Fantasy Football Podcast 2016 - 300th Show! + Starts of the Week, Week 9 Matchups

Performing. He does. He's a Phoenix. Performing very well. My pump the brakes was completely wrong. You got him. Matt Forte. No, you motivated him. Well, whatever it was, I didn't help fantasy owners with that prediction. And Matt Forte surprised me. I think he came out and he's scored. And that's what it takes. I mean, he's getting into the end zone. He's catching the underneath passes. This is also Jay Ajai, his first game after back-to-back 200-yard games and the bye week.

I'm in on Ajai. How do you guys feel? Obviously, the Jets have a good running defense. This game is in Miami. Let's see where we have J. Ajai ranked this week. I can tell you, Andy has him as, both of you have him as an RB1. Andy has him at 9. And you have him at 11. So a lower end RB1. I have him at 14, which is kind of, you know, a higher end RB2. And the reason is not because of Jay Ajai or what I watch. It really is because of the Jets.

I think the Jets. Number one run defense. Yeah, I think he's going to be much harder pressed to cut up the Jets than he has. Now, you made a point. You watched Jaya Jai on film, analyzed every snap he's had this year. Your big point was, hey, when he gets ahead of steam, oh, he's great. He's great. But the Jets.

have tackled opponents for a loss on 20% of rushing attempts, which is the second most in the league. That is the opposite of getting ahead of steam. You don't get to get into the second level. The counterpoint to my film study was that he was never able to break tackles in the backfield. When guys got back there, he was down. It was very easy to tackle him without that head of steam. So it'll be a very interesting give and take there. I think they're going to, I mean, he's playing his first game without Aaron Foster even in the bank field.

It's going to be an interesting game. I think the workload will put him into that top team consideration. I don't expect 200 yards. But I think the workload will be there. When you have a team like the Jets, the Jets are literally the number one rushing defense and the number 32 out of 32 passing defense. So I think this game is going to necessarily mold more to Ryan Tanna Hill, to Jarvis Landry, to Kenny Stills, you know, Devante Parker.

might be a startable asset this week. Kenny Stills, we brought him up a few days ago. He's a sneaky snart. Jarvis Landry is a ranked very high for me in PPR leagues this week. I think Landry, I know he's kind of an auto start for people. I assume. I feel like I don't know how I cannot, like every time I go to stat Jarvis Landry, it's seven for 77. That's what I give up. Mike has him in number five this week.

Yeah, I like him a lot against the Jets passing defense. They're atrocious. And I, I'm concerned for a Jai. I know I have him, you have, you have him as a running back one, but that's just on pure volume and maybe locking into a touchdown here. But the passing game, like Jason said, Kenny Stills is probably my favorite moonshot this week. Final question for this game. Can you trust Quincy and Newon and all the rest of the season? Yes. Yeah.

As long as your expectations are not, I've got a wide receiver one here. What if your expectations are Decker level? That's too high for me. Yeah, I mean, Decker was an absolute one. But they're not far from that, in my opinion, because he's done it the entire season. I mean, he's had a, he's had.

A few bad games, but right off the bat, game one, when Decker was in there, he was seven for 54 and a touchdown. The next week, six for 92. And if you look at the last two weeks, 73 yards, 93 yards of touchdown in both games, I think you can, I think you probably should be starting a noon one. Lions at Vikings. All right, this game has one of the lower over under totals for the week.

The Lions travel to Minnesota to take on the Vikings. The Vikings have a two-game skid right now where they cannot produce on offense. They just, I think they're averaging the least points per game in the league. Tough sledding right now. Tough keeping Sam Bradford upright in the backfield in the pocket. So what are the big storylines from this game? One of the things that we, I feel like we have to talk about, is Marvin Jones and what he started the year as and what...

that has forced fantasy owners to do, which I think is to lock him into your lineup no matter the circumstances. Now he faces the Vikings very highly rated pass defense. So what do you do with Marvin Jones this week? And what can we really expect from him rest of season in this lion's offense? I think rest of season, you're looking at a wide receiver too. Obviously he has that upside gaining a...

you know, big plays, 20 or more yards on 11 of its 36 receptions. But, I mean, that's a great percentage. But then you douse that with the cold water of the Vikings defense. They've only allowed a 40-yard reception once. So people just, you can't get deep on the Vikings. Xavier Rhodes, Griffin, I mean, the whole entire Vikings defense is tremendous. Marvin Jones started the year also with a,

with a pretty nice schedule. I mean, he opened up with that hot game against the Colts. Week three against Green Bay, who's just had a terrible secondary this year, was his monstrous 205-yard two-touchdown game. When he has played better defenses, like when he played Houston this last week and was three for 33, I think we see that Marvin Jones has spent his career not being a wide receiver one, not being covered by really elite corners.

where he's always been, I mean, he had his career with A.J. Green, even in college, he wasn't the number one on his own team. So this is a game I expect him to struggle with. And I would like to start. Here's a good question for you, Jay. Sure. Let's say you're flexing a player. You've got a couple wide receivers locked in, and you're choosing between Marvin Jones and Theo Riddick in the same game. Riddick off the very nice week last week. Which of those two guys do you start? I would much prefer to start Theo Riddick. I think both guys have the same chance at a touchdown.

or close to it, maybe a slight edge for Marvin Jones. But the baseline for Theoretic, I know Theoretic is going to touch the ball over 10 times. Marvin Jones could finish the game with two catches. So I'm going to take that, especially in the flex role, I'm going to take that security since they both have decent upside. Now we have taken Matthew Stafford down a peg this week. Obviously in Minnesota, he's our 18th ranked quarterback. We have him ranked 16, 17, and 20.

individually. I was just going to ask, what do you do with Maddie's snapback? I think you find a better option this week unless you just need kind of baseline numbers. I mean, I can't see myself starting him. I'd rather start Kaepernick. I'd rather start Bortles. I'd rather start Prescott. I'd rather start Rivers. There are a number of guys, obviously, that we have ranked higher than Matthew Severn. It just comes from the matchup. That's all it is. Yeah, I completely agree. I think...

Man, I liked, when you were looking at this matchup from last week, I thought Bradford would be a solid play. I still think he's a streamable guy. But that offensive line is just so bad. I mean, you're talking, and for the running game of the Vikings, you're talking historically bad right now. Their yards per carry as a team. So what do you even do with McKinnon or Aziata? Asiata. You know, Aziata has been, Aziata has been okay. You know, we talked about.

people having bye weeks and injuries and there's not a lot of running backs. I've had to start him in a couple of places the last two weeks, and he's been fine. With McKinnon being back, this is a game where because the opposing defense is so bad, they might be able to break free and have some production. So I think you could do worse than starting McKinnon or Ozziata. You could do worse. Yeah. All right.

We've got a solid endorsement. One more game to preview on today's show. We'll have the rest of the matchups tomorrow. And we also have our starts of the week here momentarily. Eagles at Giants. All right. Let's talk Eagles Giants. The Eagles are favored in this game in New York. Interesting. And if I had not already used my almost upset of the week on the Buccaneers for tonight's game.

I would certainly use it on the Giants in this game. You have Eli Manning taking on the rookie Carson Wins. We have the backfields that are in a sorted array of, I'm not sure, for both sides. Yeah, that's pretty gross. And then you kind of have the locked and loaded guys. Jordan Matthews, I think, is startable this week. The Giants are only 22nd against the pass. And then O'Dow Beckham Jr. is obviously in the lineup.

Can you have any confidence about the other wide receivers on either side of the ball? No. You really haven't seen Shepard come out and give you a fantasy, a fantasy worthy performance. Yeah, nor Cruz. I mean, these guys, it's hard to trust either to the point of I'm not going to play. I'm not playing anybody else. I'll play Jordan Matthews and O'Dell Beckham, and then I'm going to avoid if possible.

At the running back position, you have to pick one on both sides. Which guys are you picking? It's definitely going to be Rashad Jennings for the Giants. He has been okay. If you look at how he started the year and then he got injured and then came back with a bad matchup, I'm not, you know, we were a little bit higher on him. And I think the injury has kind of given us this recency bias where we forget that he might actually be a pretty good running back. Now, this isn't a great matchup.

for Philadelphia. So that's more the reason that I have him a little lower in my rankings. But I believe in Jennings going forward. So this is this, you know, you could do again, I think Jennings is a guy you can start. Jennings or either of the Minnesota running backs. I would take Jennings. I think Darren Sprouls is electric, but he can't take that kind of.

pure RB1 workload on a regular basis. The Giants have a pretty good run defense, and I have no trust in Ryan Matthews or any other... He's the guy, Jason. Doug Peterson said... Look, we're about to get into starts, and we'll talk about the actual guy in that backfield. So I don't see another huge storyline here. You're not starting Zach Ertz. If you want to ask me whether you start Zach Gris, the answer is no. I had a couple questions on that yesterday. He's not on the same page with Carson Wins. It's not the Bradford...

Ertz combination we saw last year. It's the opposite. I mean, you have, other than the first week where Ertz got hurt, it's just been terrible for that combination. So I don't see anything else that we need to get into here. Do you guys see anything? No. Let's do it. Starts of the week. All right, these are the guys we have confidence in. In week number nine, we have each selected a player at quarterback, running back, wide receiver, and tight end to dish out.

To get behind, who wants to start this thing off? I'll jump off the building here. That was weird. That's a great way to kick it off, Mike. I will start this segment with the quarterback. Look, I'm going famous James. He plays tonight. Atlanta is allowing an average, an average of 300 yards and over two touchdowns per game. James Winston has been getting it going of lately. I know that he is.

He can be a hot, cold type of guy, but I'm expecting a big game from him and Mike Evans tonight. And we don't know what the running game is. So I look for them to have to lean on the pass a little bit more. If I was cooking a fantasy stew, I would want to mix in one part. Defense is going to give up points. So Tampa is going to give it up to Atlanta. Sure.

One part, no running game, and then one part, Mike Evans. I mean, this is the perfect. Only one part, Mike Evans? This is the recipe for success at quarterback. So you have to be behind James Winston. I think he's been in the headlines for us for a few weeks now. Yeah, he has so many plus matchups and there are more to come with him. So if you hold on to James, just saying. Now, Jason, you have my stream of the week. No, I'm sorry. Somebody. No, no, no, no. He was not streamable because he was too.

We all wanted to stream him. We all wanted to stream this guy, but his ownership was just slightly too much. We recommended that you stream him over our streams of the week if he's on your waiver wire because he's actually my number four quarterback this week. They've not recovered yet from those streaming. Yeah. You should say his name now. The DAC attack. The DAC attack is back. Dak to the future. Dak Prescott. Dak Prescott started the year.

As far as throwing the ball, really safe, right? There was all this, look, he's not throwing interceptions. He's managing the game well. In his first three games, how many passing touchdowns did Dak Prescott have? One. You are correct. It is one in his first three games. In his last four games, you kind of have that mentality of, oh, he throws a little bit. He has eight touchdowns of his last four games. He also has two more touchdowns on the ground. So he's averaging two per game through the air. He's...