Footballers AMA + Worst Picks Ever, Big Gulps - Fantasy Football Podcast for 1/9

Welcome to the Fantasy Footballers Podcast with your hosts, Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright. Welcome in. You went so short, I was like, what time is it? I don't know. Yeah, I normally keep it short when you need to. Freaked me out, man. Not the response I hoped for from its baseball time yesterday. Oh, was it over? Fairly negative. Yeah, well, that makes a lot of sense because we're a football show. I was told that the pitcher's arms need more time to loosen up.

That's why the pitchers and catchers show up. All right. The other guys show up, like, at the first game, right? Hold on, Jason wants to talk baseball. One second. Not that I want to talk baseball. Okay? Because you know I hate the game. Yeah. And the players. But, correct me if I'm wrong, because I don't know anything about that stupid sport. Didn't in, like, not olden days, I mean, I guess it's olden days now, but like, you know, like the 90s or whatever. Didn't the 90s or the olden days? I don't know. Come on. Okay. So, like. I thought you were going to be like, back when Babe Ruth was playing.

Not long ago. That's a different word. Yeah. When we were growing up in the 90s, didn't people just, like, just try to pitch the whole game? And, like, now it's like there's 12 pitchers every inning? Yes. Do you want me to answer why that happened? And now, and now they're like, well, their arms need even more time to warm up. They're a bunch of babies. No more answers. Let's move on. Baseball's babies. Andy wants to answer so mad. Welcome in. He's like, oh, I've got the answer, Jason. No, you don't. You wouldn't do anything with the answer. You know what I mean?

You couldn't comprehend the answer. Also, the answer is going to be, they're babies. Yeah. That's true. Like, when you hear the answer, it doesn't matter what he says. You're like, oh, so they're babies. That's what you will say. Yeah. Now you really want to know. I'm curious how they're babies. Five words or less. They're babies because they are super athletes now. And so the training. Have we gotten too strong for the ligaments? Yes. Yes, we have. Maybe we should slow it down. We throw too fast and we train too hard. We've got to figure out how to upgrade those ligaments.

That's the real key. We need to put some platelet-rich injections in the ligaments. Oh, boy. Here's health, Jason, showing up. Oh, boy. Welcome into the show. It'll be a fun one today. Thank you for those of you. Thanks to those of you that have voted already at footy awards.com for the 2024 fantasy football awards. You can still go and vote before Monday. Footy awards.com. All the nominees on our last episode of the show. And a few other reminders here at the top. We've got an AMA today. We've got a good quick question. Happy to be with you. Thanks for hanging out with us this offseason, this playoff season.

The DFS Pass is free throughout the entire playoffs. So if you've never used it and you want to get in on that, DFSpass.com, completely free. Sign up. See what's in there. Enjoy it for the NFL playoffs. We have a bunch of new swag up on ShopBallers.com. That includes championship swag, gear, Foot Clan title t-shirts. We have the new autographed mini helmets. Oh, they're hot. That are up there. And soon, Jason, the model, Mike, the model, we have two versions of these brand new Ballers hats, which you can see there with the logo on them. Very, very different than the hat Jason normally wears.

Yeah, this is actually our brand. This is the fantasy footballers hat. I told our letter is different. Owl Borland was very helpful in getting these hats off the ground. But then when I got it, the little logo thing under the bill, which this is new for me. Is this what the youths are doing? Yeah, so you don't get it dirty. You put your thumb there when you grab it. Oh, that's what it's for? Yes, sir. What about the top? Well, the top's going to get a little dirty, man. It is what it's for, but I do. I mean, the top gets dirty.

It's just. We'll have our people work on that. Maybe round two, version two. Maybe we'll put a button on the top. Keep your. You can get your thumb as dirty as you want. Right. Keep your fingers clean when you're wearing these hats. But you can put your thumb in peanut butter and then take this hat off. Yeah, so the part that people see is dirty. Right. The part people can't see very clean. Look, you want these hats. They're technologically advanced. I really want these hats. They're not up there yet, but shotballers.com very soon. And if you need championship trophies, belts, rings, gear, that's fantasychamps.com.

I suppose it gives you a little bit of a better grip. Maybe you're in the rain. Right. You're not going to be slippery for you. You got to get your hat off in the rain, man. Get it on. Oh, okay. Okay. Here's your quick question of the day. Matt Wilt wrote in on X. He said he rode Bucky Irving to a championship this year. How high is Bucky Irving ceiling next year? Thanks, guys. And congrats, Al, on your title. Please stop congratulating Al. Please. Just stop. Yeah, I don't think that's going to stop. Never stop. 17 games. Never give up.

207 carries, 1,122 yards. Eight rushing touchdowns. 52 targets. 47 for 392 and zero. I, here's, you stop congratulating Al, but begin giving Mike his flowers. Because this was one in the off season that he was spot on. He thought that Bucky Irving could emerge in Tampa. It's, I mean. And. To be fair, I would love to take all this credit. A lot of that was, I thought Rashad White was not good enough. Well, look. And I was on the side that you don't. Like, Rashad White. The vet keeps his full time. It was just more like they, it was more on the basis of, they were a playoff team that

was great. Baker was awesome. And it was, a lot of it had to do with Rashad White in the receiving game. So, why mess with what worked? Right, yeah. But Bucky Irving was so much better of a runner, right? The offensive line was bad in Tampa last year. That's how good Bucky is. Bucky was that good. The job wasn't given to him. He stole the job. Because you're like, we can't keep Bucky off the field. And so, the question was. And Rashad White was a top 15 running back down the stretch. Right. And Bucky was still that good. The question of what is his ceiling is, it's extremely difficult.

I didn't know this was going to be our question today. But there was a tweet I saw earlier from Jacob Gibbs. So, shout out to him. But Bucky Irving and Alvin Kamara, which was in 2017 when Kamara did it. The only two running backs to top 1,500 scrimmage yards with a snap rate under 50%. And that is, for every fantasy running back, everything comes down to the decisions of, well, not everything because talent matters, but the decisions of the coach. Because it's pretty rare that there's two running backs out there on the field at the exact same time. And the running back that is out there, that's a coach's decision.

Like, with my unbelievable frustration with Rico Dowdle when he's getting these 20-plus carries, running great. And then they're like, ah, but inside the goal, when we're close to the goal line, we've got to get somebody else in there. And those are decisions that you just – those are the big decisions for ceiling. This is – this is – this was an amazing rookie season. Yeah. I feel like there's a huge discussion attached to this. 1,500-plus scrimmage yards, 5.96 yards per touch, hyper-efficient. And we have also – we've been here before with the efficiency. Yeah. Last year. Yes. Devon Achan, an underdog put this tweet out reminding us of kind of the – like,

Devon Achan came into the year this year. What did he average last year? 7 point something a carry? 7.9 a carry. Something like that. He had 100 more carries in 2024 than he did in his rookie season. Exactly. He had 107 more rushing yards on 100 extra carries. So, you know, that's part of the discussion with Bucky. We cannot quantify perfectly how much rest times, you know, when a young player gets to come in and they're complimenting, like Achan did last year, complimenting Mostert, who was amazing, and Bucky Irving coming in and complimenting and kind of taking over from Rashad White but getting snaps off,

there's not a really easy way to quantify that value and what that does to efficiency. What we do know is when you have a committee backfield, you do miss out on the one-yard fourth down, right, to mess with your numbers and the short yardage. And the game's getting put away, but you're getting every snap, so the defense knows what you're doing, so your efficiency goes down. Like, yards per carry only takes you so far, really. You have to have film. You have to be able to watch what these players are doing on the field. I don't think any of us think Devon Achan is less talented this year

because his efficiency went down. No, it's because his volume went up. Yeah, exactly. But the numbers look like, oh, you had a down year. No, and obviously Devon Achan, extremely talented, was great for fantasy football this year. Getting back to the Bucky Irving question, and how high can he be next year? To give you an example, you know, I don't know if everybody followed along with Bucky, you know, because in the beginning of the year, he was the clear, very, you know, he was the backup. He was not in a committee back. On the depth chart, yes. On the depth chart, it was Rashad White's team.

He was too talented. He was too efficient. They just kept giving him more work, and the beat reporters would say, hey, when are we getting more Bucky? And it's like, well, this is Rashad's backfield. He just kept getting more and more and more because he passed the eyeball test. He broke tackles. He scored touchdowns. He made this team better. If you look at Week 10 on, that's really when a transition was made to where this was a shared backfield. And it wasn't like Bucky took over. In fact, from Week 10 on, check this out. Total snaps played from Week 10 on for Rashad White was 50% of the snaps.

Total snaps played from Week 10 on for Bucky Irving was 50% of the snaps. They were 50-50. Now, Bucky missed most of a week. He got injured in one of those. So, in the rest of the games, maybe he had a few more. He out-touched Rashad White a little bit. But he out-classed Rashad White a lot a bit. You're talking about, check this out, 10.5 points for Rashad White from Week 10 on per game. And Bucky Irving, if you take out the game he basically didn't play in, 18.8 fantasy points per game. The running backs have scored more than that.

For context on half PPR, Saquon Barkley, Jameer Gibbs, Derrick Henry. He only scored four touchdowns from that point on on the ground, too. So, it was like he had eight on the year, but they came half before that event. So, there's – what I love about Bucky's situation moving into the future is that there's going to be a lot of consistency on this team from what we can see. Baker had a wonderful career year. He's through a lot of touchdowns, right? So, if you talk about – Yeah, that can regress. That can go more into Bucky gets that opportunity. Now, can he hold up?

That's a question we had about A-chan. A-chan's been banged up. Bucky's – he got hurt twice this year. So, does the team feel like this balance is the right balance? Well, even if he does, it's the numbers that Jason said. You know, there's going to be some variation, but to answer the question succinctly, I think he can be a top seven running back. I agree. I think he should be a top 15 running back, and his ceiling is probably around running back six. It's like the – looking at the Jameer Gibbs situation where him and Monty are – they're splitting, and they're both being awesome.

But it's like Jameer Gibbs, you know, the first month of the season, he was never – he wasn't a top 10 running back in any game in the first four weeks. Then you would have these stretches where week seven and eight, running back one and six, but then it's down to 18 and 17. It wasn't until David Montgomery was gone that he rattled off the four consecutive weeks where he was running back three, seven, two, and one. So the ceiling, I don't know that we – it's going to be, I think, a very – like a light version of Detroit where Bucky's going to be drafted really high.

Rashad White will be later. He'll have his own value. And then Bucky Irving will be very good. But you know that drafting Bucky is – I got this top 15 type of a player. Because if White goes down – If White misses time, now all of a sudden I have a guy who is a weekly top five upside play. Another point was that Rashad White caught 91% of his passes from Baker last year, which was like outrageous, right? Like that's an amazing number. I looked this year. This year he's at 89%. Rashad White catches everything. You want to know what Bucky's number is?

90. Oh. 90. Give him the ball. This might be Baker throwing – I was going to say it sounds – Baker's throwing a really good ball to his running backs. The common denominator here is the quarterback because last year it was like, oh, we were worried about, you know, losing the offensive coordinator. And Liam Cohen comes in. Baker's playing great. So, it's really helpful to have a quality offense around running backs. Just – I like the Detroit Lions light motif here. Yeah, it makes sense. And you've got confidence in the quarterback and the offensive system and it should be really fun for years to come.

And if you've got Bucky Irving shares in Dynasty, congrats because that's going to be a good ride. Let's talk news. News and notes from around the league. Presented by USAA Insurance. The Raiders have fired Antonio Pierce. That didn't work. No. And he didn't have a lot to work with either, but it didn't work. It – yeah, I mean, you can't lose like that and just – You mean 4-13? Yeah. But, I mean, like – well, some coaches can survive that. But, going 4-13 and with, at least just publicly what we saw, the weirdness of – Like liking an Instagram post about Devontae Adams getting traded?

Yes. You have that weird stuff. And I'm talking about like his press conferences where you're just like, dude, you're the head coach. You can't talk about the team like that. You can't talk about your guys like that. Yeah. Sometimes – we've seen this many times in the NFL. When you are, you know, an ex-player or you come in with a hard-nosed attitude, it's an amazing ride at the beginning. It motivates. It gets everybody playing very hard. And they finished, what, it was 5-4 last year after becoming the interim head coach. Everybody's loving it. But when things start to go bad and that same attitude comes forth, if that's indeed what it was, then it can wear.

It can wear on a team and they're going in a different direction. The Lions head coach Dan Campbell says he expects the aforementioned David Montgomery to play in the divisional round. That's so insane. I mean, it was his like, what, fourth doctor? Yeah. When they got to before – Well, yeah. I mean, the timeline has helped now, right? Like you're saying the surgery part. I'm saying they met with – If you remember, when all the Montgomery news was coming out, it was, oh, man, surgery. Montgomery is toast. He's out for the season. And then they're like, well, we don't like that one.

We're going to go – What do you say, doctor? He's like, no, I would have to operate on this thing. You'd be – I don't like that either, doctor. Dr. Campbell, what do you say? I think it is a – it's a weird thing. Like, I put the poll out there for fun about whether people believe that Jameer Gibbs, being the full-time starter, makes the Lions better on accident. Or is their offense missing something without Montgomery? I was surprised by the results of that poll. 64% of you said they're better with both. And – Yes. I do see that. The team is better.

I don't know if I am on that side. I voted the other way. I think that they are better with Gibbs full-time. I do not think they would survive a season – I agree. With Gibbs full-time. So I think the team is better to have both for the regular season. But I did think it might be fortuitous for their playoff run to have Gibbs on there in every down back type of situation. But most people disagree with me. Well, the nice thing is they can choose to go to Gibbs as an every down back whenever is necessary. So if they're in this game and they're down two scores

and they feel like their best offense is to have Gibbs out there, then they don't have to play Montgomery. But if they're, you know, in a close game or they're up two scores, then might as well have Gibbs continue to rest and have Montgomery, who's very good in his own right. He's not as explosive. But he also brings some – He breaks tackle. Football that wears a defense down that Gibbs doesn't really play that way. Yeah. And to me, like people want to talk about Gibbs being undersized. Like maybe when he came into the NFL, to me he doesn't play that way.

He can run inside. I think he's put on weight. You know, we talk about Bucky, right? I mean, Bucky is more undersized than even Gibbs, I think. And they can get it done. They can get it done between the tackles. Jalen Hurts returned to practice like we expected. Zay Flower is not practicing. Long shot to play in the wild card. I still think it's a bummer. It's definitely a bummer. But I do think – I mean, the line for them is the biggest line this week without Zay being active. The interesting thing – But they do play each other close historically.