Fantasy Football 2017 - Preseason Week 3 Findings + Compliment Sandwiches

Jimmy Graham looks involved in great ways. And I'm going to throw this out there because a lot has been said on Chris Carson. Absolutely. He has looked explosive rookie running back for the Seattle Seahawks. He's been involved with the first team offense. And I'm going to throw this out there. And I think you'll be surprised. But I think Eddie Lacey looked terrific. When he got his chances.

in the situations they needed him in, whether it was first and ten and he'd break off a seven-yard run, or whether it was, you know, a third and one, and they need just a few, and the boxes are stacked, and, you know, he's getting in there. To me, I am not afraid of Eddie Lacey, and he's dropping like a rock. He's dropping, you know, dropping like a rock. Dropping like a rock. So if he's late, I mean, if he's dropping into those, you know, that, that.

you know, eight, ninth, tenth round, you're talking about a guy who very well when week one comes, they might say, okay, this is our guy. And he's passed the eyeball test. A healthy committed Eddie Lacey is a top tier running back in the NFL. We have years of evidence. I mean, he was still good last year before he lost the season two injury, especially for fantasy purposes. So I,

I like hearing that? Yeah, I mean, right now, I am a believer in the Seahawks offense, and I want those pieces. I want Russell Wilson. Doug Baldwin has looked good. Jamie Graham looked great.

Eddie Lacey looked good. Chris Carson looked good. I mean, there wasn't anything that I saw on that side of the ball that was like, oh man, they're having struggles. And their offensive line shirt is the same as it's been for the last like five years, terrible. But they know how to deal with that. And when Russell Wilson's healthy and mobile, there were just so many plays where it was like, oh, the defenders got right through and he just did his little, you know, wizzy wig turn around and run and nobody can catch him.

All right. Any other ranking adjustments that you would say that you made from that game? From that game, the only ranking adjustment would have been the massive ranking in Kareem Hunt. Where do you have in, Jay? Kareem Hunt right now is my running back 14. Okay. All right. I'll jump in here. What game are we going on to now? Browns Buccaneers. By the way, I do want to say one thing really quick because we talked about the Vance McDonald News.

But I think you need to pay attention now. Kittle? Yeah, George Kittle, the tight-in for the San Francisco 49ers, is next up on the depth chart. And so when you talk about involvement in that offense and the, I mean, I'll talk a little bit about the 49ers in a bit, but, you know, you don't have an offense replete with a ton of competent pass catchers. So something to pay attention. Sure. And Brian Hoyer can find his tight-in. So Browns versus Bucks, Jock Quiz started.

And so I think that we have put to bet any fears that these first three games, when Doug Martin is out, Jockwood's Rogers is going to be the starter, he's going to be heavily involved, and he looks ready to play. So draft him late, and he's a perfect filling for your first three weeks. Now, Deshaun Kaiser, you talk about Alex Smith, about how you look at the box score. It didn't look like he played that great.

Yeah, for Alex Smith. The same for Deshawn Kaiser. His box score, it came out very, very poor. But if you actually watched him play, he was missing plays just narrowly. And I'm talking the kind of like a 25-yard touchdown, perfectly thrown the edge. The receiver just didn't get the foot down. Later on, he was pinpointing the edges just, just a little bit outside. Just a bit outside.

And the receiver couldn't pull it down in bounds. And then a couple drops. I mean, he looked very sharp. Now, he's going to make rookie mistakes. So I'm not labeling him a quarterback one. But he is definitely interesting. And the Cory Coleman situation, I have not been a huge supporter of Cory Coleman this off season because I was concerned about his usage. But Deshaun Kaiser is going to find Cory Coleman. He found him a ton.

a ton in this preseason game. So he's going to move up my rankings. Kaiser will likely move up my rankings as well. And Isaiah Crowell, he's ripping off some big runs. Yeah, 11 carries in that game. Yeah, he looks like he will benefit absolutely from the upgrade at the offensive line and Deshaun Kaiser as well. And the other takeaway is unfortunately for well.

Duke Johnson looked pretty solid. I mean, he had a huge run called back. It was a third and two. So, I mean, you're not necessarily expecting a run, you know, where they catch the defense off guard, but it was called back. So the big takeaways. Third two? Yeah. I would expect a run. Well, you're not always, just the formation was not set up to look like a run. But so the big takeaways for me are Cora Coleman is going to move up.

and Deshaun Kaiser will go into that middle QB2 range for me. And let me ask you about Tampa Bay because their offense has not been what people hoped or expected, but it's the preseason vanilla schemes, vanilla offense, working through some things. Vanilla ice. What did you, so Winston, Winston looked like James Winston, which is a guy who looks unstoppable. I mean, laser passes coming out right where they need to be.

And then a horrifically bad interception. That's the resume. Until he cleans those up, he can't be a top quarterback one because there's just too many mistakes happening for James Winston. But the talent is there. I think the problem with the mistakes, it's not like, I mean, Drew Breez had a lot of interceptions, right? So it's not like the interceptions by themselves make you not capable as a fantasy player. It's luck had that a couple of years back too.

It's what the coaching staff will do with your mistakes, which is take the ball out of your hands in terms of the game plan. They can't trust Winston until he doesn't make those kind of decisions. Right. And then he had another one of his spectacular. The edge rusher gets right in. He spins out, scrambles. Looks like he's making the worst possible decision. And then first down strike. So, I mean, you're going to get ups and downs with James Winston.

Anything else from this game? You want to talk about Packers and Broncos? No, we move on. All right. I watched the Broncos and the Packers game. On the Packers side of the ball, this was interesting because Aaron Rogers played six minutes. Okay, he played six minutes. So he only had four touchdowns. Right, right. Let me put it this way. I believe the confidence level on Aaron Rogers is there.

I think he's going to start for the Packers. Nice. No, but he's in there six minutes, so you can't make a lot of passing game conclusions with Aaron Rogers playing six minutes in this game. You know, you did see Randall Cobb in zone target from Aaron Rogers. He looked very spry, made a couple of catches. We've talked about Randall Cobb being kind of the sneaky second option potential. It might not be Devante Adams all the time. Adams had his classic good catch, bad drop situation.

But what I did see from the Packer side of the ball that is worthy of, I think, a ranking adjustment was continued passing of the eye test for Montgomery. Montgomery looks bigger. He looks stronger. He looks like a running back. And he was much more dynamic than Jamal Williams in this game. Now, Jamal Williams made some good plays out of the backfield, Hunley finding him on dump after dump after dump. And in the open field with the head of steam, Jamal Williams looked okay.

He does not look like he's on the same level as Montgomery. Montgomery even lined up wide a few times. And you're just seeing a heavy utilization of Montgomery and a capable utilization. Found his way into the end zone on a goal line carry, two yards out, pushed his way in. He looks bigger, faster, stronger, capable. Needs to stay healthy. But much like, you know, Jason saw with Eddie Lacey, a player that you're kind of up and down on due to other players in the depth chart.

My confidence level on Montgomery went up seeing this game and seeing what they wanted to do with this first team offense. So I think Williams is a capable back, but I think Montgomery is the back to own. Yeah, he, as well for me, he's one of the few guys that has needed a ranking change based on preseason. I think he looked very, very capable. I have been a Thai Montgomery doubter. I mean, he's not super low in my rankings, but lower than he should be. He's the clear starting running back.

for the Green Bay Packers and Aaron Rogers, and he's a great pass catcher. So if you're any kind of PPR half point, I think he's not going to let you down. All right, we want to talk. Hold on. I didn't get to talk about the Broncos. Thanks for trying to move on, though. I'm just excited. So the other side of the ball, the Denver Broncos, look, it's strange to see Jamal Charles in a new uniform. And I watched every snap and I watched with care on Jamal Charles because I wanted to see what we saw it on the field. He looked a bit.

hesitant to me, but what impressed me out of Jamal Charles was... And he's made the 53 men of roster. And he should have. You watch him and you say, this is an NFL running back still. You didn't see the level of burst that you'd seen in the past with the Chiefs. And the hesitant running, an awkward open field cut after a big run. So good and bad there. But what I liked from Jamal Charles is watching the plays where he didn't get the ball.

Not only the route running on those plays, but the Blitz pickups. He took on a few linebackers and got crushed and held up against it. And that to me is why he made the 53. You watched him out there on third down, and he saved Trevor Simeon a few times in this game. Now, to talk about Trevor Simeon, sometimes you hear quarterbacks analyzed as surgeons, right? Pick apart the defense precision. I don't want Trevor Simeon.

Doing surgery. Operating on me. Look, this was a play. This is like giving your surgeon three or four Starbucks before the procedure. It was shaky, guys. It was, it was Brock Osweiler level of up and down. And I, oof, really bad interception across the middle of the field. Some horribly misplaced throws, bad reads, and then he would get into a string of three or four quick hitters. I'm telling you, Trevor Simeon is.

he should just be giving gifts to Demarius Thomas and Emmanuel Sanders in every single play. But it is a shaky offensive situation there. I am concerned with what you're going to get. I think you're going to see the good, the bad, and the ugly. Now, the ugly is Paxton Lynch. He was terrible in this game. He's hurt now, too. Terrible open field play, running the ball, bad fumbles. So Simeon's got the job, but he looked really shaky to me. And then Anderson. Anderson looked good. Yes, absolutely. Yes.

Failed on some short-yarded situations. Oh, come on. He did. All right. This is the compliment sandwich for Anderson. Look, certainly the lead back, cemented in that role. Failed on some short-yarded situations, but made a few plays. Look, we know what we have in Ced J. Anderson at this point. Do we? We do. Yeah, I think we do. You know what you have on the field. This guy's not going to be somebody that beats you to the edge. He's a guy who's just aen every down bruiser who he's capable enough.

past catcher. The offensive line didn't look that good to me for Denver. So, yeah, you know what you have in C.J. Anderson. He's a player that, you know, he's going to benefit from the positive game scheme. And I think he's going to disappear a little bit when they're down. Now the defense looks great. So they're probably going to be in a lot of games. So we can leave it at that. All right, Jay. Oh, I get to talk about it. Well, you know, we're from Arizona. And I'm going to talk about the game between the Cardinals and the Atlanta Falcons. There was a.

Not too much to pick up from this game, to be honest. There were a couple of nuggets. And here are the things that stuck out. From the Arizona side of the ball, I really do believe that their past defense is going to be super legit. If you want a good, you know, defense special teams type of. Are we talking like I'm avoiding them with my past catchers? I think.

You might get to that point. At the beginning of the season, I'm not avoiding any team until I've been proven otherwise. But when it comes to pass catchers and quarterbacks, not necessarily running backs, but the passing game against the Cardinals, I think it's going to really struggle. Tyron Matthew looks back. I mean, he had for the second preseason game in a row an incredible interception. That's going to be hard when you've got a good pass rush there as well. I think they are susceptible to the run. But this is preseason. And so, you know, the scheming of the defense.

Right now you're just seeing the athletes on the field. So David Johnson, he had like one snap and then was out of the game again. It was just say, hey, you're our starter. Please don't get hurt. Get out of here. So we got to see a lot of Chris Johnson. And if you look at the box score, he ended up with a pretty okay game. But he was bad.