Fantasy Football - Week 1 Studs & Duds + Panic Players, Deep Breaths! - Podcast for 9/8

easily like Jason would win. I have the burrow chase stack, which fell completely flat. It's very rare when Jason says I won. Oh, yeah. I don't like to jinx myself in that situation. I think I was down at like the 1%. But it all worked out for me. My three running backs from yesteryear that were supposed to be great were great in Bejohn and Brees and Travis E.T.N. So I was like, yeah, all right. We split. Unfortunately, you did not have the king. The King Henry here, Derek Henry, if you missed it, you should go back and watch all the highlights from the game. The insanity of, look, I really needed Derek Henry. So, I mean, I was glued. The third quarter of, like, Derek Henry barely touching the ball and then moving to Justice Hill a lot, just in that particular quarter, it seemed very odd to me. It was a really strange decision by the Ravens when Derek Henry is just doing whatever he wants. And they're like, eh.

it was like something else it was literally like an adult playing with children yes that's what it felt like he was at that point in the game i think he only had 13 or 14 carries it wasn't like we got to give him a break or rest he didn't he couldn't have a lot of carries because he kept housing them he kept ending drives with the 30 plus yard touchdown man he's he's the best bejean was number two I got it done in the pants again. Yeah, we're lucky he had that huge reception. Giovante was number three. Yes, Giovante Williams with the two touchdowns. James Cook at four and Christian McCaffrey at number five on the week. With no touchdowns. Yeah, 32 opportunities, 10 targets.

He was everything. He was, you watched the Niners game, and I know that, look, they had a ton of injuries, right? There's, there's no IUC that got rid of Debo. There's no kiddle for most of the game. Juan Jennings goes down. So it's like, what do we do? And their answer was just, it was basically like, I would say three-fourths of every play was in the hands of Christian McCaffrey. 32 opportunities. Just stay strong. Stay strong. We had Travis ETN, 16 for 143 against Carolina, three targets, 61% of snaps. Bigsby saw 21% Tooten, 6%. I will remind us. Second highest rushing total of his entire career. I will remind us that what we said going before the week, you got to remember what you thought before the week. We said, don't worry about production. Someone's going to have a monster game here. Yeah. Worry about the snap counts. And the breakdown of.

Like, that's it. And so I'm not going to sit here and say Travis ETN is going to be great rest of season. 143 yards against Carolina. Seems easier. There was a lot of inept tackling by Carolina. 61% of snaps. Yep. To Bigsby's 21 to Teuton's 6%. And their other running back look. i want to say lequint allen i don't remember his name off the top of my head um he was actually more involved early on than than some of the others so but it was clear that travis etn yeah was their primary starting running back yep and if you drafted him and like you're like he's on your bench i think you should feel confident next week against the cincinnati bengals on the other side of the ball no the uh the our foot clan hq our ultimate dashboard yeah

I was looking at my teams on there and it said, hey, I think you set your lineup wrong. You should have Travis E.T.N. over Adam Thielen. And I was like, okay. And I made that switch. So he's in my starting lineup, Mike. Okay. And you built that product. I did. I did. I was part of it. Don't victory lap that too. That's true. That's true. Oh, okay. Fair. Fair. That's right. Oh, my gosh. It would be so great if you had three touchdowns. In the other side of that game. You know, you look at the snap counts here. Even in a super negative game script, Chuba Hubbard, 67% of the snaps. 16 for 57, also had a receiving touchdown. And, you know, that's a good sign for those that believed in Chuba Hubbard. We were definitely believers. But in a negative game script, you didn't see him come out of the field and a bunch of Rico Dowdle or something. Sequan, 18 for 60 in a touchdown, five targets. Breece Hall. Let's talk about it.

Yep. We had a show, we had a show three, two, three weeks ago, and it was like, what's one player that would be most likely to flip the script on the narrative in the offseason? And we brought up Brees Hall because we had been there before. We've been here where the offseason, no one wants to believe in Brees Hall, and then Braylon Allen gets all the offseason hype. And it was the same situation. Back there with Michael Carter. You know, this was a really impressive performance, 19 for 107 on the ground. Now he didn't get a bunch of pass catching. He only had two receptions, but they went for 38 yards. Well, he did get four targets, but that was 100% of the running back targets. So I was happy with that. And it was an eyeball test. Like he looked really fast where for some reason he just didn't look that way last year at all. He was one of the most telling players this week for me where you want to talk about a changed opinion because I don't want to

You don't want to underreact from week one either. You know, we talk about don't overreact, but that was one where it was like, oh, okay, he looks like he is playing for a contract. He's auditioning for his free agency. He looked very sleek and fast. Devon H.E.N. 7 for this one, look, seven carries. Three catches. Now, he scored. But I wonder your reaction to that because you look at. 10 total touches for Devon A-chan. Ollie Gordon only saw three. They were throwing the whole game, but this could be a little bit of the Miami Dolphin season. It could go downhill quick. Tua was so unbelievably bad. You talk about how much they threw the ball. And they shouldn't have thrown it that much. Devon A-C-Gan had four targets. I mean, Devon A-A-chan is, you know, he's usually in games with Tua. He's on like 100-target pace.

And so it was so weird to me that they weren't involving him in the passing game. I don't expect that to stick. I don't understand what happened with the dolphins. They were so bad. I couldn't really make sense of it. J.K. Dobbins was the start of the week. He ends up getting into the end zone. 16 for 63. The split in the first half, it looked really 50-50. It's just. Yeah, are you talking about 50-50 with bidet? Well, Badegh was out there a bunch. Sean Payton. But in the second half when the game, when it got under the line, I think that's when you need to pay attention, there was a lot of Dobbins. In the second half, when it was the final drives to put the game away. 16 for 63, a rushing touchdown. Harvey was very good. He had a 50-yard run. Harvey looked like he has juice, and he will.

definitely get more involved as the season goes along. And I think it won't take long before he overtakes Badee. And Badee was more of the passing game. This is what was interesting to me. It was like looking to see who's got the passing game role. Does J.K. Dobbins have that? And he didn't really have that role. That was Biday. And so R.J. Harvey looking as good as he did, I could see him sneaking in, keeping J.K. Dobbins in the role he clearly has right now. and then having RJ Harvey just overtake Tyler Bodei. Jacori Croski Merritt. 10 for 82 and a touchdown. He looks so good. You know, Echler, solid veteran snap counts were in his favor, but the juice was Bill. Yeah, Echler had a good game. He's got the same role he had last year, which was a role where he was very often in the top 24 weekly running backs.

This looks like it is Bill's, Bill Kroski is going to be the one of the one-two punch here throughout the season. Top five wide receiver scores on the week. Zay Flowers was number one. Quentin Johnson number two, Emeka, Bucca, number three, Keon Coleman number four, and Debo Samuel. One of the reasons. Not to victory lapis season on Debo, we said a couple things. One, I thought he'd start strong. Veterans start stronger at the top of the year. But two, it's the offense. Everything about Washington fits the pursuit of Debo Samuel because they do so many short area targets, screens, endarounds, misdirection, close to the line of scrimmage. It's really nice for Jaden Daniels to have somebody capable of doing that. But their offense looked pretty good. They didn't get it going.

until i mean it was like 14 to 6 for a long time but keon coleman really nice to see the target count there i think he was at 12 uh had the deflection touchdown that wasn't intended for him but also had a couple of intentional you know targets in the end zone that didn't work out he had one where he i think he had two two point conversions that were targeted to him one he ran out of the back of the end zone the other one he ended up The ball wasn't really placed in the right spot. But if you look at his last several healthy games, his target share percentage is really, really good. They talked a lot about what a great camp he had, what a good offseason he had. This is what you hope. You hope that there's a guy that can come in here and start demanding a 25% market share for Josh Allen. Now, it won't always be the bills down by 15. You know, that's going to be more rare than when you play the Ravens.

it does look like there's the potential chance for him to emerge as a clear number one wide receiver option. What do you make of the huge performance? Two touchdowns. Five for 79. This was not, you know, one weird broken play. This was a good performance. Yeah, he was clearly ahead on the depth chart. You know, Trey Harris was the second round pick. So it was could he take over? And then you had like the weird offseason where Lambert Smith was. the one making some noise in training camp all and then all along. You know, it's, it's Keenan, it's Ladd, and is Johnston as the three primary starters. And so it's a, if you buy into the pass rate and what Justin Herbert did in week one, then I think you should buy into Johnston. He's not going to do this every single week, but he, he was out there running a ton of routes and it really was divvied up. You're talking to the targets were divvied up between the three guys.

Here's a tweet from our own Kyle Borgnoni. Okay. 22 plus fantasy games in full PPR since the beginning of last season. Since the beginning of 24. You have Justin, Jefferson, C.D. Lamb, Nico Collins, Tyree Kill, T. Higgins with three of them. Nice. You have Drake Lennon, D.K. McKeff, Jalen, George Piggins, with two of them. And then you have Quge with four of them, more than any of those players the most in fantasy football. Explosive. He's the player they're going to look to around the red zone, period. It's not going to be, you know, he, that's where he thrived last year at times. So I think if he keeps catching the football, that would be good. Emeka, Abuka, it was a weird game because two big touchdowns, Jason, you said you felt a little disappointed in Abuka just from a target standpoint. Yeah, I mean, genuinely the way that they were playing, the Buccaneers, when they were down, needing to throw the ball at times.

He wasn't a hyper-targeted guy the way that Chris Godwin was hyper-targeted last year before the injury. So I was, look, I'm not going to be disappointed on a two-touchdown first NFL game. Awesome, right? Mecca, boo-ya. But I was a little bit disappointed in the utilization throughout. Well, you did have Mike, you brought up Baker's performance. It was saved by touchdowns. Mike Evans was not good. Right. We'll see. I'm pretty excited. It's just that they're, you know, one of the teams like the Lions. Packers, it topped your defense, but that's the Lions' first game without Ben Johnson. This is the Bucks. It's been Baker's M.O. to just keep getting new offensive coordinators. But Liam Cohen leaving will be something to be paid attention to. Keon Coleman was 8 for 112 and a touchdown on 11 targets. He ran 94 of the.

percent of the team's routes. That's a good sign for those of us that believe Keon could break out and be their true number one. He looks like that guy to me. Debo, we talked about it. Seven for 77 had the rushing touchdown. He also had 40 snaps in the slot. That was double his previous career high in 2022. Wonderful. Very cool. Garrett Wilson, nine targets, seven for 95 in a touchdown. Should have had two touchdowns. Yeah, should have had two. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He don't know how he got tacked. I think he slipped. I need to watch it again. No, I remember it really well. The defender came in. We thought he might have even face mask him, and it wasn't. It was just an awesome tackle around the shoulders, but it still felt like just have a little bit of momentum and you should get in. It's weird. What do you guys make of that of Garrett? 100% of the routes. Well, that...

That better be the case. Well, even, you know, elite wide receivers don't run every single route. There was never a question of whether he was going to be on the field, getting the most targets, getting a ton of targets. The only question was how catchable are these targets? Right. How good are the targets? Yesterday. He caught seven of nine. No, yeah. I mean, that's because they were all catchable. Justin Fields was on fire. He was doing everything he wanted to do and had a great game. We have seen. a handful of really amazing looking Justin Field games in the past. So he needs to put it back to back. I am really, you know, it's a great positive outlook for him. I'm more bullish on the potential that, you know, hey, Garrett Wilson can do enough with Justin Fields. I would be fine taking the shot if you want to call it and try to trade for him now before he puts it together over and over and over. That's okay. But I...

I would probably personally wait another week. The problem is if you wait another week, yes. You're not going to get them. Yeah. All right. We had Keenan Allen, 10 targets. We had Marvin Harrison with the touchdown. Five for 71's not. I mean, for Marv, that's great. Five catches on six targets. I mean, the catch rate last year, they were not in sync. Not enough. Not enough targets. I agree with that. I'm still worried about it. Still not sure Marv is better than really good. Yeah. Fair. Cortland Sutton, nine target six for 61. So, you know, any other wide receivers? I mean, JSN was amazing. Oh, JSA was unbelievable. I mean, he also played outside the most he's ever played in his career. He had a 53% target share, not of wide receivers of the team. That is an outlandish number. If you get on a course of a season, a 30% target share, if you finish the season at 30%, you're.

borderline guaranteed to be a top 12 wide receiver. That's just a super high number. He's starting the season with 53% of the targets. And the thing is, is, you know, the bull case for him going into the season was, look, he was that dude last year. Now you take away D.K. McHF. And you take away Tyler Lockett. Obviously, they drafted rookies and brought in Cooper Cup, but those are downgrades. And so Jackson, Smith, and Jigba looked great. I'm fully in on JSN. He's got Pittsburgh next week. We'll see if their defense is just falling apart and then Saints and then Arizona. So it's a pretty decent run. So speaking of targets here, can I interest you in 42% of Patrick Mahomes targets? Because that's what Hollywood Brown received. And it was 16 targets. We're probably not getting there. But with Worthy Out, Rice out, he is going to be a hot.

topic of discussion. You know who I was super disappointed in in week one from the chiefs was Travis Kelsey. I know he got the touchdown. So everyone's going to be fine. You know, fantasy wise, he didn't bust. But it was like they needed him before the injuries without rice. And it wasn't that guy. Four targets, two for 47 with the score. And then Xavier Worthy goes out. How many targets? For Hollywood? No, no, no. For, for, uh, for Kelsey for Kelsey. Four. Yeah, four targets when you had all the injuries to everyone else? I don't know, man. I'm starting. There's a couple of these elder statement vets where you go, oh, you know, Mark Andrews. The Baltimore Ravens just scored 40 points. Yeah. Put it on them. And Mark Andrews had one target. 100% catch rate. It is just like, I don't know. Yeah.

We had top 10 tight in, or top five tight ends, Brock Bowers, Dalton Kincaid, Travis, Kelsey, Juan, Johnson, Tyler Warren. All really close in points somewhere between 12.8 and 11.4. Nice debut for Warren. You talked about the Kelsey touchdown. Kincaid with the long touchdown. Brock Bowers, hopefully healthy. Outside of that, you know, Harold Fanon was a story because Harold Fanon ended up with nine targets for the Browns, which is a real. problem for David Nojoku. Yes, it is. A common theme in the Duds notation there. If you don't know who Harold Fanon is, he's a rookie tight end who fell a little bit in the draft. No one knew where he was going to go because he kind of played for a small school. And then he tested bad. And he didn't do well at the combine.

but his production in college is pretty much the best production of all time. The fact that week one as a rookie, he comes out and is this involved, 67% of the routes, a 21% target share, which I don't know for a fact, Kyle, please double check me on this, but I think he led the team in target share. That's an incredible, that is really bad for Najoku. I've gotten Najoku in a lot of leagues, and obviously it's wonderful to say like, oh, look how many passes went to the tight end from Flacco. That process worked, but if you're splitting them between two guys, you're going to need a lot more passes. Yeah, Judy had eight targets, so it might have been fan and they're up at the top. And then it may be one week wonder, but I'm going to highlight Juan Johnson, who had 11 targets against Arizona. The Saints for how close the game was, they do project to be a team that will be losing.

and he ran around on 96% of their dropbacks. Like he was fully utilized as a pass catching weapon hot off of his contract extension. You do have a couple of years, Kellan Moore with Dallas Goddard was over a 20% market share. So there's a little bit of signal there to say that Joanne Johnson could be the number two pass catcher for that team. Okay. We are going to take another break here and jump into some of the... Uh-oh. Maybe we'll see if there's any panic in the streets. We'll find out. Foot Clan draft day is on the way. You got your rankings. You got those sleepers. You got you can't miss picks. But you know what? You need sometimes a backup because, well, even the best fantasy football team in the world doesn't go according to plan. Sometimes those starters, they don't show up. Wouldn't it be great if you could have the same peace of mind everywhere else. With Progressive, you get more than just a policy. You get a playbook full of coverage options you can count on for your home and for your auto.

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dominated by the Cleveland Browns truly dominated. I mean, the defensive line for Cleveland, the defense in general, I mean, Newsom against Chase. I mean, it was just the offense as well. Burrow had 113 yards. Yeah, Burrow had 113 yards. The Browns looked really good. They looked like a good team. They should have won that team. So easy. It wasn't like their defense was so good and they were let down by their offense. Their offense was very good. The issue in why they lost was because Joe Flacco had two perfect passes. One to Jerry Judy that was popped up and then turned into an interception. And then another really nice one to Cedric Tillman that was hit him in the hands and popped up and turned into an interception. Also missed extra point and missed field goal, I believe. And then you lose by a point. Crazy. Yeah, they should have won the game. The Browns definitely look like a better team. I think the Browns had like two extra yardage too. Yeah. No, they more than that.

Yeah, yeah. They were at like 3.40 something. I think the Joe Burrow in the 140s. The Bengals in week one. That's why it was the almost upset, which at least, you know. It's just, it's impossible. All right, Bo Nix, 25 for 42 picks. Barf. Bo picks. Those did not hit his wide receivers in the hands. They hit the opposing team. And the other thing was that he had 78% of his attempts under 10 yards. I think his average depth of target was 4.3 yards. He, couldn't get the ball down the field. He never, like, it was an asset in the beginning of the game. You're like, oh, cool, he can throw moving. Then it was like, oh my gosh, please stop moving when you throw. I think he just, yeah, he was really sniffing those farts. He was like, check out this cool. Patrick Mahomes. Check out of this cool throw I'm going to do. Yeah. They're very lucky to have won the game. If they weren't facing Cam Warden's rookie first appearance, they could have easily lost that game. Agreed. Trevor Lawrence. Really disappointing. This is the same Trevor Lawrence. Mm-hmm.

It was Carolina and he had 178 and 1. Now, this game did have a super long lightning delay. Yes. Just like the, so I mean, lightning delays are now 2 and O against NFL offenses. Yeah, team, you guys are really. They didn't have a retractable roof, you know. You guys are really hammering the weather. I just, there's a solution. I didn't. I just said the game got shut down and then the offenses were disappointed. Trevor Lawrence. I just play them underground, man. Trevor Lawrence. Where you like it, mole man. Yeah, that'd be great. As long as there's enough depth. Yeah, for sure. If you've got enough height on the ceiling underground. Yeah. Simulated on a computer, why play? You're not listening. They didn't play. Yeah. No, they did. They came back and played. Because they're just impatient. But T. Law is the most similar quarterback to me as Kyler Murray, where he's not that dude.

He's good enough. It feels like it more and more every week. You're going to end up. But you did pay him like the dude and you're stuck with him. Yeah, and you're stuck with him. And if either one, Kyler or Trevor Lawrence hit the open market, half the league would go and pay him the highest. They're not bad as quarterback. Jay Cutler was highly in demand. They're not terrible quarterbacks. They really aren't. They are above average quarterbacks. But they're not great and they will never be great. Send in the cars. Yeah. I don't know, man. I think their car was better. Dak had a tough week one, too was disgusting. And CJ Stroud, I thought he made a lot of good throws, but then you look at the stat line. They got embarrassed. Yeah, they got beat, so they couldn't get it done. That offensive line is going to be a big problem. That offensive line, and they, and they, I think they lost an lineman during the game. Another one was kind of banged up during the game. They don't have depth and they don't have talent.

So the Texans are real, their defense is awesome, but their offense could be a real issue this season. Kenneth Walker. We need to have the conversation. 10 carries 20 yards. That's not the problem. 40% of snaps. That's the problem. Yeah. And yuck. Yeah, it was a, it was a full on time share. I think he had one more touch or one more opportunity than Charbonnet. Charbs had looked much better. in the production this is i don't this is not a defcon one but we're probably at about three yeah i don't terms of this they're just going to split and what did maybe charbs is just a better fit for the offense it was extremely disappointing there is the outside chance and i i do think it's an outside chance that this was managing the injury kenneth walker could be dealing with

But even if that was the case, even if this was like, we're going to limit Kenneth Walker in this game because in this early off season, he was dealing with stuff. Charbonnet looked awesome. He did. Number one in success rate in week one. Charbonnet was great. I mean, he was better for this system with, you know, this is a new system. Keep in mind with, with, with a full back. And Charbonnet was fantastic. Sharbs has never had, he's basically averaged a 24% market share in games that he's played with Kenneth Walker. He's only been a backup. And in this game, he was 48% of the snaps. So this is projecting to be a complete split, and Sharbs looked to fit the system better in week one. There's not really something to be gained by Seattle banking too much on Ken Walker if Sharbs is productive.

I mean, Walker's been hurt so much that if you bank on him and he goes out, then you're hurt. But if you have a committee and he goes out, you're fine. Yeah. All right. We had David Montgomery, 11 for 25 on the ground. Only 37% of snaps. He averaged 42 last year. The game script was definitely more Jimere Gibbs oriented. So you, you know, pay attention to it. We expected a little bit more Gibbs this year. If it goes from 42% to 37, that won't surprise me. It also won't surprise me if this is more of their game script this year than it was last year. They were ahead of so many games last year, and we'll see. It's one week, but something to pay attention to. But the success of David Montgomery is the lion's offense has to run extremely hot. And they could bounce back after one week, but that's the thing is the offense overall has to be nuclear for David Montgomery to.