throughout the playoffs with the Arizona Cardinals, depending on what happens next week. I believe Carolina plays Tampa, and the Cardinals play the Seahawks. And Carolina is at home, I believe. Okay, and the Cardinals are at home as well. Yep, yep. And they will both be...

Both games are in the afternoon. They have moved Carolina to the afternoon for the situation of both teams have to play without knowing if the other team has already won. Smart. Very smart. So before we get to our fantasy stud muffins of the week, we want to thank our sponsor of the day, PokerStars.net. We've been talking about them all December because we like to play a little bit of poker, and there's no better place to do it than PokerStars.net.

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All right, so as we reflect on the guys that had big time performances that genuinely won people fantasy leagues this week, I want to put them into a little bit of a year-long context for our listeners as well, because this is kind of the culmination of either a surprising year for a lot of guys or a surprising week. So we'll talk about them a little bit. But the big names, Cousins and Bortles. Wee! I mean, if there was ever a time when it was okay to kiss your cousins.

Hey! It would be this weekend because, man, 31 for 365, four touchdowns, and possibly the most memorable negative four yards of the season. What I'm titling Neegate. I've never seen anything like it. It was delightful. You were on delay and we were just, we couldn't type in big enough capital letters are just... I needed a font increase. I did. I did. I needed some.

Comic Sans 42 to... Now, if you didn't see... Well, it had to be shameful. You had to be shameful. If you didn't see the play and don't know what we're talking about, let me just ask you a question, listener. If the half is almost here and time is going to expire, but you're on like the two-yard line... With no timeouts? With no timeouts. Should you... Should you A? Throw a quick slant. Should you B kick the field goal? Should you C?

Spike the ball. Spike the ball. Or D. Take a knee. Victory formation and just stick it to him. Because he went with D and he took a knee and they went into the half with zero points. The best part was the, well, the two parts that stuck out to me beyond just the lunacy of the play.

Because something happened in his mind. But the play was supposed to be a fade to Pierre Garcin. And then if he catches it, it's a touchdown. If not, they got a second to kick a field goal. And the second he took the knee, Pierre Garcin just started marching off the field. With his hands on his hips, he knew exactly what had happened. Jay Gruden was completely confused. Obviously, he didn't mean much to your fantasy day or...

Well, I mean, it could have. I guess they could have scored again. I enjoyed watching Cousins right after the knee. Go, stand up and go, oh, what am I doing? And then try to spike the ball again. He tries to run. He's like, I don't know what I'm doing. His body was like trying to spike, trying to run, trying to hide all at the same time. Yeah, you can't hide from that. One of my favorite tweets of the weekend was somebody messes. They said, thank goodness for the Colts play, that fake punt play. Otherwise, that would have been the worst play of the year.

for cousins. You're like, oh, man, thank you for reminding me of the cold fake puns. That was something special as well. And I thought. See? I forgot about, hey, let's move every blocker out of the way. Snap the ball. We'll get them. Somehow these plays just happen and they're magnificent and we should find a way to reward them. These are professionals. It is amazing. It almost, we thought it happened yesterday with the coin flip with Matthew Slater in New England. Now, it came out that.

Basically, Belichick let him off the hook saying, hey, I wanted a kick. Yeah, liar. No, it's Belichick. He just did it a couple weeks ago to the Broncos. Yeah. So anyways, Blake Bortles showing that he is indeed a fantasy force, 27 for 368 and four touchdowns. Big time game from him.

He's going to be entering in. He's already a top five fantasy quarterback. And with the performances of some of the guys ahead of him, he may move up even more. Drew Breeze had a really great performance where there were questions about his injury all week long. He came out through for over 400 yards and three touchdowns. Brandon Cooks helped him. And the same injury that Peyton Manning has missed several weeks with. Yes. Am I right? You are correct. Yeah. He's got better doctors. I guess.

I will say this, in the long-term dynasty context for Drew Breeze, it is my belief that Drew Breeze and Sean Payton will both be there next year. I have said this for a while. I know differing opinions on the show. Jason thinks that Sean Payton will be gone. I know there have been discussions about San Diego now with Sean Peyton. Jason's conjecture has always been Indianapolis. Those things are very possible. I believe that they will both be back. I believe Breeze will take a pay cut in that team. I think you saw yesterday, Breeze.

still can play the game of football at a very high level. Yesterday there was reports coming out of the Breeze will be forced to take a discount. If he wants to stay in New Orleans, he's going to have to take a pay cut. Which we've seen with Brady, we've seen with Manning. But we'll see if he's willing to do that. Yeah, yeah, exactly. So Ryan Fitzpatrick against New England. Three more touchdowns, those wide receivers.

They do it every single game. Two touchdowns for Marshall, one for Decker, and no one else ever catches any. No. But it's great. It's actually a really great thing to bank on when you're an owner of Decker or Marshall because in the red zone, all the plays are drawn up for those guys. I mean, you have very few touchdown scored by anybody else unless it's, you know, a dump off to Bilal Powell, who, by the way, had a pretty good game again. Matthew Stafford, Mike's start of the week. Yeah. Had a very good game. Yeah, he did. He was 29 for 301 yards, two touchdowns.

He gets to play the Bears next week. Yeah. That doesn't, that's not so bad. No. And Jason started the week. Brandon Whedon. Yeah. Okay, maybe not. But no one started the week. No one started the week. Yeah, apparently his mom actually started Matt Stafford in her league. Yeah, it was really sad. In her league. Brandon Whedon. Isn't this funny? Brandon Whedon and Ryan Mallet got to start some games for different teams yesterday.

Ryan Mallet looked like he was happy to have a job. Yeah, and he got it done. Yeah, he did. That was a shocking game, the Ravens versus the Steelers, if you watched any of that. Two of the Steelers losses. Oh, that is one thing I wanted to say. I was going to talk about before we started the show, and I said, let's just wait and start the show. Divisional matchups, you need to throw everything out the window. St. Louis went to Seattle and dominated. Dominated. The Seattle Seahawks. Not...

The Seattle Seahawks from week one, or week three or week five, the Seattle Seahawks that were extremely efficient in the pocket with Russell Wilson and throwing the ball down field and blowing people out of the water, got blown out of the water. And it showed that Seattle has some weaknesses on that offensive line that if a team can exploit them with the pass rush, that team cannot do what it's done over the past few weeks. And we know the matchups that they had over the past few weeks were different than the St. Louis Rams, right?

weaker. Let's just put it that way. My point was going to be the offensive line. We saw them earlier in the year when they were losing games was because of the offensive line. If you remember that primetime game against the Lions where Russell Wilson was running for his life every single play and in that game they happened to just manage one scramble for a touchdown or for a deep pass that turned into a touchdown. That's what happened this week. The Rams, their defensive line was just

eating them alive. So that is a concern for the Seahawks moving forward. And it goes to show, too, with Aaron Rogers having the second worst game of the year, their offensive line is the same type of issues, and they suffered more injuries this week. We know better than anybody as Arizona Cardinal fans from years past that ignoring the offensive line in the draft or having issues on the offensive line,

You know, it doesn't matter how good of a quarterback you are. It gets you. You know, Russell Wilson, would you say Russell Wilson is above average in terms of evasiveness in the pocket? Yes. It still doesn't matter. You know, these are professional athletes, professional defensive linemen and linebackers that can run pretty fast. If they're in practice. If you don't block them? Hey, Russell, do a three-on-one drill, see if you can get away from these three NFL defensive backs. He's going to lose. Yeah, yeah. So, wide receivers. Julio!

Julio Jones. Hey, always start your studs? He came through unless their names are Brady and Big Ben. It is a dangerous dance, but Julio was humongous, literally, on that play. I mean, Matt Ryan, have I not been saying this all year? Throw the ball deep to the giant man who catches the ball. It drives me crazy. And they just threw it up to him. He had Luke Kikley on him, and he had Kurt Coleman on him. It didn't matter.