Draft Fallers + Combine Buzz, New Offenses - Fantasy Football Podcast for 2/27

to the fantasy footballers podcast with your host, Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright. Oh, welcome in. Thursday, February 27th, the fantasy footballers, Mike Wright, Jason Moore, Andy Holloway. I saw you check your watch, Jason. Were you confirming the date? I was indeed confirming the date. I didn't realize we were this close to the end of the month. Do you feel like you know when February is going to end like inherently? Like you know how long it's going to be? I know it's going to be 28 days. Okay. And I know I know that definitively four out of every four years. So quarter of the time I'm wrong. Yeah. I don't know when. And I don't really care. I don't care what I'm wrong. Like if I wake up to, you know, on the 29th and it's not the first, I'm like, okay. You're cool with that.

Yeah, I don't care. What happens? Oh my gosh. I already tore the calendar page off. We, yeah, well, look, do you know how many this year? 28, yeah. I mean, this is not a leap year. Exactly. Right, right. So Saturday, March 1st arrives, which is the deadline, the final day for the ultimate draft kit giveaway. We're going to give away a spot in the listener league. As long as you have the Ultimate Draft Kit preordered by then, you will be entered to win, a listener league spot, and you'll get some other sweet perks. The Dynasty Pass available right now, so you want to get over there, Ultimate DraftKit.com. And again, if you were an ultimate member of Join the Foot, you already have the UDK, and you already entered to win. Yeah, but you go check it out because it's an amazing resource, and we've got more and more information coming on the rookies. There will be a new drop after the Combine, which is coming up.

I mean, any minute now. Yeah, we're in. The Combines this weekend, right? Right now. Yeah, I mean, not really. I mean, really checked his watch again. Yeah, the combines. Combine notes on your watch. That's a second check of the watch. How much of your life is run by that watch? Is that a teleprompter? Way too much. If I'm, if I'm talking to someone, I am. Always looking at my watch. I feel so rude because if they're not used to like the notifications on the watch, it looks like I'm looking at the time. Like, you know, can we move this along?

You know, you can also, like, not look at the notification. That's true. Oh, there's another one. Like, I would say. It feels worse having to explain that you're getting, I'm sorry. I'm only interrupting for a notification, not a, not a time check. Yeah. Someone far more important to you is trying to get a hold of me. It could be. I don't know it until I check. Oh, it's not. You get to keep going. And there he is again. We thought we were going to do a 10 Things to Remember episode. But we are pushing that to Tuesday because we have we have some of the coaching changes OC news that we didn't get to. And then there's a ton of NFL news to talk about as well. So we're going to tackle the remaining coaching changes and get through the news, answer some questions. And then next week we'll do our famous, now famous, 10 Things to Remember episode. So I know we'll have some good stuff to share.

Do you even remember last year at all anymore? Yeah, barely, which is why we need to do this show quick. All right, so a reminder, you can find us on X at the FF Ballers, Instagram.com slash fantasy footballers as well. Let's jump right into the news. News and notes from around the league. Well, Khalil Shakir for your contract with the Buffalo Bills. Your dash money. Worth up to $60 million. His guarantee was like 30 something. I remember that correct? I didn't see the guarantee. You can look that up. But I think, you know, obviously for Dynasty, this is always great when you've got a guy that gets an extension. But I, you know, he had a very good fantasy season. He was reliable, impactful in certain games.

for being someone that you come in, not really drafting, you know, in half of leagues was undrafted. And this is a commitment from the bills as an organization that he is an important part of their offense. That to me is just nice to know that if they bring in another wide receiver, which I think they will. I think they need to. They see Khalil Shakir as a really court, like his role is kind of entrenched to me that he's going to keep doing it next year. And this was a, I mean, he had 100 targets. Yeah, I like Khalil Shakir. I think he will probably always be a player that's more valuable to Josh Elm than he is the fantasy managers. But when we were doing the offseason discussions and Curtis Samuel was making headlines and they were trying to figure out who the next man up would be. Clearly Shakir stepped into that role and doubled more than doubled his target total career high, had 76 receptions and 15 games, 821 yards, four touchdowns. Those hips don't lie, man. Oh, is that a?

Swish. So Shakira thing? Yeah. Okay. Thank you. You're really doing well today. The watch didn't warn you on that one? No. Okay. Bad joke incoming. You gave blood again, didn't you? Oh, no. Mike McDaniel said Tyree Kill had surgery to repair a ligament in his wrist. Matthew Betts, our injury expert extraordinaire, should be cleared for training camp. We did also get like a full. I don't remember what, somewhat recent, a full reversal from Tyree Kill. If you remember after the season, it was, I am out of here. Miami is not where I will be playing. You guys are a bunch of chumps. It softened a week or so later, and then we've, we've had the full, no, I'm going to be in Miami doing my thing. What percentage of fantasy football players will use the wrist ligament injury to absolve Tyree Kill of his one?

half as good season and give him a... I don't think anyone is going to give him a complete free pass. What about justification to draft him higher than he should be? Yeah, I mean, that will be the justification used because you have to justify it. He was not good. He didn't miss games and he was, you know, like you said, almost half as many yards as the season prior. I think when you pull the trigger and draft him where he's going, which is to me, I'm still surprised how high he is being drafted. He is wide receiver 12 right now in basketball. Exactly. Like I will not. You would not do that. I will not take him at wide receiver 12. I mean, 12 seems okay to me. I think that's okay. He was, he was still. Give me some names around that though. He was still good. I mean, you had to throw the draft capital away once we got here. But it's like week one, 20 plus fantasy points, two gets hurt. He's gone for a month or so. And then over the, you know, like from week.

eight on. He's still, he's still very usable. It just, it was not the number one or number two wide receiver. Would you rather have Tyreek kill on your roster or Garrett Wilson right now? Tyreek. Garrett. J.S.N. J.S. Tyreek. DJ Moore. DJ Moore. I think that one's DJ Moore. It will be hard, I think, for a lot of people to pass on Tyreek. Yeah? Because you know the upside is. still, I mean, if you believe that it could be there. We've done this a bit with Cooper Cup. Let me put it. Break the records and then justify the problems with injury and then. Mike, you said so from week eight on, right, to his back and he was usable. Usable. Yes. So in a points per game from weeks eight on, he was the wide receiver 27. He's usable. That's not someone that you're not going to throw in your flex.

or not going to even have as your wide receiver 2. But that's not someone I'm drafting at wide receiver 12, you know, when I'm building my roster. Now, obviously, if this year was a blip on the map and he bounces back in a significant way because he's Tyreek Hill and he's the fastest man on the planet, great. You'll be happy you made that pick. But it's very rare for aging wide receivers over the age of 30 to have a down season and then be like, I'm back baby. Yeah, I won't be in on that. I mean, the idea of. a bounce back. He'll be 31 when he plays this year. A full bounce back? No, but I mean. And part of it is the change of the system. You don't have to a stepping back and airing the ball down the field where Tyree Kill thrived. Once he was back from his concussion injuries, just get the ball out of his hands as quick as possible. And plenty of targets to Tyree Kill, but those aren't going to be the same value. Yeah, and if the offensive line doesn't get fixed in Miami, they won't have time. Even if they want to switch back.

What's the next bit of news? We have Steelers general manager. Omar Khan said the team will tender running back Jalen Warren. Mike, maybe take a second and explain what that means to those that are not familiar with that terminology. So he is a restricted free agent. We're talking about Jalen Warren, which means that the team can, the Steelers are the team that they're negotiating with the first. Jalen Warren will be able to go out and talk to other teams. and get a contract offer from them. And then the Steelers will be able to say, like, we're either going to match certain things. And based off, there's different levels of tender of saying, like, this is the compensation that we will get back if another team steals him from us. Because with the tender, then we're saying, we're going to give him this amount of money. Are you going to beat that? Essentially is how it will work. This says to me, but we saw that. We haven't heard anything on Nagy yet. So this is the team saying,

We're at least actively going to do it. Now, it might be original. And I think that's an RFA Tinder, right? Well, I'm saying an original, in original round, which Jalen Warren was an undrafted player. So it's not like, this isn't a heavy investment, but at least they're giving us some signal that they want him back. It says to me that Jalen Warren will be back on the Steelers, like almost definitively because the free agent marketplace for running backs this off season. considering how strong the draft class is, I don't think general managers are going to go out and spend a ton of money for a player like Jalen Warren. They'll want him on the roster. They'll make him a reasonable contract offer. But a reasonable contract offer is something that will be matched by the, by the Steelers. The original round tag, I'm seeing 3.19 million. Okay. Is that for a undrafted player? That's the, yeah, that's not the second round tender would be 5.2. Okay.

Original round tag would be 3.1. Kyle, am I getting that right? That's what I'm seeing. His undrafted status might make it different. Yeah. We'll figure it out. So, yeah, we'll see if anybody wants to bring him in. It's such a deep running back class in the draft. Yeah, look, the Steelers are not right now on offense. It's kind of a demoralizing picture to me. You have two free agent running backs. You have two free agent quarterbacks. You have one wide receiver, which I don't think it's even mentioned in the news yet, but there's the talk of George Pickens holding in. And, you know, George Pickens has been a boisterous fellow. If anyone's going to hold in, it's George Pickens. So, yeah, it just feels like they could, they could commit to the same level of kind of fantasy football and NFL football.

malaise on offense, or you could rebuild the whole thing. You could bring in a different quarterback and inject some excitement, but right now it feels weird. All right, we have news from the Bengals. This is Combine Buzz, but the Bengals, their own executive, Duke Tobin, says that Jamar Chase will, quote, be the number one highest paid non-QB in the NFL, which is what he wanted to be last year. Yeah, they, the Bengals committed a pretty big whoops of doozles. The T. Higgins won last year. I get it. As a franchise, you're not sure you want to commit to this guy who's been good on the field. But is he worth the money? He keeps getting hurt a lot. Jamar Chase, on the other hand, was, what are you doing? You're going, like, unless Jamar Chase plays this year and has a career-ending injury, you're going to back the truck up. You're going to give him all that cash. And when you wait a year,

Now that cash has increased. Let me think for a second. Okay. Help me work through this and tell me why I'm stupid. If you wait on Jemar Chase a year and yes, you're paying him a more significant per year salary, yes, but you didn't pay it to him last year, right? So you spread out the savings. No, it would have been an additional. Like his fifth, his, whatever contract he was on, like it would have been additional years on that. But what you are doing is you're getting a year on the back end at today's rate. that you would have had to renegotiate another long-term deal with him at the end of this contract at tomorrow's rate. It's one of those things where do you care? Does the franchise care more about the cap number and competitiveness or about the money that they are losing when they pay players a lot of times? So they saved money. They saved cash out the door by not paying him last year and getting it started.

early, but they... In the owner's pockets. Exactly. Right. But from a cap standpoint, now they're going to have a larger cap number to deal with than they would have had if they did it last year. So then you just go back to the top and say, is this a good organization? When I say good organization, I mean, is this a win at all costs, you know, what the fans want? And no, the Bengals are not. I'm saying, yeah, the cap has gone up, which all the players know that. And all the player agents know that. They'll say, you know, you have more room. You're going to give us more. He's going to get paid so much more now. Jamar Chase 100% made more money by not getting the extension last year. But he will, Jamar will get it. And the, the conversations from Bengals officials that we're hearing from the combine, like on T. Higgins, on Hendrickson, like it's.

It went from last year of them being like, it's impossible. There's no way we can't, we can't do this to now like, eh, we'd better get this done. Yeah, the NFL. Burrow is definitely helping. The NFL PA, you know, had their annual, what is it, like the team grades based upon, yeah, the report cards. Yeah, the report cards based upon the, the players in the building, they grade a bunch of different things. I think it's like one through 10 on a million different. avenues and then they get a letter grade on those. The treatment of families, the Cincinnati Bengals, were self-graded as an F-minus, food dining room F. So this is, you know. Ownership a C, though, and A for the head coach to who you don't like. I don't think that the players don't like him. And I don't think he's a bad head coach, but I do think he limits them from going. He's not a great head coach. What's funny is if you just lock up those four players, Burrow locked up, Higgins, Chase,

and Hendrickson. Those four players, as long as they're on that team, they will be relevant every single year. Correct. Here on out, no matter what the peripheral pieces are, genuinely, an elite pass rusher, an elite quarterback, and two elite pass catchers. I would counter argue that by saying they had all four of those players have awesome seasons last year and they did not make the playoffs. No, but I did not say make the playoffs. Okay. I said stay relevant. Sure. Yeah, yeah. They were a much better team than the record last year. They lost a bunch of one score games, dumb, stupid games that they shouldn't have lost. And then they still missed the playoffs barely at the end of the season. It's just you're going to make, this is the thing, the message you might send to ownership. You're going to make more money. Yeah, there you go. You're going to make more money if you have the best players on your team instead of living in the basement. Also, you have enough money.

Right. You're fine, dude. You're fine. Your children's, children's, children's. Yeah, but what about their children? They're fine. Also, you have literally infinite money. It is different. Win. Win for your city. It is different now to have them come out in the off season right away and say, Chase will be the number one highest paid player. There's no more negotiating in the media. There's no more funny business. But so, I mean, the number that I'm seeing floated is. averaging 40. Yes. And so last year, Justin Jefferson got his contract. And then immediately it was, okay, well, what's Chase going to be? Is Chase going to be slightly under? Is it going to be at it? And I'm looking at Spotrek. Jefferson's average salaries 35. If I, Jamar Chase is so good that I feel like I should contribute some money myself because he's on my fantasy team towards.

the money he deserves to get paid. I bet the billionaire owner would he take your money? Yeah, he would. Absolutely. There's still constant chatter with the Rams and what they're going to do organizationally at quarterback. They've given Matthew Stafford the opportunity to go out there and find either a trade or a contract type of offer that would maybe make a trade conducive just to show what his market value is. There was a New York Daily News report about, and we should talk about this. about Aaron Rogers preferring to play for the Rams. Obviously, California kid, the possibility of him bringing Devante Adams there. We talked about Adams. Adams wants to play in California. And, you know, also them potentially being comfortable with Jimmy Garoppolo. Also, Ian Rappaport, tweeting out six minutes ago. Do I need the button? Sure. Come on, man. Breaking news.

Raiders minority owner Tom Brady and the Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford ran into each other at a ski resort in Montana. Yeah. That doesn't happen. You don't randomly. Oh, well, you're here too. Off the beaten path a little bit. What are the odds? Anyways, since I got you. Are you still playing quarterback? So, I mean, obviously he's been given permission to go and test the market, see what the value. I think he's, I have been on record. I do not think he's going back. It's so weird. I feel like it is so weird what the Rams are doing here. You express confidence. So the Rams won with golf. And then the Rams have the established.

offensive operation to bring it. It's kind of like the 49ers with Shannon, right? You can bring players in. You express confidence in if Sam Darnold was the guy, you'd think he would succeed. For fantasy, yes. Okay, for fantasy. And as a team, they will succeed, but will they, can they win a Super Bowl with Darnold? Jimmy Garoppolo was a starter. Right. I could see an NFL team. I could see Sean McVeigh believing that what they have in Jimmy Garoppel would be fine. That's what's been reported is that they are confident. in Jimmy Garoppolo as their starter if they need to be. And so then Rogers and Garapolo maybe they view, look, Stafford's 37. He'll be 38. Like this is not going to, no matter what we're having this conversation at some point soon. It's just matter of whether the Rams want to spend $50 million on Matthew Stafford for a couple of years or they want to spend it elsewhere on the team and rebuild and reframe the organization. And the best teams do figure out a way to turn over the quarterback. The 49ers have done it three or four times while winning.

I just buy into it. And I don't think the circus around Stafford, which it is. It is not all coming from him, but his circle makes a lot of noise and press. Yeah. And it is nasty dynasty season. Speaking of Jimmy Garoppolo, you should go see if he's on your waiver wire. Right. Because he's not on ours. Oh, you do. Of course they picked him up. I, you know what? Why would I, why would you not pick up? He used to be on my team in that league. Yeah. And then he became a backup. And look, he, Jimmy Gromple, I mean, I, the odds are not with you. I bet we're talking low percentage odds. But right now, this is when you got to be making those small low percentage odds. Yeah. To tell you who you don't need to pick up. Gronk. Well, let's, we'll talk about that in just a second. We'll take a break. We'll be right back to some more news.

Well, we'll be talking about another tight in here in a second, but Jason, before the break, you mentioned. There was just, it was floating around that Gronk was, Gronk was A.I. Yes. That, uh, Rob Gronkowski was training for a return. It's a different kind of AI, yes. That he was training for, I don't know, to the NFL. And then, uh, he put those rumors to back. Can we get Gronk AI? Oh, it's Gronk. Hey, dude, tell me for this. Uh, Yo soy fiesta. I don't know exactly. Gronk AI. So, yeah, no gronk return. At the very least, when, you know, the voice portion of GROC needs to have a grunk version. Yeah, just let him do the talking. Chiefs updates from general manager Brett Veach, anticipating Travis Kelsey back and playing in 2025. They also reported that he had been dealing with a big.

sickness, illness before the Super Bowl. What about during the season? I don't know how I could keep that genuinely. I don't know how I could keep it under wraps if it were me. I've thought about this. Like there have been times where you hear that a player has had an injury that they played through. I think I am too weak that I would want the world to know immediately why I sucked. Everyone is that way. If Kelsey sucked in the Super Bowl, I'd be like, yeah, I had the flu. No, you can't say it. You have to go to the, because everyone has to talk after the game. And you show up.

And just Kleenex balled up in your hands. You're like, that's you. That's the only way you can do it. Because if you come out and you're like, I'm making no excuses. We won't know officially until March 14th. The way that the roster bonus. The way that this story has moved around with Kelsey is also super weird. The way that he came out and talked about it. And then yesterday or two days ago, whenever it was, you had the report that. No, we heard, we knew right away that he was coming back and was fired up. I still don't. I still don't think we have a real answer yet. Yeah, March 14th is the start of the new league year and the last day to remove him from the roster before he earns 11.5 million in a roster bonus. And the Kansas City Chiefs also said they would like to look to get Hollywood Brown back. That one makes sense. Which is the same phrase they said the entire year. Yeah.

But when Hollywood was on the field, their offense was better. There was, I don't know if you watched the comments from General Manager. I only read him. Chris Ballard, I watched it. You know, just talking about the Colts quarterback room last off season was a lot of Anthony Richardson discussions about his potential for fantasy. It didn't work out. And the team is talking about, Chris Ballard is talking about an open competition at quarterback with a quarterback they bring in and Richardson. You know. He gave a lot of credit to Richardson saying that, look, he's not dancing around the fact he wasn't good enough. Then he needs to get to work, yada, yada. So I think it's the right. I think it's the right way to do business. Sometimes you worry about hurting the confidence of a player. But in today's NFL, you don't have time for that. You know, they benched Bryce Young. If you're the dude, if you're good enough. Richardson got benched. Right. It's like.

If you are going to overcome adversity and be a great NFL quarterback, me putting you in an open competition isn't going to ruin that. It's just not. It's impossible that you could have been that great, but I said, you know, I made it a competition. You failed to win the job because you would have been so great if you just were gifted it. Like, Trey Lance. I was going to bring him up. That's exactly right. The 49ers. They invested the number three pick in Trey Lance, and they just said, eh, that's not the guy. I want to win football games. That's my goal. My goal is not to justify our picks. Our goal is to make the best picks we can, train them the best we can, and put the best product on the field. Falcons have come out and said that Kirk Cousins will remain with the team.

for the foreseeable future. I don't know if that's a leverage comment from them. Yeah, you do. We don't have good offers yet. Yeah, you know if that's a leverage comment. But the offer, yeah, the offers are contingent on basically cousins maybe being willing to lose some money. So like you have to basically tell Kirk cousins through the media, yeah, we'll keep you as a backup. And if you like that, you'll get paid well. I think right now. there is still hope that a team would take on the entirety of Kirk Cousins contract, that they would look at that and say, we need a quarterback, we don't have one. If the Raiders look at Kirk Cousins and say, yeah, well, if he was on the market, we would pay him that. No one would. I agree. I don't think they would, but I think that's still the hope right now. For the Falcons? Yes. The Falcons just hope that someone will trade for him and take on his contract. That's why you can't go out and say we're actively willing to trade. Exactly.

Yeah, he's on the books for a cool 27-5 and then 35-35 for the next three years. I feel like that's not insanely outrageous for a quarterback. For a starter? Yeah, for a starting quarterback. No, for a start. That's what I'm talking about for a team to acquire him. Well, his cap hits 40, 57-57. Ooh, that's that's a little spicy. So I was just talking the base salary, not the, that was just what the base is. But yeah, he's on the books for 40. 57 and 57, they could get out with 35 dead cap in 26, so after next year. And he's 37. And other teams know that the Falcons are in a position where you just can't have, you can't pay for that for a backup quarterback. So just hold out. This will be a game of chicken that lasts too long. Tray McBride, a priority for the Cardinals in terms of extending Tray McBride. I think we all expect and know this to be the fact. That's the, that is the correct thing to do.