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

Yep. I think Carlos Hyde, you know, he looked okay. He had a very nice, he had a couple, very nice runs, but having a concussion is not good for you. Don't you see, I mean, don't you see what I'm saying about Carlos Hyde? This is not a good team. No, I completely agree. You can't put it all on Hyde to make this team good. I am officially, you've heard me talk about my hope that Kaepernick-Kosemma earned the job back. He was awful. He's terrible. He's probably going to be cut.

I'm statting Gabbard. I'm not studying Kaepernick. I hoped and I thought he would give me a glimmer in this game and that would make that fourth game important. He was terrible. Even if he played great, the whole national anthem sitting thing going where the 49ers have literally had to issue a press release apologizing for Colin Kaepernick. Even if he played great. Wasn't their press release more that they just respect the decisions? They didn't apologize for him. Their first press release immediately was...

It read to me like an apology for him. But I will look into that. Maybe agree to disagree and go read the press release yourself. Okay. But my point is he came out and he stunk. He had one read and then looked to run. And when he threw the ball, it wasn't good. He has no chance to start. No, no chance at all. And Tori Smith has one target. We joked about it in the beginning of the show. He's had one target in the preseason. Is there a 49ers wide receiver to own? No. I agree.

I think they might be this year's Titans. Yeah. I don't think I'm going to draft any. I would still draft McDonald. Sure. But he's not a wide receiver. So. Yeah. It was Seleck who was more involved this last game. So look. I'm staying away from most of the Niners. Yeah. I say draft guys on teams that are going to have success. The big salad might be the only value here in the entire game is Sean Drone. All right. Chiefs and Bears. For me, all the preseason games that I watched, the Chiefs were the most impressive team to me.

I think they're going to be a very, very good team this year. We obviously had the end of the season. They won so many games in a row last year, got into the playoffs. To me, they look great. I love the offensive scheme. They're running. It's quick hit. It's the type of stuff that Alex Smith is good at, you know, misdirection. A lot of Albert Wilson running behind the line of scrimmage. And obviously, you didn't have Jamal Charles out there, but this was still highly targeted Jeremy Macklin.

Goal line target for him, highly targeted Travis Kelsey. He got a red zone target, and they both look good to me. Conley is a two. I mean, Conley's a two on a low volume offense. I agree, which makes him irrelevant to me. He is the number two, but I would not draft the number two. I would draft the number two for certain teams, but not for a pass volume as low as Kansas City. No, I would treat him the same way I treat Travis Benjamin in San Diego right now, where when the week comes where I've got buys and I need somebody to stream, I think Conley's going to have his games.

Yeah, I probably still wouldn't be looking for him, but he will have his games. I just don't know that you can predict it based on a matchup or anything like that. Were you as impressed with the Chiefs as I was? Not as impressed. I don't think they won the preseason in my mind, but they looked good on both sides of the ball. And what I loved was seeing Alex Smith.

run the ball he he he was willing it was one of those things where you know when you talk about going through your reeds one of his reads is just the field ahead of him and if that field is open he was running and he would get 20 yards 15 yards and and take a nice slide he would only run when he had wide open lanes but he's not afraid to do it and we we uh

We don't think of him as very athletic. Oh, I do. Well, I think the fantasy community, the Wii is on a whole. Alex Smith is great to throw dirt on for short passes and safety net opportunities. But he will surprise in fantasy because he's going to, he's going to finish with 250 yards on the ground. And that adds up. Yeah, probably more than that.

Bear's side of the ball, they struggled mildly. I think a lot of this had to do with the Chief's defense playing so well. But you also had struggles for Cutler, frustration for Cutler. Nothing impressive out of Kevin White.

Langford looked like the guy and fine, but, you know, you're going to run into a Carlos Hyde situation here if they can't move the ball through the air. And Jeffrey dropped a big touchdown pass that probably would have, you know, he probably would have taken into the house and he'll be targeted heavily. But not a good game for the Bears. No, Jeffrey looked very good to me. I will, I mean, obviously he did drop that pass where he was streaking open. But Jay Cutler was a wreck. I mean, Jay Cutler, to me, and this is one game, but he looked.

like not an NFL quarterback. He did not look how he looked last season where he was hyper-efficient with Adam Gase. We can hope it's a James Winston situation. Yeah, yeah. Maybe it's just a bad game. But I can't blame it all on the Chiefs. Like I want to give Chiefs credit, but there were some wide open receivers. He just airmailed. And so, you know, he just, the Bears look bad to me, but I agree. Where are you drafting Kevin White? I'm not drafting Kevin White right now. In a redraft. In a dynasty, I still think he's going to be great. But Kevin White has to be.

I've got to take him way down. He has done nothing to impress me. He's an eighth round pick right now. Don't do it. And I've been, I've been, I love Kevin Wiggs. Or Kevin Wigg. Oh, my goodness. Stefan Diggs. We'll get to that game in a minute. But he looked. Devin Funches or Kevin White? All of those guys. Keep going. Tori Smith or Kevin White? No. No, I will take Kevin White ahead of Tori Smith. But, yeah, most guys that are involved. Kevin White looks like he's a project. All right. We've got to move on. The Ravens.

And the Lions, we talked about Ben Watson's injury. We talked about Kenneth Dixon's injury. Your gun to your head, you're picking the backfield for Baltimore. You're starting a guy all season. I'm guessing it's four set. It's four set because he gets the first crack at it and because he's shown that he can do it in the past. I am staying away. I'm now officially staying away from the Ravens. And when I say that...

So last night, after the Ravens game, I was doing this draft. My opinion was already there. And I drafted Justin Fawcett. But I drafted Justin Fawcett in the 11th round. I mean, at that point, you're going to take the starter for any team. It was great value. But for the most part, where guys are normally going, I don't think Fawcett does it for the whole year.

Terrence West looked great in this game. If you could get Forset in the 11th, wouldn't you just draft West with your last pick and then see how the beginning of the season shakes out? Maybe. But I'm not sure. We had that opportunity in the draft last night. I chose to not do it because I didn't want to. My shot was, hey, maybe Forset will be the guy. But I'm not taking a shot at I want to. I want to.

get that whole backfield. Because I think there's a very easy opportunity for Buck Allen to be involved, Terrence West to be involved, for said to be involved, and there is no guy. So let me ask you this. If that's the opinion on the running back side, what do you think of Mike Wallace? And do you think he will be, I mean, they talk him up a lot. We've been disappointed by Mike Wallace before, but he has been somebody that's produced. Even in his time in Miami when he was annoying, he still got into the end zone.

Is Mike Wallace moving up your rankings? Is he somebody you would take a flyer on? Yes. Mike Wallace is moving slightly up my rankings. Not very high, but he was targeted a lot. He looked good on a couple of plays. But granted, there were also a few plays that he looked out of sync with the offense. Ran ran the wrong route and the ball went the other direction when he cut. And so there's some kinks to work out, but he's done it before. Joe Flacco to me look great. You know, his arm is strong.

I'll say that. The lions, you know, they struggled. The lions were a little bit out of sync. Tons of penalties. In this game, it seemed like Golden Tate was the first read compared to Marvin Jones. I think you're going to see those guys kind of alternate that production. That's why I'm taking the last of those two in the draft. Wherever they're going, I'll just take the second guy. And right now that's Marvin Jones. They're getting close to each other. I mean, they're getting real close. Marvin Jones is creeping.

Oh, ADP-wise? Yeah, ADP-wise. He is going higher and higher and higher in every draft I've seen. He used to be such a great value. I mean, he was going in the ninth. Now I think he's around the sixth where he is still okay. I'm willing to take him. He did have a couple of red zone targets in this game. But yeah, I mean, it is a 1A-1B. And if you want to tell me who the A is, I'd be happy to know. All right, takeaways from the Eagles and Colts game.

The big takeaway that you need to know about the Colts is that they lost their left guard Jack Mughart. Huge loss. And apparently just watching the game, what they did is where that guard spot was in memory of him is they didn't fill it. They just left a big hole there. And then there was a tackle. In memorandum. In memorandum. They just left a hole. That's what it looked like. Oh, I have now. Bad, bad, bad. The ball got to Andrew Luck oftentimes slower than the Eagles did.

And that's the Eagles. Let me ask you this, because I thought this was crazy. See, something about this show, sometimes we agree, sometimes we disagree. We give you the reasons why you can make your decision. A listener wrote in on Twitter, and they said, I was offered Dante Moncrief for Melvin Gordon. And Mike. Oh, I saw this. And Mike said, amazing. I love it. And I said, gross. So where do you weigh in? Because I thought I would rather have Melvin Gordon. Who would you rather have?

I think as of right now, from what I've seen in this preseason, I'd rather have Melvin Gordon than Moncrief just because of position scarcity. I believe both are going to be good. I love drafting Moncrief. If Mike and I, we have the My Guys episode coming up this week. I promise you Dante Moncrief will be on that episode, but Mike and I are going to have to arm wrestle for who gets to be that guy. Because I'm drafting Dante Moncrief wherever I can. Even with this game where the offensive line just looked peep.

That's the biggest takeaway is they have got to fix their offensive line. It hurts Gore. It hurts Luck. It hurts the offense. It hurts Moncrief. Hurts Dorset. It hurts everybody. See, I'm worried about there being a situation. Look at last year. We give Luck a pass. He was hurt. We give Rogers a pass. Jordy was hurt. What if we see kind of more of what we saw last year from those two teams? What if they don't automatically fix? You know, if they can't protect luck, he's going to struggle. The nice thing, though, is that...

The ADPs, if you haven't drafted yet, they kind of have that struggle built in already. So if they bounce back, you're getting a value. If they don't bounce back, you're still all right for taking those guys where most of them are going, in my opinion. I still love Dante Moncrief. He was heavily targeted in this game. It really is. I feel like when I watch this...

It was just like Tate and Marvin Jones. You've got a 1A1B here. No, I agree. I just. And the difference between where T.Y. Hilton and Dante Moncrief are being drafted. That being said, position scarcity, if I can get a very good running back or a very good wide receiver, and I'm confident that they're going to be that. I'm taking the running back. All right. The Eagles take away, you know, they look like a team ready to play football. They look like Bradford's the guy. They look like they could do some things. Ryan Matthews had three carries, 31 yards, looked fine. They got them off the field.

Barner looks to be the backup there. I still like Sproles as a sleeper. I don't think there's any other headlines before we move on. No, it's just a matter of how good can the team be? If the team is good, then Ryan Matthews will be good. Bradford will be reliable and be out there. If the team is bad, Wins will come in and the team will go to Shambles fantasy-wise. All right, it's time for New York City. New York City. We've got the Jets and the Giants game.

Talk about the Jets. Okay. Thank you because this is my biggest takeaway. Like of all the, you know, I'm taking notes, pin to paper for every single one of these games, watching every snap. You have one of those like the ink. Yes. Like the feather pins. I only use a quill. I am a quill only type of guy. You should live stream your quill notes while you watch the preview. Yeah, I get ink everywhere. Sure. I mean, I don't know how to use it.

If you looked at my notes and you got to just come in and steal them and rob my house like a maniac, you would see one note that sticks out more than any others because very often once I see something I like, I put a big asterisk by it. And then if I see something I like again, if the player does something again, I put an asterisk by it. There were four gigantic asterisk by this note, which was the Jets defensive line.

I mean, I usually am concentrated on the offense. We don't do IDP here. We try to focus and be good at what our main. Stay in your lane. Yeah, we stay in our lane. But the Jets defensive line looked as dominant as any defensive line I have seen in recent years. They were just manhandling the Giants. I mean, people came and said like, hey, should we be worried about the Giants' offense? They weren't able to move. And I give all the credit.