The NFL is Back! + NFC South Breakdown - Fantasy Football Podcast

Two different college programs completely around from losers to absolute winners. But both programs, the first year that he was there, they stunk. It took him two years to turn him around. And they gave him a long-term contract. They're talking about building this the right way. They drafted a whole bunch of defensive guys. I think they're worried about getting the offensive continuity. For fantasy, I actually, this is like the, my.

The team I'm most excited about that I think is also going to be terrible in the NFL that I can remember because you have Joe Brady, who was the, you know, the offensive coordinator for LSU last year. But prior to that, he was working with the Saints for a couple of years with Sean Peyton. And he was there when Teddy Bridgewater was there. That's not a coincidence why Bridgewater is here. So there is a little bit of.

at least experience in working together. And I'm sure some of the same systems will be implemented. And, you know, when you look at having not a great offensive line and a terrible defense and a really accurate short throwing quarterback, I love Christian McCaffrey, I love DJ more, those pieces I want on my fantasy teams. I didn't want to interrupt you in the middle of that because you bring up some very good points. But I'm going to...

We also weren't listening because we were waiting for this. Breaking news. The NFLPA player reps approved the NFL's proposal on their conference call. The deal is done. Let's play some football. Let's go, man. Let's go. That is Ian Rappaport, by the way, reporting. That is great news. I have a smile on my face. Yes. I agreed with all the parts of what you were saying about them struggling.

I didn't agree with the fact. I don't like crafting the narrative around, you know, this is Teddy Bridgewater's first team. I don't. He's not his first team. No, this is 22 and 12, man. Okay. All right. This is, okay, this would be the first time that he was fantasy relevant based on all of these things that you're painting. If you tell me Sam Bradford is on a team with a really bad defense and a bad offensive line, I'm not excited. If you tell me Alex Smith on a team with a bad defense and a bad offensive line, I'm not excited.

I need to see it first. This is a prove it to me policy with Teddy Bridgewater. You give me a bunch of short throws and sacks. I'm not that excited with Teddy Bridgewater. That's my concern. I know you love DJ Moore. He'll be heavily targeted. No reason not to. Christian McCaffrey, I don't care what narrative you can create. You have to draft him first in fantasy leagues. Those two players, you know, I think you guys have really made your case for DJ Moore. I've watched the film.

he's going to be best friends with Teddy Bridgewater. They're going to be skipping down the yellow brick road together. Yes. But beyond that, and with Teddy Bridgewater in particular, I have my question marks. I'll just leave it at that. And then, you know, Mike, I don't know what stands out to you on this team. If you have any bold predictions for Carolina. Well, I had a couple of things when I was researching, you know, Teddy Bridgewater that stood out was interesting to me. So last year, Teddy Bridgewater in his stint as the Saints starter.

Just over 7% of his attempts were deep passes, but he had a 57% adjusted completion percentage. He was good. When he went deep, it was good. Show that last year, Drew Briggs only went deep 8.2% of the time? And I bring that up as, yes, we have a larger sample of Teddy Bridgewater not going deep, but perhaps that was just...

That was the philosophy of the offense last year for the Saints. Neither of the starting quarterbacks were really going deep at a huge clip. Meanwhile, we've had Matt Ruhl talk about the deep pass is going to be a larger part of this offense. Again, if you want to go with the, I have to see it first, I'm just projecting of what this team could possibly be. And one other name I want to bring up. Post-type Sleeperville?

Yeah, well, no, actually, not Curtis Samuel. Oh, okay. I want to bring up Ian Thomas, the starting tight end now for the Carolina Panthers, who he's averaged six targets a game in games where Greg Olson has not been there. Hot stat from the Saints. Jared Cook was active for four starts with Teddy Bridgewater. Jared Cook was the top six tight end in two of those four games. So it's not impossible.

that Teddy Bridgewater finds himself another friend in Ian Thomas. I think we need to bring him up as one of those late round flyers where you just, if you punt the position, maybe you take a shot for Ian Thomas. I put him right with, you know, Jonu Smith, Johnu Smith and Ian Thomas are in very similar situations. The veterans leaving and can they step up and fill that void? Yeah, Carolina is just one of those teams that between the difficulty of the division.

Not seeing what Matt Rule is going to bring to the table. You talked about Teddy Bridgewater sample size. I will call that Teddy Bridgewater's career thus far. For me, it's a prove-it thing. I do love the – I mean, he's got weapons on paper that should be able to equip him for fantasy production. So maybe these are some guys that you're targeting even if they struggle a little bit with, you know, on the road against Tampa, on the road against the chargers, facing Arizona.

You go out of the gate, you're learning a system, you're playing some difficult teams. Maybe you project some of these guys to get it together in the second half. And you're going from Kyle Allen, who was ranked 35th in passer rating last year to Teddy Bridgewater, who was 11th. It wasn't a full season, but he is much better. He has a much better quarterback than Kyle Allen. Yeah, and I think that's a good note to end on, because I have no lack of respect for Teddy Bridgewater and his ability to run an offense. I mean, he did that.

competently in Minnesota. He just did it in a way that wasn't, at that time, you know, that wasn't going to help your fantasy team. Right. But he's got everybody around him to do it. Curtis Samuel was one of the strangest situations last year. The Curtis Samuel got Kyle Allen big time, man. Yeah, that's a good way to put it. I mean, he led the NFL en route to run. He was on the field constantly. 67 of 107 targets were catchable.

You can't hold that against Curtis Samuel at all. No. Because I have never caught any passes that were not catchable. Yeah. The nice thing is with Robbie Anderson coming in, while Curtis Samuel can be a deep threat and obviously it was thrown to a lot deep last year, I don't think he's going to be pigeonholed into being a, you know, run deep every single time. I think they'll use him in the intermediate routes.

I think he can excel there too. But the only guy I'm confident in is DJ Moore. So I love DJ Moore. I love CMC. And then I'm just going to take a wait and see approach with the rest of the offense. When I see 40 targets that were uncatchable, it makes me wonder how many other targets didn't even get counted as targets for him. They were just so outside the bounds that they counted as targets for other people. They didn't know who it was too. Hold on. Was that a target or did he throw the ball away? Yeah. Who was the hell on to? I don't know.

But yeah, guys, we're going to have football. We're going to have football in 2020. It's been a wild road. But hey, get ready to go. I mean, this past week with all this newsbreaking, we set our draft date in League of Record and we made our rules adjustments. And we did a lot of that stuff that maybe we would have done just a little bit earlier. But just like you guys out there, maybe you were waiting to just kind of have that jolt of energy for the NFL season. And it's here.

And we're going to have football. And it might not look exactly like it did in years past, but we're going to have it. And having watched some baseball yesterday, just live sports, man. I'm looking forward to it. Yeah, absolutely. I have two quick notes before we get out of here. Like, it's almost the end of the month. Footclanvote.com. We are up for the podcast awards. If you could, just take a second, go over there, nominate us for the people's choice and for sports. And, you know,

Throw spitballers in there for Best Comedy. Make sure you check the box that says... You could even listen to Spitballers, too. If you wanted to. I'm just assuming that people do. And make sure you check the box that says you would like to vote. And hopefully you'll be able to vote and lock that up for the fantasy footballers and the spitballers. And two, you want to talk about hype for football. Follow our social media accounts on Twitter at the FF Ballers.

on Instagram at Fantasy Footballers. We got some stuff planned for next week, and you will not want to miss notifications, so make sure you are following us. That is a spectacular reminder, Mike. Well done. Thank you. We're going to go live a bunch next week. That's what he's trying to. It was a secret. Look, there's, and we got a lot of Todd Gurley or David Montgomery coming up. Oh, my gosh. Is that a weekly event? Goodbye.

you for listening to another episode of the fantasy footballers podcast. Join our fantasy football community on join the foot.com and follow us on Twitter at the FFBallers. And Foot Clan, a reminder, WGU has created an online university for people whose ambition never rests. WGU's competency-based learning model was designed specifically to fit in the lives of busy adults. They offer online bachelor's and master's degrees, business, IT, and education, and nursing.

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