Fantasy Football - 32 Preseason Takeaways + Key Questions - Podcast for 8/18

to get on the show. 302464 TFFB. We'll go ahead and start with the voicemail. Hey, ballers. You fan of the show. Quick question. Our league manager took away the IR spot and made it into a regular bench spot. Is this a good idea or is it the same as if you were just to have or better if you were to have an open spot? Thanks. It's certainly not the same. Yeah. Those are different things. Yeah. First of all, we don't know how many bench. spots you have. So he's wondering, is it better to replace an IR with just a full regular bench spot? I would say that if you usually have four bench spots, yeah, sure, because I think you probably don't have enough bench at another bench. The downside with adding too many bench spots is it makes the waiver wire not as fun. The fewer people out there to bid over and compete over every single week.

So how many bench spots do you guys usually prefer to have? Five? Yeah, five. Yeah, that's where I land. Six. Like, I think it's okay to have a deeper bench as long as you have the people in the league are for that of knowing that it's going to be a shallow league. Deeper benches are fun if you have deeper starting roster spots. Like if you've got a double flex, that's great because what it does is it still makes the waiver wire interesting because you're going to be needing to place of garbage. DeMarcus Robinson is like important then. Yeah, so it does impact obviously the amount of talent that'll be out on the waiver wire if you convert and add one more bench spot because everybody's going to, not everybody's got somebody on IR, but everybody will have a fifth bench player, a six bench player. So it'll take 12 names off the waiver wire right there. Good or bad decision. That's league specific, I think. I like there being an IR spot in general, though. I don't really love their not being an IR spot.

It just handcuffs teams in too big of a way, I think. If you're in a league right now that's getting ready to go for next year and you don't have IR, you should bring that up for a vote. Having an IR spot is so good. It's more fun. It's better strategy. It feels like it really sucks when you have an injury and you don't have a guy to drop and you're forced to drop someone injured. Like, the NFL has IR. Add IR to your league. All right. Kyle from Instagram writes in, are people sleeping on Bryce Young as a fantasy football flyer? They are starting the year at Jacksonville, at Arizona, underdogs and those, then at home against Atlanta, and then on the road against New England. Mike, you've spoken very highly of Bryce Young in terms of making that offense move. I think that that, I think he's a fine flyer. You know, after the by week, he was on pace for 430 rushing yards. So, like.

That's the thing is Bryce has to give us at least something like that for him to make his way into the top 12. He will be a streaming option. I'm excited for the Carolina Panthers offense to see if he really takes that step moving forward. So as a flyer, sure, but the quarterback position has so many guys late where you're like, no, that guy's a flyer or a sleeper. So Bryce isn't. He's not one of your targets, but you could certainly see how it works. Addie Tetaroa McMillan. Yes. I think Tatavian Sanders is a pretty darn good young, tight end. He's got enough weapons to throw the ball to. If he keeps running, if he's going to finish the year with 450 rushing yards, he could very easily be a top, you know, 15 quarterback. Mikey from Instagram, how should I view C.J. Stroud this year? It feels like he was a player we talked about incessantly all last off season and almost not at all.

this offseason, you know, you just brought up Bryce Young. Is he a potential flyer? Like, C.J. Stroud is a level above that, but never discussed at all. I don't know that he is a level above that. Just in the sense that you're not going to be rushing the ball. No. You know, last year, what did he have? 233 rushing yards. Yeah, so he's a pocket passer. The offensive line has gotten worse. The run game seems banged up an older... You got Nico, that's great, but you've got to have other players here step up. And if you look at his consistency versus Bryce Young's, like C.J. Stroud's an F in our consistency score this last year because without running the ball, you've got to throw 4,030 touchdowns as a pocket passer. And that's, I feel like it's an uphill battle to do that with his current weapons. All right, YouTube question.

What is Calvin Ridley's floor with rookie quarterback Cam Ward? Last year he was a my guy. He was up over a thousand yards receiving in spite of what? The Will Levis Mason Rudolph Disgusto Fest. But, you know, with rookie quarterbacks, we have data over the last 14 years. Only seven receivers got up over a thousand yards with a rookie quarterback. So 28%. only one rookie quarterback supplied 10 plus receiving touchdowns for a wide receiver. It was Jaden Daniels last year with McLaren. Before that happened, we had the data. We brought it up on the show. It didn't happen ever. Like you just couldn't do it. Yeah, the thing for the situation, if you have a rookie quarterback, your target share has to be extremely high. Like it has to be a 26, 27% type of target share. Calvin Ridley could do that. You know, the excitement is.

for the rookies, and he's really the established main guy there. So if he's getting that, then you'll end up being excited. Oh, breaking news. What you got? The Cleveland Browns have named Joe Flacco as their official week one, starting quarterback against the Cincinnati Bengals. Oh, baby. Okay. David Nogoku, week one. Draft David Nogoku. Jerry Judy, week one. Well, Jerry, Judy, we'll see. Week one, baby. Nijoku is the huge benefactor. We'll see on the wide receivers. Oh, Jerry Judy will be great week one. Again, this is against the Bengals. Oh, yeah. They're going to have to score a ton and it's not a very difficult defense. So after that, trade them. Week one and trade them. How many games does Joe Flacco start for the Browns out of 17? Okay, well, let's run.

Let's run through the opening. The schedule is not good for them. Cincinnati, it could happen. I think that, let's say they win that game, because Cincinnati gets off to slow starts. Okay, let's just give it to them for, okay, whatever. Just to be crazy. Just to be crazy. At Baltimore. Nah. Green Bay. I'm going to give it to the Packers. Okay, at Detroit. Detroit. Minnesota. Winnable. At home. In Cleveland? Yeah. So the Browns, he's going to play like 12 games or more. He's going to play enough that I'm all in. I mean, who are they going to play? Yeah. Bill and Gabriel? No. I do her. No. I feel like this means picket doesn't make the roster. I mean, maybe. Like if I was the Brown's general manager, the only right path has always been you either name Flacco the starter or Kenny Pickett the starter and then you keep the two rookies and you move forward. I, you know, maybe they keep four.

Quarterbacks? No, no, no. I think that's the move is you've got to try and trade Kenny Pickett. It's tough because pickets the best of those other guys. You'll have to get up a sixth. Pickett's the best of those guys by far. By far. Yeah. Yeah, so Joe Flacco is the starter. It's good for fantasy and hopefully that will last a little bit, but man, they're underdogs in their first eight weeks. Oh, no, they're, sorry, let me correct that. They are favored by one and a half in week seven against Miami. but otherwise they're underdogs seven of the first eight oh no they are dogs there never mind they're underdogs and all of them they're underdogs they're just it's not as bad it is the dog pound so they are dogs they got the dog in them yeah um wow all right uh jason instagram harvey or caleb johnson rj harvey i'm i'm harvey i'm not going to answer this question stupid arthur smith

Okay, nothing. I'm not going to lecture you on players whose name begins with Kay and ends with Johnson. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. All right, let's grab another. No further questions at this time. Another voicemail. Hey, ballers. What is some input and advice that you would give to those of us that are in keeper leagues? Thanks, guys. So general keeper league advice, one of the things people tend to do is hyper-emphasize their keepers. Mm-hmm. The truth is, is if you're in a keeper league, unless it's some exhaustive huge amount, which borders on Dynasty, you're keeping a couple guys. Maybe it's one, two, three players. Sometimes it's at a draft cost. Sometimes it's just a no cost at all. But you see people kind of building their roster around this ideal that they're going to have, you know, you get this name on your team and he's going to be your keeper for five years in a row, and they're locked and loaded on your team. And it's just very, very rare in the lifespan of players to live under that.

in that world. Like, and I see people lock themselves in. They don't want to trade players because of that. You're not, your keepers are going to turn over all the time. Yeah, the biggest mistake people make in keeper leagues is over emphasizing age. Age matters a lot in dynasty. You know, if you're 26 deep and you've got that roster forever, but when you've got three guys, James Connor can be a keeper. No problem. A great keeper. No problem. And he's an elder statement. Like, you don't need statesmen. You don't need... His statement is old. Statements. He makes old statements. To overemphasize the youth. And so I would basically treat it almost exactly like a redraft. Yeah, I mean, perfect example would be like if somebody's excited about RJ Harvey, and they're like, man, I'm not going to trade him for sake one. Because...

You know what I mean? In a keeper league, it's like, oh, man, he's going to be good in a few years. It's like, go win the league. Because that's the mistake the other league mates are going to make, at least some of them. And so then you have an advantage over them for sure. So we've got breakout, sleepers, values, busts episodes coming out. We've got our fantasy MVP episode, mock drafts coming out. It's a hot week. We've got the time machine episode in the near future. So a lot of big time shows and a big announcement tomorrow. So you're sleeping right now.

Me and Ken Walker tired. And then this is your last chance to get the UDK for Life giveaway situation. So get the UDK to be in or to win the UDK for Life. And our live stream begins at 6 Eastern this afternoon. Ultimate DraftKit.com for more info on that. That is it for today's show. But we'll be back tomorrow, everybody. So thank you for joining us. Shout out to the Ducers back there. I think we're recording the show. We're recording? Yeah. Dumb time. Goodbye. Thank you for listening to another episode of the Fantasy Footballers podcast. Join our fantasy football community on join thefoot.com and follow us on Twitter at the FF ballers.