NFC North Breakdown + Big Time Upside - Fantasy Football Podcast for 7/20

Huge NFC divisional breakdown episode for you today, Aaron Rogers, no longer a part of the NFC North. We break down the whole division, the fantasy players that are going to make a big difference and some gambles we might be taking with our drafts. Tune in. Great Scott, if my calculations are correct, you are listening to this before your fantasy football drafts have taken place. I've been to the future. I know that followed the advice from the fantasy footballer's Ultimate Draft Kit had a spectacular season and with certain many victories. It's almost as if Biff had given each of them a copy of Grey Sports Almanac. I'd highly recommend heading over to www.orgatrathkit.com without any further delay. To the Fantasy Footballers podcast with your host, Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright.

Oh, welcome in. Thursday, July 20th, the fantasy footballers podcast. It sounded like you were changing your mind mid-sentence. No, I know what I'm doing, Mike. Okay. All right. Don't worry about it. I apologize. It was very confident. Mike, the fantasy hitman is here, Jason Moore, present, accounted for another divisional breakdown episode for you. Yeah, but we're out of that. AFC nonsense. Yeah. Are you an NFC guy? We're to the good teams now. Well, it's, I mean, the Cardinals are an NFC team. So I've just, I grew up believing that the NFC was superior simply because I was just like, my team is in the NFC. So clearly it's better. And that has, that has carried through my life when I hear NFC.

It's just, oh, yeah, this is better. AFC's like, that's those other guys. Yeah, they're doing weird stuff over there. Well, it kind of sounds like AFL and AFL just join the NFL later, right? Maybe. Kyle is with us, right? Kyle, you hear? Maybe. I am here. Okay, all right. From a train car. Kyle, your job is to tell us the amount of Super Bowl victories by AFC versus NFC. Oh, that's interesting. Because there is a better. Conference. Yeah. Technically. Statistically. I'm all in on NFC. All right. I don't know. I don't know what the answer is. Don't. Tom Brady has won too many. That's fair. But Joe Montana, Joe Montana's NFC. He's got some, but it's like the Pat and the Steelers, the runs. I think I know what's going to happen here. But we'll find out. Welcome into the show. NFC North Breakdown, bestball breakdown today. NFL news to talk about potentially very impactful NFL news on a couple of fronts.

A reminder, we will be hosting a live event, our only live event of the year. Saturday, August 26th at the Palace in Los Angeles, you can get tickets at ballerslive.com. Every single ticket in that venue is a good ticket, by the way. This is an awesome, going to be a full house, an awesome event. Over a thousand of the Foot Clan will be there. Yeah, we picked this venue out of several places specifically because the place is awesome. Every single seat is just perfect. I will also say even though that the lower level, the non-mezzanine is sold out, there's mezzanine seats available. There are benefits to the mezzanine that Jason has considered. So just think about that. It's where the newsies want to be.

Oh, gosh. Yeah. That's a deep cut. Is it now? Is it a deep cut? How wait, Jason, how are you possibly? I just didn't think it was that good. I'm, I'm, I'll be honest with you. I mean, I'm sorry. I'm a newsies guy just like, I don't know. There's someone out there. There's always this. There's the mic people. Yeah, he's right here. I love it. Oh, Al's into the news. Yeah. No, Jason's over here trying to figure out what the reference actually meant. Did you not remember? Was it? Was it part of the song or something? Let's move on. Let's have a fantasy football show. Sounds good to me. The Ultimate Draft Kit available now, Ultimate DraftKit.com. Head over there. Get primed for your draft. I mean, we're almost there. It's July 20th. So you're going to be drafting very soon. And we'll be in camp and we'll be sharing every bit of news that comes along. Twitter at the F.F. Ballers and a reminder of the Dynasty podcast yesterday.

Brand new episode. Top 10 running back up. You guys went with a top 10, huh? We did. Those are very enticing. What's the top 10? Give me it. Give me them all. If you slow that down, you'll get it. But yeah, we talked running backs. And it's quite the time to be talking about running backs. And so we did. We kind of, you know, broke down just the state of what's happening with running backs as well. Breaking news. Yeah. That's right. It's kind of incredible. NFC has won the Super Bowl 29 times. The AFC has won the Super Bowl 28 times. Oh! I knew it. We are the best. I knew it. Not for long. So if the Chiefs repeat, because, you know, they're talking about the repeat, they will even even it up between the two conferences. Jalen, it's up to you. Yeah, yeah. You're our only hope. Interesting. I didn't realize it was that close at all.

Okay, let's get into the news. News and notes from around the league. Well, we have some injury news. The Saints have placed rookie Kendra Miller running back on the non-football injury list. Third round draft pick. Somebody that we like tremendously on film out of TCU, six foot, 220, 21 years old, still recovering from MCL surgery. And he didn't participate in OTAs or minicamp. and according to Nick Underhill, one of the most trusted beat riders for any team. Not a concern is what he's been told. So, you know, he could be activated at any moment, just something to be aware. Yeah, this was a player. We liked so much going into the, like before the draft, but we knew about this injury. This wasn't surprising or new information. I was really surprised when he was drafted.

You know, number 71 overall as a day two pick with this injury. I thought he'd plummet. So I think this means the Saints are committed to him. They do believe in him just the fact that they weren't worried about this injury. But it's worth remembering, you know, your draft of best ball and stuff like that. Like he is still coming off. This injury is not healthy yet. Speaking of recovering from surgery, Isaiah Pacheco, Chiefs running back, still recovering, was practicing with a non-contact jersey, recovering from labrum surgery. And then this one's the bigger piece of news. The Patriots have hosted Leonard Fournet for a workout on Wednesday. We may have an addition to the running back room for New England. We should ask Mike how he feels about this news. Yeah. It's not my favorite. What do you think about the dump truck in New England? It's not my favorite, but I mean, with every, their depth chart.

it feels crazy at this point that they haven't made a move. And with all the guys who are kind of whirling out there with, you know, with Zeke, Dalvin, Leonard Fornett, and Kareem Hunt is still out there as well. Leonard Fornett, at least skills-wise, seems the least threatening at this point of his career. I know that if they sign him, he will still get work and a ton of work. And like he can catch the ball as well. kind of comps to a old man version of remandre i think it's worse than if they had signed zeke i'd be happier for remandre really yes and why is that pass catching past catching zeke can catch too yeah but not like for net for net is his entire career he's been an avid pass catcher past protector he's like the definition of a veteran sound like he was like a photographer an avid photographer yeah he also he's a hobby of his

He's also a professional, but he, you know, he's excelled in that, not necessarily efficiency-wise, but trust of coaching staffs. Yeah, locker room. Yeah, and just history of doing it. So I do think he'll take away more passing work should he sign. Obviously, this is just news that he's visiting. Yeah, we'll find out. We'll get into the implications. If it happens, he may not like the offer that they make to an aging Leonard Fortnite. He's now what, 20? Eight going on 29? Sounds right. What an old man. Just so old. But Remandre is very high in Mike's rankings. Yeah. So, and the potential's there. And we've been trying to, he's been like doing the Matrix Dodge all off season. Yes, he has. So, but like you said, the depth chart's so bad, it really feels like Remandre and no one else. Yes. It feels like Remandre and then some guys that will probably belong on a practice spot. You have Pierre Strong. You have Kevin Harris. Yeah.

I think Ty Montgomery is he still around there? He's always around. I mean, yeah, you're right. Lurking in the shadows. He lives in those rehab rooms, like for certain teams. But yeah, no other news, right, Brooksie? No, sir. Okay. You guys want to get into it? Let's get divisional. Into the NFC North, our divisional breakdown looking at changes from 22 to 23, looking at how offenses could function. and we'll break down our predictions for the division, which may at this point be more exciting than us all sharing the same opinion of the AFC West. This division is wild. What's very strange is it's been a long time since I have been able to separate the words NFC North and a kind of like a picture of Aaron Rogers. And I see Al the Packer fan over there's just kind of like reflecting on that reality because he kind of, he just owned this division.

They didn't win it every single year, but you thought they were at the beginning of every single year. And he's gone. And it's wide open. It really is. It's very wide open. I mean, there is not a dominant team that has it locked up. And there's at least three teams, if not four here, that could win the division. So, you know, every year there is a team that goes from worst to first in their division. It happens, you know, and you look at the bears and you think, That can't happen. They're not ready. But this is the type of division where you don't know what you have in the Packers. Last year you had the worst best team of all time in the Minnesota Vikings. A 13 win team with a negative point differential. And then they lost pieces. And then the lions who are the presumptive, I believe, you know, the betting favorites to win the division.

They're the lions. You know, it's like, let's just call a spade a spade. There's things that don't usually go right for certain franchises. Yeah, the last time that the Packers entered a season without far for Aaron Rogers, Matt LaFleur was 12, their head coach. It was 1992. So it's different. The Vikings will start there, 13 and 4 last year. Their win total before the season was 9. outperform that yet had that negative point differential. Had the 36 point comeback? They had a negative point differential? Yes. They were 11 and 0 and 1 score games, which is the best in the history of the NFL. They won 13 games and they were outscored on the season. They won 13 games. That's not possible. When they were only supposed to win nine and their Vegas win total has moved down.

They're like, we were too high last year. Well, that's because they lost their quarterback and star receiver. No, no, no, they didn't. In fact, this division is the only one in the NFL, whether a head coach or an offensive coordinator, change at all. So all of them are coming back. You got a little bit. You know, if you remember, and I started watching that documentary, the quarterback one that you talked about with Kirk Cousins in it, and it reminded you of how the season started where they came out and they absolutely looked incredible on offense. They destroyed the Packers. And then the next game, it fell off a cliff. And that was kind of their season, except for they just managed to win the close ball games. If games had ended in the third quarter, this was a seven and ten team. Speaking of that, the documentary there, is Kirk Cousins. Go for it, yeah. The most boring person in the history? No, no. Second most boring. Drew Brees. Okay. Drew Brees.

And I think Kirk Cousins are the two most boring people in history. Like, cousins, this is your time to shine, man. And I've been defending you for years. It's like, no, he's a good quarterback. He's a good quarterback. He's a good quarterback. And you're like, oh, man, this guy is, it's watching paint dry when he's talking. He has one. Sorry, Kirk. He has one moment in his entire career that's entered. You like that. That's it. No, no, no, no. There's the two. There's the, there's the dancing on the plane with all the chains. Oh, okay. That was pretty cringing me. Anytime he does something that is outlandish, it becomes popular because he's so boring. Oh, man, he was. But look, is this offense going to be boring for fantasy players? That's the question. I mean, we had a much more exciting situation last year.

Kirk Cousins being drafted very, very late, yet led the NFL in total air yards, third down passing touchdowns. Thank you, Justin Jefferson. You know, he struggled at times. They go. They add Jordan Addison in the first round, a player that is very, very dynamic. A huge upgrade, if not for game one, for, you know, the majority of this season is going to be a huge upgrade for this team over to Adam Thieland. They spent a seventh rounder on Dwayne McBride, but the offense is mostly intact. I mean, Alexander Madison is going to take over. Yes. That's a big storyline. We can all agree on that part. Yeah, it's a huge storyline. I mean, Dalvin Cook is gone. Where he will land, we still don't know. But Alexander Madison, when he's at opportunities with Dalvin Cook injured, has the average 16.9 fancy points per game in those games. His metrics.

in totality, aren't as strong as his metrics when he's been given those chances. It's always hard in these situations to know what a player really has. Do they have the stamina to be in every downback? Does the team view them as that in the light of, you know, in light of the running back room in Minnesota? We've had a lot of running backs that have been very efficient with small amounts of work. He's kind of been the opposite. He's had low efficiency under four a carry. But he's built for a workload. He's built for a workload. I don't know how trustworthy he'll be in the passing game because I don't know how the team's going to draw that up. I mean, they do have some players behind him that are unproven. So that's a long way of saying we have them kind of all over the map in terms of where he's ranked. And he's going in the sixth round right now. We have him at RB21. Mike's the highest at 17. I'm pulling him up.

But not unreasonably. No, not at all. RB 24 is his ADP. I think I've got him too low. I think I've got him at 23 right now. I probably have him the lowest. I mean, none of us are super low. I signed a contract a long time ago. We're slightly ahead of ADP right now. ADP he's running back 24. If he, the way this depth chart looks, he's going to get a lot of work. He doesn't have to be great to beat the least good, you know, RB2. He'll be a top 20 back. just from volume alone, but there is the chance that he's good, that he performs in the manner that we've seen him play when he's had the opportunity to be the guy. And so there's an upside case here where he's a running back one. He's a top 12 running back. Where he's being drafted right now at RB24 is partially due to the fact that his ADP started this offseason super low.

Dalvin Cook was ahead of him. And then, you know, they started to creep and then there were rumors. But it was, it's such a slow transition that it's difficult to just take a guy who was the running back 40 or whatever and then grab him at running back 15. You feel like you're making a drastic mistake when you're drafting. So his, his ADP, I think, is nerfed in part by that. And he's a very good pick because of that. I believe he's being drafted at his floor. And with this defense. I want pieces of the Minnesota Vikings offense. They're going to have to, they're just going to have to play fast at the end of games. I mean, if you look at what happened last year, the way that they won in the fourth quarters, in the fourth quarter, they had 169 fourth quarter points. That's the fifth most over the last 30 years per Warren Sharp. It's because it was like, man, we're down. We got to, we got to go. And if they're scoring a lot of points to keep up with a bad defense, I'm in. Yeah, I think he's a good player.

I've loved him since he was a prospect. I agree with Andy that I can't say for sure that he is going to be the primary pass catching running back. What I can say is I believe that he is very capable. I know it's been a while, but you can go back to his two college when he played at Boise State. He was heavily featured as a pass catching running back. I mean, so. and had the skills to do it. So I think it's just now the opportunity is finally there. I don't blame the Minnesota Vikings at all for playing. Dalvin Cook was great for many, many years. He should be the one playing in front of Alexander Madison. But it's now his opportunity. I think he is by far the best running back on the roster. And what Jason's saying, if this is going to be a potent offense, he should be.

the guy who's getting, you know, in the 60 percentile of the opportunities, maybe even more, with goal line and should get receiving work. So he's incredibly interesting for me. I am curious how the rotation is going to be because you're not going to bring in Madison and then use him more than Delvin Cook. I don't believe. So, you know, Ty Chandler, Dwayne McBride, Kenai Nwangwu. Yeah. In Wong was the, I think the one that's the... the biggest threat to him taking away receiving words. Oh, receiving work, sure. He's good. He's a good player. Yeah, he's mostly been a special teams guy. Dwayne McBride doesn't touch the ball in the past game. I believe he had five college receptions. Because he uses gloves. Yeah. So skin never. Right. That's what I meant. He just never, never touched. Oh, yeah. Well, no, that's good. But my news is. No, it wasn't good, but it's still better than the news he's thing.

Justin Jefferson's good. The wide receiver won. Draft him. Six most receiving yards of all time. You know, he did bust 29% of the time last year. We went over that in the very early part of the off season in our consistency shows. But yeah, draft him. Jordan Addison, KJ. Osborne, T.J. Hawkinson, the other pass catching weapons in this offense, an offense that did use Delvin Cook a lot in the passing game. There's always the possibility that some of that is distributed amongst the. trustworthy T.J. Hawkinson and KG. Osborne over the final month of the year when he had an opportunity. You know, talk about Madison taking advantage of opportunities. Osborne was the wide receiver 2, 12, and 13, three of the last four weeks. So was very capable in that department. And Jordan Addison, while undersized, is going to be utilized all over the field. You know, we haven't seen him.

What's the latest on the injury front? We just don't know. No, it's an undisclosed injury. I don't think that their rookies have reported yet for training camp because the coaching is in place from last year. But any day now, they'll get back together and we'll see whether or not he is there ready for training camp. The expectation was his undisclosed injury kept him out of the rookie camps and mini camps, but he'd be good to go for training camp. We'll find out here in a couple days. I'll start to worry if he shows up to training camp. still with the undisclosed, hopefully disclosed injury at that point. But his talent, even though he's undersized, the fact that he's cross field from Justin Jefferson and won't have hard coverage, the fact that he's replacing an Adam Thielen who ran the second most routes in the NFL, the opportunity is there, the talent is there, the bad defense. You said that a lot. Are you assured that he's replacing him as opposed to being utilized differently? I certainly think that there's a coaching staff that's done a good job using the,

players they have. So I don't think they're just going to rerun last year's script and then say, okay, well, we're taking Adam Thiel and out, putting Addison in. But the point is more that they run a lot of routes. The number one player in routes run was Justin Jefferson. So this is a team that's just going to throw the ball a ton and they have an absence, a giant hole to fill. And that's where Jordan Edison's opportunity, even if it's not the same, he's going to be on the field running so many routes. So after the last couple mock drafts, I saw some feedback talking about T.J. Hawkinson. The opinions out there was that we are just avoiding this guy. They don't understand. He won people weeks. He's got an opportunity. He was great in Minnesota after the trade. Are you down on T.J. Hawkinson? I laid it out when we did our early bust picks that T.J. Hawkinson, we have him ranked basically where, you know, the rest of the.

The industry has him ranked, have him ranked pretty close to his actual ADP. The problem is, yeah, he had, you know, he had two monster weeks, one in Detroit, one in Minnesota. But when he was with Minnesota, it was just, it was consistently okay. He wasn't destroying you. But I think it was what was, I think it was like one top five performance or something like that. I can go re-look it up. But it was just. He's got two of those. Or no way, you're at one top five. With Minnesota, which it should be better because now he has an actual offseason to be integrated and be a focal point of the offense. The problem is what you are giving up when you draft T.J. Hawkinson, who I think will just be okay. Here's a different thought, though. Maybe we're missing this because touchdown variability is significant at the tide in position. He only scored in two games since he came over from.

from the in the trade. But you know what his target pace was? I mean, he was catching a ton of receptions. Yeah, and that's not even really fair because he only played 46% of snaps in the final week. If you throw the final week out, which was an outlier, one target, one catch, 46% of snaps. His target pace was above Travis Kelsey, 160 targets, 111 receptions, 950 yards. If the touchdowns come. My point is if the touchdowns comes, he actually does have the ability to get into the top. Two at the position. And everything we're saying about Adam Thielen being, you know, giant vacated targets, you could argue that that's better for Hawkins. Part of my argument was, though, that was Adam Thielen was already vacating those targets while he was on the team. And those were, there was no one else. There wasn't a.

Jordan Addison. Trying to represent the bull case. Sure. Yeah. The way that I project it is that Addison is better than Thielen will take more targets away from Hawkinson, that Hawkinson will be the third in targets. But it's certainly worthy of saying and realizing that that isn't a guarantee and that Hawkinson could be the two. And absolutely, he has a bull case. I am going to move on, but I'll be very curious to see where you have Minnesota ranked at the end of the show. Back in a minute. All right, this is a fun team to talk about. The Detroit Lions who went 9 and 8 last year, despite having a 6.5 win total from Vegas. This year, sports books have them at 9.5. I mean, that's something. Mm-hmm. You know, it's a preseason win. Preseason hype piece for the Lions. That would be back to back then. If they can take care of the off-season and pre-season hype, that'd be two years in a row that they've won.

They went 12 and 5 against the spread, nearly made the playoffs, beat the Packers, knocked them out, finished 8 and 2. That's where a lot of the excitement is, is the finish to the season. Right. You know, this is a team that you feel like you almost have to step on eggshells to fully endorse because of, you know, it isn't, well, it is statistical. But it's also kind of like just the feeling around this team. In 2019, the Browns. became the new hotness of the offseason. That was actually the year where Jason's bold prediction was that their fantasy options wouldn't provide. They were all being drafted very highly. And then their season was terrible. So I, look, I'm rooting for Guns Mahoney in this roster. But, you know, you don't want to let as a fantasy player, a lot of hype around a team's on-field performance kind of.

betray your wisdom when it comes to which players you're actually putting on your fantasy team because those names might differ quite a bit. This team has a lot of confidence in Jared Goff, for example. And we can start there. We can talk about them. Fifth and points per game, that's a good reason to like what Jared Goff did last year. But we also saw 17 touchdowns from Jamal Williams on the ground. Jared Goff, he was great at home. They were amazing at home. But from a fantasy perspective, he was nearly unplayable last year. There were a couple of opportunities that I remember, you know. It was when it was a matchup that you wanted a streamer against and Jared Goff was at home. You had it with Jacksonville, Minnesota, like that back to back. And he came through. He was the quarterback for both of those. And then championship week at home against Chicago. You knew that he was going to come through. Yeah, his home road splits last year, 21.3 fantasy points per game at home.

11.5 on the road. So golf this year, when you look at the kind of weapons that he has, Almond Ross St. Brown, Jameson Williams, out for six games, comes back. Marvin Jones, Jr., he's back in Detroit. Yeah. Jamir Gibbs, David Montgomery, Sam LaPorte, tied in that we really love. Rookie. Rookie has an opportunity to contribute to Goff's stat line, even if he's not going to have a big year necessarily week to week. Is golf being undervalued at QB17 where he's being drafted? Nope. I don't think so. I think that's about where he belongs. He's not going to be someone you draft to be a weekly starter. If you're playing in best ball, he's just kind of a filler guy that you hope fits in the right puzzle piece matchup plays with the other quarterbacks you have. He isn't a prolific touchdown thrower, which is part of...