Fantasy Football Podcast 2015 - Week 14 Fantasy Forecast, Starts of the Week, News

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It's week 14. Mike, you always get a little antsy if I don't start the show at the exact same part of the song. That is very correct. You look like, what's going on? Where am I? Help me. It's like the beginning of a race when you're sitting on the blocks and it goes, doot, doot. There's a rhythm to these things. And then when it doesn't go off at the same time, I freak out. I mean, we've done 152 shows this year. At some point in time,

You know, when you go to a concert and you hear Metallica sing one of their favorites, sometimes they mix it up a little bit. Yeah, that's true. Right? That's true. So I just, sometimes I just have to start it differently. Gotta keep people guessing. The melody has to be different. So welcome to the show. It's Thursday, December 10th. We are the fantasy footballers, and we are previewing week number 14 in your fantasy season, your playoffs, your fantasy playoffs. Although I have, I've heard from people.

that are fighting to get into the playoffs still. Yes. Because depending on your league, if you've got a two-week playoff, something like that. So we've got everything you need to know. We've got all the news and notes. We've got the first half of the game's matchups. We'll do the rest tomorrow. And then we've got our starts of the week. This is my favorite show of the week. I'm joined, as always, by Jason Moore and Mike the Fantasy Hitman, right? Greetings. And I'm excited. I'm excited to get started. You can find us on Twitter at the FF Ballers.

You can find us on The Fantasy Footballers.com. Got a fun Twitter story for you. Yesterday, so Mike and I are facing off head-to-head in our League of Record. Mono E. Man. All righty. I was trying to think of an insult. Yeah, you know, that's all right. Man, that was a good one. I took a... Got him. Nailed it. Still got it. So I took a picture of our matchup, and I posted it on Twitter, and I posted a poll. And I said, you know, who's going to win?

Me or Mike. Now, ESPN projects Mike as a winner by five points, which I think is ridiculous because it makes... They put the jets ahead of the Chiefs. I don't like that this week. But I asked the general public. And somehow, after about 545 votes yesterday, 50%, 50%. How does that happen? Dead heat, because that's what it looks like. I know.

And so we have a massive matchup this week. I know a lot of you out there have huge games that you're counting on, good advice for. So we're going to try to deliver on that today. Jason, who do you play this week? I play nobody. I'm on a bye week, but I am playing against my own emotions as I have lost Mark Ingram, my number one running back on the team that helped get me to the number one seed. Yeah, it's not.

I mean, what a sucky situation. Like, he didn't... Well, you saw this coming, right? Well, yeah. I mean, we did know about the shoulder injury. You know, if you watched the last couple weeks, you saw some changes. But, I mean, all of a sudden, you wake up. I'm feeling great. Got the number one seed. Waiting for one of you two, you know, to come and face me. And the semis. And then it's like, oh, yeah. Hey, you don't have your... You don't have your number one running back. Thankfully, I went depth this year. Not by choice, but...

I went death so I can roll Frank Gore in there, and hopefully I'll be okay. You might have to physically roll Frank Gore into the lineup, too. He ran good last year. He did. Well, he scored, is what you meant to say. No, he had some good looking at. He was all right. So, quick question of the day. What do you guys think the difference is between the number one fantasy kicker and the number 10 fantasy kicker in points per game? This is a little quiz. Points per game?

Yeah, like what's the difference? What's the difference in points per game between the number one fantasy kicker and the number 10. Okay, so I assume that the number one is Gaskowski. You assume correctly because it's the last 15 years. Yeah. Just saying I don't actually know. Yeah, I'm just curious what you think the difference is. I'm going to go an average of three points. All right. I'm going to go an average of as much as I love having Guskowski. Kickers are kickers. So I'm going to say,

One and a half points. One point four points per week. One point four points per week, which begs the question, why do we have kickers in fantasy? Thank you. I am the leader of the charge for getting rid of kickers. Are you on the doorsteps of Congress with signs up? I have done the 99th thesis on the door of Congress just saying, here's why we need to remove.

It's that a Martin Luther joke? Yes, it was. Well done. Oh, dropping some of that in here. That is awesome. And yes, they should be gone. There was a hashtag on one of the posts when people were comparing Mike and I's team, and it said kickers win championships. And the fact is, they might be right. Because if you, the difference is that.

But it's a random difference. So if Mike ends up with five and I end up with 15 from a kicker, that's a big thing to overcome. And it's completely unpredictable. It hurts the strategy and the skill of fantasy football, in my opinion. Do you think that the, oh, go ahead. The reason that you have kickers in, the only reason that I can see justifiable for. I know what you're going to say. Is because they have kickers in the NFL. Yep. But if that's the case, then every league should be an IDP league.

because they have defensive players in the NFL. Yeah. You're playing a different game, and I like to have the strategy of the guys that you can predict. If you want to keep them, I say you hyper-nerf them. You've had a theory on that. If you're going to keep them in the league, because we're not going to get rid of them in our league of record. You're saying all this. We're never going to vote that away. Never going to happen. But you could do something like a field goal is worth three points. You don't get penalized for a miss. That's it. You don't get penalized for an extra point miss.

Yeah. And then it's just the scope of difference is so much smaller than if you get negatives and positives. Here's the problem with that. Here's the problem with that. When a field goal kicker misses a 30-yard kick, they lose real-life points, right? The NFL team loses a point. Yeah, they lose real-life checks is what they lose. Now, I know we're on a tangent here, but I do have, I don't think I've ever brought this up before. December. I have.

I have a radical idea that I think is actually the better way forward. You ready for this? Indulgences. No. Defense slash special teams should be where the kicker gets points because they're special teams. That's part of, I mean, when you're drafting a team and you say what team is good at defense and special teams and things like that. So you got the Patriots D, you just get Goscowski that week.

Is what you're saying? They're included in all of the defensive scoring and the special team scoring. I believe that that would allow defenses to be better skillfully chosen as well as the kicker points mattering, but being able to look at game flow a little bit more and match up and say, you know, this is going to be a defensive type of matchup. You're going to get more field goals. I'm going to go for this type of a defense.

That's where the points should be. I think you just shift the randomness then from the kicker spot to the defensive position, which you can actually use skill on. It's too new for me. I can't process it all. A couple years. But, yeah, maybe I'll come around to that idea. It's interesting. I think the NFL itself is trying to get rid of kickers. They're moving the extra points back to depress them. They stop making, you know, the kickoff's almost gone at this point. Your job is to just boot it out of the back of the end zone.

You don't need to place it anywhere. I don't know. That actually makes it harder to be a kicker, I would think. In different ways, but you're not strategically putting the ball where you should kick the one guy. But I'm saying you've got to be able to be accurate with your field goals. And if you don't have the leg strength to kick a touchback nearly every single time, then that's a problem. You're out of the league. All right, let's move on. News and notes from around the league. And obviously we are going to reveal our kickers of the week. Yeah.

No? Not a new segment? Not me. Hey, I... Why did I record the drop this morning? I did the folk plan of favor, and this week was the first week because it's playoffs that I actually published kicker rankings. I don't know if you guys are aware. I haven't done that this year. I have... Yeah, I'm aware because I keep telling you to do it. Yeah, it's a boycott. Here's the thing. Here's the thing. It is hyperbolic to say that there is a 1.4 difference. You want to know why? Because that does not reflect...

playing a matchup and a strategy with your kicker. That just reflects the top to the bottom as though we're all not streaming kickers. We're all streaming kickers matchup-wise. So there's still strategy to it. There's still teams like, you know, the chiefs that average two and a half, you know, field goal attempts a game to a team that averages one. Fair. I'm going to win with a kicker this week. That's fine. All right. Some news. No, it's the big news. The big, big, big news.

The big depressing news from Jason. Mark Ingram's shoulder surgery came out. What is it? Torn rotator cuff, injured reserve, ending the season. And there he goes. Wave goodbye. Goodbye. Wave goodbye if you can. A lot of questions out there as to who is the guy you pick up. Who do you want? I'm going to be following this obviously very closely through the week. So you could check out my Twitter for different updates. As of this second, for me, I would prefer to have Hightower.

as the handcuff. We saw him used in that Kyrie Robinson role. And there's a lot of different reports coming out, right? So one is saying that there's going to be a three-headed committee. Now, that shouldn't be too scary because the truth is, it has always been that three-headed. When Mark Ingram was there and Kyrie Robinson was healthy, you know, Mark, Mark, Kyrie Robinson, I was frustrated as an Ingram owner. They used him a lot and then CJ Spiller still got, you know, a little bit in.

There's Nick Underhill. He covers the Saints for the New Orleans advocate. He said that Sean Payton was talking about we get a chance to see more of Spiller. So that could be exciting for Spiller owners. For me, you've had a chance plenty of times. One of the biggest issues is they don't trust them in past protection. So I'm not sure whether or not they're really going to let that fly. If you're in a PPR league, I would say, you know, maybe.

Maybe you give a little bit of love Spiller's way, but for me, I'm leaning more towards High Tower. It's the one that Titans, like, we got to get David Cobb the ball a little bit more. Okay, so give him the ball. You mean, when they talk about it and they're kind of like, well, I sure hope that we have a way to see Spiller this week. We're the ones who control who gets the ball, but I'm just not sure we can figure it out. Yeah, and in addition to that, they have said this about Spiller several times this year.

In his career? Yeah, well, I'm saying, Sean Payton this year has said, oh, we got to get that guy the ball more. Something hasn't quite worked there. All right, let's move on. Dorel Revis is not practicing on Wednesday. Mike, do you expect him to play? It's a long shot. Wee. It's a long shot, and that's very unfortunate for the Jets who are shaping up to be a very solid defense of play. It was the most selfish we I've ever done on the show. Completely has nothing to do with other owners, just me because I'm playing you, which is.

Ridiculous. So, all right, the Raiders have signed Michael Crabtree to a four-year extension. Got paid. He got paid. Got paid. He played. He's been playing great. And now you kind of see kind of a trifecta between Carr and Cooper and Crabtree for, you know, the three Cs for the years to come. So good for Michael Crabtree. It's good for the Raiders. Yeah. And I guess it also puts them into some dynasty keeper context for people that know where he'll be next year. And the next year, when Clive Walford.