Fantasy Football - Merry Megaladon! Starts of the Week + Matchup Mayhem! - Podcast for 12/24

Ho, ho, ho. Merry Christmas. To the fantasy footballers podcast with your host, Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright. Hi, welcome in. Here's Christmas and title time for me. Not you. I'm pointing at Andy. So, so much is going on inside of Mike. brain right now. Way to launch the show. Well, I couldn't point it Jason because he's... I am still in a championship. Technically in one. It's just not the league of record. Oh, you are? Yes. Oh, you're in the... I take it. The expert league. I'm facing Mike Clay. It was a funny bit. Yeah, no, I mean, I don't feel like it. Wait, wait, wait. Who could you put at? Is there anyone in this room you could point at? Because I'm in a title game. Oh, wait a minute.

Oh, yeah, Papa Josh. No, you're... Poop a Josh. I'm in too good of a mood. It doesn't matter. Is this a Christmas mood? Yeah, I'm better. I'm better. I had a lot of people reach out. You slept it off? Yeah, I'm way better now. Nice. Nice. Had a lot of alcohol. It all, I... It all went away. No, we've got Championship Week, and that's why we're here. It's Christmas Eve. Merry Christmas, everybody. We got Mary Meg is what I'm calling it today. I like it. It's not just a mini mag. It's kind of merry. We've got Wednesday and Thursday's segments today. And then we'll be back on Friday the day after Christmas getting you primed for championship weekend because, well, that's that's kind of important. Yeah. And we'll have at that point in time, we will actually have several games to go over. Amazing, amazing, amazing football on Christmas. I mean, I just can't wait for these.

great matchups on Christmas. It didn't work out very well for Netflix. No. Remember last year, last year was a bad Christmas for me because I was looking forward to the Houston Texans Baltimore game. I had four players in my title game against Al Borland and all four stunk and it was over on Christmas Day. It is a... It is a very strong spin of the roulette wheel giving us championship Christmas or championship games on Christmas. Yeah, Thursday, Saturday, Sunday this week, got a Monday night game. So your championships spread out across four different evenings of tilt. Yeah. I understand like very particularly. Like we will wake up on the West Coast and football will not be far away. That's true.

That's true. And I'm curious. I don't know what the holiday schedule is for the pants store, Mike. Will you be visiting? What's the pants? You either you win a couple of titles or you are buying some pants. You are projected for both of our main leagues to win heavily. One of them is a heavy projection, but I don't think it's correct. The other one is I am projected to beat Owl Borland, but not. Do you believe crushing defeat type of? Do you believe that you are going to win both titles? I do believe that, yes. Okay. You're a strong man. And will you be coming to work on Tuesday next week if you lose both titles? If I lose both? Yeah. See that little laugh he had there? He just had a moment. That revealed how confident he is. Yeah. He said, well, I hadn't even considered that. I.

He has not considered losing both. He's like, that's impossible. I'm saying I'm not, I'm not trying to do the, I think I'm going to win. Yeah, you are. That's fine. That doesn't mean I will, but I do think I will. I think you'll win one. What's wild is he has, he's got so many combined players across both of his teams, like the borough chase stack, both of those leagues. Christian McCaffrey. Both of those leagues. My king. One more week, Christian. If those three players in particular do well, it seems like those leagues will be linked. I mean, this is not rocket science, but it's not like the Bengals have a tough matchup this weekend. Right. Arizona Cardinals have one more gift to give you, Mike. That's not fair. It's a gay. If the Bengals do well, that's a gift for the three of us.

We need Arizona to lose. You know it. You know it. Maybe Michael do the show by himself on Tuesday. Like I got a gift for all three of my kids under the Christmas tree, except one of them gets like, you know, the front row tickets and then the other two. I've done, I did that one year. Uh, I had a package that I hid for or not here, but I mean, it was covered in the garage for weeks. My wife knew nothing about it. It was for her. It was for the family. Okay. And so I wrapped it up and snuck it in, you know, in the morning. And it played the whole, oh, what is this thing? And then so the kids go and then unwrap it. And it's the, uh, the teenage mutant Ninja Turtles arcade game. Oh, for yourself. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, what a great gift for all of us. Santa was so kind to me. Us, us.

Well, here we go. We've got a big show for you today. Matchups to get into. We got backup options momentarily. You can follow us on Instagram, Instagram.com slash fantasy footballers on X at the FF Ballers. You can hang out on the Discord. Ballers Discord.com. I'll say it again. We're a year-round podcast. We're not going anywhere. The show schedule will change after week 18. But we'll be here twice a week. A bonus episode every week all year long at join thefoot.com. That is our community of supporters, the Foot Clan, and we give you an extra episode every week over there at jointhefoot.com. Without further ado, waivers have gone through. It's time for backup options. Backup options, presented by progressive insurance. All right, most dropped players over the last 24 hours, a bunch of them, not a surprise, the newly suspended D.K. Metcalfe, who will play no part in fantasy championships. Quinn Sean Judkins now injured.

The Estimate Evan Hole disaster, they've been released and should be. Kamani Vidal with the injury and the reduced workload as well. And then Colby Parkinson after the letdown, Darren Waller, also one of the most released players. If you're desperate, we have backup options for you. I will go with Trey Tucker, wide receiver of the Las Vegas Raiders. I had... kind of toyed with the idea of putting Gino Smith as a streaming quarterback option yesterday, which is a wild thing to say out loud. But they're at home against the Giants. The Giants are, I think, losers of seven or eight consecutive games. It is the battle for the number one pick. Gino Smith could have some success in that game. And Trey Tucker is definitely 100% the number one target there in Las Vegas. Both teams have lost nine in a row.

Yeah, Train Tucker is playing basically every single snap in the game. He was 4 for 43 last week. Played 100% of snaps. There will be some points scored in this game. It will be to the detriment of those fan bases for those points to be scored. I was talking about that. I mean, they've interviewed a bunch of players from this game. They're like, I can't say what Max Crosby said because it includes expletives. But the TLDR is, I don't care about the pick. I'm the best. I'm paid to be the best defensive in in football. That's what I'm going to go do. I get it that the players, they want to go win. They want to go play football and win a game. They're competitive. Like, of course. But the home fans is the thing that's so confusing to me. I was talking to Mike about this. Like, if you aren't there as a Raiders fan, you're in Las Vegas, you got season tickets, you're showing up.

You want your team to lose. There's no doubt. They're like none of the fans in that entire arena want their team to win that game. I would be fine competitively losing. That's your hope, right? Yeah. But then when it comes to like, but you can accidentally competitively win. Right. When it comes to like cheering in the home environment, I don't know. But I'll go with Trey Tucker. The matchups too good. The Giants giving up a ton of points to wide receivers. That's where I'll go. I'm going to go with Jaward Jordan, the running back. from the Houston Texans who has had a lot of opportunities the last two weeks. Two weeks ago, obviously there was no Nick Chubb. Woody Marks went down and he was great. He had like 15 carries for 100 yards. You were right on Jordan. And so I wonder, you know, this last week we weren't sure whether Woody Marks would be back or not. He wasn't. But Chubb was back and it was like, okay. So is Chubb the starter or is it Jordan? I think they want to see what they have in Jawar Jordan. They don't have necessarily their future in this backfield locked up.

It's obviously not going to be Nick Chubb. And if Woody Marks is absent again, you're talking about 17 and 20 opportunities the last two weeks. He's just one of those. He's one of the very few. There's not a lot of point of picking up someone for the future at this point. This is your last week. This is it. And so I do think that you need to, you know, I'll throw Tongis McBaskill out there as well as someone that if you're rostering Woody Marks, Jake Tongis McBaskill. Thank you. I refuse. You know, if you're, if you're rostering Woody Marks, you should be rostering Jordan because that could happen this week if Marks doesn't play. If Kittle doesn't play this week, Tonjus McBaskill should be on your roster. Yeah. I do remember watching the game and Nick Chubb was on there. He was in there on the goal line play action that he had had a couple runs and then we're like, okay, he's going to get into the end zone here and they play action to him and threw it to Dalton Schultz.

which turned out to not matter to Mike's teams, but it was disappointing in the moment. Yeah, it was a bummer for the Nick Chub recommendation. This week, I'm going with Devon Singletary. He's in that crap bowl of a game of the Giants versus the Raiders. The Dung Bowl. Devin Singletary is on the most dropped list of this week from Sleeper. He saw 12 opportunities last week against Minnesota, and the matchup is good. This is not Singletary over Tracy by any means. This is a backup option. that should waivers have not gone the way you wanted to, your league is a little bit deeper. Singletary is playable to me and should see another 10 or more opportunities this week. That was backup option sponsored by progressive insurance. Quote today at progressive.com. Let's talk news. News and notes from around the league. Presented by progressive insurance. Well, we got news on J.J. McCarthy pretty quickly yesterday. Hairline fracture on his finger. He is out.

For the Thursday Christmas Day game, Max Brosmer will start. Someone from Minnesota tweeted at me and said it's Brozmer. Okay, is that official? I'm going with it. Someone tweeted at me. Oh, okay. All right. I mean, that's, that can't be wrong. I can't be held. Brozmer on Christmas. They said, like Super Mario Bros. I was looking at the Christmas. I don't care. I was looking at the Christmas slate, right? This is Netflix that bought it. I mean, that's. Well, they have two of the games and then there's a prime thing. Right. Okay. So a lot of money going into these Christmas games. Christmas football.com. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Christmas football.com. You need it. But I was looking at these, I was looking at the slate, the schedule makers. They genuinely were like, we are giving them the best games of the week. We are getting Christmas. We're taking over Christmas in 2025.

Cowboys Commanders. That could be, that's Jaden Daniels. That could be a divisional like victory. Lions Vikings. Oh my gosh. Just two of the best teams last year. I mean, you would expect everyone came into this year being like, okay, who's going to win the division? Those two are right up there. Raise your hand if you're in the playoffs. Broncos Chiefs. That's the division. That's for the division. That's for the number one. See that's and none of these games matter. for anything. We'll all watch them anyways. Oh, I mean. Well, they matter begrudgingly. This is where they really need to embrace fantasy football. Because every game. No one gives crap out these games, except for us playing fantasy. Max Brosmer will get to start for the Vikings. Ben Johnson said Roma Dunesay has been rehabbing the foot injury. He's on the right track. He's in a good spot. He's going to be able to help us this year. I don't think he's going to help your fantasy teams, but they're playoff bound. So that's where he might be able to help. Like this calendar year?

I doubt it, but I think this season is what he means. I think in the NFL playoffs, he'll come back and he'll make an impact. Josh Johnson, the 39-year-old, trending towards making his first start of the year for the commanders, which means Marcus Marietta with the hand and the quadriceps will not get the start potentially, although he has not been ruled out. He has not been ruled out, but this is a Thursday game. He did not practice Monday, did not practice Tuesday. I can't fathom that Marietta is going to play. Let me ask you. Because I was looking at Josh Johnson. His last start was great. It was like 30 fantasy points. But that was like three years ago. He's almost 40 years old. So I don't think you could trust him. The little stint we saw in replacement of Mario was bad. One of the worst, slowest thrown picks. Yeah, sorry, Jay. We were trying breaking news. I promise it's worth interrupting. Oh, all right. We had to confirm it. Uh, there's tweets going out, Tom Pelliserro.

Great friend of the show. What? The Raiders are placing Brock Bowers on IR today. Step one of number one pick overall in place. Hey, Raiders. This is what you can control. I respect it. All players have been placed on injured reserve. Oh, man. Oh, no. You were going to play. I know. Okay. So Andy, back to the question of hand. This is, this is legit. I'm sure there's. Dozens of us out there that need this advice. We're at a 14 team, our listener league, I'm in the championship. No, I wouldn't. So I have, you didn't hear the other options now. You haven't, you haven't heard all the options. I lost Jane Daniels, then I lost Marcus Mariotta in the championship. I could pick up 39 year old Josh Johnson against the Cowboys. Terrible. Terrible. Terrible. Currently, as of this moment before that news, my number one waiver pickup was Gino Smith. Now.

I mean, I just said I thought about streaming him. Ask me now. Okay. Would you stream? No. Without Brock Bowers. No, I wouldn't. Okay. So now the other options. Kirk Cousins. Rams. Against the Rams. They're at home. Aaron Rogers against the Browns without D.K. Metcalfe. He didn't like D.K. anyways. Yeah, I mean. Ewers. He wasn't throwing the ball. Shador Sanders. I mean, I could go with like the bros bros. This is and you're the dude that's never lost the title game. Yeah. I'm putting that to the test this year. Without Brock Bowers, that is, um, I mean, Trey Tucker. Hey, Trey Tucker looks even better right now. He does. And yeah, 14 to. I would genuinely for the first time ever, I think I'd put all those names in a hat and pull one out. You've got a Santa hat on right now. I'm not sure that there's a good. I mean, you understand cousins probably.

How many years of experience Josh Johnson has? 39. He's been in the league since 2009. I'd play cousins with the way Pitts has been playing and Drake London probably. Yeah. That's probably what I would do based on those answers. It's that or you just. Oh my gosh. You, Hercules Mulligan and you play Josh Johnson and you say, I'll take the matchup. I would love it if we got breaking news of the Giants in a counter move, put one of their players on I are right now. Jackson Dart. He's on the IR. So by the way, you may have wanted to know, because we just said he went on injured reserve. It's just the knee injury that he's been dealing with and playing through. And he could definitely play this week. Oh, man. But the decision was to was made strategically to be smart to get him ready for next year. I will say that has a huge impact on championships. There are going to be a lot of teams that have Rob Bowers. Yeah, that sucks. In there. And it's not like, you know, I don't think you can.

Just pivot to Michael Mayer as a replacement. No, and I think you're going to have to start looking at Darren Waller, who has recently dropped. Colby Parkinson recently dropped. Jake Tongue Smith basketball, who was who may get a start as an emergency play. But that was big news. George Kittle, dealing with a mid to low ankle sprain. I. I doubt he plays this week. That's how I feel too. I doubt it. I don't understand why he would. Because they got to win out. They do have to win out, but they also are in the playoffs. And George Kittle has a long-term issue with staying healthy. I agree. I don't think Kittle plays either. If he does play, it creates, it's almost a could possibly worse situation if he plays.

of you just you have no idea how it responds yeah how is it going to respond is he going to go out do two snaps ago okay guys i can't actually do it's going to be used just as a blocker not running routes running but the reason he plays is true if you win the next if san francisco wins the next two games they get a week off they get the buy yes they get the one yes yeah there has they play seattle if they win their next two games no matter what they are the number one seat The Rams could shut Devante Adams down for the last two games to keep them ready for the playoffs. That seems smart as well. Yeah, I mean, you don't need them to beat the Falcons this week, and then you don't need them to beat the Cardinals. So, yeah, shut them down and have them for the playoffs. Wait, Kyle, this is a tweet from Doug Claw. Doug Claw saying, it'll get you. 49ers hypothetical schedule if they win out.

The game site will be week 17, Levi Stadium, week 18, Levi Stadium. Well, those would be the final two of the year already. And then every game. The Super Bowl is at Levi Stadium. They will be a home game for the next five weeks. Yeah, they could be if they win the next two. Wow. They would be the number one seed, which means they'd be the home team for the divisional and NFC title game. That's why George Kill would be at home. it's also why they'll see if he can yeah that's tough um dk macab his two game suspension was upheld his 45 million guaranteed was voided that is that's gonna be fascinating to watch is i don't need him i don't yeah they need him but they also have to realize we have overpaid for this man that's what i mean of the production has not met the contract by any stretch of the imagination

So is there a chance that Pittsburgh just is like, eh? It doesn't mean they're not paying him. It means that if they want to get out of the contract, they can do it for free. Which could happen maybe more likely after next year or something. Yeah. If it doesn't work out instead of having two years guaranteed. Philip Rivers will start again against the Jaguars. Makes sense to me. It looked pretty good. The Colts. Did you watch all the miced up stuff with Phillip Rivers? I did not. Unbelievable. Unbelievable. Not just because. of all the calls at the line of scrimmage not just because of the celebrations uh which are outrageous but also because of this man's incredible usage of substitute words for curse words it is amazing gosh darn it i mean it's so i mean he is it's like he's dropping all the expletives but he's not so funny too because he talks the harshest trash thinking yeah i mean he talks trash like a mania yeah oh yeah like

like he just finished pounding a six pack and he's letting loose but he can't he's not going to let that tongue fly no he's incredibly disciplined hilarious 44 year old and we've got can we he's a poop talker can we submit a petition to allow can we get two color jerseys for this guy can we not do the full one color pair shaped situation. Oh, you're saying, we need to get all white, then he's all blue. Can we do it half and half? Yes. No, no, he needs. He needs vertical stripes. Oh, thank you. That is what I meant. He needs vertical stripes. Horizontal stripping. I mean, in the full blue, it's just. Don't let him play in the bumblebee. It's just fully. He's just a shape. He looks like a top. You'd spin on the top of a table. Incredible job. The, uh, the foghorn leghorn body type. Yes.

Yes. All right. That was news and notes sponsored by Progressive Insurance. Quote today at progressive.com progressive casualty insurance company affiliates and third party insurers. Not available in all states or situations covered subject policy terms, limits and conditions. It's time for starts. Starts of the week. All right. Big week. Yeah. Big names. Start of the week time. We're trying to find those guys you aren't automatically starting. Sounds like Jason could use some help. Oh, man, I would love any of these guys. Yeah, they're not. I'm, I am now hoping for Kirk Cousins to bring me that title. I'll kick it off here with the guy who was Kirk Couss. Let me tell you why he's a great start this week. Don't do that again. At home against the Rams. Trevor Lawrence, it was my stream of the week because amazingly it was 50% available in leagues, not in 14 team leagues.

And he's going to be on the road against the poop talker himself in Indy playing against Philip Rivers. He's the quarterback four on the season, quarterback two since the bye week. He's coming off of a good game. He was the quarterback five in Denver, in mile high, on the road against a great defense. We have been waiting for that game to be like, is this incredible outpouring of points from the Jaguars? Is this just because of their schedule? Are they figuring stuff out? T-Law has looked great, and he continued to do so. I feel like his floor is very high. There's a 47.5 point over or under. The Jaguars have an impressive 27-point implied team total. And they've been letting Trevor Lawrence actually lead the team. This is not, you know, in the past, earlier in the year, there was a time where it was like Travis E.T.N., you know, the run game was really leading this team.

But over the last month, Jacksonville is third in pass rate over expectation and the indie defense. I mean, we just saw it Brock Bowers. They're not stopping the passing game right now. 31st in passing yards per game allowed. I think I would start them in my championship. Yep. I'm going with Drake May. He's playing the New York Jets. And Drake May over the last, you know, six weeks, it's been good. It hasn't been great. But I think we have an opportunity for it to be a. Great week. Patriots are still trying to get that number one seed, so we don't need to worry about motivation. He's the best deep passer in the league, which that's what I want against the New York Jets, because over the last five weeks, the Jets are 31st and schedule adjusted points to the quarterback position. I'm not trying to, like, I'm not moving away from May because it's just been okay. I think that, I think we were, uh, you just may today.

Yes. Caleb Williams at San Francisco. I'm going back to the Caleb Williams as well. Better hope you get five quarters. Peer River, the poop talker himself went 27 and 2 against San Francisco on Monday night. The pass rush doesn't exist right now for San Francisco. They're 25th in schedule adjusted fantasy points allowed to the quarterback position. I think it's going to be very good for Caleb Williams again this week. And I think that game overall is going to be really good. So before we jump into our running backs. Which, Jason. I'm really considering Josh Johnson here. Oh, brother. You shouldn't. But you live. You do you. You do you. We'll take a break. We'll be right back. All right. We're back from the break. Is Jason still considering Josh Johnson? I am just because I know that in my previous underdog championship matchups that I have won.

They have come with the most insane crazy names for fun, and it worked out. But at Running Back, less insane crazy name, I think it's a good start this week. Ramandre Stevenson. We don't have any update yet on Trayvion Henderson, but obviously he's going to be fine, guys. He's currently in Concussion Protocol. He's not going to be fine. And the Jets, like why rush Henderson back? when you're playing the Jets. The Patriots should be able to easily handle the Jets without Henderson, give him a week off. Ramandre Stevenson was great last week. I mean, 8 for 51 and 1 on the ground, 2 for 2070. He played 84% of the snaps. You know he's going to basically be a bell cow running back against basically the worst defense for running backs in the league. The last six weeks, they're dead last and schedule adjusted fantasy points allowed. Who was their matchup last week, the Jets? Who did they get?

destroyed by it was like 28th. The Saints. The Saints. Okay. Tayson Hill. Yeah, I was just trying to think of the running back situation last week. It just ended up being Tayson. So, yeah, I think, sorry, Mike. I know you're playing against Romandre this week, but the rest of your roster will easily overcome it. Looking at Remandre on their side is disgusting and terrifying. I'm going with Tyrone Tracy against Vegas the last two weeks, 18 opportunities in each. You know, Devin Singletary is a backup option. Tracy is the main course. A starting option. He is the main. Yes. And look over the last five weeks, Raiders 29th that scheduled adjusted points to the running back position, 28th and yards after contact allowed in that span. And Tracy has been gouging, gouging with chunk runs. I like him in this matchup.

Well, I'm going to go with last week's running back 20, who was 15 for 63 and a touchdown, who was scored. Crodd. One, two, three, four, five of his last seven games and really was just hurt. Oh, hell, Crod. It's Crod. It's Chris Rodriguez against Dallas. Cod. Dallas's rush defense has not been good. I think Quentin Williams is still going to miss this game. I don't know that for certainty. Wow. But Crod himself, this game is a 50.5 over under. That's why Jason's thinking about Josh Johnson. For real. It's still. Oh my gosh. Oh, my gosh. Crod has a 63% of the team's rushing attempts. Crod. Over the last. Is that like a ribbet? I don't know. But his carries are going to come inside the tin as well. He's been running well all year.