QB Sleepers, Streamers & Surprises!

But last year, and what is the NFL average? It's in the mid-fours, but I wanted to break that down to make it maybe even easier for newer listeners. So his rookie year, he threw a touchdown every 19 passes. Yeah, there you go. Sophomore year, every 17 passes. Last year, every 34. Exactly. And that was well below the NFL average, even though he had prior been slightly above the NFL average. And it's not a coincidence that two things.

were true last year. One, the offense was just bad all the way around. Part of that was Marcus Mariotta's fault, but part of Marcus Mariotta's poor play was his injuries. He was, I mean, you could see it on the field. Everything out of Tennessee all last year was how banged up he was. And he looks good. He looked good the first preseason. Camp's going well. I think with, I mean, look, do you like Cory Davis? Andy, you like Cory Davis, right? You believe he's going to be a good player this year?

Who's getting him the ball? Tewan Taylor is a sleeper candidate for me. They now have a good, you know, pass catching back, a better offensive mind there. So I think that the offense can take a step forward. I think touchdown regression to the mean will happen for him. And he rushes enough to where I see like quarterback 15. I don't think he's going to be a top five guy, but I feel like quarterback 15 is kind of.

If he was playing the whole season, that's, that's his floor to me. Okay, let's move on. Jared Goff coming in at 15. Everybody's doing it. I'm not doing the golf. I'm not doing the golf. I'm boycotting the goff. You don't know why? Why are you boycotting the golf? Because at 15, I have Tyrod Taylor, and I have to bring that up. Who you coined Tyrod the Toolman Taylor. Oh, so good. On the footcast. Tarot the Toolman Taylor.

Because I have to bring up Tyrod right now. And just because I have host powers. Because you guys have him ranked so low that we don't even get to talk about him today. To be fair. So I'm just letting you know I have Tyrod right here in lieu of golf. I'm calling him Tyrod the Toolman Taylor because he's got to build himself a nice bench to sit on. Oh! Halfway through the season. Get bodied.

We bet eight games, right? Yes. I'm going to win that bet going to win. No, you're not. I'm going to win that bet. Oh, I want to end? Oh, I want to end. Yeah. Waterbed. Let's go. I'll take a cup from each of you if I lose. Yeah, that's how it's going to go. We're going to talk about Tyra Taylor a lot next week. You are. Yeah. Fine. All right, so.

We're doing the golf. Yes, back to Jared Goff, who he'll be pretty good. He made quite the jump. Jared Goff was completely written off his rookie season. He looked flustered. He did not look like a professional NFL quarterback. Out goes Jeff Fisher, in comes head coach, Sean McVeigh. Lo and behold, Jared Goff looks competent. A finish the year as a top 12.

quarterback, including two number one performances. If you had him in championship week against Tennessee, you can thank Todd Gurley in his 80-yard reception to the house for padding those stats. But Goff is, I have him outside of the top 12. We all do. So we see a bit of regression coming for Jared Goff, who he was fine. He was fine for fantasy despite finishing at number 12.

He had a lot of touchdowns where he would just toss it at the line of scrimmage or even behind the line of scrimmage, and his team would do the work for him. Yeah, Robert Woods, Todd Gurley and company. And those things are just hard to repeat. He's hard to repeat, yes. Hard to rely on him. But the two things about golf that I want to say is that one, he is the definition of a streaming quarterback to me, a player that I'm not going to draft to be my year-long starter. I don't have any confidence that that's what I would want week in and week out. But...

What surprised me about him last year is if you told me he's going to get better, I'd be like, okay. But if you told me you would have three weeks where he'd finish in the top three, including two weeks in which he was the number one quarterback on the week. I would not have believed that possible. So because of that, and because he doesn't turn the ball over, at least last year he didn't. Sure, sure. Last year he was good, 28 to 7 touchdown ratio.

But because he has the capability, because of the weapons and the offense and the mind, he's a great streaming target to me. He's an 11th round draft pick. And it's very possible he gets dropped. If someone takes him, he gets dropped and he's sitting out there on certain weeks. And I'd look for the matchups. I mean, speaking of matchups. All three of those games, I believe, were, well, were they at home, his three big weeks?

That I cannot tell you. I don't have that in front of me. I thought that they were out home, but the consistency charge does not tell me. I want to tell you about his opening schedule. Against Oakland, I think that's a bit of a wild card. It's on the road. As of right now, it's a fine matchup. But then Arizona, the Chargers, the Minnesota Vikings, those are not matchups that I'm excited to play Jared Gough in. So you might start streaming him from the waiver wire on good matchups down the line. Sure.

He's projected this side. The Rams are going to score a ton of points. Here's one thing on that note. If you look at how many points the Rams scored last year and you go back through the last 20 years, every single team that has scored what the Rams have scored have taken a significant drop. Even when they were still good the following year, they take a significant drop in total points scored. The Rams aren't putting up.

more points or even the same points than they did this last year. And that's not saying they're going to be a bad team at all. Is that your, are they your Atlanta Falcons pick this year? Well, we'll have to wait until they did. I mean, I got Carolina two years ago Atlanta last year. So they added. They added Brandon Cooks. So I think that that's something that a lot of people out there listening are going to say, well, they added a much better, you know, a more consistent.

thousand-plus yard contributor to this team. Yes, they lost Sammy Watkins. But if you looked at the roster last year, Sammy Watkins wasn't finishing in the top seven, eight most important players on that team. You kidding me, they lost their most expensive wide receiver too. Tavon, man. Tavon Austin's gone.

That's going to devastate them. Yeah, I mean, look, Todd Gurley, I've talked about, I've talked about the fact that Todd Gurley, while great, he had six receiving touchdowns. That's a rare number for a running back to have. Some of those touchdowns just aren't going to go to the house and.

He's going to be fine. There will be improvements from guys like Cooper Cup. What I imagine the goth dance is when you're on that dance floor. When you're doing the golf. It's a very just, it's a very dad dance. Oh, no. You're not, it's not even the electric shuffle. No. It's just, it's just like a little shoulders. It's a step touch. A little hips. And that's what you're going to get on the field. You're just going to get, it's all right. You can, everybody can do it. Everybody can do the golf. There's nothing special. That's why everyone's doing it. And, you know, you're not going to get.

Made fun of? Yes. But you're not going to be celebrated. You're not going to be like, oh, he's got dance moves. You're just going to ignore it. You're going to ignore it. Speaking of that, Alex Smith comes in at 16. He added a few dance moves this last season. He did. He didn't even tried to dance before. No, apparently he can twirl. He can dip. He'd been, you know, content just. I feel like he pulled an Uncle Drew on us where.

He is now this real seasoned veteran quarterback. We knew who he was. And you think, ah, old man can't do anything. And then he's dunking on fools. Last year, 4,000 yards, 26 touchdowns, just five interceptions. Another 35 yards on the ground. 55. It's been a while. I had to hit the drop. For those who are new to the show and I've been asked, what is the evolution? What is the backstory of 55? That's why. Because every time someone says that number, I can't.

help myself what to sing it and it's just dumb and has been put on the show. Yeah, I mean, there are things. I apologize for nothing. There are things when you hit Philip Rivers age, you know, as you have, that you just do. I mean, Jason, I was telling him yesterday, I go, he was telling me some joke that he always tells me.

Like the same joke. Does he forget that he's told it? I don't know. He just goes to his hits. He goes to play the hits. It's one of those. I don't remember what it was. It was just one of those dumb things you say in response. But I pointed out to him. I go, you know, you're becoming like one of those like the old men who've got their go-to jokes that they say all the time. It devastated me. And he was hard broke. He's like, because I grew up going like, you know, all the older people that were like.

Dude, you said the same joke over and over. Stop it. So I don't remember what the joke was because I deleted it from my brain. Over under two days before the joke happens again. A couple days. Yeah, I'll take the under. So Alex Smith, look, he changes teams. He's heading to Washington. They wanted him. They did. They played the game with Kirk Cousins. They lost it to a degree, right? He became too expensive regardless.

They went with what they viewed as, I guess, the puzzle piece, right? I feel like Jay Gruden views Alex Smith as a player he can plug into that spot and then you worry about other things. That's kind of how I feel about Alex Smith. You're getting a player that's going to be very efficient, a player that's not going to turn the ball over, and is going to be reliable to execute. But what does that mean for fantasy football? Last year, it's hard to take last year's numbers because...

Two factors. One, he was playing on a team with, I think, better, more dynamic weapons in Kansas City. And two, it was an outlier season for him to begin with. It was not his prototypical season. But he finished in the top 12, 66% of the time. He won me a fantasy championship. When I lost Aaron Rogers and Carson Wentz, he was reliable, including playoffs. He was weeks 15, 16, both in the top 12.

So we have a long enough career. What's hidden here? We have a long enough career with Alex Smith to know that last year was an outlier. Was 100% an outlier. If you look from 2013, you know, he was the 13th. I just talked about he's always a quarterback too. He was 13, 19, 16, 22, and then 4. And the difference, if you go, well, why? What was it that made things special last year? Why? There were two reasons. One.

is the fact that his touchdown rate was well above his career average. His career average is 4.6 touchdowns per inning. Yeah, his touchdown rate was much, much higher than his career average, but his yards on the ground, he had 355 yards of the ground. Now, that's not abnormal for him in his career, but the year prior, the year prior, he had only 134.

rushing yards. And we thought, maybe he's done. That was the outlier. Right. The 134 was the outlier. Well, it turns out it was, but he was older. Yeah, now he's going to be 34? It's not, it's not planned runs with Alex Smith. He's just very athletic. He gets out of the pocket and the play breaks down and he just runs. It just happens. It's just, you're going to get that. So look, look back over the last five years. You've got, you know, 250 yards, then 500, then 130, then 1.30.

We don't need to do it again. So my point is I don't think he's going to run as much. He's a solid quarterback in two quarterback leagues, but I don't think his upside is there for a normal weekly play in fantasy in a single quarterback league. I think he can return to that, not top three, but I think he can return to being a top 12 guy more often than not. He plays in a very...

friendly system for the quarterback, Jay Gruden, offenses and teams that he has been looking over five of the past six seasons. It has produced a top 12 quarterback, including four of those finishes as top 10. Three of those are top five at the quarterback position. Let me put it this way. If you had to tuck a player on your bench all year to rotate in and stream, would you rather tuck away Alex Smith or Jared Gough? Alex Smith, golf. That's, um,

Yeah, I'd probably go golf. But I do think he'll have stream-worthy weeks. I have them ranked that way, so I've got to stick with that. All right, 17. We're going to go to the replacement in Kansas City, Patrick Mahomes, Rocket Arm Mahomes. I have him at 17, Jason, 19, Mike, you haven't at 15. He's got the weapons. Yep. Kareem Hunt, Tyreek Hill, Sammy Watkins, Travis Kelsey. That's the argument for Patrick Mahomes. And Andrew Reed, as somebody who has been able to develop quarterbacks.