Fantasy Football Podcast 2017 - Top 20 Players & Best Ball Bonanza

game plan what you think you need, you know, composition wise. Because so often you look and you go, okay, the next highest player on my rankings is, you know, it's whoever, it's Josh Doxon. But if you look at your lineup already in tow and you say, okay, I'm really heavy at wide receiver. I've got the top end great wide receivers. You know, how many tight ends are left?

You've got to just take everything into account and look at your team and every time say what would make my team the best from here on out. So like should I add maybe two running backs and three wide receivers and a tight end, but change every single time. Whenever you come up on the clock, reevaluate. I agree. That's a great perspective for best ball leagues. You didn't know this, but while we were debating our teams, I threw it on Twitter. Oh.

And so you had an early lead. Right now is 53-47. I am in the lead. So early. We'll have to check in the end of the show. Brian Willis says I wish push was an option here. Sheesh. All right. Hey, main event time. You ready to talk top 20 overall players? I sure am. All right. Let's explain exactly what you're getting here. This is the consensus top 20 players when you take Jason's rankings, Mike's rankings, and my rankings. So you could call these.

Show rankings, not positional, not broken down by position, the top 20 overall show rankings. So individually we may disagree with exactly where they line up, but we thought it would be fun to run through the top 20 players on our rankings. And number 20 back in the league is Marshawn Lynch. Marshawn Lynch right now has an average draft position.

surprisingly of 205. Shockingly, because I'll be honest, when we say that Marshawn Lynch has cracked our overall top 20 players, I feel like that's a hot take. I think people are surprised that we're saying, old man Lynch, we're willing to put you in our top 20. But it's not surprising to the average player. You know, the average draft position is even higher than our ranking. And so here's the lay of the land on Marshaun Lynch, right?

If he's healthy, if he's not broken down, he's going to be great. Latavius Murray put up double-digit touchdowns for that team. They've got a great offense, a great offensive line. They are never. I mean, I watched the face of Jack Del Rio and all the coaches when Marshaun Lynch came in to sign the contract, and they weren't just apathetic and they weren't a little bit excited. They thought this was a Super Bowl winning move.

They are not giving Jalen Richard or DeAndre Washington, the ball on the goal line. Every carry inside the five is going to belong to Marshaun Lynch. And he will get his touchdowns unless his body's broken down. If his body's broken down and he's too old, he's not getting it done, then sure. So the question really becomes, do we try to predict whether or not Marshaun Lynch's body is done? Yeah, I think the job that you have as a fantasy owner is to hedge is to hedge that prediction a little bit. You don't.

extrapolate his fifth and fourth and fifth and fourth finish from basically what that's not last year not the year before so three years ago you don't just take that and apply it no way but you realize the potential's there for a top performance and i think i like him at 20 that's fine i'm comfortable there uh it's a little bit behind the average job position where he'd be 17 so i like number 19 number 19 the guy going right after him in the draft right now which maybe is crazy t y hilton

Mind you, that's a standard draft ADP, correct? Right. So T.Y. Hilton is maybe, you know, he's one of my favorite players, but his draft position is very high now, and he's certainly a player that can win you a week and lose you a week. Yeah, T.Y. Hilton at the end of the year will be a very good, you know, if he's not a wide receiver one, he'll be a high-end wide receiver two.

You know, when you're the number one wide receiver for Andrew Luck, it bodes well in your favor. When Luck has played, you know, a season of health, he's been a wide receiver one. The question is at his draft position, it's kind of already baked in that he's going to succeed. And that's fine if you're 100% positive a guy's going to succeed. But it's hard to take people at where their ceiling is. You know, basically where you're drafting him, he needs to come.

with his best and if he comes with his best then you're a return value you're happy right but if there are wide receivers you prefer potential wise to him that are at a better value i don't think that there you can never argue that t y hilton's value we have them at 19 overall in our top uh in our consensus show rankings lynch 20 hilton number 19

Let's talk about one of my favorite players. Jay Ajai is number 18. I would have him higher if it were up to me, as does the world. The world has him at 11. But we've got him at 18. If you kind of throw out the first four weeks of last year. He didn't play week one when Aaron Foster was in. He wasn't the starter. Exactly. So you throw those first four weeks out. He finished as an RB2 or better in all but four weeks. Three of those four were he did not. He was still inside the top 34.

He only had one clunker of a week against the Jets. It looks like week 16. So Jaya Jai, I think the sky is the limit for this player. He was a touchdown machine in college. All the health concerns. You talk about Marshaun Lynch and, you know, you buy into being healthy. I think it's the only health that stops Jaya from being a monster this year. I think he could be more involved in the passing game than we saw last year due to being just another year in that Adam Gay's offense. I absolutely love Ajai. He's one of the players that if you told me, hey,

Name everybody that you think could finish number one at the running back position. Sure. Could, not will, but could. Ajai is in that list. Yeah, he should be in that list, especially with the reports that maybe they're going to involve him more on passing work. But as we've joked recently, all the reports out of Miami are glowing on every player possible, which one of the reasons I like Ajai, but I have to temper it against what I just said is the fact that the latest reports about the health of Pouncey, their center.

look good. Sure. It looks like he's going to be there for the majority of the season. If he doesn't make it for week one, he'll be there soon. And, you know, that makes a huge difference for a running back. A good, a good center makes all the difference in the world. I really like JHA. We both, you and I have him inside our top 10 running backs. I think he belongs there. Yeah. And when you talk about hype.

I like having numbers behind Jay Ajay as opposed to the hype behind Devante Parker right now or those type of things. At least with Ajay, we've seen week-winning type of performances from him multiple times last year, finished second overall three different weeks, sixth one week.

So very impressive. Yeah, before we get to this next guy who we have a slight disagreement on, definitely want to thank today's sponsor, Seat Geek. Seek is the best and only way to buy your tickets for any event, sporting event or... Wife and I just grabbed tickets to... Hamilton. Yeah, and the Book of Mormon when we were out in New York. Yeah, some of the best memories I have with friends, with family, they're going to live events. You just can't replace...

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Michael Thomas, you say slight disagreement, and that's because I think you're in love with him, and I like him a lot. Yeah, when I... I'm just not willing to give him the ring, Jason. Sure. I can't get on one knee for Michael Thomas. So let's compare this to the T.Y. Hilton, right? Because Michael Thomas costs even more than T.Y. Hilton costs. Yeah, a couple picks ahead. And I was worried that Hilton might be being drafted at his ceiling. Well, the reality is whenever you're drafting a guy in the first round, you're drafting them at their ceiling, right? I mean, you're...

You're spending capital that says he needs to come in on top. So actually what I look for there is almost a reverse. I look for what's the floor of this guy? And when I look at the floor of Michael Thomas, you can make the argument that because, you know, oh, defenses are going to scheme different this year. You haven't seen, you know, he's sophomore slump is a two-word phrase that you've heard before. But his volume in a, you just named all the numbers on Drew Brees.

Drew, Drew Breeze is getting it done this year because he's playing. He always, yeah, because he's playing. And so his number one target will be Michael Thomas. You know, I think he'll be in the 90 reception range and he was great near the end zone. So your floor for Michael Thomas to me is a super, super high end two. I think his floor is wide receiver 15. And I think that's a very fair argument. You know, we have them at 17.

I'm okay with that. I'd have a jai ahead of him for sure. You did have weeks last year where he disappeared. He had 125th finish, a 45 finish, a 60 finish. I don't think that there is ascension for Michael Thomas. Yeah. Personally, so I think he's in the same boat as, you know, Hilton, where you're kind of saying you hope you get everything you got last year to justify the draft pay. You have the opposite situation, though, there because T.Y. Hilton.

is getting, you know, in theory, is getting a healthy Dante Moncrief back. Whereas he played without Moncrief a lot last year, and we saw he was a beneficiary of that. When he was out, T.Y. Hilton did a lot of his damage. Now, now this year, you've got Michael Thomas having Brandon Cook's leave. And so more target opportunity for Michael Thomas, less target opportunity for T.Y. Hilton. Okay. 16 is Des Bryant.

He's going right now around 20. He's undervalued. You think? I do think he's undervalued. This all comes down to, I mean, we made this, kind of had this discussion around Dak Prescott previously. I don't like the cornerbacks that Des has to face in that division. I think that there will be games where he is not as involved because, for one, maybe the running game is dominant and you don't need him. Sure.

But I certainly believe in the talent and the double-digit touchdown potential of Des Bryant. Right now is ADP as 208. Yeah, I mean, he's got a, the last two years, he's had injury concerns, and so that's why he's dropping. He was always basically a top five wide receiver pick, and the reason was because he finished as the third wide receiver, the seventh, the fourth wide receiver, three years in a row before those injuries came upon him. Now, last year, he was dealing with...

one of those aforementioned injuries in the beginning of the year had the week seven by and then was back healthy week eight if you look at week eight to the end of the season remember they didn't play in week 17 they rested all their starters so eight through 16 he was the wide receiver four and that includes you know a bad game here or there with uh you know josh norman i think that's that's a strong argument you know he had enough games back from week eight on to where you could say he has a report with prescott

His health was back, so maybe that translates to same old dead. Yeah, he's being drafted in the back of the second, and I think if he plays 16 games, he's a top five wide receiver. That's a great value to me. All right, number 15, youngster, but dominant youngster at that. Jordan Howard comes in at 15 on our top 20 rankings. Just an impressive, incredible rookie season for Jordan Howard on a team that wasn't good.

That was honestly, that was very kind of you. Yeah. And are you just doing that because Jake Grizz is here and he doesn't want to hear you talk bad about the bears? Yes. So they may be worse this year. I don't even know. But it's nice to know that Jordan Howard has already done it in that environment. He's proven himself. He's established himself and really only had three weeks outside the top RB2 range from, what, week three on? And he was fighting for a carries in the beginning of last season. So.

It's just a workload thing for Howard. He wants the workload. He wants to go in and be the guy. Yeah, I mean... I love everything about Jordan Howard except for the lack of a track record, which is built into these young players where it's possible they regress or they try to do too much. You saw it with Todd Gurley last year. There's no reason that Jordan Howard couldn't have a regression of sorts because the offense can't do it. But...