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

AJ Green has never caught less than a thousand yards. He has never had less than a thousand reception yards. How do you catch a yard? I've never tried to catch a yard before. I understand it came out funny. So let me rephrase this. A.J. Green has never had less than a thousand receiving yards in a season. And that's pretty good. He has the longest active streak of any wide receiver. That's at five. He is currently going in the second round, high in the second round.

Which, you know, like, oh, that's high, except he's the seventh wide receiver off the boards. I get it. For some reason, there's a, AJ Green is not nearly the sexy name as the other guys like DES and people going in front of him. But a thousand yards. I mean, you're talking a level of consistency that no one else has going for them in the NFL right now. The Cincinnati Bengals have lost their wide receiver two and their wide receiver three.

option. 150 targets are gone from last year's team. Absolutely. And you're talking about AJ Green in the years when it was just green, Andy Dalton threw so many targets to AJ Green that he finished he's finished multiple years in the top five. So I don't think it's that people are overlooking or neglecting AJ Green completely. But

For whatever reason, he is the seventh wide receiver being drafted when he has the longest streak of 1,000 yards. Yeah, I think that that's a great guy. And he's a great touchdown machine. I know Eifert came on the scene huge last year, but A.J. Green is more than capable of giving you double-digit touchdowns. Yeah, I mean, I think the guy he replaced for most consecutive weeks was Calvin Johnson, was it not?

Yes, it was. And so you kind of have that dynamic that you love with a powerhouse wide receiver where you have a quarterback and a wide receiver that have been together for a long time like Stafford and Calvin were, like Romo and Desar. There's nothing to not like other than the ho-hum perception of A.J. Green that for some reason... Maybe it's just he does it too much, and we've grown numb to the fact of how great he has been. Well, we all have him higher.

We have him at 4-4 and 6 if the ADP right now is 7, so we all agree on that one. And I will say this. Each season, he has played the full 16 games, double-digit touchdowns. Yeah.

I mean, that's, what else can you want? And that's pretty good. I'll take 10 touchdowns of 1,000 yards, please. All right, Jason, what's yours? Well, this is another good segue because this is another quarterback wide receiver combination that is going to grow together. And it was replacing Calvin Johnson. Mine is to remember the Detroit Lions.

change last year in the second half of the year. This is going to affect mostly to me Golden Tate, but the reason that I bring this up to remember is because what is your guy's perception of the Detroit Lions right now? Are they a good team? No. That's the perception. Yeah, they're not a, they're a mediocre offense is my perception. Exactly. And I think that most people see their team in closer to the vein of the Cleveland Browns. You know, they're just kind of a mess right now.

Plus, they're losing Calvin Johnson. So I think the value of the Detroit Lions players is as low as it could be right now. But let me tell you some of the changes that happened last year. They started one in seven, right? They were a complete dumpster fire. So everybody was off of them. The guys that had a little bit of hype, the Amir Abdullah's, they stunk the first half of the year. Golden Tate disappointed people. They fire their offensive coordinator after the Minnesota game in, I believe, week seven going into week eight.

And that was Lombardi, who, in my opinion, should never have been the offensive coordinator for a team. And if it wasn't for his grandpappy, Lombardi, probably would never have had the job. So they fire him, and they bring in a better named guy, Jim Bob Cooter. Jim Bob Cooter comes to town. Let me ask you this. And I think you guys might know the question. But the first half of the year, Matthew Stafford, under Lombardi, was the 20th ranked fantasy quarterback.

The second half of the year, they had a week nine by, so it's a perfect split. The second half of the year, what quarterback rank was Matthew Stafford? I'm going to say six. I'm looking at it. That high? You think that high? You're not high enough. He was fourth. He was the fourth highest quarterback, the second half of the year. He stopped throwing interceptions, too. That certainly, well, yeah, I mean. Because the offense was working for him. Exactly. Lombardi came from the Saints.

Yeah, Lombardi came from the Saints for five years as the quarterback coach for Drew Breeze.

And then he transferred over to Matthew Stafford. Matthew Stafford is not Drew Breeze mentally, and that game plan that Lombardi had was too much. I will give him the credit that Stafford has improved as a real-life quarterback over the past couple years. So I'll give Lombardi the credit for that. Sure, sure, sure. And I don't mean to throw too much shade on him. But look at Golden Tate last year. Last year, Golden Tate in the first half of the year, he was the 56th ranked wide receiver.

Garbage, unusable. The second half of the year, he was the 19th best wide receiver. That's a guy that's in your starting lineup. He's losing Calvin Johnson. He is last year, and I told you, I think, an episode ago, I said I needed to go look at Golden Tate again because I wasn't sure. I was kind of starting to become down on him, but when I had looked at him early in the offseason, I liked him. I know Matt Harmon, probably the best name on wide receivers, does not believe in Golden Tate.

And it's very rare that I go against the grain on wide receivers for Harmon, but I do here. Because last year he had 90 receptions. He had 99 the year before. Calvin Johnson is going away. He's the clear number one there. Marvin Jones is not going to be the number one wide receiver. He's got the chemistry with Matthew Stafford. He is a lock barring injury to get 100 receptions. He's always been a good yards after the catch until bizarrely last year. He was not good at that.

I expect him to return to the norm. Last year was a bizarre year in general. Yeah, it was a split of the season. You know, Calvin's inconsistency. It was a weird year. Jim Bob Cooter coming back. Remember the lions. Yes, remember the lions. Roar. Denza Washington is in that movie. That's what my son would say. All right, I'm going to go with this, guys. And it's something, a refrain we've said on the show before, obviously. It's a big part of what we do.

But it's part of remembering what you need to remember for 2016, and that is remember the power of the streaming quarterback. A streaming quarterback is a quarterback you sign from the waiver wire and start that week. Because they have a plus matchup. Correct. It's a matchup play lets you not waste a pick on a quarterback early in your draft. Sure, you'd love to find somebody you could play every single week, but a lot of the times you can't if you pass on a quarterback early. Look, last year.

During the season, every week we have a segment on the show called Full Stream Ahead. Each of us select a specific quarterback that we believe has a chance at succeeding in the coming week that is not owned in at least 50% of the leagues out there. And so we are giving you three streaming options, three different options every single week of the year. If you take...

The options we gave you last year you would have ended up with, on average, the number six overall quarterback. That will get it done in your league with your other strengths at your other positions. There were guys, look, how many people's stories that didn't win Foot Clan titles last year that didn't win their championship ended with this. Kirk Cousins killed me. I knew it was coming to Kurt. Yeah, that was the first time I almost cursed on the air.

Darn Kurt Cousins was the reaction we got from so many people. He was so unpleasant. Unless you were streaming quarterbacks, listened to the show, picked them up, and played them, then you won your championship. The power of the streaming quarterback is great. Even the guys that ended up as week in and week out starts last year, the Carson Palmer's of the world. Even Cam Newton, Tom Brady, they went late or not at all in drafts. Blake Bortles.

Derek Carr, guys that you could play. Don't forget the power of the streaming quarterback. And not only is it the fact that you would have ended up with the top six, you know, quarterback on average, but Andy alluded to it, you get your draft pick back for where you had to invest. I mean, if you want one of those top guys, here's the guys that you had to pay a top pick for last year. Andrew Luck, Aaron Rogers, Peyton Manning, Ben Rothlisberger are four of the top five last year, and they all...

They all hurt you through the season. Imagine who you would have drafted in the third or fourth round there instead of those guys. So I like that. I'm going to take the next one here because it's a real good segue from Remember the Streaming Quarterback. It's remember the depth of the tight end position. The tight end position last year.

changed. Going in two last year, it seemed like there were a few good options and then garbage. And all of a sudden, guys came out of the woodworks to finish as good tight ends. Gary Barnage was undrafted. He doesn't have an ADP. And he finished as the, you know, depending on your scoring format, the number two or three tight in. Some of the offseason moves that have been made this year have only expounded that, right? Martellus Bennett leaves and goes to the, uh,

goes to the Patriots. Leaving Zach Miller all alone. Ladarius Green. Exactly. Ladarius Green goes. Dwayne Allen. His value goes up. Kobe Fleener goes. Both Dwayne Allen and Kobe Fleeners go up. And so this is what I want you to remember from last year. Last year, here are guys that finished in the top 12 at the best of the tight end position. Gary Barnage was undrafted. Jordan Reed was amazing. He was the 19th.

tight end off the board, meaning he's undrafted. You had Gates, who was a top guy, 14th tight end taken. You had Tyler Eifert, on average, undrafted last year. Benjamin Watson, undrafted. So this is another one where you don't want to, I mean, I get going after Gronk. If you want to go get Gronk, because Gronk finished last year, number one, Gronk finished the year before number one. If Gronk plays the whole year, or even just 14 games of the year, he's going to finish number one.

And so you want to spend that draft capital, do it. But outside of that, I think you're going to be really hard pressed to make a good decision drafting a tight-in early. And let me give you some names of how deep this year is. You got Gates, you got Ossefarian Jenkins, Eric Ebron, Dwayne Allen, Jordan Cameron, I think is a sneaky play this year. Zach Miller, Jared Cook, we talked about, Clive Wofford, some of those guys.

are going undrafted and we'll finish in the top five because it happens every year. I think, well, we're going to talk about this a little bit more in the mailbag section because we have an actual question regarding the tight-in position, a voicemail question. But I'm going to say this on the end up being the steel that nobody wants to admit. You know, you talk about a player you're ashamed.

to like, he's getting closer to my list. He's already in my list, my man. Because he can't walk. He can barely even walk on the field, but he's Antonio Gates, Nola Darius Green, and Philip Rivers and him have such a rapport. So just keep that in mind. Mike, it's your turn. All right. I'm going to jump mine a little bit out of order here and finish because I think number three will be a little bit longer. I'm going right to number four.

We all love the final standings. I completely admit when I look at them, they can overtake some of my opinions. And what do you mean by final standings? You're talking about like the ranks of players? I mean the end of season standings, rankings, when I'm looking back at 2015 and previous and you go, oh, wow, this guy finished. Like Frank Gore. Frank Gore finished as the number 12 running back. Did it feel like that? Right. Like, I don't know. Certain guys feel it. Some guys do not. Here's one example.

Larry Fitzgerald, the wide receiver 11. He finished as a wide receiver won, and here is why. Weeks 1 through 8, he was the third best wide receiver for fantasy. He started like a monster. Weeks 9 through 17. Yeah, I remember you bragging a lot. Oh, I loved him. He was great. Weeks 9 through 17, though, he was the 34th wide receiver. So in that time period, is that making sense? Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're good.