Unsolved Mysteries + TNF Preview, Alligator Man - Fantasy Football Podcast for 9/18

Welcome to the fantasy footballers podcast with your host, Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright. Welcome in. The fantasy footballers, Mike Wright, Jason Moore, Andy Holloway. Thank you for joining us. Well, you're welcome. It's my job. No, no. I mean, I guess so. I guess I'm glad you're joining us. I think he was talking to me. You're welcome. Yes.

Here we are again, September 18th, another episode of the show. Jason is in a burgundy V-Net t-shirt, a stark contrast from the pitch black routine. Still in my dark, hide-them-boobie's colors. You know, so that's the goal here. Oh, man. Era, Jason. Era, thank you. Yes. Oh, the H-TB era. Yeah. Mm-hmm. HDB. People tune in for the for the realness. Is that what they need? Yeah, so I don't know how to transition naturally out of that one. But I don't think it's going to be a great show. I don't think it's into hungry for more. I'll tell you that. We got news to talk about. We have unsolved mysteries on today's episode, which is a look at the top three most difficult.

to decipher situations in fantasy football through two weeks. We asked the Foot Clan and what your biggest questions are, concerns, beliefs, or disbeliefs, and these were the top most frequent responses. We also have big news, very exciting news. Very thankful we get to share it, but the current Megalobole leader is not the Falcon. Oh, thank goodness. Man, that's great. How'd you do this week, Falcon? All right. You did okay? What's your record? I'm four and oh. Okay. I'm in there. I'm four and oh right now. You're just not number one anymore. Number 12. Number 12? That's still pretty good. Yeah, that's pretty nice. Breece Cups, number one. Breezy.

Is it? Like breezy cups, I think is what they're going for here. I hope that does not insinuate that they have had the Cooper Cup. Okay. Because they will not be number one next week if that is the case. The Cooper Cup injury is devastating for, wait, is number two. So many of my teams. Number two, their name is, it's all one word, Camel case, Saints fan against Allen. Yeah. But two question marks. Well, at this point, maybe they added the question marks because things have been going good. For two wins. And every win they will add a question mark. Yeah, until I shave my head. It's coming. We got to get a thermometer on this wall. Oh, to count the. Yeah. Every time the Saints win, we put another. You know what? Another red. Go to go to Jason's full camera here. I just want to, yeah, we got room. Oh, yeah. We got room. We're going to put a Saints logo right back behind your left shoulder. Every win, a little Saints logo is going on the wall. Another one.

It'll be like one of those Ohio State helmets where they do a good thing. Yeah, we're going to get that head nice and shaved. What else do we have to talk about? The weekly rankings up on the website. You can go check them out, the fantasy footballers.com. Tons of great articles. It's always, I always want to shout out our writing staff and the incredible work that they're doing. If you want fantasy football content, articles to read and things to think about, You can get that on the website, the fantasy footballers.com. You can also get it on our in-season app, which is free. So if you go to the app store on Android or Apple and just search for the fantasy footballers and download our in-season app, that is completely free. The start sit tool is in there. And we're going to be adding all of the foot clan tools to that app here over the first half of this season at some point as well for everybody that's supporting this show over at join the foot.com.

I always can, there's kind of an undercurrent that happens here in the studio when I am like talking and trying to carry the show along and then I noticed the just the void. We're not in waivers just yet. That was, that was a news check. No, I'm not for this guy. Oh, yeah. I'm on waiver check already. Yeah, I'm on waiver check. Jason's already refreshing. Refreshing the waivers. I got an alert, but it was differently. Well, look, let's just come clean about the waivers that are about to go through in our legal record. We had a waiver show yesterday. Yeah, what are we hoping for? I mean, there's nothing you can do at this point. I would like to know what you spent and how much you spent, like your highest waiver claim.

Fab-wise, and how much? My highest waiver claim was Gus Edwards, and it was only $10. So I expect to not receive pretty much any of my claims. I can promise you you won't receive Gus because I bid about $22 on Gus. Hold on one second to do it. Uh-huh. Yeah, and so Mike, what about your... Like I said, I'd rather. We're not changing it. Those deucers back there, they've got work to do on the show. They're not changing anything. I think he's just embarrassed. Oh, I am very embarrassed. Are you in need? Have you heard about my League of Record team? Have you heard what's happened over here? It's a disaster. No, I've had to go, what I think is pretty hard in the paint after Derek Carr.

Oh, oh, yes. Oh, that is so good. I'm in the car. I want a point laughing you. I had, and for the, like, why is that happened to me? Well, Jordan Love was my draft pick. I would like to put him on my IR except my medical unit is full to the brim of Jonathan Brooks. Your IR's already full. Yeah, Christian Brooks, or Christian McCaffrey, Jonathan Brooks are just. They're going to be there for a while. Just, you know, hanging out recovering. Last week, it was Stafford was going to be my streaming option. And then his offense has completely imploded. So I'm having to make some moves. Meanwhile, I don't know what the team with Tua is going to do because Derek Carr is currently the, he would be the go-to guy off of our waiver wire. Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of people asking Derek Carr questions right now.

Lots to talk about. We'll let you know. I just notice these guys get distracted a couple of minutes in. Sometimes we've, in the past, we'll be tuning out here in about two minutes. We've waited to start the show, but it's also entertaining to want you guys freak out over the waiver wire. So we'll see. You guys give me, give me that. My team's healthy and good. I'm Andy. I thought you were the reaper. Things are going really, really well. No, I reaped both of you. Yeah, you did. You guys are both completely. Yeah, I've absorbed your powers. Um, yeah, yeah, this is going really good today. Check out the Dynasty podcast. If you are, um, interested in that sort of thing. We have a new Dynasty podcast up. And now I can be hungry for more. Welcome to Hungry for More presented by Uber Eats.

Well, Mike, you said you spent up on Derek Carr. Now, I want to know how much you bid. We'll find out for the moment. My hungry for more this week is Derek Carr and the Saints offense. Oh, thank goodness. So, you know, everything that they're doing top to bottom in New Orleans right now is perfect. Pressure-wise, Derek Carr. Only Aaron Rogers has seen fewer pressures through two weeks in the NFL. And they just played Micah Parsons and the Dallas Cowboys. And they won-on-one to him a lot. It was very impressive. Well, there's a lot of motion. There's a lot of misdirection. There's a lot of utilization of the running game. A lot of play action. There's a lot of Shanahan-y stuff going on in the running game. Derek Carr right now is averaging 11.4 yards per attempt. He was basically dead last in that category last season. This season, he's number one. He leads all quarterbacks and fantasy points per dropback.

And they've only thrown the ball 43 times. So it's been efficiency. It's been play action. It's been big plays. It's been screen game. And right now they're favored. They're favored to beat the Eagles this week. And that is who I am taking. I think they will beat the Eagles this week. The Eagles defense is too challenged for me right now. So I don't know if you guys agree with that. But I'm hungry for more. Derek Carr, Rashid Shaheed. I think it's the week of Lave takes off. And more Alvin Camara. I mean, this is saints alive. When you eat a delicious meal, you are always going to be hungry for more of that. And the Saints have been outstanding. I mean, you know, I got backed into in our listener league. My team name is the Saints because I ended up with a good value on Camara, a good value on Alave, had to stack them with Derek Carr. And I'm off to a good start. So, yeah, I think we're hungry for more Derek Carr and the Saints offense. Keep.

Keep going. Keep going, Dennis Allen. Yeah, it seems borderline impossible for, I mean, it is impossible what they've done the first two games for that to be an entire season's worth. It's just the hope and dream that maybe they're just a, maybe the offense has figured something out. Baby cubes. Yep. Getting it done. My hungry for more this week makes a lot of sense. We finally saw the tasty dish. We are Cardinals fans. I am hungry for more Marvin Harrison. Marvin Harrison Jr. was incredible. And what was crazy is he basically had one quarter of action. He had four for 131 and two in the first quarter. He was the wide receiver one on the week. Absolutely outstanding. They used him across the field. They had scrambled drills that connected.

deep in zone. And then my favorite part, and this is what I'm really hungry for more of. There were two different plays where they were in the red zone and they had one-on-one coverage like near the goal line with Marv. Both of those, they kind of threw the back shoulder fade, which a lot of times that is a stupid play to run. But when you have a Devante Adams and an Aaron Rogers, you run that thing like crazy and it works almost every time. you know, the Cooper Cup Stafford. When you get that connection in the red zone, that play becomes what feels like a 75% chance at a touchdown if you truly have one-on-one. And they missed on both of those opportunities in week one, but it's there and they're building that chemistry. And I'm really hungry for more of that specifically. Throw it to him, one-on-one, that back-shoulder fade. Keep doing it for years until it becomes perfected.

I'm going with, we'll get to the waiver report here because it just ran through. But mine, hungry for more, it's Tony Pollard from the Tennessee Titans. I'm all about that, man. This week especially. It's interesting of the coaches over the offseason where, hey, we got 1A, 1B. We got a 50-50. We got two starters on this roster. Week one happens. Tony Pollard is the dude. The dude. Going to press conference after that. Hey, we're going to get Tajay Spears a little bit more involved. And we go into the next week. Guess who's still the dude, Tony Pollard? Because in my opinion, he is just that much better than Tajay Spears. It's not that Spears is a bad player. I think Tony Pollard is excellent. This is the Tony Pollard that we hoped we were going to get last year. Unfortunately, his recovery from his ankle injury, it took a really, really long time to get there for him.

It wasn't until, I think, like, a double-digit week of last year, but when he said, I finally feel healthy. And that's when his Russian grades really started to improve over on PFF. But here's the list of NFL running backs who have seen 15 or more carries in four targets in each of the first two games. Okay, ready, guys? Tony Pollard, end of list. This is sensational. And he's been excellent. His matchup against Green Bay, they have been a run funnel offense, even though the Colts were weird and they took Jonathan Taylor off of the field for the whole fourth quarter, that was a highly suspect decision that they made. But Tony Pollard is a good player. We keep hearing good things about him. And we keep hearing the coach being really mad at his quarterback. Well, that was my point is that one of the reasons I loved Tony Pollard moving forward. I loved him before this season because I thought he would win the, like hold the job over.

Spears, now Spears is even banged up. But it's the fact that, guess what? Will Levis cannot close his eyes and throw the ball over the back of his head when it's in Tony Pollard's hands. Like if their defense is as good as I think it is, which with Sneed and the pick that they made, strengthening the interior of the line, like they have, I think they're the best defense statistically this year, number one, but they've lost both their games. And that's because of mistakes on the offensive side. Put the ball in Tony Pollard's hands. throw him some like high probability targets and let him go because he seems like he is me two top 24 weeks. I love it. I'm hungry for more Tony Poll or two, Mike, if you're willing to share. Oh, all are welcome. All are welcome at the table. You're going to eat that. All right. That was hungry for more presented by Uber Eats. Get Game Day deals all season long only on Uber Eats. Official on demand food delivery partner of the NFL order now. So we have the waivers. They have ran.

Andy? Yeah, everything was perfect. Everything, it was perfect. Oh, you're happy with it. I'm so happy. So you, yeah, Gus. I had an empty bench, by the way, 100% empty. I did see you cleared house. That's another part of my problem is my bench is just, it's full of a lot of players. Full of dead guys. It's full of players that I just, if I dropped them, they'll get picked up right away, but I need people to play. So I'm in a really tough situation. But Andy, you. Got Carson Steele for $28. You went hard in the pain. I did move that one up. That was the one I could have survived. I had him at 22. But I realized with Joe Mixen's injury that I might need a very important start this week. And also, Jason made the point on the show yesterday as we were teasing out all of the different options in Kansas City. What happened is is Kareem Hunt signed later in the day. It's going to take him some time to onboard. And the team has spoken so highly of Carson Steele.

What Jason said was, look, if there's a chance for one of these two guys, Carson Steele, Samajap, Ryan, to be a surprise special option on your team. It's Carson Steele. I went back. He had watched the film. I went back and watched the film. I do think they're going to give Carson Steele a real opportunity to begin these next couple of weeks, and I wanted my opportunity there. It's an eight-week time period that we're all booking Pacheco to be out. So if it works out with Carson Steele, if he comes out and look, Kareem Hunt could not outperform Jerome Ford last year, right? Or even Pierce Strong at certain points of the season. Samashi-P-Rine was cut this off-season. He's a player that I think... He has a role. If Carson Steele struggles, Somaget P. Ryan could be everything for this offense. So that was an opportunity. I just drew my line in the sand on Steel. I wanted him on the team. And then I spin on Gus Edwards because the carry counts are...

You know, insurance running back, never doubt your need in fantasy for more and more and more running backs on your roster. To me, there's no plan for this team. Jim Harbaugh does not look at the running back position squarely through yards per carry. It's about what you offer the team breaking down a defense. Can you be somebody I trust with the football? So I think Edwards' role as a... startable asset is going to be there all year. Yeah, that's why I had him as my highest bid, because even though he does not have the ceiling that Carson Steel has if steel hits, it's still like, I know that until Gus Edwards gets injured, he's getting 15 carries a game every single week. He's going to have plenty of goal line opportunities. His involvement is very, very high.

He was 22. Next bids were 18, 17, 15, and 12. He was highly sought after. Now, apparently Al Borland, apparently Al Borland had the chance. He says that he could have, like, you know, had a lack of integrity and tried to outbid me based on me disclosing this. I was curious if it would let me change it at that time. So I did up my bid from 17 to 18, knowing that still wouldn't outbid you. And it did go through. So you really have like partial integrity because if 17 to 18 had won you him, you already told me your bid. Oh, that's true. That's fair. That's a fair point. And Mike did. I'm disappointed here, Mike. When you were embarrassed, I thought you went hard after Derek Carr. You spent 16. That seems perfectly reasonable for your needs. He's Derek Carr. And you mean the quarterback two on the season? That's a good point though. He is Derek Carr. He's Derek Carr. And that is 16% of my season budget.

For Derek Carr. Yeah. And he is likely, what, do you believe he'll pumpkin? Because I think he'll pumpkin. I think so. This week? No, not this week. Yeah, I didn't. Not this week. But all of the bid was this week. I need some magic. Andy, having watched Carson Steele, you watch this film, I watch this film, do you agree? You know how announcers will talk about a downhill runner? Yeah. He looks like he is falling. Literally running down a hill like he's out of he's he's tumbling down a hill every single time. If Pacheco is beating the ground up, Carson Steele is being pushed off the top of a hill and just see where he lands. He is doing the old man fall and run to try to stop his fall every time he goes. It's unbelievable. But he's a big strong young alligator man. So.

I apologize for comping him to the old man falling. But he is. He's running, falling down. Alligator man? Yeah, what does that come from? Why do you call him the alligator man? Carson's, isn't that the guy who has a, he was given a pet alligator as a kid? Oh, I don't know. He grew up with an alligator. He's got like an alligator. His pet is an alligator. I'm seeing people nodding. I did not deep dive into the childhood of Carson's Steele. I mean, you know, you got to go deep. Outstanding. Now I wish I had been more, even though I won just for the alligator. All right.

We're going to jump into the news. News and notes from around the league. Presented by USAA Insurance. Yep. Big old alligator. Big, big fan. Great name, too. Carson Steele. Might be the steel of the week on waivers. Switch. Yeah, you got it. Justin Herbert, he will be listed on the injury report. His status is to be determined, but I think they expect him to play. I saw positive reports from his head coach. He played through broken ribs. I mean, if he can, if he can stand and throw. Last year. Yes, last year. I'm just saying he's, he's one of these, you know, some guys struggle with injuries more and some guys play through them. Whether it's good or bad, you know, Trevor Lawrence maybe should have taken some time last year, but we know he'll be out there if he's injured and he can be out there. Herbert is one of those guys, so I expect him to be there. This sucks, but Marshaun Lloyd has been placed on IR with an ankle injury. Dude.

Man. By the way, they're the number one team in rushing in the football in national. What are you saying? The national football league. It makes sense when Josh Jacobs gets what was it like 30 carries or so. Yeah, when Malik Willis is your quarterback on short notice, you say, all right guys, come here. Huddle up. Here's the plan for this game. You know who number we're going to run number 32 is? As in fewest rushing attempts. No, few is rushing yards per game. They're number one. The Packers are number one in rushing yards per game in the NFL. Okay. Dead last. Who's dead last? Is it the Cowboys? No. It's the Raiders who lost Josh Jacobs. So Jacobs is on the number one offense and then the team that lost him, they're dead last. The Raiders are also second in pass rate over expectation right now. Like this is not just a, the Raiders have been in game scripts where they have to throw, which they had to.

I mean, this past week was a massive comeback against the Baltimore Ravens. It's seemingly the whole game. But as of right now, they're letting Gardner throw. It has been interesting that the teams that did invest heavily in free agent running backs seem to be succeeding greatly with them. Yeah, Jacobs, Sequin, despite the drop, he's been great for him. Mixing. Aaron Jones has been great. Yeah, and then the teams that decided we'll just go with what we got. It's not working with Matt. The Madison's Amir-white combo is not working. Well, it's not working for Chicago either. They gave a guy a lot of money. That's true. They were the first team to go out and grab their free agents running out. They chose poorly. They did. Tootanga Viloa on IR as he recovers from his concussion and meets with specialists. Skyler Thompson will start in week three at Seattle for and for the foreseeable future. It's going to be a long stint. They are not putting any timetable on his recovery.

Nor should they. I think they're dealing with it appropriately. Tua did come out and say he's not looking to retire. So he should be back this season. Hopefully it's a couple months from now. Royce Freeman signed to the Brown's practice squad. Not really important. David Najoku. Pierre Strong is hurt. Which is why Deontifurman got so much work last week. David Najoku unlikely to play. Cool. But not likely to be placed in the... marked oh for your i are that's what i'm saying thanks guys that was today's news and notes presented by usa a insurance learn more at usaa dot com slash insurance we'll take a break we'll come back with unsolved mysteries unsolved mysteries well last year on this episode we were working through some unsolved mysteries uh jimier gibbs's usage was really low at that point in time we talked about whether it'd get better it got better did we solved that one

Baker Mayfield's Redemption Tour with Mike Evans. We wanted to know if it would continue. He was in many ways what Derek Carr is right now. Oh, do I have last year's Baker? Maybe. Did I get him? You might. And the Bengals, they were having offensive woes. Oh, hey, who's having offensive problems? They are slow. This is every year, man. They are slow starters. And then Jordan Love. Just real quick, the Bengals remind me, do they play in the preseason? Do they play their starters in the preseason? Because I'm thinking maybe they should. I heard the stat. I have not vetted this. Kyle, you can vet this, but the Joe Burrow is one and nine in his first two weeks of the season going back every year. Try to try to do a little bit more in training camp. Maybe they just tell the guys that their regular season games, even when they're the last couple preseason games. Yeah, maybe. But Jordan Love, we were wondering this time last year if he's the real deal as well.

This year we put it out there to the footclan. What are the biggest situations that you are dealing with? What are the unsolved mysteries of fantasy football after two weeks? Confirmed, one and nine in the first two weeks of each of the seasons. That's insane. Yeah. Yeah. The first thing that I want to deal with is will the passing numbers in the NFL come back to form or get better? Because... Right now, the touchdown totals in the NFL are way, way down compared to previous seasons. The passing touchdowns way, way down. We're talking at least six, seven years ago. Are we going to get some positive regression? There's a lot of two high safety defenses that are just locked in. We're seeing the return of workhorse backs. Like the pendulum is being swung. The defensive philosophies have changed.

You know, there's a lot of data we can go through, but just get your reaction to that first thought. Yeah, I think the first thought is it will get better as the season goes along. We have several rookies. You know, I wanted to bring this up. I took the week one, like we said, what did we get wrong in the draft season? And my first thing was like, I'm in on Brock Bowers. Like after one game, it was like, he's great and I'm always against rookie tight ends. We're just making bets on history. The other bet we make often on history is avoiding wide receivers for rookie quarterbacks. And with three rookie quarterbacks starting right now, that's, that is a little piece of this equation. Currently, J.J. McCarthy is tied for the lead in passing touchdowns for rookie quarterbacks. With Caleb, with Jaden, with Bo Nix, with Drake May. Ah, with not playing.

Exactly. No rookie has thrown any touchdown. Yeah, Michael Pennix. Don't forget. Yeah, nice job. Oh, yeah, he's tied there. So that plays a piece of it. But I do think the defensive schemes that we have seen recently with the too high with quarters, it's having an effect. And it's really, it's shifting it to more running games. Like if that's the look I'm getting, I'm going to run the ball more. I'm going to involve my running backs more. And when you run the ball more, rush rate up equals. fewer overall plays per game. That's just how that works. So it's having an effect, but it makes me realize if you look at the middling wide receivers versus the middling running backs, right now I think the middling running backs are much better plays. I'll give you examples here. Brian Robinson and Austin Echler and Ramandre Stevenson and Pollard and Charbonnet and these guys who were like, you know, mid.