Fantasy Football Podcast 2017 - Eye-Popping Stats + Offseason Hype

There is more risk there than I think people realize. Yes. I love him. I think he's an amazing player. I still know what the real ceiling is. I'm sad that his average draft position. It's baked in that he's going to produce. Right. And there is risk with him. So when I'm on the clock and he's there, he's not usually the guy that I have been taking because you're already betting on him to repeat. I'd much rather take a Jordy to repeat who's done it over and over and over than a Michael Thomas.

But I am a believer. And I'm going to go ahead and say he's going to Marquis Colston it, which was not Jimmy Graham, but he had 98 receptions. So right there close. But you're not allowed to have 100 receptions. If you get to 99, they pull you out of the game and they say. We'll trade you to the Patriot. Yeah. All right. Michael Weinrich has this one for us. What does this say? As total NFL rushing attempts fell for, by the way, the fifth consecutive year.

2016's 443 rushing TDs are second only to 2008's 478 rushing TDs. Is it an outlier? Yeah. Are the numbers for the rushing TDs were through the roof? 100%. 100%. Legeret Blunt had half of those. Yeah, Lageret Blunt had half. David Johnson had 20, I just said 25 rushes inside the five yard line. He was set up. Okay, yes. Jordan Howard had a bunch too. Yeah, that's a really good point. The bear. Yeah, he's very, uh,

He's very bear-centered. Why didn't you get in on all the Cam Meredith and Brian Hoyer conversation? All right, I apologize. You don't got to get personal about it. Did you know that Jay Grids is now being featured?

Oh, yes. Hey, if you're going to Toronto, the third week in August or whenever that is. The fantasy sports show in Toronto. Yeah, they're putting on a big fantasy sports show. Learn how to get better at fantasy sports. We'll be there. We'll be doing some keynotes and some classes. A live show. We're doing a live show there. Oh, yeah. But Jay Griz is now a featured guest. Yeah, if you go to the fantasy sports show.com, he's now a headliner guest. Incredible. He has taken on a life of his own. He's on the home page. He's on.

The homepage. As he should be. Do you believe that it is because of the amount of salmon up north that he has decided to accept this invitation? No doubt. Okay. No doubt. They swim upstream. So that means they go up the country. Right. That's the only way. Upstream is south. Okay. There's a little bit that I do know. Yeah. There's a few things you know about the world and that is one of them. Okay.

You were saying something about rushing TD's regression when JJ has interrupted. If you look at the trends of the NFL, the NFL has become more and more a passing league, fewer rushing attempts, and then all of a sudden, you've got this like downward slope on, you know, if you look at a graph chart, and then all of a sudden it's huge spike this last year. And if you look back far enough on the trend, you see previous spikes like that.

And the following year, it gets right back on the trend line, which goes under what it was, you know, the year prior. Does that have anything to do with past interference calls? It very well could. Yeah, I haven't vetted that, but that would be something to look at, Brooks. Past interference calls in 2016, balls being placed at the one-yard line opportunities. It's interesting, but it does look like an outlier's. Yeah. So I guess what that means is, you know, coming off of the heels of last year, you won.

with the running backs, with the stud running backs. And we as an entire, you know, all of the home leagues out there, we're going to possibly overvalue the running back position too much. Or we probably won't over, because I don't know if you can't overvalue the true elite running backs. But what you do end up doing is you end up sleeping on great wide receivers because you think the...

average running backs are more important. At that point, you don't. You get as many of the elite running backs as you can, but then don't go crazy because this is still a passing league. And what you saw from the top wide receivers this last year was also kind of a dip in their touchdown performance. And I think it was just an outlier. All right. I want to talk about Taven Coleman. Kevin Coleman.

You might not be singing after you hear what I have to say. Kevin Coleman on 31 catches average 13.6 per reception. That's a higher total than O'Dell Beckham Jr. and the highest yards per catch for a running back in the last 36 years. Yeah. The irony is Spencer Ware was just behind him. Here's the thing with numbers that are that good. A lot of times people use it to prove how great a player was. They were unbelievable. And that's...

Almost never, and including in this specific example. Outside of Jamal Charles, yards per carry on the ground, it's almost always wrong. It's almost always an outlier. Yeah, it is an outlier here. He's not going to be anywhere near that next season. Which means he'll need volume to make up for efficiency. Correct. And I don't think he will. Get it. I agree. I think Kevin Coleman, if you draft him, you're going to be starting him because you're drafting him while you're still filling out, you're starting wide receivers and running backs based on his average draft position.

He will give you some games. He obviously, I mean, we saw last year he's got the upside. But what it took to give you that, you know, 20, what was he? Like, he was in the top 20 running backs. But wherever he finished, what it took was a monstrously historical efficiency in one category that was just not repeatable. I mean, no way, shape, or form can he do that again this year. Unless his volume goes up and then he can finish.

He just scares me. He's the type of player I avoid in fantasy. It's just hard for me to buy in to Coleman and start him every week, even though last week he proved himself. Last year? Last year. No, last week, Jack. Well, I'm sure he did. I'll bet he was great down at OTAs. All right. Frank Gore eternally stuck his RB12 squeaked out another RB1 season last year despite averaging 64 yards a game.

He now has 9,000 yard seasons for his career, only behind him at Smith's record 11 seasons. Is he going to do it again? He has literally gore blood in his veins. Gore blood? Yeah. I mean, you know, you talk. I guess you were right. We're talking horror movies. I guess I have to give you the literally core blood. I said literally. The guy is made of a different kind of meat. And you love meat. I do love meat.

So last year, just to walk you through this, okay, this is incredible. I'm looking at last year the weekly fantasy finish for Frank Gore. Week one, he was the 27th running back, then 13th, 16th, 10th, 27th, 21st, 13th, 20th, 7th. So that is... What it says is you are not drafting him for...

upside or for huge weeks or to be great. Only one top 10 performance out of all of his weeks. However, that's one of the advantages of looking at that weekly consistency chart. But when you can grab a guy to plug in as your, we've done this before on some of our moks, let's say you start two running backs. You get one of those studs early. He's great. Then go wide receiver. Go wide receiver for days. Fill out your lineup with these amazing wide receivers. If you've got one of those David Johnson's, Ezekiel Elliott's Levion Bell's in your running back spot.

And then when Frank Gore falls to the eighth, ninth round, because nobody wants to take him, just plug him in that second RB slot. You only need one guy to just kind of go out there and finish as an RB2. A top 20 performance in one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten weeks. That's ridiculous. And it wasn't like he fell off the map in those other games. He had three performances in the 20s.

on top of that. So you only had two weeks last year that you would consider duds, a 49 and a 42. That's incredible. His upside does not exist. He's not an upside type of guy, but he is reliable. He's consistent. He's getting the rock again this year. Can you check his ADP for me real quick? Because I want to compare him to somebody. So if you started Kevin Coleman, you had a number two week, you had a number three week, and a number seven week, and a number nine week.

Right now, Frank Gore is going at the back of the seventh round. And Tevin Coleman's going where? Because I wanted to compare that to. Coleman. Coleman is going the end of the fifth round. Oh, okay. That's not too bad for Coleman, to be honest, because it depends on what you need. Oh, that's too bad for Coleman. That's my fifth player I'm taking. You're saying he needs to be back where Gore is? Yeah. Okay. I'm saying I have to say.

Gore in the 7th versus Coleman in the 5th. My fifth round guy has to start every single week. Right. And I would, you know. Here's a question, though. He was startable almost every week. Would you, he was last year, yes. But I don't think he can do that historical crazy efficiency again. So going this year, would you rather start a guy like Kevin Coleman in a home league, in a redraft league, every week that gives you that potential to win you the week, but could really fall off the map. Or Gore.

as your second running back, who's going to be consistent, reliable, but never win you a week. That's team makeup for me. And you have to remember Coleman, you just said he could fall off the map. He also has the reverse possibility built into him with Devante Freeman. Because if Freeman goes down, Coleman can go the other direction. He would be a top 10 finisher almost every week if he was the bell cow of that backfield, as long as he could stay healthy, which he hasn't been able to do in his career either. So I think it would be based on team makeup.

Really solid contributors. Like if my wide receivers were Julian Edelman and Larry Fitzgerald built in as my two three or something, I'd take the chance on Coleman because I'd want somebody that can give me a week that just, you know, a rocket chip week, a top three performance week. Gore never gave you that. So, all right. Last one here, 14 different tight ends. 14 different tight ends finished as the weekly number one last year. Yeah, Mike correctly, last year, early off season, Mike correctly gave the moniker to the 2016 tight ends.

which was they were the barfie tight ends. Barfie tightens. And, I mean, we saw that. They were the Barfie tight ends. Last year, not only were they barfie and that they were unreliable and different guys up and down, but the entire, you know, the tightened corpus, if you will, was just down over every year prior. And part of that was because Gronk and Reed, the two best fantasy producing tight ends.

missed, you know, significant amount of time. Reed, Eifert, and Doyle were the only players to repeat as number one throughout the year, which means that the number one tied in in production, Travis Kelsey never had, never repeated as a number one over the course of a week. So he only finished as the weekly number one one time, just six top five finishes. I think everybody is on the Travis Kelsey train now because of Macklin leaving Kansas City. And then you had Kansas City firing their GM this week.

Yeah, that was I didn't know what to make. Like my initial impression was, uh-oh, like, you know, if Andy Reid has control of this organization and the GM had control over these draft picks, what does that mean from a Holmes and Hunt versus the existing regime, his loyalty to Alex Smith, Spencer Ware.

From my understanding, I think that they had a singular vision. I don't think it was a vision problem. It was a contract problem. Whether that was power or money, I'm unsure. But that means to me, whatever we thought they were doing in the draft, what it looked like they were heading towards their future. That doesn't shift. The immediate scare was that, but it does not appear to be a difference in vision. The only thing, like Dorsey was great. And the only thing I could say that.

You could count against them as they're in a very bad cap situation, which may have forced their hand on the Mahomes and moving towards the future. But Kelsey, I just don't think he's guaranteed to be what you want him to be this here. That's my problem with Kelsey. I do. I still have Greg Olson higher than Kelsey. Yeah, I really like Kelsey this year. The only thing I don't like about Kelsey. Did you like to make an early Kelsey Olson? Waterbet? Oh, man. That's tough, but sure.

I don't... Waterbed. See, this one is not a locked and loaded. Look, Greg Olson has been... Which is rare for you not to make the bet that only you can win. Right. That's always the goal. That's your goal in life. But I do believe, especially with Jeremy Macklin leaving and what we saw, Travis Kelsey kind of develop into... Sure. And especially, I haven't said this in a long time, but if you look at the opportunities that Kelsey got inside the 10-yard line,

And I watched every single one of those opportunities snap by snap. He was missing about three touchdowns that he should have had. So I believe the way that they used him was more valuable than what ended up in the box. Jason has Travis Kelsey at three behind Gronk and then Reed, followed by Jimmy Graham and Greg Olson. I have Kelsey at four.