Top 10 QB Rankings + Player Tweaks, Tom Riddle - Fantasy Football Podcast for 8/13

It was fantastic. We didn't talk about Harry Potter at all. So the thing is, is obviously getting adjusted to a new system, a new receiving core, new coach in a COVID year. So you think the back half of the year is probably a little bit more indicative, but also had injuries in the front of the year and then got Antonio Brown added to the team in week nine. But when you look at the splits of the first half or the second half, the last eight games.

It is the perfect split because that is when Godwin was healthy the whole time. Antonio Brown was on the team the whole time. Mike Evans was out there the whole time. It was basically, if these pieces are on the field, what is it like? And he had the whole stretch and obviously went to a Super Bowl. During that stretch, he was on pace for 5,193 yards and 42 and a half touchdowns.

He was outstanding. And when you have Chris Godwin, when you have Mike Evans, when you have Antonio Brown, when you have Grunk as your fourth weapon, and when you're getting even an O.J. Howard back, granted, it's Achilles. Maybe that won't do anything. But it's more about the receiving court here. This is...

an offense that we know is going to move that is going to score a ton of touchdowns with the greatest quarterback of all time. He's going late in a drag. It's just easy. I'm just going to throw another wrinkle into the equation that he did not have last year on this offense that he will this year. I never imagined he could possibly help another franchise. Oh, no, you are not. Don't do it. You are not doing it. He's not going to help your fantasy team, but he's going to help Tom Brady get a lot of free. You know he doesn't have a mustache anymore, right? Free yards and it's Joe Bernard.

He got his James White and Gio Bernard a perfect fit for Brady. He came out and said how excited he is to work with Gio this year. He is going to open their playbook up to the James White experience as well and give the immobile Tom Brady an escape hatch that isn't the bumbling stone hands of either Fournette or Ronald Jones. Anyone throwing the ball to Ronald Jones? When Giovanni Bernard shows up, you're like, what? This is an angel.

Just send it from heaven for me. So I think we all just, look, there's a non-rosy picture for Brady. Yeah. Injuries to some of those players, his decline, you know, there could be the defense. It's a pretty good defense and it could limit how much he has to do. I mean. Right. He's 44 years old. If he comes down with any kind of injury, I mean, we, look, Peyton Manning was absolutely awesome late in his career.

unbelievably good until one injury couldn't be recovered from, and it was poof, it was done. Right now, he's healthy, and so I will say this. If he's more healthy. If he sprang, right, because he played on the MCLS. Yeah, if he sprains his foot or his shoulder or something in week three, you know, I'd be fine to move on. You know, he's just going to, if that happened, he'll eat a lot more plants on me. He'll eat a bunch of grass and he'll be fine. Yeah. And I'm, again, I'm not as bullish on Tom Brady as you guys. I'm fine with him.

in, you know, in the eighth round. I've seen him go later sometimes as well. But if we're talking just at ADP, you got Tom Brady in the eighth or you got this next guy in the seventh. Aaron Rogers. And that's where I would go. Aaron Rogers. So you'd go around earlier with Aaron Rogers, seventh round. It depreciated ADP due to why? I mean, MVP last year. Because we thought he was going to retire. I think, yeah, I don't think this is.

Like what you're saying right now is accurate where if it's one round difference, why not go with Rogers? Yeah. But I don't think come August 27th, it'll be a round. It'll be two rounds at that point. Once the casual players show up, Rogers will likely skyrocket. Yeah, I mean, 48 touchdowns kind of skyrocket. And was the quarterback three last year? Incredible season. You know, highest percentage of his touchdowns in the red zone, you know, just.

dominant. I think it's a pretty good value if you can get them here. You can't count on 38 touchdowns or 48 touchdowns again. Yeah, I agree. 48 to 5 touchdown to interception ratio. That feels like a cheat. And to highlight the red zone numbers and how insane it was, let's go 2019, he throws the ball 17 times inside the five for seven touchdowns, which.

That is actually a very good. That's a high number. Last year, 30 attempts inside the five for 20 touchdowns. I think that number's going to come down. Well, he has his good friend, personal request. He did some fantasy trading this off season. He did. And he acquired his good buddy Randall Cobb to return to the office, which does help. I mean.

Reliability is what Cobb brings you. It's not explosiveness. It's okay, when Devante Adams isn't the option on this play, which is a rarity, I have somebody else I can throw to. So Cobb is there. Aaron Jones, you know, he loses Jamal Williams. Aaron Jones is there. He's got Tonyon as a great...

Red zone and, you know, a touchdown option, especially as teams start, you know, getting more and more worried about Devante Adams and shifting coverage. They're very good at sneaking Tunyon out for large gains to a wide open side of the field. I have no problem with Aaron Rogers. You just look back at his career and obviously first belt Hall of Famer, but fantasy career, he has finished.

high so many times. He used to be the consensus number one pick year after year after year. And there is something to the fact, you know, like touchdown regression is probable here. Yes. But I do actually believe there is something tangible to the fact that he has zero farts to give about what the Packers think, what the Packers call. He is going to do what he wants to do. So when he's on the goal line and he wants to throw a touchdown,

And they call run play. He's going to be like, I'll just throw it to Devante Adams because I know I could do it. Like, he's going to have a great season. And to your point earlier when we brought up the touchdown percentage, the numbers with Josh Allen, you know, the fact that the league average is what did you say, four and a half percent? Rogers has been below that number one time in his entire career. Yeah, his career averages 6.1. Yeah. And he's been up above 6.5 percent like six seven times. He followed up a outlier 45 touchdown season.

where he was 9% with him just a disastrous, 39 touchdown, 7% season. So 48 touchdowns probably not going to happen. But 39, explosive weeks, week-winning weeks, you'll be happy. We'll just see where that draft price creeps up. Yep. Seven is Russell Wilson. Eight is Dak Preska. Oh, boy. Oh, boy, Dak. But let's start with Russ. He was the...

Quarterback six fantasy finished last year, but it was a bumpy road over the back half, 4,200 yards, 40 touchdowns, 13 interceptions. You're going to be living in the efficient wonderland of Russell Wilson. But that is a, I mean, that's a, it's a scarier place as a fantasy player to be waiting for efficient touchdown totals compared to, you know, pure volume or something of that nature. Russ has been over efficient his entire career, so it's not an outlier to.

to project him above the NFL average. And he does, he's still mobile. He still runs around over 500 rushing yards. You're not getting a high output of rushing touchdowns, but it's nice to pad those numbers, a little bit of safety with over 500 rushing yards last year and still over 4,000 passing yards. For me, the question for Russell Wilson is imagine, because we know what,

The top is. You know what Russell Wilson could do. You saw it for the first half of last year. If that gets put together into a full season, that's the quarterback one. But you know that Russell Wilson, at the very least, is still going to be, he'll be a top 10 guy by the end of the year. It's just, is that road? Is that a paved road? Or is that a cobblestone? Cobblestone. And you're...

By the end of it, you've got to repair your shocks. My wagon wheels are shattered. I mean, what do you do with that, Jason? 18th inconsistency over the back half, first in the first half. And you don't just average those things. You have to think about it as your experience as a fantasy player. You spend an early six-round pick. Aren't you locking them in?

Yeah, you would be locking them in if you draft someone in the first six rounds. That's the tough thing to do. And as far as, well, which one are we going to get? It really is all entirely to me about the system. Like, Russ is good. Russ can get it done. It's what system are we going to see? Because there were really two systems last year. It was the first half of the year let Russ cook. And then he started, you know, having turnovers and losing games. And then they're like, oh, we got to, we got to.

change that. We've got to throw less. And so they really swung the pendulum too far the other way. And then they replaced the coordinator in the offseason with a lot of offseason hype about wanting to run more, pass, less. However, Shane Waldron, the new offensive coordinator, everything he's talking about, everything you're hearing from the players. I've heard Russell Wilson, Tyler Lock, Andy K. McCaff all mentioned this independently. And, you know, Shane Waldron's saying it over and over is tempo.

Tempo, tempo, tempo. They want to be a faster-paced offense. They want to keep the defense on their heels. And I do believe that if you just get more offensive snaps in for Russell Wilson, he's going to be more consistent and a great fantasy option. So if you want to take the shot of the talent and the weapons that they're going to be a faster pace of play, I'm fine with that with Russell Wilson. But you are going to lock him in. And he has over the last several years.

Just had, like it's always, every single year, it's like, well, one half's good, one half's bad. I don't know what it is, but those things scare me away, and I will probably not take Russell Wilson in a redraft league in a best ball league. I'm in love. I'm hopeful for the offense, for what you're talking about with Waldron, because the volume went, when Russ was destroying in that first half through week nine, he was averaging 37 passing attempts per game.

And then after that, the second half, it was 32. So it wasn't like his attempts got cut in half or anything. I mean, yes, on average, five attempts per game. That's a substantial number. But it wasn't just the volume completely went away. He was worse. He was worse. The offense was worse. More turnovers. Defense knew how to stop what they were doing. DAC is at 8 right now. Here's a quick question on DAC. We know the potential, right? We know how good he is when he's on the field.

Is he off your board if you're drafting in the next week? This sucks. How far does he fall this week? Yeah, I mean, he was a fifth round, a fifth round quarterback, the QB5. If he falls to the seventh, I would scoop him up still. Okay. You take the chance. How about you, Mike? Dude, I was dreading talking about Dak Prescott because he, before the injury to what it was officially a lat injury, is that where we are?

I mean, the injury too is so he can't throw. Dak Prescott was very exciting for fantasy football. He's always been a fantastic guy for that. He was off to an insanely hot start before the broken ankle. And now it's, I don't, when is Dak going to play? I have no idea. Am I wrong? You guys saw Hard Knocks this week. Yeah. McCarthy was reacting to the amount of involvement that Dak had in the first practice. You realize that? It wasn't like,

They went into the first practice and said, let's make sure we keep him under this. It was he had the first practice. And then they go, oh, my gosh, he had this much work. Now let's limit him. Yeah, by whatever their statistic was. Yeah, it seemed like they. Whoops. It was a reaction. And he was so upset that he wasn't giving more playing time. And here you are with clearly an injury that's probably the result of like a long hiatus and being out there on the field. It's disappointing. There's too many question marks for me right now.

I guess Jason's right. I mean, there's always a point in which you maybe make the investment. But I see you, Andy, you have DAC down at 10. Was that a result of the? No. He's been there that whole time for you? Yeah, I just like other quarterbacks better. Okay. I have not adjusted him since the injury. Interesting. So you guys have them at 6 and 8, all of us behind ADP because you do have to spend a fifth round pick on him right now.

whether or not this injury to his shoulder existed, there was still coming back from a severe ankle injury. How mobile will he be? How much of the rushing, like he's always been good for a handful of rushing touchdowns. There were some question marks there and there were other players that I just like more.