Fantasy Football Podcast 2017 - Post Hype Sleepers, AFC North Breakdown

Okay, so Danny Woodhead arrives. Jeremy Macklin arrives to this offense. Obviously, they lost Steve Smith right in the offseason. Dennis Pitta is gone. Kyle Usecheck is gone. And we have some turnover on the offensive line, right tackle, offensive guard center. So there's some shake up there. And we know they want to be able to run the ball. But wanting to run the ball, like the Cardinals did for years without David Johnson. They wanted to run the ball.

We did. Like Detroit last year, they want to run the ball. But what happens is push comes to shove on the field. Can they run the ball with the offense they have? Can they run the ball with Terrence West and Kenneth Dixon, who doesn't come back until a four-game suspension? Or is this pie in this guy thinking, and we're expecting 60% of the time they're throwing the ball? I think the throwing percentage comes down. They become more balanced. Terrence West is a great late-round flyer we've talked about. He's essentially free for a running back that's

guaranteed to be the starter for at least four weeks, if not more. Danny Woodhead just showed up in the news again, Joe Flacco, praising Danny Woodhead's passing game, passing game chops, saying we haven't had a back like this since Ray Rice, who had spectacular pass-catching ability. He's also very cheap. I mean, that's kind of the overarching theme of the Baltimore Ravens is fantasy value because for whatever reason, fantasy players just...

don't want to go in on this offense when they should. Oh, I get it. Why? Why do you get it? Explain this to me. The reason why all of their values are very low is because you've got a combination of question marks.

with a low scoring team. I don't think anybody is expecting the Ravens to be a high power, a lot of touchdowns to be shared, and you go, well, who's going to be the starting running back? How will it break down? And that's why I think instead of just saying it's going to be this guy or it's going to be that guy and getting it right or getting it wrong, you have to kind of look at the range of outcomes. So like Terrence West, great value because he's super late in drafts, but he has no upside.

Right? I mean, he's got no chance to be an RB1. Okay. I would say he's got RB2. His side. Oh, absolutely. I'm just saying like on a weekly basis, he's going to be a guy that you're going to get late in your draft. He will be a value for where you get him, but he's not necessarily a championship winner. So do you want to?

you know, take your capital and use it on that, or do you want to swing more for the fences? Danny Woodhead, if you're in a PPR league, could inch closer to that RB1. I'm afraid of ending up like a Tennessee situation a couple years ago when you had Bishop Sanky and Antonio Andrews and an offense that just can't produce one guy to give you any kind of consistent performance. And West doesn't make me go, oh, wow, that's the guy, even though he had a pretty decent year last year. They still, when Kenneth Dixon was available.

started sharing the work. Yeah, and I think Kenneth Dixon might be the most talented back. That's why his ADP is actually ahead of Terrence West. But with a four-game suspension, I mean, if you're in a redraft league, you're wasting a lot of time and a lot of bench. You have to roster him for five weeks before you get anything. And then at that point, are you going to start him in week five, not having a clue who he is? The 30th ranked offensive line doesn't help you. And this is why all of that leads me to say, Jeremy Macklin is the player I want here.

I think he is locked and loaded into a wide receiver two role. I don't see him being a wide receiver one, but if he falls into the wide receiver three category, I will be equally surprised. The amount of passing volume and the quality of player that he is, I think just puts him at a place where he's going to come into that Steve Smith role, where Joe Flacco's number one target always has a pace of over 130 targets. If he gets that, Macklin's going to be just fine. And his value right now, because of those question marks and all the reasons we described.

He's cheap. And you've got to throw out, of course, Ben Watson. Well, I was going to say, they threw the ball 9.9 times per game to the tight end, third in the league. So is Watson the flyer? Yes, absolutely. Dennis Pitta is gone. He had the most. 9.9 targets, my apologies. 9.9 targets, not receptions. He had the most tight-end receptions in the league last year. We're talking more than Travis Kelsey. Talking about Dennis Pitta. He suffered another injury, unfortunately, and he's out.

Crockett Gilmore is recovering from injury. Max Williams is looking to start the season on the pup. He's done. I mean, there's no one left. He's Ben Watson, who he's recovering himself from an Achilles injury, but by all reports, he should be ready to go. And if he becomes that Joe Flacko best friend, that's a completely free tight end that, as Andy said, 10 times a game they're targeting the tight end.

Did you consider, last year, Jason, did you consider Pitta, that number one target you talked about with Flacco? No, because his, you know, his fantasy points per target, and I'm just coming at it from a fantasy perspective, his fantasy points per target were so low. He wasn't a red zone. Do you know if he was the leader in targets on that Baltimore offense? I believe he was. I'll bet. So he fits, that's what I meant. When you're talking about Flacco's number one target having X amount of targets, last year you would have said that's the tight end.

Yes. Okay. The Bengals, let's talk about the Cincinnati Bengals. Turnover at the running back position. Joe Mixen brought aboard Giovanni Bernard may start on Pupp. Jeremy Hill is still there. Andy Dalton gets some weapons back. A.J. Green. They went into the draft and they brought in John Ross, very early pick, ninth pick of the draft. And then Tyler Eifford, at least for now, is healthy. The big headline for the offseason was losing Andrew Whitworth.

Kevin Zitler on the offensive line, very high-grading offensive linemen that you have heading out the door. So a lot of concern from people for the running backs, for Dalton being able to be protected and be efficient. I still think that this team has a very good defense. I think they have an underrated defense and they're going to be competing with the weapons that are currently healthy on that roster. What are the fantasy headlines for you guys? Where are you turning your attention?

My attention is squarely on Andy Dalton. I believe he has always been as good as his weapons allow him to be. He's not one of those guys. You know, it reminds me a lot of Matt Ryan, who has always been a good quarterback when his weapons were good enough. But he's not going to take, you know, mediocrity and make them great the way that a Tom Brady can do. Yeah, Aaron Rogers. Right. But if, if Dalton has.

a group of great receivers, which right now it looks like he sure does, maybe his best he's ever had, then he was already without that, a prime candidate to regress towards the mean on his, you know, percentage of throws. His touchdown percentage? Yeah, that go for touchdowns. That means that.

You're talking positively. Positive regression for him. Positive. When you just bring up the word regression, I think most people are going to hear that as he's going down. No, but what happened is if you look at, you know, the pass attempts per touchdown of his career, and then you look at that on a chart last year was just astronomically low for him. It was an outlier season. And, you know, part of that is the fact that he was.

He was under pressure, and he had no targets to throw to. In 2015, when he was under pressure, he was a great quarterback. 2016, he was terrible. Well, that's, he had no Mohammed Sanoo. He had, you know, no Marvin Jones. A lot of the times he had no A.J. Green or Tyler Eifert. He's basically a career mid-5% touchdown for some, you know, every 5% of his throws were a score. He went down all the way to 3.2 last year.

All three of us have Andy Dalton currently ranked in our top 12. We do? We do. Good for us. There you go. Jason and Mike, you haven't meant 12. I've got him at 8. Yep. I don't have a problem with it. Tyler Eifford is a- We can't forget the season this guy was having before he went down the year before. Yeah. When he broke his thumb two years ago, he was a legitimate MVP candidate. And Tyler Eifers is the name I want to highlight going currently in the seventh round of standard.

drafts, I should say, non-PPR drafts as the sixth tied end off the board. That's fantastic. If I miss out on the gronk value, if gronk is dropping Jordan Reed, then my eyes are set on Tyler Eifford. If I can get him in the seventh or even the eighth round, I think that's incredible value. Willing to overlook Kelsey or Olson and get the value on Eiff. Yes. Now let me ask you this with Eifert.

let's say it's third week of August and he's not back yet. I expect he's going to be a close call for a week one start. And we won't know for sure, I'm guessing, when most people's fantasy drafts are going. Are you willing to take him into the value if it means you've got to draft two tight ends? Depends on that value. If you're saying I'm getting Tyler Eifford in the seventh round, there's no way you're drafting two tight ends. And he's not going to start week one. I'm not going to spend the seventh round pick on him.

If he drops to the 10th, then you can grab someone else. I would do that. Sure. The real question here is the running backs, though. For the Bengals, you have two running backs who have been fantasy relevant for the last few years in Geo Bernard and Jeremy Hill. But in comes the new hotness. Yeah, and it makes sense because Jeremy Hill has been progressing in the downward sense for years.

Yeah. Every hope that you had for him to be this breakout elite super talent that he was that year one, it's gone down every year. Now, he's still an elite goal line back, and that's going to cause problems for Joe Mixing and his ability to break in and be a dominant top 12 type of guy if he's sharing goal line work with Jeremy Hill, who can get into the end zone. And Jeremy Hill runs angry down there at the goal line. Even last year with a bad year, what, he lead the league in, or he had what, 10, 11?

Yeah, I believe he had double digits. Double digits again. I think he's had it for two consecutive years. Jeremy Hill is somebody that I think everybody wants to write off, and fantasy owners want the Bengals to write off for the sake of Joe Mixon. I'm just worried about how soon that will happen. I think Mixon's talent will show itself early and often, but what will that mean for Jeremy Hill being on or off the field? Jeremy Hill had nine. Nine touchdowns, but he also was. What's his last three years? I don't have that, but I'm saying he was ninth in 10 zone.

attempts. Those are incredibly valuable. Last three years was nine touchdowns, 11 touchdowns, nine touchdowns. If he's, if those are the only touches he's getting, you're not going to want him on your fantasy team, but he is absolutely siphoning away what Joe Mixton can do. All right. We're going to talk about the Browns now, guys, the Cleveland Browns. And it's an interesting thing to talk fantasy with Cleveland, because you can make the jokes, right?

How many quarterbacks did they have throw a pass last year? 12. Yeah. That was one game. But I mean, Cody Kessler is there now, Deshaun Kaiser, the draft pick. But this is a team that, you know, when you look at the stats, they could run the ball. Number one in the league in terms of yards from scrimmage per touch for the running back position, 5.9 in the top three at 4.8 yards per carry from the running back position. They ran the ball often and they ran it well.

between two different running backs, Isaiah Crowell and Duke Johnson. So how does that break down this year? Do they continue to turn to the running game in a volume perspective? Because that's the problem, right? You have those metrics, but those metrics aren't volume dependent. Well, they're performance dependent. Maybe they wouldn't keep up if they were able to hand the ball off. Say, I have to correct you. As far as running back touches, they were at the bottom.

Well, no, what I was saying is... Is there efficient? Yards per touch, not total touches. Yeah, because I have them down. I have the running backs that have combined 279.

attempts, which is 32nd in the league. And that's because they don't have the opportunity. Well, and it all comes down to the fourth quarter, right? I mean, this is kind of what Andy's saying. The efficiency was there, but the opportunity wasn't. Can that opportunity turn around? And this year it definitely can for a multitude of reasons. You know, you've got a team that is projected by Vegas to be three and a half games better in the win column than they were last year. I mean.

I'm just saying that. What did they win last year? Was it one? Yeah, they're four and a half this year. So I'm just- You did it, Cleveland. You got up to being an under five-win team, Cleveland. But that's just saying game script should be a little better. You have Hugh Jackson, who has always been near the lead.