Fantasy Football Podcast for Week 14/15

Yeah, I agree. So let's get into everybody's favorite section. The fantasy footballers versus the world. That's right, versus the world. Hopefully these... It's important. We pick these out so that you can win your fantasy matchup. Some start and sits. So what I do is I jump on fantasy pros.com, and they have a start sit feature where you can...

You enter your players in, and they will tell you what percentage of experts that they have data from, who they would start. You can go standard half-PPR, full PPR. It's a fantastic little tool. So we're just going to have a couple of them real quick and give our opinion on them. Let me just say something, too. Don't always listen to the expert. That was something that drove me insane this week on my picks. And I'll admit, on one I went,

myself and on the other one I went against the, you know, I went with the experts and one I went against them. But I was sitting there, throwing down a couple tough decisions. One of them was with kickers, and ESPN's telling me that Adam Venetary is going to score four points in their projections. See, it's so easy if you have projections in these weeks. They get in your head. Yes, they do. And so I had to choose between Cody Parky, who was at the time the number one kicker or Adam Venetary. And the projection difference was 17 to 4. And I'm going,

And I had to go against what everyone was saying and go venetary. Now, that ended up being the right move with that situation. But sometimes you have to go against these experts. We're going to give you these numbers so you know what they're doing, what we're doing. Right. But if you have a gut feeling, projections aren't worth anything in your score. Yeah, and I will say this, just as I say is a philosophy or strategy of fantasy football when you're talking about experts. It's, to me,

I would rather put, if I have a conflicting decision where an expert's saying this guy, and I feel strongly that it should be this guy, I'm going to go with my gut and put my guy in because I would rather lose with that guy than lose picking against myself just because somebody else told me to do it. Yeah, and, you know, I look at it like a weatherman, right? What can you live with? A weatherman's going to tell you that it's not going to rain.

But if you look outside and you see clouds, you know, you better follow your instincts. You better bring the umbrella out. And so play who your gut tells you to play unless you have a stupid gut and then listen to us. Okay. Mark Ingram or Alfred Morris, who would you start this week? Both had kind of poor weeks for different reasons. That's why I picked them. They both had poor weeks, but they both have fantastic matchups.

Ingram's taking on the Bears and Alfred is taking on the Giants. I believe those might be the worst two run defenses in fantasy. I'm going to go with Alfred Morris based solely off of if Griffin is in. Because I think if Griffin is in, there is a possibility that Jay Gruden...

punishes him for playing, so to speak, if you know what I mean? Doesn't lean on him too much. Yeah, well, like what happened to Gino. Gino, yeah. Where, okay, Griffin, fine, you get to play. But you know what you're going to do? You're going to give the ball to Alfred Morris. Yeah. So that, I'm... It's funny because these are the two running backs I'm going up against in my semi-final matchup. I did not even realize that. For me, I agree with you. I'd go with Alfred Morris. I think...

What you've, I mean, you brought up Pierre Thomas as a start of the week. Kyrie Robinson was active last week. He didn't get any carries. But he was active and he's healthier. So you're probably going to see a little mix. And we'd be in the minority because Mark Ingram is the 71% favorite according to the experts on fantasy pros.com. And it's something I like to do is I find experts who I really like. And then they can kind of tip me.

Like my man Mike Clay, he's on the Alfred Morris side. Shout out. Unfortunately, another guy I really like, Scott Pianowski, he's on the Mark Ingram side. It's as though we don't really know who's going to be better. So if I was looking at this, this would lead to a week-long diarrhea session where I would lose sleep, much like I had last week of Jeremy Hill versus. And you have this week kind of, sort of. Yeah, I got to do it again.

Chris Johnson or Vincent Jackson. I have to go with Chris Johnson. He's my start of the week. That is fair. I went with both of these guys because they both had a bit of a resurgence. Stutter much? Because I'm trying to formulate my thoughts here. I will go with Vincent Jackson based on the assumption that Mike Glennon is playing. Okay.

If Mike Glennon plays, I'm going to put V Jax out there. So what is the fantasy pros? Even though they're playing the Panthers. What's the result? I like them. We're pulling it up right now. 65% in standard. Go with Chris Johnson. Okay. So I bet. It's real close. I bet if you bump this up to PPR, it changes. 100% hits a jacks. You're right. So. Yeah, not a lot of balls being caught by CJ this year. Odell Beckham or Des Bryant. This is a great question.

O'Dale Beckham is playing the Redskins. Des Bryant's facing the Eagles. They're both divisional matchups. And I like this one because it brings up another philosophy question of, are you going to play your stud? Or are you going to play the guy you grabbed off waivers who was in Fuego? Absolutely. This is pretty brutal. I'm staring this down, and I can tell you exactly the situation. I think O'Dale Beckham is a better play. And I think...

it would be impossible for me not to play Des Bryant. Yeah, I completely agree with that analysis. Yeah, I think Odell Beckham has looked outstanding. You do have the, I think you just have the longevity variable of who's done it longer, but are you kind of in the same bowl? Who would you start? Man. You have Des in one of your teams. Put Odell on his team. Who do you start? That is ridiculously hard.

I think Dez is also, he's running into the do. He hasn't scored in a couple games. I watched the... Philadelphia's defense is much better than Washington's. It is. And based off that, I actually might go with ODB, but just a quick note on Des Bryant. If you watched the Thursday game with the Bears, that guy was getting ferociously pissed off at the game plan when they started to Turtle.

Yeah, he was. He was. He's like, throw me the ball, and then the turtling almost caused Dallas the game. Yeah, so maybe a little payback here. So maybe the coach. I think they're both going to be great. I think they're both going to be great this week. Believe it or not, which is amazing because of the, and this brings me, actually, I'll bring up my point in between these next sections, but O'Dale Beckham is 57% projected to win. He has, I saw the number since he started, which I think,

was week five, five or six. It was later than that. Whenever he blasts, was it? Yeah, it was. Cruz got hurt in week. Whenever Beckham's first game was, which, I don't know, week six or seven, he's been, he's the number five wide receiver, which is crazy when you're talking about a rookie. And Eli Manning throwing him the ball. I was trying to figure out what week, yeah, Cruz got hurt.

In game six, so week seven, you're right. It was pretty close to that. What I was going to say later is just a quick, maybe this is a quick point to 2015, but the rookie class of wide receivers this year. My goodness. Has been arguably the best ever. The amount of guys, and I'm going to read them real quick, here's the rookie wide receivers. Mike Evans, Fantasy Impact. Sammy Watkins, had an impact. Kelvin Benjamin, top 12?

15 guy, maybe he dropped down a little bit. Evans is in the top 12, I believe. Yeah. Brandon Cooks, obviously, he got hurt, but he was an integral part of the offense. Odell Beckham Jr., we just talked about him. Jarvis Landry. It's coming on strong. Martavis Bryant. Just caught a 94-yard bomb and has had three or four big games. Devante Adams, you can see his potential in Green Bay, despite being, I think, I mean, he wasn't really involved until about three or four games into the year. Dante Moncrief, my start of the week.

is another rookie. Jordan Matthews in Philadelphia. And then you also have John Brown in Arizona. And on top of those, you've got guys like Alan Robinson, Alan Hurons, and Taylor Gabriel in Cleveland. So the class is through the roof. And these guys look like they are cornerstones. A lot of these look like cornerstones to the team. I mean, it's just going to be interesting because we always said, like the traditional fantasy football forecast for a rookie wide receiver was maybe a top

tier first round guy like a j green or julia jones who's put in that starting role immediately they have an impact but you're seeing i mean i just named 12 guys yeah or more um so i wonder how popular the uh the in vogue zero r or zero r b no no no oh from a

zero wide i guess zero rb was kind of like the the trendy way but i heard a couple people going zero wide receiver and that's in terms of draft strategy that might not be a bad strategy next year because because there's because there'll be guys you're saying yeah there's wide receivers a plenty because you might be sitting in week two of your playoffs and starting a rookie instead of does bryant is that why yeah that's yeah that's insane pretty crazy so all right let's hit the mailbag mailbag mail bag

All right, this is our last section of the show, but we get to answer your questions that you email us at the fantasy footballers at gmail.com. As always, a good, interesting, funny reference or whatever? Punny. Punny, yeah. Funny or punny? Your name, if I like it, you get moved to the top of the list. Let's just say I didn't think, I just looked at the second email. I didn't think it said too many cooks. This is a family show. Yeah, seriously.

So I guess we'll start with that one. We'll start with that one because you're too many cooks. Let's get the cooks out of the kitchen. Did you, are you familiar with too many cooks? Probably not. If it's some pop culture reference that I'm supposed to understand, that's not related to the band Creed. Sure. You need to take 15 minutes of your life and watch too many cooks. What is it? It's, I'm not going to ruin anything for you, but it is fabulous. You need to watch too many cooks. All right. Put it on this. So tight end start.

Too busy winning fantasy championships. Scott Chandler, who takes on the Packers, or Jared Cook who's taking on Arizona. I'm going Jared Cook, and that's easy for me to say. Done deal. Yep. Next question. From Soda Popinski. Will you like that one? No, I saw the next one. Oh. Yeah, the next one. I don't know how that, I should have led with that one. Oh, all right. So Soda Poppinski. What does he want to know? He has a... Or she, whoever it is. Yeah.

This person has a QB start question, and do you go with Eli Manning against Washington or Big Ben against the Falcons? I think the prevailing thought here would be Big Ben. Oh, yes. But it's not for me. Oh. I'm going to take Eli, and I'm going to take Eli because of the... I just think Levyon Bell is going to blow up the Falcons. That is very valid. And I like Odell Belkin this week. So for some reason, I just...

You know, the Falcons haven't given up. I think Washington's given up. Yes. So they both have bad defenses, but the Falcons are trying. So I'm going to go with Eli. I'm going to take Big Ben. I really like him this week. I feel like I should steal your thunder and read this next thing. Oh, you want to read it? All right. This next one comes in from Kaka! Kaka! Kaka! Oh, that is not a name. It is a sound. It's an onomatopoeia. Yeah, that is a... For the English majors.

We laugh because we've alluded to Isaiah Crowell in another podcast, so this must come in from somebody familiar with those. The defense, who would you start? Which defense? The Cardinals versus the Rams, and that's in St. Louis, or the Vikings against Detroit. This is, this to me is a little bit of what do you need? Right. Arizona is safer to me. Really?

Over the Vikings? Yeah, because Detroit's offense, they've scored 37 points in two consecutive weeks. They've gone on a roll. So I don't mess around with Calvin Johnson and I don't mess around with Matt Stafford. I mess around with guys like Sean Hill and Stenman Bailey. You don't tug on the Superman's Cape? No. Go get beat by Sean Hill in your playoffs. Yeah, that's Stafford. I'm going to be the homer and say Arizona has a great defense and Sean Hill is going to get picked off at least twice.

Yeah, so there you go, Mr. Kaka! All right, our next question is from the B-Girl from the No Rain video, Blind Melon. No? I saw you post that on Facebook today. Well, after the question came in, I got to listen to this song. I didn't watch it. Well, you should. It is. That's part of my problem in life. People post stuff and I don't watch it. It is a classic. No Rain? Oh, man, that's in my top songs. I love that song.