Fantasy Football 2018 - Alex Smith Traded! + Rookie Review: 2017 WRs & TEs

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that the Ultimate Draft Kit will be available for pre-sale on Super Bowl Sunday. What? On Super Bowl Sunday, Ultimate DraftKit.com. To the Fantasy Footballers podcast. Coming to you from Draft.com Studios with your host, Andy Holloway, Jason Moore, and Mike Wright. Welcome in. That's my volume level, but I'm better. I've got a voice.

Mike, how you doing? No, I'm good, man. Good. Thanks for asking. Jay Grizz is here again. If you want to know the answer, and yes, I just squeaked a little bit, if you want to know the answer to why we record fantasy football podcast all year round, look no further than that trade last night. Or I guess that's two nights ago when you're listening to this. I've not gone to sleep.

It was that exciting for me. So we're going to spend a decent amount of time today talking through the Alex Smith to Washington train. Big time. Fantastic. Reverberations throughout the NFL, especially for fantasy in each of the cities, in Kansas City, in Washington. And then wherever Kirk Cousins ends up, which will not be Washington, oh, that's the rope-a-dope right there.

They sign him to a long-term deal. They double down. Two quarterbacks. We're going to, they hate him that much that they will franchise him. To bench him. Oh, 34 million for the bench. Sign me up. Can't get CTE from the bench. This, the signing, or I should say the trade of Alex Smith to Washington, he could not have possibly gone to a better spot for the narrative in the NFL of tracking Kurt Cousins because.

Washington, while I think all of us felt like it was a low, you know, a much lower probability that Kirk Cousins ends up back there. Maybe they franchise him a ridiculous third time or he signs a long-term deal there. We thought it was a low probability, but it could still have happened. That's gone now. Now you have, in my opinion, maybe Drew Brees is up there too, but at least in recent memory, the best.

Free agent quarterback. And look, Peyton Manning, I'll include him in there. But everyone knew when Peyton Manning was a free agent, you had two to three years of Peyton Manning. You have Kirk Cousins. It's 29. 29. You're talking. Well, for a context, Alex Smith is 34. And just signed a four-year deal with Washington. Yeah. So he's under contract for five years. Right. And Kirk Cousins is five years younger. Tom Brady's 40. Right.

Kirk Cousins has at least seven to eight great years of NFL football in him. Maybe. And he is on. We'll see. Yeah. I said this is my opinion. Sure. A franchise quarterback is available in free agency. This does not happen. We will talk much more about it. I want to welcome everybody into the fantasy footballers podcast. You can find us on the web, the fantasy footballers.com.

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that is educational, that helps equip you to win your league and enjoy being in your league and enjoy running your league. All of those pieces they come into play on the show. You can find us on iTunes. You can leave a review. Apple Podcasts. Yeah, you can leave us a review on the Apple Podcast app. Subscribe over there. And then we're pretty much everywhere else you could listen to a podcast. Spotify, IHeartRadio. We are on the YouTube. Hmm.

We are. We are. All right, I have, I want to get into this quick question, and then we'll circle back to the Alex Smith News. We'll talk about the fantasy implications. Jason's still on vacation, by the way. Have we announced what else is on this show? No. But people that listen to Tuesday show know. All right. So what's on today's show, Mike? We're looking back at the rookies. Tuesday's show, we took a look at quarterbacks and running backs. So we're going to look at rookies. How did they perform?

project a little bit, talk about, you know, coming into the year our process of what we thought of these guys and how that played out. So we will be talking about that as well, but that's not nearly as exciting right now as the Kirk Cousins News. No, and I think everybody wants to hear our take. I call it the Kirk Cousins News. Yes, you do. I noticed that. Maybe that's appropriate. We'll see. I love this quick question, though. This is a great one. This one comes in off of Twitter.

If you listen to the show over the past couple of weeks, we got into the truth about every position, the players where they finished and what their consistency levels were. And this question comes in off of Twitter. It says from the wide receiver in running back truth shows, who do you want to give a pass to? Okay, so there were players that ended up with bad consistency rankings. Who would you give a pass to?

I'll jump in here. I'm giving my pass. I'm giving it to Mike Evans. And this is because the truth is about consistency, like Andy said. And Mike Evans was actually consistent. He only busted for your team, according to our metrics, about 20% of the time. And that's extremely low. He was consistently not as good as last year. Yes. But not.

A consistent bust. Brooks is nodding. That's what he was, right? He was a stair step down. Absolutely. But to me, people get, people are far more likely to swing the pendulum based on the 0% of great games for Mike Evans. Instead of looking and saying, wow, this guy was actually very consistent. Is that right? Zero percent? Yes. That's why people. No week winning weeks. No top three performances. Exactly. That's why people think that Mike Evans was bad for fantasy football when.

Not everyone is Antonio Brown. Not everyone is DeAndre Hopkins. You may have thought you were getting that in Mike Evans. You didn't. And you aren't going to get that. No, and that was why, despite opposition from many, we were hesitant to put him in the pantheon of, O'Dell, Buckham Jr. and Julio Jones, Antonio Brown. I don't think he is that. I think he's great. I don't think he is. He's not a top-top-tier guy, but he's going to drop in drafts.

yet again, because he kind of does this, right? After his rookie season, everyone loved him, then his touchdowns. Well, he was double-digit touchdowns, then he wasn't. And then he was again, and now he wasn't. So Mike Evans back the second, top of the third? Absolutely. I'm loving that. Maybe it's something with being a Tampa Bay Buccaneer. Because you had the back-and-forth of Doug Martin, now you have the back-and-forth of Mike Evans. Perhaps. Maybe you're not allowed to succeed in successive years. Something to look into, Mike. We need a study.

I'm going with a player that had 0% great games as well. And I had to think a while to make sure I wanted to do this. But I'm going to give my pass to J. Ajai. Because we expected a lot from him, but he changed teams. He moved from an established role to establishing a new role on a new franchise. Unexpected quarterback change took place in Philadelphia. There were a lot of variables. One of the ones that I want to bring up again that we brought up in The Truth Show. He never had.

A red zone carry inside the seven this year. None. That's the money zone. That's the, yeah. I mean, that's where you want to be. That's that 10 zone type of carry. He had a ton of them last year when he was great with Miami. And now you have a situation with Garrett Blunt. You know, I don't think they knew what they wanted to do in that backfield. I don't think Sproles will come back. I don't think Blunt will be back. A giant is going to find his way there. And he was the number 33 in terms of consistency. That's not good. No.

But I'm going to give him a pass through the change of teams. And I want to give an honorable mention to T.Y. Hilton. Oh, yeah. Because he's a legit. That's a quarterback situation. You know, he wasn't going to be consistent with you go be reset. That offensive line. No other weapons. Follow up. Who's going to get a pass from the fantasy community that doesn't deserve it? The guy that I think will get a pass from the fantasy community because I think he will get a pass forever. I mean, this guy has.

He took his hall pass. He went down to the laminators. He made sure that no one can ever tear this thing up because of his draft stock and his college production. That's Amari Cooper. I think people will still be guns blazing to draft Amari Cooper. He's so young. And this is not disparaging of Amari Cooper. I think that he can improve.

We'll see what the Raiders are going to do. Will Michael Crabtree, in fact, be released as the rumors stated. You're already making the case for him. Yeah. He's sounding great. Young, Crabtree's gone. Gruden's in? Oh, you've talked to me out of it right there. Oh, well, you and Gruden. You make that grimace towards Gruden every day. Yeah. Yeah. Gruden them. Don't approve of what you're doing, my friend. All right. Look, C.G Anderson.

I could see him getting a pass into the year strong. Didn't have a quarterback. I could see Jordy Nelson getting a pass. No Aaron Rogers. His numbers plummeted without him. Maybe he gets a pass and people give him another shot as a higher draft pick. I don't know. I don't know if he's deserving of that. If Jordan's going to slip similar to Mike Evans, I will be scooping him up. All right. Can we circle back? I'm not even going to do the news drop. I'm going to go with this one. Oh.

Breaking News. It's January, Mike, and we have a monster trade. We! Alex Smith traded from the Chiefs to the Redskins was traded for Kendall Fuller, who you said you called it the Kirk Cousins trade. We might be calling it the Kendall Fuller trade soon. Yes. I mean, this kid is great, 22-year-old cornerback, also got a third-round pick. And from a high level, this is called We Screwed Up.

From Washington? Washington. We screwed up on signing Kirk Cousins to a long-term deal when we could afford it. Now here we are. So Alex Smith lands in Washington, signs a four-year $94 million extension, $71 million guaranteed. Alex Smith didn't have a bad day. No. Alex Smith got traded to a situation where he's the locked and loaded starter, which for me as a dynasty owner of Alex Smith, that made me happy.

You got an extension done with the player. Now he goes to an offense. Now, I don't know if Alex Smith is better in Washington. But at least I know he's a starter as a dynasty owner of Alex Smith once they paid him this money. So what did you think of the overall, let's start with just the trait. Do you think Washington made a good move here or how are you evaluating this trade? Well, I mean, it's better than letting Kirk Cousins go and starting over in the draft.

in this NFL. You know, you need a quarterback. You need an opportunity. I like Alex Smith. In terms of the trade, they got hosed. All right. I mean, is that your perspective? Yes. I feel like they got fully, fully host. So tell me more about like what is the possible outcome for them. What's the best case scenario for Washington? The best case scenario is my goodness, they have to, you're giving up a young emerging corner.

and Kendall Fuller and a third round pick. I don't know. I don't know what the best case scenario. Because here's the thing. I like Kirk Cousins more than Alex Smith moving forward. But if you want to make the argument to me that they are the same tier of quarterback, I'm not going to argue. If some people say, well, I have Alex Smith as a slightly better quarterback than Kirk Cousins. Okay. But the problem here is Alex Smith played.