Fantasy Football Podcast 2016 - 10 Things to Remember for 2016, News, Mailbag

to the run. And when you, and when they were oriented to the pass, say, the final play of their Super Bowl. Oh, sorry Seattle fans. All right, but so here's the difference from weeks one through nine, or so the first eight games, I can even say that. First eight games, average passing attempts, 31 and a quarter. Last eight passing attempts, 29 and a quarter. So they went down two attempts, but that's just, that to me is not a shift.

in who you are as a team. I think the running efficiency you talked about went down because they lost Thomas Rawls and they lost Marshawn Lynch. You had Bryce Brown and Kristen Michael, as much as I wanted Michael to succeed, and he was okay. He just, he wasn't Rawls, what Rawls was able to get done last year. Okay. So I think we've covered all the different angles for that. So ESPN's robbed him, Demovoski, I mispronounced his name, believes Jared Cook was the Packers.

best off-season edition, which is probably true because they never really, you know, have off-season additions. So that's true. I mean, they don't genuinely bring in big name-free agents. They draft their players. So Jared Cook, though, I added this blur because I wanted to briefly speak about expectations for Jared Cook. You know, how much of a potential flyer really is he?

You can have him as late as you want him. I don't think he's going to be. He'll be one of those last tight ends drafted in your draft. You know, those guys where it's like some of them are drafted, some of them aren't. I don't expect the upside to be too high because Aaron Rogers has not used the tight end. Even when Jermichael Finley, which we forget how long ago that was, Jermichael Finley was used.

okay, but he wasn't a big red zone target. This last year you saw Richard Rogers finish as a top 12 tight in, but that took the injury to Jordy Nelson to actually use him. It took a Hail Mary 50-yard touchdown pass, which really helps spike up the fantasy points to get some of that production. I think Jared Cook is okay. He's a talented player in spurts, very promising, but I just don't think that the...

The Green Bay Packers are really a team that utilizes the tight-in, and most people will be disappointed. I think the upside to me is you look at Richard Rogers last year, like Jason just said. He finished ninth for tight-ins.

If you want the tight end who's going to finish ninth because he will give you a great game here and then kill you for three weeks. And the thing is, is Richard Rogers isn't going away. He's not just like, oh, okay, Jared Cook's here. Now he's the guy. Richard Rogers disappears. Now both of these guys are going to be splitting and fighting with each other. It also took the injury last year not only to Jordy, but what was the other tight end? Corpus. Yeah. I mean, so leaving Richard Rogers the only guy. We call that Sam Bradfording.

is when a new player shows up, you just leave. I thought you meant when Jared Cook's on your team, too, because Jared Cook and Bradford didn't work out together. Everybody thought they would, that's for sure. But Cook is perennially inconsistent, that's for sure. All right, before we get into our 10 things to remember for 2016, before we dig deep and pull out some nuggets for you, I want to tell you about our friends, good friends of the show, pristineauction.com. You've heard us talk about them.

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auction.com. We think you're really going to enjoy the website. Dig deeper, y'all. Let's go! Let's go! He really wants to go somewhere. Pulling that from the archives. All right, let's dig deep. Let's give listeners, let's give the Foot Clan 10 things that they need to keep in their brains as they get ready to draft for the 2016 fantasy football season. Mike, we're going to let you kick this baby off. I'm going to kick things off here with...

The aforementioned Jason's favorite player of all time. Wide receiver for the Seattle Seahawks, that is Doug Baldwin. And I did some calculating of the maths and looking at it. I didn't know you could do that. I didn't either. But I mustered it up. I looked deep and I got it done. And Doug Baldwin has played five seasons. Okay, five seasons in the NFL. 38% of his career touchdowns came in a five-week span last year.

Is that a lot? Five seasons. Nearly 40% of his touchdowns in five weeks. Wow. That's called... So what does it mean, Mike? He's on fire! That's called an anomalous stretch that is not repeatable. And currently, Doug Baldwin is going at the back of the fourth. I don't mind taking the chance on a guy who did that in five weeks put up...

40% of his touchdowns, it's worth the chance to put him on your team and see how it goes. But if you are looking, just looking through the final scores and go, oh, Baldwin, wow, he did great last year, you need to take a closer look at the numbers and realize that that is not who he has been for four and a half seasons. So are you advising us to forget?

That part of his season last year rather than remember? What is the key for the listener here and where they value Baldwin? The key to remember is just that that's a near impossible thing to duplicate. So if you are, if you're drafting Baldwin saying, oh man, I'm getting 10 touchdowns for Doug Baldwin. That is a guarantee. That is a lock. You're looking for disappointment. Yeah. And I.

I shared my love for Doug Baldwin, but I completely agree with this point that you have to remember how crazy it was. I mean, I made the point that he was the number one wide receiver the last half of the year. He has zero chance to be... Very sarcastically, I might ask. He has zero percent chance to finish as the first wide receiver, or I would say even the top five. But for where he's being drafted in the fourth round, I still like him. I will...

take the reins, if you will, and go to the next nugget to remember. I'll stick with the wide receivers that we're talking about here and take a time to remember the rookie wide receivers in 2015 and really to remember the rookie wide receivers even beyond 2015. Because here's what's happened. In 2014, 2014, we had...

a Hall of Fame wide receiver draft class, something that has never happened in the NFL before. And when you look at rookie wide receivers breaking in, you figure you need to be a top 36 wide receiver to be, you know, generally speaking, I mean, there's weeks you could use a guy, but generally speaking, that's a guy who's rosterable, startable, is a top 36 wide receiver. Over the last decade, usually the half of the time,

There is one rookie wide receiver that cracks into the top 36. One. Sometimes two. In 2014, there were six. That's nuts. That's, I mean, and some of those guys, you know, O'Dell Beckham Jr., he wasn't even drafted, right? But that rookie class was... In fantasy drafts. Yes, yeah. Well, obviously.

He was drafted by the New York Giants, but in fantasy drafts, he was not generally drafted that year. What happened last year was this crazy rookie wide receiver value going into the draft. It was the highest ADP for rookie wide receivers ever. Never before in fantasy football have rookie wide receivers been valued as high as last year. That was because of the 2014 season. The narrative was,

Is there a change? Is this now a passing league? Well, in three of the last four seasons, there's been one rookie, including last year one rookie that cracks the top 36 at the wide receiver position. So I am telling you... Are you talking PPR or standard? That was PPR. Okay. So...

The point here, and I got some of that information, Kevin Cole, a great, great guy over at RotoViz. I saw some of those stats. I did a little bit more research into it, but it just says to me this year the rookie wide receivers are still being overvalued in redraft leagues. I don't think I'm going to have a single rookie wide receiver on my team unless it's like a Tyler Boyd really later or someone like that. Real quick, what did you take when you heard that Corey Coleman had reported out of shape?

Did you see that news blurb? I did see that. And I think it says... Is that just motivation from Hugh? No, I don't think it's just motivation. I think that if Kevin Coleman showed up in great shape, he would not... Cory Corum. Cory Coleman. I think he showed up. If he showed up in great shape, Hugh Jackson's not going to say, yeah, he's out of shape. Yeah, yeah. So I think he was out of shape. All right. So I'm going to give you mine. Let's remember...

For 2016, and this is, I'm preaching to myself, all right? More than anybody. Definitely not to Mike. You're looking in the mirror. Definitely not to Mike. Look, remember the power of the scatback. Skatba, whatever we eat. Yeah, exactly. Not that. No, the power of the, the scat back, the third down back, the running back that does not have a chance to be the bell cow. We're talking Danny Woodhead, all right.

who ended up the number eight running back in our half-point PPR league with double digits in seven of his first nine games. Even if he gave you, now he ended up eight, so he gave you consistency almost the entire season. But even if you only had him for the first half, that's double digits in seven or nine games. Consistency, powerful in a PPR league. Gio Bernard, he ended the year at number 19, but he started the year with double digits in nine of ten games and carried...

teams that didn't expect to have a powerful running back out of Geo Bernard where he was drafted. Even second-tier guys like Bilal-Pal and Theo Riddick had big time years. Bilal-Powel ended the year with five of six weeks in double digits. Theoretic was just outside the top 24 in PPR leagues. I have a problem. And the only way to fix this problem is to say these numbers out loud to myself because I always want to take the guy that I think can turn into Adrian Peterson.

in the fantasy universe, right? Like, not actually Adrian Peterson, but the guy that if things go right, he could be a 300-carry running-back stalwart for my team. But the problem with only approaching the fantasy running back position with that mindset is that you ignore, one, you ignore all that. Dionne Lewis is another guy. I didn't mention, right? Who is very high. And Charles Sims. So there are a lot of other guys out there. Those are the ones that came to mind right away that we need to remember that you can actually.

I think this is the message to myself. You can lean on them a little bit. You can lean on those guys to carry you through weeks. You can take a chance on them later in your draft as the RB2-3 option on your team and maybe even better if you pick the right guy. So remember the power of the scat-back, resist the urge to make every back that you pick a 300-carry guy. These guys can catch the ball and they can do it. Yeah, we all wish we could walk up to the redwood.

give it that one spinning roundhouse kick and the tree goes falling down. You got to keep chopping, man. These guys who are going to give you the consistent seven or eight points to boost your overall score, that's great. And people tend to overlook that because they want the home run. If you pair those scatbacks with stud-wide receivers, which I think is a strategy a lot of people are using this year, you can piece your running back together in a way that

In years before, you couldn't. You really couldn't piece the running back position together. You had to have one of those thuds or you've got garbage. Sure. So, Mike, let's get your next one here. My next thing to remember for 2016.