Fantasy Football Podcast 2016 - Top 15 Running Backs Part 2

Uh, it was Mark from my, uh, good friend of mine, B bonds. And it's just like this cream. He said, rub this on your legs for your combine. Oh, really? So I, B bonds. Bonds. Yeah. I don't know exactly who it is, but I'm, I'm just doing it. You have the cream. Yeah. All right. Let's get into the news. News and notes from around the league. All right. A little bit of news here on Zeke Elliott. That time of year, we got a hamstring injury. Gonna miss a little bit of time. What are you guys hearing? Uh, I'm hearing the, the.

The reports, actually, the initial reports were very ominous of, was it, Schefter tweeted out, Jones, Stephen Jones saying Elliot's going to miss, quote, sometime. Very ominous. And then it came out, maybe it's not as bad as maybe he'll miss a week, maybe two weeks. Either way, though, missing two weeks of training camp.

Not good for a rookie running back who they need to perform and be able to protect Tony Romo immediately. So it's at least noteworthy. And people are asking, does this drop him in his rank, drop him in my rankings? Nope. Am I scared to take him towards the back of the first round? Nope.

Yeah, I would agree with that. And when it comes to missing the week, the position that it's going to hurt the least as a running back versus a wide receiver, much easier for a running back to come in and be productive. Mental reps. Get those mental reps. But I will say this. It's worth noting that it's a hamstring. And we want to, you know, if he comes back and in three weeks has a little setback with the hamstring again, then I will actually worry a little bit because.

We've seen it time and time again. Some players, when they get a hamstring early in camp or in preseason, it just keeps lingering all year. Well, and the pressure's on him, too. He's a top pick. And for fantasy owners, you're not drafting Ezekiel to eventually help your team. You're drafting him to help your team now because you're investing that kind of a draft capital. As opposed to a guy this next bit of news, Josh Doxon, Doxon has a...

Achilles injury. He's in a walking boot. He's weeks away from a return. It doesn't sound good. When reporters talk to him, he's like, well, the team doesn't want me to talk about it. Yeah, that's the worst part. That's not really good. But I, you know, like I said, Doxon, you're not drafting him in a position where you're like, oh, I have to play him week one. If you want to take a shot at him, maybe he's a great play for you in week eight, nine. Even I'm not saying he's going to miss games. I'm saying he might have to be eased in. If he doesn't get camp, you know, Mike just said missing time is bad, especially for a rookie.

Well, it pushes their draft value very far down. Remember back when Odell Beckham in that great year where there were just all these good wide receivers you could take as rookies. And Odell Beckham went undrafted solely because he was injured early in the season. He was all right. Yeah. So you heard it here first. Jason is predicting John Doxon. No, I'm just saying the only rookie wide receivers I want are the ones I can get very, very late.

And I might now be able to get docs. Oh, we got bad news, Mr. ASJ. Dirk Cutter has lumped Austin Savarian Jenkins into the category of players, quote, fighting for a job. And he does not use kind words. If you want to take a positive approach, you talk about Cameron Brate. Yeah, Cameron Brate, he does not hate. Cameron Brate. He thinks he's great. Yes. We did it. And I think Cameron Brate is great, too. Would you draft Cameron Brate?

Say that again? That was hard. Would you draft Cameron Brate? No, I would sign him and play him early. I mean, he'd be on my watch list for those first few weeks because there's always the Barnage-esque breakout tight-in. We all like the offense. Well, I mean, you know, minus Doug Martin, according to Mike, but whatever. Cameron Brate is somebody to keep your eyes on. ASJ is somebody to turn your eyes away from. Yeah, ASJ is...

Fantasy football-wise, currently dead to me. Yeah, ASJ, B-A-D. R-I-P. There you go. The Indianapolis star Zach Kiever reports that Josh Ferguson has flashed consistently so far at training camp. I'm not going to overreact to this news, but this is just, it's good news. You want to at least hear positive things about especially an undrafted running back. Josh Ferguson or Kenyon Drake?

uh probably i would take ferguson at this point because you've got one guy in front of him and he's a very old guy i realize arian foster is as injury prone as anybody but then you still have joppycock well and and uh i was dave richard our good friend over at cbs he had gone to the miami uh training or training camp and you know who was running in front of kenyon drake isaiah peed i remember him

Isaiah Pete. It wasn't until he went out with cramps that Kenyon Drake actually started taking reps. Yeah, you see the difference. That's the thing. He's not overreacting to the Ferguson news, but you'd rather be kind of, you know, the wind blowing the right direction. Exactly. Or Kenyon Drake, it's not been positive yet. All right. Very sad news. Have we really not said this yet? I'm not sure. Trent Richardson was waived.

Oh, no. Oh, no, we did. We talked about this. We talked about his gold jacket. I apologize. Well, if that's the case, then it's worth bringing out other reports from the Ravens Camps. We've really made this a Ravens running back early show. Terrence West is several reports over the last couple weeks and said he's looking great. He has lost weight. He lost weight coming into this week. He's making great cuts. Great. Lost weight. Cameron Bray. What is with this show? Open up the gate.

Yeah, so he is finding a way to come through the gate and hopefully be great. He was a little bit late to date. Yeah. Can I rhyme to date with that? No, no, you can't rhyme at all. The point here is, you know, I have been a defender of Justin Forsett as the.

you know, foregone conclusion as the runaway starter reports are now. Terrence West has put himself in a position where he could. It just says to me right now. Mike just said Givorius Allen has the potential to be involved in. I like Kenneth Dixon a lot. Yeah, that's as an overall talent. That's four running backs there. I can't, I can totally see how you guys love Justin Forsett. If I, if I, if I had to take one, I would still take four set. Sure. So that's a big difference between.

But I'm choosing Justin Forsett. I know I'm not putting all my stock into Terrence West. The Terrence West news I throw into the trash. Here's what I know. They want to just produce. They want to produce at the position. And they better use Justin Forsett. Agreed. All right. Well, we disagree there. And my rankings reflect that. So, well, we won't be talking about him in our position rankings, though, because he's not in our top 15. Thank goodness. No.

I can make some changes. And Wendell Smallwood suffered a strain quads. Ha! Ha! Wait, are you laughing about Wendell Smallwood injury? I'm just laughing at it. Seriously? I think that's the first time. I think he was genuinely laughing at. I think he seriously was. That was awful. That was not laughing at the man being an injured. That was me laughing at...

running backs get injured and all these shade thrown on Ryan Matthews like, oh, he's already hurt. Guess who else has already hurt? Wendell Smallwood. Weird, man. We'll accept that.

So that people know. If you ever wonder if Mike has bias. Just go back and play that whole video. Love Ryan Matthews. We're a positive show here. We're a family show, Mike. Before we get into the running backs, which are going to start off with some heat, very excited. We do want to make sure, look, this is a fantasy football show. You guys look for places to play fantasy football.

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All right, all right. We're going to start at number eight here, but I'm going to rehash. I'm going to go back and give you our, well, Mike can do that. Give us our top seven from the last show. Sure. Our number one consensus running back is David Johnson. Who? David Johnson. Number two is Todd Gurley. Number three, Jamal Charles. Number four, Lamar Miller. Number five, Adrian Peterson. Number six, Shady McCoy. And number seven, hamstring himself, Ezekiel Elliott.

All right. Number eight, Mark Ingram. Mark Ingram is our consensus number eight. Jason was talking in the office yesterday. He's been watching a lot of the camp reports. In an interview with Mark Ingram, Ingram said he wants this to be his best year. He expects to be the best running back in the league. He gave credit where credit was due to Lev Bell and some other players. But.

He expects to be the best. It was a good indication. I mean, you always, right, players are going to say, I'm going to be great. I hope to be the 14th best player this year. Trent Richardson just said he thinks he's going to end his career with a Hall of Fame jacket. So, you don't really care that much. They need to get him one of those bumblebee jerseys. Yeah. What was good, don't do that on Trent. That would just be too big.

The thing is with that report is he really showed that he believes this is an opportunity this year where he will be involved. I saw him in training camp working with Drew Breeze, working on passing and routes and things like that. That was really the difference. If you want to know if Mark Ingram is going to be great this year, it comes down to whether or not he's the passing. Yes, it does. If he is what he was last year and he's catching passes out of the backfield, it's going to be very hard for him to not be a top 10 running back.

We were all surprised at his performance in the passing game last year. You saw it in preseason, right? And we started talking about it, and we said, wow, you know, he looks really good in the passing game. But it was a surprise. Here's the deal. He was really good in the passing game. Yeah. 464 yards after the catch made him the seventh best at the position, catching the ball out of the backfield for a guy that was looked at as a first and second down bruiser. And he caught 50 of 60 balls. I mean, that's like... Right.

You keep throwing that guy the ball. And he did that, remember, in limited games. I think he only played 13. 13 games last year. And that's part of the rub against Mark Ingram is he played 13 games. But look, he was one of those guys. We're going to talk about it when the preseason gets going. When we go three, we watch every single game. We're scouting every single player. You need one of the tips we always give, you need to trust your eyes a little bit. You can watch those preseason games and you don't.

Read into every stat line, right? Because these guys are playing different reps at different times, the different offensive lines. Trust your eyes on the individual player. Mark Ingram looked different. He looked completely different in the preseason. Yeah, we talked about that. We're like, this is not the same player. Yeah. And so weeks 1 through 13 when he was healthy, he was the running back three. Wow. In standard. Wow. He was the running back three. So you toss in his PPR numbers. I don't know where he ranked probably right around the same place. But he was unbelievable.

uh and the thing for that jason made that's my that's my flag for mark ingram is will he be the past catching back the predominant past catching back last year 148 targets to the running back for the saints the year before 166 so this is