Fantasy Football Podcast 2016 - Rising Stars, Preseason Takeaways, News, Injuries

with their draft, also known as draft for them. Right. And we drafted A.J. Green felt us in the second round of a 10-team league. And then about 30 minutes later, he was coming up limping, seemed non-contact, and got a little scary there for a minute. Remember that other guy that Mike used to like a lot? The Roob's. Reuben Randall has been cut in the most disappointing offseason. I mean, you get signed.

They're mesmerized by his lack of effort, and he's gone. They brought in Dario Greenbeckham. We'll get into this wide receiver quarter when we cover the game, but Ruben Randall has been released by the Eagles after playing zero games with him. Colin Kaepernick, look, I saw this report. Jay Glazer came on and said Kaepernick has an uphill battle to make the team. We'll talk about the performance of Kaepernick and Gabbert in the game review. But, you know,

At least Glazer's report is that he could be released. I wouldn't be shocked. I think it would be good for the 49ers to release him. I think if he's not going to start, that seems like the best course of action. Stephen Ridley. If I had a mediocre signing of the week for running backs, Stephen Ridley goes to the Colts. We knew the Colts were probably going to be looking for another running back. Did he officially signed? He officially signed? Yeah, he's on the Colts. Keith Marshall expected to miss.

Three weeks, Redskins rookie running back, that is. That seems like good news to me. When he went down on this play, it looked like he broke his arm to me. So just a sprained elbow, he'll be out. And then we got news this morning that the Broncos have officially named Travis, I'm sorry, Trevor Simeon, they're starting quarterback. Bye, Mark Sanchez. I don't know that they will cut him, but I think it makes a lot of sense financially to cut him. And Simeon seems like the better player.

So I'm not shocked at this. I think it's smart for them to announce it now, be able to go into the next, the rest of the preseason, getting prepared for, you know, they should be able to be a good team. They should be able to compete. Obviously, there's a Super Bowl champs. They've got a great defense. So you want to give clarity there.

I agree. And before we get into the rising stars of the week, I'm very excited about my guy. I want to thank pristineauction.com. You've heard us talk about them so much on the show. They're doing something very special for you, the listener. We've got a giveaway that you can win. And all you have to do is go to footclan giveaway.com. It is a pristine auction giveaway of a...

David Johnson, 20 by 30, signed canvas. Oh, I've seen those. Those are amazing. Yeah, they are awesome. And they're also giving away an 8 by 10 signed Raymond Barry photo. So you can win either one of those.

And we're throwing in a sticker fantasy footballers pack as well. So, you know, pristine auction is the absolute best place to get signed autograph memorabilia. You guys know this. You've got to go to pristine auction.com and go to footclan giveaway.com if you want to get involved with the David Johnson signed canvas. It's awesome that we've got a partner that just gives free stuff away to the listeners. Pristine auction is amazing. And if you are on YouTube, you see our place is decked out.

with pristine auction gear. Also, if you are going to games, which we highly recommend going to football games because football games are awesome, make sure that you are using Seat Geek to go to your games. It's what Andy uses. It's what Mike uses. It's what myself uses. Seat Geek app is so much easier. In fact, we were just looking up tickets for Jim Gaffigan is coming to Arizona, funny comedian. And you have, I didn't realize how much.

More control you have of where you're choosing your seats and the price that you're going to get. I was looking on Seat Geek, and I could select exactly where I wanted to go. They pool in tickets from all the different ticketing sites, so I can guarantee that I'm getting an awesome price. They got a big green circle.

where, you know, it's easy to say, oh, that's the best price ticket in that area. So it's really great, nice maps. And if you haven't bought through SeatGeek yet, they're going to give you $20 back in your pocket. So here's what you need to do. You need to go download the free Seat Geek app. Go on the settings tab, click the ad promo code, and enter promo code footballers, and SeatGeek will send you $20.

after you've made your first ticket purchase. So download the free seat geek app, enter promo code footballers, and do it today. Raising Cain's Rising Stars of the Week. All right, so it's a two-man show today. So we've got two rising stars for you. These are guys that, and this is going to be a regular segment all year long on Mondays, talking about somebody from the past weekend that caught our eye that we want to alert you about.

Tell you about right now so that you can do something about it in your league. Yes. If you are drafting or if you've already drafted and you want to trade for these players. Waiver wire. Yeah. Sometimes they'll be on waivers all season long. Very important. And someday, someday, because this is the most delicious segment we have. Sure. Someday it'll be Eddie Lacey and that's just going to be great. That's going to be great. But for now, I'm going to go with Mike's. Mike sent us in his. Oh, so wait. We have mics.

Yes. Mike's Raising Kane Rising Star is Deshawn Jackson. He is a guy that you need to be on the lookout for year after year after year after year. He is, you know, at the end of the year, he finishes as the fantasy like wide receiver 20. You know, he's always that wide receiver 2 who puts up great weeks. He has that on lockdown. But last year, he was injured for about half of the year. When he came in, he was great. And what we saw this preseason.

was excellent. First, he's getting targeted. Second, when he got the ball, he made some moves and some juke to just remind you. He is NFL elite when it comes to speed. You know, everybody's fast than the NFL, but he is faster than the fast guys. And so he looked great. He's targeted all over the field. I think he's rising up, and his draft value right now is... He's in the eighth round. I mean, that's silly. He's going where Sterling Shepard is, where Jordan Matthews is.

That's about the range where he's going. Devante Parker Range. Michael Crabtree. He should rise up that list. If he falls to you there, take him with confidence. All right. My rising star is somebody that I've, you know, we had him as a value pick for a while because it's just one. I think we have a Michael Crabtree, Mari Cooper situation. All right? Yeah. And the player I'm bringing up is Vincent Jackson. Wide receiver for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Everybody.

and their mother loves Mike Evans. And for good reasons, he's enormous. He's incredible. You saw it this weekend. But Vincent Jackson was heavily involved in an offense that was throwing the ball around, this dirt cutter offense, and the draft position between those two guys is just... I mean, Vincent Jackson is an 11th round draft pick. There are plenty of leagues where he doesn't go drafted. Oh, yeah. You could have finished your draft right now. Go check out waiver wires and see Vincent Jackson sitting there.

You are going to have weeks in which Vincent Jackson outscores Mike Evans. You know, two guys. Probably four or five of them this year. And he is, you know, last year, Amari Cooper, or in this year's draft, Amari Cooper goes in the second round. Crabtree is going in the eighth round. You got Evans going in the first or second round, Vincent Jackson in the 11th round. This is not, that doesn't make sense. That doesn't make any sense whatsoever. And if you look at last year, two guys that helped win championships were guys like Larry Fitzgerald and Brandon Marshall, guys that were.

Old wide receivers, and I don't want them anymore. They're 32 years old or whatever. Look, when the biggest indicator of future success in fantasy football is previous success. And I get it. Sometimes it's going to be the Andre Johnson's of the world where their time has come and they are done. But in the 11th round, and you can see it in preseason. Man, Vincent Jackson looks just fine. He was four.

For 78, that's 19.5, nine targets. Next closest on the team was five. Yeah. Nine targets in this game. Vincent Jackson is a great value. So I will go with my final Raised Cain Rising Star, which is last week's.

Rising Star. Oh, that was my guy from last week? For Andy, I've got to throw out Melvin Gordon again because he is a guy to me that is going to help people win this year. Melvin Gordon, what he's shown in the preseason is that he is kind of, he's figured out the NFL.

a little bit. Now, I will grant you this is preseason work, and anybody can look good in the preseason, but it's better to do what he is doing rather than what he did last year, and what he's doing right now is finding a way to get open, to cut into open lanes, and use his elite speed. He pulled away from guys this week again on a run, and, you know, it was like 30-yard touchdown. He looked spry, he looked fast. He's obviously going to be involved. He's going to get a workload, and he is the predominant, you know,

back there and he's great at catching the ball too. I mean, when he came into the league, he was he was supposed to be. It was like, who's better? Todd Gurley or Melvin Gordon. Todd Gurley's going to, you know, I've seen him go at the 101.

Plenty of times. And I'm not saying that Melvin Gordon is Todd Gurley, but I'm showing that the value, the draft value, when you can get Melvin Gordon in the fifth or sixth round sometimes, that's great. If you've gone wide receiver heavy, you've drafted a tight end earlier. Melvin Gordon's one of those guys I'm targeting to be part of my core backfield because I think if he's a two on my team, he's going to perform like a one on some weeks. He's gotten the touchdown monkey off his back in the preseason. He's had a couple scores. He's shown.

He's passing the eye test that I look for in the preseason. It's less about the stats. It's more about that eye test. And he's passing those. So those were the Raising Cains Rising Stars of the week. Don't forget, game day tastes better with the Raising Cain's tailgates. By the way, that's exactly what I want for my draft. That's full of fresh 24-hour marinated hand-battered chicken fingers and fresh brewed.

Sweet tea. It's so good. So good. So good. The most delicious segment by far. So check out Raising Canes.com. Find your nearest location. And as Mike would say, always get an extra sauce. Pro tip. We're here to help you. That's right. Weekly rewind. All right, week three of the preseason, we're going to try to bust through all the games with you right here, right now, giving the biggest takeaways from each team in their preseason game. A reminder, we're not overreacting.

So you shouldn't overreact either. But we want to give you some takeaways, things to pay attention to if you haven't drafted or if you already have, what you can look forward to to the season. Am I right? You are right. And if we don't mention something about, oh, why didn't you talk about this guy? Probably because it's not that important. Yeah. Yeah. Or, you know, yeah, that's why. Yeah, I mean, the reality is, you know, we could talk about every player on the team and then this would be a five-hour show. Yeah. So we want to give you some fantasy perspective, something to...

kind of hold on to here. We're going to start with the Patriots and the Panthers. They played a game of football this weekend. The Patriots won by a couple points. What was the standout takeaway on the Patriot side of the ball? On the Patriot side of the ball, I think there were two big takeaways. One was we were saying early in the season, Chris Hogan.

Great sleeper. He's going super late. He's got Tom Brady. Got a little banged up. With the Tom Brady four-game suspension in place and him getting banged up, we kind of were off the Chris Hogan. But what we saw in this preseason game was that Bill Belichick is not off Chris Hogan. He was really involved. They were using him as a tool. They were putting him in motion and they were designing plays for him. And he looked great. He looked great. Even with Garoppolo and he looked great with Brady. So I would say.

Look at him as a late sleeper. The other takeaway is Gaffney, Tyler Gaffney, is possibly going to end up. I think Blunt and Gaffney both make this roster, and I think they split. So I've been pretty high on Blunt lately, but Gaffney is playing too good to be cut and too good to not be used in a game. Blunt himself looked great, but I think if you've got both guys playing great, you are going to mix them in in the game, which stinks.