Fantasy Football Podcast 2015 - Special Guest: Martavis Bryant, Busts, Players to Avoid

perform in the preseason with all the confusion. Or just have a big commitment from the team in camp. Yeah, exactly. Which we didn't see. We saw so much unknown. And so now he's definitely on that bust list. He's the counterpoint to our Andre Williams sleeper talk yesterday. So, yeah, he's a good name. I'm going to throw Darren McFadden out there as a bust. Okay. I know that somebody will gain yards behind that offensive line.

I'm just going to go out and say it's not going to be Darren McFadden very often. It is a mess in Dallas right now for something that fantasy players considered a gold mine to get the player. I mean, I don't believe in Darren McFadden. He's over the past few years has been when you look at.

metrics and statistics and things. He's been one of the worst running backs in the league. And film. I mean, it's not just stats. You watch him and he does not pass the eyeball test whatsoever. Name the last running back who's been aging, has stunk on a team for a couple of years. Switches teams and is better. Name the last one. Do you know who it is? Herschel Walker? No, he was still good. Trick questions. Never happened. That's a trick question. Nice one. All right, so let's talk about a couple of warning.

Guys? That's the word I'm using for them. You can use whatever word you want. But Emmanuel Sanders comes to mind, and I don't love bringing his name up on this show because I like Emmanuel Sanders a lot. But let me just set the table for him right now. Last year, he set career highs in basically every receiving category. So that should set off your alarm bells a little bit if you're drafting. For expectation. Expectation drafting. Yeah, you don't necessarily want to do that. The other thing.

in the equation is he's been banged up. The offense seems to be more committed to the run. Cody Latimer is in his second year. These are things that come to mind. So what are your gut feelings? Because part of, you know, part of what we do is stats. Part of what we do is smarts, I would say, and part of it is guts. Guts. So. Dude, you have it. Oh, my good. Did Nickelode you? Dude, I didn't have cable growing up. Yeah. Sorry, bro.

Foot Clan. I knew what that was, though. Foot Clan, Guts was the greatest show when you were a child. I never saw it. It's true. You know, I think that you bring up a lot of the good points. They're going to go a little bit more run heavy, and definitely Cody Latimer is going to be more involved. So injury aside, his numbers have to regress a tad. I think it's very, it's probable.

that his numbers are going to regress. Now you factor in the hamstring injury, which is one of those soft tissue lingering things that happen, and there's a chance for Cody Latimer to make a big deal. And this is not a bust alert. No, this is a warning. Where you're grabbing him, there's guys right before, right after him, that are equal to me in the potential of Emmanuel Sanders. So if I'm choosing between some of those guys, I'm probably not going to grab Emmanuel Sanders. Yeah, fair enough. I mean, that's probably the best way to put it.

DeAndre Hopkins is right next to him. I would take DeAndre Hopkins over Emmanuel Sanders. And obviously the league format matters a little bit. In a PPR, I feel a little bit safer with Emmanuel Sanders than I do in a non-PPR myself. But let's talk about another warning sign. I can't believe what I heard this morning when Mike looked this up. I am not surprised. Doug Martin is now being drafted ahead of Jonathan Stewart. Is that what you found? That is what we saw from Fantasy Football Calculator. So warnings. Warnings. That is a official. Yeah, it's good.

Warning is called two years of sucking. Yeah, that is not. Well, man. I'm trying to think of Jonathan Stewart and how I described the last two years for him. How is his play been? How was his play last year? On the actual field. Yeah, that's a great point. But what's great about fantasy football is our recency bias of two years, two full years of getting just scorched by Doug Martin.

We watched two preseason games. We're like, yeah. That's what's amazing to me. I'm back in it, baby. We're back in it. I was totally shocked because it is an absolute reaction to one game. Mostly. Yeah. I mean, mostly last game, he had a big game. When you do it on the prime time, it moves the needle. That was Monday night. Yes. And we're not saying, look, look, look, he looks more like his rookie self. But, Kimmy John Stewart. But, yeah, I'm taking Jonathan Stewart over Doug Martin.

The offense will struggle frequently throughout the year with Winston as he goes through his growing pains. He's going to take some goal line stuff away there too. And Charles Sims is still there for passing downs. If they're trailing, I imagine we'll see a lot of Sims. It's just two games is not going to race two years for me. Yeah. Let's take a quick time out. I want to read something to you. I got off at Twitter. It says, at the FF Ballers. I just used the Seat Geek app.

It was great, and I was able to get great seats for not a lot of money to see my 49ers versus your Cardinals. Thank you. Whoa. I just got that this morning. Hey, I hope the Cardinals shall lack you. Yeah. But that's pretty cool. We talked about Seat Geek, the Seat Geek app on the show on Tuesday, and it's awesome.

Because it gets you discounted tickets to NFL games. It's as simple as that. Really truly is the easiest way to find them because their color coding thing that they do, I've been looking up certain tickets because I want to go to the Cardinals several times this year on good seats. And it's like you don't have to spend as much time in it. You open it up and that color coding grid of the best price just means like, oh.

I'm focusing right here, and because they're grabbing tickets from every place, from over 100 different sites, you already know that is literally the best price, and it takes two seconds in their app. You download the app, and it takes two seconds to just go, I want this game, I want the best price. Oh, here it is. Get it. And let's be honest. Real life NFL action is tremendous. And we know that tickets with a full family can be...

hard to come by right now. That's why you want to save as much money as you possibly can, still get the family out to the event. You go to Seat Geek. Here's what you got to do. You download the free Seat Geek app today. You put in the promo code footballers. You know what they do? 20 Bones. 20 Bones off already cheap tickets. Yeah. Check out the Seat Geek app. It's awesome. And we like hearing from you. So if you use the app, tweet us. We'll read them on the show. Tweet us pictures of your sad face when the Cardinals...

Wipe the floor with you. See, I normally left the family at home. That was the strategy to get cheap things. Even cheaper. Even cheaper. No, check that out. We appreciate Seatgeek, and we love the app. All right, let's talk a couple more guys in the warning category. One that's jumping off the page to me. I might have been caught up in the hype early on. And that's T.J. Eldon. Just the idea that.

Well, that offense needs to run the ball, and they drafted him so high, and so they're just going to give him the carries from day one, and it's going to be a rosy, magical ride, and I don't think that's the case anymore. You've got, look, Jacksonville upgraded their offensive line, and there's a lot of things we like about the improvement. But it's still a subpar offense, and a completely unproven rookie who has other talented backs there. You combine all those three things together, and how can you jump and get crazy excited about T.J. Yeldon?

You know, that just doesn't make sense. So it depends on value, right? If you're getting him late, if you're getting him eighth round, that seems like where a guy with those descriptions should go. That's why watch preseason game three. This is going to be huge for TJ Yeldon. I feel the exact same way on Yeldon as I did last year on Toby Gerhardt, where it's, I think I'm getting a feature back. I'm not excited about the...

The scoring potential, but I think I'm going to get tremendous volume, and so hopefully I'm going to get a safe floor. That's how I felt with Yeldin. And now that the volume seems like it's not going to be 100% there from day one, there are some warning signs. He could emerge and take the job. But like we talked about, Donard Robinson, he's looked good. Toby Gerhardt has looked great in short yardage. We know Toby was hurt all last year, so maybe Toby still has.

has some stuff that they want to use. And these aren't has-beens, so to speak. They paid for Gerhardt last year, and they didn't get a lot of use due to injury. And DeNrod Robinson was a draft pick and produced for them. Not every game, but he had three or four games where he was a five, six yards, a carry kind of lightning bolt. Because he was offensive weapon to Norfolk Robinson. So we're throwing the warning out on T.J. Eldon. Again, this is going to be one of those things where I probably just draft somebody else because of...

who's around him in the draft. Right now. Or hopefully we can be taking his value down right now enough to where your draft this weekend. You get him in the eighth. So we're in a PPR draft. Guys going around him. Arian Foster. That's kind of crazy. But I guess the news on him has been positive. So Aaron Foster, Todd Gurley, Chris Ivory, Gio Bernard. I love Chris Ivory there. Yeah.

Just saying those are guys that who are clumped in a similar area. I would draft most all of those over Yelden, including Aryan Foster. Now, if preseason, you know, week three comes and he just looks like an absolute beast, you know, we stay water. You know, we stay in water, my friend. But definitely don't just believe hype without seeing anything to back it up. Here's another player that I would avoid. Another player that I would avoid is Jimmy Graham.

Jimmy Graham is completely based on just what you have to give up to get him. I actually have him as my number two tight end. I am not saying that Jimmy Graham is going to be a bad tight in. And if you have him on your team, he's an asset to your team. But here's the truth is that especially now that Kelvin Benjamin has gone down, I feel like Greg Olson has moved to that tier that we've only included Travis Kelsian. So now you've got four top options. But...

But half of those options are going to cost you maybe a fifth or a sixth round. Whereas to get Jimmy Graham, you're looking back at the second or the third. I would much rather take a quality running back or wide receiver there and then get a guy that I think is going to finish just where Jimmy Graham is in Greg Olson in the sixth. Thank you. The defense rests. It's pretty hard to debate that perspective on Jimmy. Because it's not saying Jimmy Graham is going to be terrible. It's saying that Jimmy Graham is not going to be on your team.

Right, exactly. He's a player that... And your team will be better for it. Because Jimmy Graham is not on it. And then trade for him. That's exactly what the GM at New Orleans said right before they traded him. Our team will be better without Jimmy Graham. They had to with money. No, and the Unger effect. Let's get him in there. Okay, one more bust. One more bust I want to talk about before we get to our conversation with Marty McBry. Let's talk Tom Brady.

Yes. Let's talk. Tommy touchdown. It's time to have a real conversation about Tom Brady. Yeah. But not like one of those email ones where he says how much better he is than Peyton Manning. All right. So let's talk Tom Brady because he is, he's going too high, my friends. He's got a great name. He's a good-looking man. Everybody wants a piece of Tom Brady. The only problem is over the last several years, he hasn't been that good of fantasy quarterback.

He really hasn't. Not until, you know, what was it? Four years ago when he put up his, you know, awesome. Yeah, the Moss. Well, that must have been more than four years ago. Five years ago, I don't know. But yeah, the Moss year, after that, he's really been an average run-of-the-mill quarterback. He had a great stretch for a couple of games last year where he was a top-end quarterback. And I'm not saying he's ever been like a quarterback 15 or 16, but.

You're not talking about a top three guy finishing the last few years. You're talking about a seven, eight, nine guy, and he's set right now to miss four games. Why would you draft a guy who is a back-half quarterback one who's going to miss four games and take up an extra roster spot? It just is nonsensical. But his name is so nice. The argument, which I understand the legs of this argument.

Last time the Patriots got in trouble, SpyGate, Belichick, and Tom Brady came out and decimated the earth. They did not pull the gas ever. They wanted to beat you by 50 points because they were furious. They had tremendous aerial weapons during that time. Now you go, that's what, and people think, oh, he's suspended, he's mad at the NFL, he's going to come out, and he's going to crush people. I just don't think that the weapons are around him. Dude, the offense is not set up to do that. Julian Edelman, hurt.

Brandon LaFelle. Hurt. They signed Reggie Wayne because they were so desperate. But to go along with Jason of, yeah, we remember that hot stretch in the middle. That was coming off of four games where he averaged under 10 points. He lost weeks. 2013, he finished the 14th best fantasy quarterback. Yeah. He just, he has not been, he has not been real life.