The TRUTH About Fantasy RBs in 2020, Part 1 - Fantasy Football Podcast for 1/26

So this is just an extension. Which I think is a terrible idea. It's a very bad business decision. Andy had your backs, everybody. Is me and Jason over here? We're like, this is it. $300. We came to an agreement with Brooks to subsidize that additional cost. It was normally going to be about $1,000. Brooks is paying a subsidy on your behalf. He's keeping the price low. But this is...

And Brooks, I just want to say thank you so much for using your wealth in such a positive way for the industry. You're welcome. Okay. All right. He loves the foot clan, man. All right. Truth about the running back position momentarily. Let's get into some news, though. We have some things to talk about. News and notes from around the league. All right. This was huge news. Oh, this offseason. You know, it's not normal to have franchise quarterbacks moving teams in an off season. Mm-mm.

But here you are with Deshawn Watson, potentially moving teams. Yeah, maybe. And a new report, the Lions and Matthew Stafford. They've mutually agreed to part ways this off season. The team is going to explore trade options in the coming weeks for their star quarterback. So many teams in need of the quarterback position. Matthew Stafford is 33 years old. I absolutely adore Matthew Stafford. You're talking about a 33-year-old franchise quarterback with top five armed talent.

that's going to have a new home. Now, when this first happened, I got kind of emotional about this thought that the team thought they're better off without Matthew Stafford. I've been corrected by the Detroit fans. From what I'm hearing, it's much more about giving Matthew Stafford an opportunity, a mutual respect, a sense that this team is being built. Look, Dan Campbell, six-year deal. Teams being built from the ground up, they're not going to let Matthew Stafford kind of just be

a pin cushion behind center for the next couple years as they rebuild. So I want to just apologize for reacting so harshly to the news because if that is indeed the reality of the situation, then they're doing right by Matthew Stafford. Yeah. And doing right by him is going to include trading him to a good team. That could be someone like the Indianapolis Colts, who I think are, you know, among the front runners.

Could be the San Francisco 49ers. I hope it's not. Could be New England. Better than Jim McGroplo. Absolutely, New England Patriots. It'll be very interesting to see where he goes. In the meantime, the only thing we do know is that if he does go somewhere else, either via trade or via some kind of cut, the lions get worse. The team is worse. The outlook for...

DeAndre Swift is, unfortunately, it takes a small hit. His talent is still there? Yeah, because. Because I had the opposite reaction. Let me tell you why. Anthony Lynn joining his offensive coordinator. That's another piece of news. The team is going to be built around an attempt at running in defense without a new quarterback. So I just wondered if the volume.

and attention that Swift is going to get with Anthony Lynn might be better off. Like I thought about trying to get DeAndre Swift. The volume will absolutely. I mean, I think that they will have to build around DeAndre Swift. It's certainly not something saying DeAndre Swift is gone, is terrible. But where I think he excels the most is in the passing game. You remember every single week he was getting five targets? That's a Matthew Stafford special. Campbell did talk about.

that he wants to get DeAndre Swift in the slot. And this was just one of his examples of after the old knee-biter gate that we experienced, which was just a Twitter sensation. He then said some very forward-thinking, at least bring you some hope that this man is not bringing a caveman offense, and he'll do the right thing for his players. And he mentioned putting Swift into the slot. But yes, volume will go up. Efficiency.

has to go down. If you don't have someone who's capable back there and you can just load up against the running back, it's. Yeah, Swift is good, but I don't know if he's that good. Scoring opportunities will be down. The box will be more difficult to run. And I think targets, total targets, even if they move into the slot, if you're a bad quarterback versus a Matthew Stafford, it's not going to be as valuable. Could be no Goliday, no Marvin Jones on this team. Yeah, and Matthew Stafford has been hurt.

You know, we've seen this team without him. Let me be clear. If the worst player of all time Chase Daniel was somehow the quarterback, I would retract any positive things I could say about DeAndre Swift. All right. Lots to follow there, though. It will matter who's the quarterback. It will matter what happens in the draft. I mentioned Anthony Lynn, former Chargers head coach, is now their offensive coordinator. He knows how to run the football. The Eagles hired Colts offensive coordinator Nick Siriani as their head coach. The Eagles have a new head coach.

And I believe Siriani's like 39 years old, right? He's one of the younger coaches in the NFL. He's young. He's good. He's worked on a couple of good offenses. And this was as close as they could get to getting Frank Reich back.

They're like, oh, man, we should have let him go. Let's get him back. But, yeah, well, I mean, we're going to talk about all these offensive coordinator changes, head coach changes on our coaching changes episode, which is literally my favorite offseason episode coming up. Well, then I'll, I'll just blitz some of the news on hires here and we'll move forward. But they also hired Shane Steichen to be their offensive coordinator.

The Colts then with the absence had to promote somebody, and it was Marcus Brady. Their quarterback's coach is their new offensive coordinator. Jacksonville, Darrell Bevel, welcome back. He is now the offensive coordinator in Jacksonville. Falcons hired Bears passing game coordinator Dave Ragon as their offensive coordinator as their offensive coordinator. I get through it all. I wasn't hired in any of that news. I did not get any – I did not get picked up.

for even the smallest opportunity. I actually did have a dream that I was being interviewed for the Atlanta Falcons head coaching job. Did you really? I really did. genuinely did. And the real deal breaker for me was we were looking at houses. Did you turn it down? I did because I didn't like the house that the, that the, basically if you're the head coach of the Atlanta Falcons, you live in that house.

It wasn't a very nice house. So I said, I can't live here. Thanks, but no thanks. You and your dreams. All right. Greg Olson has officially announced his retirement. Seahawks tight in, Panther, great. Yeah, but not the greatest tight end to announce his retirement. Vance McDonald. That's true. Thank you, Jason. Vance McDonald retired from the NFL after eight seasons. Never.

came to fruition. So he burned too bright, man, burned too bright. We had the stiff arm moment. We had the playoff game and then and then kaput. And I think the Vance Dance drop is retired forever now as well. Now it is. Now it's retired. Yeah, thank you. And then Dwayne Haskins, a one year deal with the Pittsburgh Steelers. We told you how bad Mason Rudolph was. This is pretty. This is the high. And now they have to.

All right, without further ado, let's get into the truth. You want answers? I think I'm entitled. You want answers. I want them. You can't handle the truth. All right, we're into the running back truth episode. And as always, you want to check the website, the fantasy footballers.com, because we're putting up some pretty sweet articles in conjunction. Too sweet. Very sweet. 25 running back statistics article is up there right now by Jeff Greenwood. So check that out.

But the running back position. Oh, so fun to talk about the stabilizing force of your fantasy team. And in our truth episode, here's how we're determining consistency. Great games, more than 21 fantasy points. Good games, more than 11. Bus games fewer than seven. Don't hold the missing games against you. And I got some really, really bad news for you. I'm going to share with you in just a split second here. Oh, no. But let's go with number one.

Alvin Camara. That guy's good. He's pretty good. I thought we were going to get our Alvin Camara drop there, but there is. There he is. Super Camario himself. He missed the block a couple times. Number one at the position. Number three in consistency was great. 33% of the time, good 87% of the time. Oh, man, that's so nice for your fantasy team. Busted one time.

One bad game. But here's the headline news, the bad news, Jason, before you get into the good. His previous three years, 81 receptions, 81 receptions, 81 receptions, and he ended up with 83 this year. Yeah, it's a real shame. He had a chance to go for the quattro, as we say. And he failed by, you know, outdoing himself. The reality with Alvin Camara is his...

beginning to the season, the first 10 weeks, the pace that he was on was otherworldly. We're talking Ladanian Tomlinson, all-timer type of season. And then, of course, Drew Brees went down. And that was a very different Camara that we saw. He wasn't bad. You know, he had four games with Taysam Hill as a starter. Twice. He was a top 12 running back. He was an RB1. He had his one bust game during that time. But those four games were like,

four of his six worst games of the season, and now you have the presumption that Drew Breeze has gone. So the truth about the truth about the 2020 Alvin Kamara was that he was as good as if not the best back in the league when he had Drew Breeze, and he was very good without him, but not nearly the same caliber. That's the truth. But what's the truth for 2022 or 2021?

That's a tough one. If you look at his splits, he's the same against top and bottom defenses. He does have a decent gap at home. So like he was about seven points better at home. However, that game, the Christmas Day game was at home. And when you score 50-something points on such a small sample of games like this, that can actually move your average in a big way. So his home road splits are pretty close.

Camara is very difficult heading into 2021 because he's elite. He has an elite running back contract. He will be used and showcased for the talents that he has. How good is the team going to be? But how good is the team? Is it Tayson Hill? Is it James Winston? Is it Matthew Stafford? I mean, it could be, it could, we have no idea who the quarterback for the Saints is going to be, at least at the time of this recording on Monday afternoon here.

Couple things that I'll throw in here. One, we spent the offseason talking about the fact that his touchdown totals were going to rise. He ended up with 21 total touchdowns, which is an extreme number. In fact, I think he's only the fourth player ever or fourth time ever that 100 plus targets 20 plus touchdowns in a season. So bear that in mind in evaluating Alvin Camer's ceiling, right? Obviously, he was number one overall this year.

If he finishes three or four or five, he still pays off on his top-end fantasy numbers. But how do you end up? I feel like here's where I'll go with Alvin Kamara. I know that there are variables in play, and these things all have to be brought up, and they will beat storylines and narratives throughout the off-season. But I feel like Alvin Kamara is like you go to your favorite bakery and you get the cinnamon bun.

And like one day you're like, oh man, this cinnamon bun is the best one you've ever made. But they're always good every single time you go into the bakery. It does. Yes. Your worst cinnamon bun is still a cinnamon bun. That's kind of what I'm saying. That's my point. It's like at the end of the day, the worst thing you have is a cinnamon bun, which is pretty good. I agree with you on the cinnamon bun analogy for 2021. Wherever Camara's average draft position is.

is exactly where I will be drafting him because the reality is if his quarterback is bad, he will fall. He won't stay this top three pick if Taysam Hill is the starter next year. People will factor that in, the regression on touchdowns, and he'll be a mid-back in first round pick, in which case I'll take him there. If somehow Breeze is back and, you know, they're going at it again, then he deserves to be at the top. The reality is he is one of the very few.

running backs that truly is a difference maker when he touches the ball. The other running backs can't do what he does. And those guys need to be drafted at the top of fantasy drafts. Yeah. And you know he's going to have the targets. It may not be Breeze level, but he's still elite. Number two on the list. Derek Henry, number two in total, in fantasy finish, number seven in consistency. 75% of the time good games, 38% great.